declines under unjust and restrictive laws, which tend to keep the inferior classes in ignorance and poverty. Like all other industries, in fine, it seeks out and takes for itself the modes and forms at once the most advantageous for those who are engaged in it, and for society at large.

It would certainly not be difficult to support these assertions by unquestionable proofs; but that would not have been sufficient. So great is the number of conflicting views involved in this single question of rural economy, that I should have been forced to enter into a labyrinth of discussions and controversies almost without end; and it would have been necessary to refute, in a hasty manner, doctrines, and specious and intricate objections, the errors of which, having their origin in principles of political economy partially elucidated, or imperfectly understood, could only have been clearly exposed by a very extensive investigation of these principles themselves.

Such a labour required a separate work, an entire treatise; and how could I embody it in this volume without distracting the attention of the reader, and withdrawing it from considerations of a higher and more important kind? Other times will leave me, I hope, the leisure necessary for availing myself of the materials which I have collected for elucidating this branch of the question.

It will be seen that the present work is not composed to serve a particular occasion, but has a general and comprehensive scope and purpose. If the presentation of the project of a new law upon entails and successions, as the basis upon which it was sought to reconstruct the aristocratic edifice, have hastened the publication of the volume, this is the only connexion which it has with the project of the minister. It will be easy to see from a perusal of it, that I have unfortunately not had it in my power to profit by the lights thrown upon the subject in the course of the debates which have lately taken place in the Chamber of Peers.

My readers will doubtless find in the work some tedious

and negligent passages, and perhaps repetitions; a defect partly owing to the nature of the subject, and which a more severe revisal might have enabled me to correct, if I had not believed it incumbent on me to hasten the publication of a work, whose object is to throw light on a subject which at the present time so powerfully occupies public attention. So far, therefore, I have to solicit the indulgence of the reader, happy if my labours in offering some natural views of so grave a question shall assist him in forming a just idea of the forms and the principles of which our present situation and the onward progress of civilization require the application.

NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR.

The original work being more especially addressed to the French people, acquainted with their ancient and existing laws of succession, equally with the attempt made in 1826 to innovate on the latter, the Translator thinks it advisable, for the benefit of the less informed English reader, to subjoin an explanatory extract from the article "Primogeniture," in the "Political Dictionary," published in Paris in 1844.

"The feudal law of primogeniture was abolished by the decree of 4 August, 1789, and the law of 18 March, 1790. The civil code established the rule of an equal division among all the children of a family, except as to majorats, (subsequently abolished,) and the right reserved to a father of giving to one of his children, or to a stranger, a portion of his whole means and estate, which can never exceed a half. Equality is thus the ruling principle of the law, and inequality is merely facultive or permissive.

"In 1826, under the ministry of Villele, Corbiere, and Pyronnet, the Restoration proceeded covertly in its retrograde policy. In the matter of hereditary rights, it was impossible for them to return to the past. The constitution of society offered no means

of openly re-establishing the distinction formerly existing between the lands of the nobility and those of the inferior orders. But they wished to base the monarchy upon a nobility; and the latter being no longer able to support itself on the prestige of military service, an attempt was made to found it entirely on landed property. It was therefore proposed to allocate to the eldest son the whole testable part of the heritage paying three hundred francs of land-tax, unless the father should by a testament order an equal division of it. It was wished to make inequality the principle of the law, and equality facultive or optional.

"The sum of three hundred francs was exactly that at which the elective franchise was then fixed, so that it was in view, by means of primogeniture, to constitute in the privileged family an hereditary electoral right.

"This law was carried to the Chamber of Peers, where it encountered a strong opposition. Petitions without number, daily articles in the newspapers, pamphlets, and tracts, testified to the popular feeling against it. It was rejected by an immense majority on 8 April, 1826.

"And now, since the empire, with all the genius of its chief,-since the Restoration, with the authority of its traditions and the fatal necessities of its position, were unable to resuscitate the law of primogeniture, what future government will ever possess the power, although it may have the courage to renew the attempt?" &c.

It may be observed, that a report of the instructive debates which the projected law of 1826 gave rise to, is given in a "Treatise on Majorats, Entails, and Primogeniture, by M. Isambert, Deputy and Councillor in the Court of Cassation: 1 vol. 8vo. Paris, 1826;" from which it appears that the measure was opposed by all the most able practical statesmen of the day, such as Talleyrand, Molé, Broglie, Barante, Pasquier, Choiseul, Decazes, Simeon, Darau, Roy, and Lanjuinais. Extracts from some of the speeches of the opponents of the law will be found in the Appendix No. 1.

The promise held out by M. Passy, of a separate treatise on the agricultural branch of the question, was only redeemed by him on 24 August, 1846, in a "Memoir" then read before the " Academy of Moral and Political Sciences," and afterwards published with a

supplement in the "Journal des Economistes," Nos. 34, 38, 40, and 57. An English translation of this work has since appeared, entitled "On Large and Small Farms, and their influence on the Social Economy; including a View of the Progress of the Subdivision of the Soil in France since 1815." To this work reference is now made, as amply refuting the assertions of M'Culloch in regard to the deteriorating effects of the French law of succession on agriculture.

The present work was published in Paris in 1826. Since then, two revolutions have occurred in France, both equally unlooked for, and precipitated by circumstances. If the last of them, by changing the form of the government, seems to contradict the author's assumption as to the permanency of monarchy in Europe, neither of these great events tends to detract from the soundness of his conclusions as to the injustice and inexpediency of the laws of entail and primogeniture. By the latter opinions we have occasion to know that the author still firmly abides.

THE TRANSLATOR.

Paris, September 1848.

ARISTOCRACY CONSIDERED

IN ITS RELATIONS WITH

THE PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION.

CHAPTER I.

ARISTOCRACY-ITS ORIGIN-AND THE MODIFICATIONS WHICH IT UNDERGOES.

IF amongst old established nations there are often found to exist laws and institutions at variance with public opinion, there can be nothing of the kind at the origin of societies. Equal in strength and in misery, still free from the powerful influence of habit, reminiscences, and doctrines, men only accept the rules that are recommended to them by utility; and every power which then rises up, is essentially the result of the necessities inherent in their modes of existence.

Such, without doubt, was the origin of Aristocracy, -at least, the feature common to all nascent societies, is, the grouping of their members around a small body of chiefs, and the formation of an aristocratic patronage, under whose shade the first germs of civilization flourish.

Look at India, Ethiopia, and Egypt: from the most remote antiquity in these countries privileged orders held the laborious classes under a withering yoke. Look at the States of ancient Greece, and you will find slavery to be the fixed and sorrowful lot of the masses; and never did the terms, Aristocracy and Democracy,

B