of similar usages in England;
but on the whole the doctrine prevailed that moveables might be freely
disposed of by Will, and, even when the claims of the widow continued
to be respected, the privileges of the children were obliterated from
jurisprudence. We need not hesitate to attribute the change to the
influence of Primogeniture. As the Feudal law of land practically
disinherited all the children in favour of one, the equal
distribution even of those sorts of property which might have been
equally divided ceased to be viewed as a duty. Testaments were the
principal instruments employed in producing inequality, and in this
condition of things originated the shade of difference which shows
itself between the ancient and the modern conception of a Will. But,
though the liberty of bequest, enjoyed through Testaments, was thus an
accidental fruit of Feudalism, there is no broader distinction than
that which exists between a system of free Testamentary disposition
and a system, like that of the Feudal land-law, under which property
descends compulsorily in prescribed lines of devolution. This truth
appears to have been lost sight of by the authors of the French Codes.
In the social fabric which they determined to destroy, they saw
Primogeniture resting chiefly on Family settlements, but they also
perceived that Testaments were frequently employed to give the eldest
son precisely the same preference which was reserved to him under the
strictest of entails. In order, therefore, to make sure of their work,
they not only rendered it impossible to prefer the eldest son to the
rest in marriage-arrangements, but they almost expelled Testamentary
succession from the law, lest it should be used to defeat their
fundamental principle of an equal distribution of property among
children at the parent's death. The result is that they have
established a system of small perpetual entails, which is infinitely
nearer akin to the system of feudal Europe than would be a perfect
liberty of bequest. The land-law of England, "the Herculaneum of
Feudalism," is certainly much more closely allied to the land-law of
the Middle Ages than that of any Continental country, and Wills with
us are frequently used to aid or imitate that preference of the eldest
son and his line which is a nearly universal feature in marriage
settlements of real property. But nevertheless feeling and opinion in
this country have been profoundly affected by the practice of f