e law resigned itself to
follow inveterate practice, and we find that in all the bodies of
Customary Law, which were gradually built up, the eldest son and stock
are preferred in the succession to estates of which the tenure is free
and military. As to lands held by servile tenures (and originally all
tenures were servile which bound the tenant to pay money or bestow
manual labour), the system of succession prescribed by custom differed
greatly in different countries and different provinces. The more
general rule was that such lands were divided equally at death among
all the children, but still in some instances the eldest son was
preferred, in some the youngest. But Primogeniture usually governed
the inheritance of that class of estates, in some respects the most
important of all, which were held by tenures that, like the English
Socage, were of later origin than the rest, and were neither
altogether free nor altogether servile.

The diffusion of Primogeniture is usually accounted for by assigning
what are called Feudal reasons for it. It is asserted that the feudal
superior had a better security for the military service he required
when the fief descended to a single person, instead of being
distributed among a number on the decease of the last holder. Without
denying that this consideration may partially explain the favour
gradually acquired by Primogeniture, I must point out that
Primogeniture became a custom of Europe much more through its
popularity with the tenants than through any advantage it conferred on
the lords. For its origin, moreover, the reason given does not account
at all. Nothing in law springs entirely from a sense of convenience.
There are always certain ideas existing antecedently on which the
sense of convenience works, and of which it can do no more than form
some new combination; and to find these ideas in the present case is
exactly the problem.

A valuable hint is furnished to us from a quarter fruitful of such
indications. Although in India the possessions of a parent are
divisible at his death, and may be divisible during his life, among
all his male children in equal shares, and though this principle of
the equal distribution of _property_ extends to every part of the
Hindoo institutions, yet wherever _public office_ or _political power_
devolves at the decease of the last Incumbent, the succession is
nearly universally according to the rules of Primogeniture.
Sovereignties descend the