sly excluded all females from the throne. There is,
however, another mode of obviating the inconvenience attending the
devolution of sovereignty on an infant heir, and it is one which would
doubtless occur spontaneously to rudely organised communities. This is
to set aside the infant heir altogether, and confer the chieftainship
on the eldest surviving male of the first generation. The Celtic
clan-associations, among the many phenomena which they have preserved
of an age in which civil and political society were not yet even
rudimentarily separated, have brought down this rule of succession to
historical times. With them, it seems to have existed in the form of a
positive canon, that, failing the eldest son, his next brother
succeeds in priority to all grandsons, whatever be their age at the
moment when the sovereignty devolves. Some writers have explained the
principle by assuming that the Celtic customs took the last chieftain
as a sort of root or stock, and then gave the succession to the
descendant who should be least remote from him; the uncle thus being
preferred to the grandson as being nearer to the common root. No
objection can be taken to this statement if it be merely intended as a
description of the system of succession; but it would be a serious
error to conceive the men who first adopted the rule as applying a
course of reasoning which evidently dates from the time when feudal
schemes of succession begun to be debated among lawyers. The true
origin of the preference of the uncle to the grandson is doubtless a
simple calculation on the part of rude men in a rude society that it
is better to be governed by a grown chieftain than by a child, and
that the younger son is more likely to have come to maturity than any
of the eldest son's descendants. At the same time, we have some
evidence that the form of Primogeniture with which we are best
acquainted is the primary form, in the tradition that the assent of
the clan was asked when an infant heir was passed over in favour of
his uncle. There is a tolerably well authenticated instance of this
ceremony in the annals of the Macdonalds.

Under Mahometan law, which has probably preserved an ancient Arabian
custom, inheritances of property are divided equally among sons, the
daughters taking a half share; but if any of the children die before
the division of the inheritance, leaving issue behind, these
grandchildren are entirely excluded by their uncles and aunts.
Co