people[12] and they might, perhaps, do it on the condition that the
incumbent consented to allow the lease to descend undivided to his
heirs by the laws of primogeniture. To this condition all classes
would readily agree, for I have heard Hindoo and Muhammadan
landholders all equally lament the evil effects of the laws by which
families are so quickly and inevitably broken up; and say that 'it is
the duty of government to take advantage of their power as the great
proprietor and leaser of all the lands to prevent the evil by
declaring leases indivisible. 'There would then', they say, 'be
always one head to assist in maintaining the widows and orphans of
deceased members, in educating his brothers and nephews; and by his
influence and respectability procuring employment for them.' In such
men, with feelings of permanent interest in their estates, and in the
stability of the government that secured them possession on such
favourable terms, and with the means of educating their children, we
should by and by find our best support, and society its best element.
The law of primogeniture at present prevails only where it is most
mischievous under our rule, among the feudal chiefs, whose ancestors
rose to distinction and acquired their possessions by rapine in times
of invasion and civil wars. This law among them tends to perpetuate
the desire to maintain those military establishments by which the
founders of their families arose, in the hope that the times of
invasion and civil wars may return and open for them a similar field
for exertion. It fosters a class of powerful men, essentially and
irredeemably opposed in feeling, not only to our rule, but to settled
government under any rule; and the sooner the Hindoo law of
inheritance is allowed by the paramount power to take its course
among these feudal chiefs, the better for society. There is always a
strong tendency to it in the desire of the younger brothers to share
in the loaves and fishes; and this tendency is checked only by the
injudicious interposition of our authority.[13]

To give India the advantage of free institutions, or all the
blessings of which she is capable under an enlightened paternal
government, nothing is more essential than the supersession of this
feudal aristocracy by one founded upon other bases, and, above all,
upon that of the concentration of capital in commerce and
manufactures. Nothing tends so much to prevent the accumulation and
concentratio