ceroys and command armies, cannot, where the succession is
unsettled, wait patiently for the natural death of their father--
delay may be dangerous. Circumstances, which now seem more favourable
to their views than to those of their brothers, may alter; the
military aristocracy depend upon the success of the chief they choose
in the enterprise, and the army more upon plunder than regular pay;
both may desert the cause of the more wary for that of the more
daring; each is flattered into an overweening confidence in his own
ability and good fortune; and all rush on to seize upon the throne
yet filled by their wretched parent, who, in the history of his own
crimes, now reads those of his children. Gibbon has justly observed
(chap. 7): 'the superior prerogative of birth, when it has obtained
the sanction of time and popular opinion, is the plainest and least
invidious of all distinctions among mankind. The acknowledged right
extinguishes the hopes of faction; and the conscious security disarms
the cruelty of the monarch. To the firm establishment of this idea we
owe the peaceful succession and mild administration of European
monarchies. To the defect of it we must attribute the frequent civil
wars through which an Asiatic despot is obliged to cut his way to the
throne of his fathers. Yet, even in the East, the sphere of
contention is usually limited to the princes of the reigning house;
and, as soon as the fortunate competitor has removed his brethren by
the sword and the bowstring, he no longer entertains any jealousy of
his meaner subjects.'

Among Hindoos, both real and personal property is divided in the same
manner equally among the sons;[4] but a principality is, among them,
considered as an exception to this rule; and every large estate,
within which the proprietor holds criminal jurisdiction, and
maintains a military establishment, is considered a principality. In
such cases the law of primogeniture is rigorously enforced; and the
death of the prince scarcely ever involves a contest for power and
dominion between his sons. The feelings of the people, who are
accustomed to consider the right of the eldest son to the succession
as religiously sacred, would be greatly shocked at the attempt of any
of his brothers to invade it. The younger brothers, never for a
moment supposing they could be supported in such a sacrilegious
attempt, feel for their eldest brother a reverence inferior only to
that which they feel for the