"Primogeniture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it seems insuperable. Thereupon we become suspicious: we begin to wonder if the emergence from the cocoon, that is to say, the hatching, really takes place in the order of primogeniture. Might it not be—by a very singular exception, it is true, but one which is necessary in such circumstances—that the youngest of the Osmiae bursts her cocoon first and the oldest last; in short, that the hatching proceeds from one chamber ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... fabulous sum," he said, closing his eyes again. "Ah! had they been mine, with what joyful alacrity should I have ascertained their exact money value. And mine they ought to have been, if the sacred law of primogeniture (that special Providence which watches over the interests of eldest sons) had been duly observed. Sir John had not the pleasure of my acquaintance, but I fear he must have heard some reports—no doubt entirely without foundation—respecting my career, which had induced him to pass ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... jealousies, such as were entertained towards Mary Garth. Solomon found time to reflect that Jonah was undeserving, and Jonah to abuse Solomon as greedy; Jane, the elder sister, held that Martha's children ought not to expect so much as the young Waules; and Martha, more lax on the subject of primogeniture, was sorry to think that Jane was so "having." These nearest of kin were naturally impressed with the unreasonableness of expectations in cousins and second cousins, and used their arithmetic in reckoning the large sums that small legacies might mount ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... most hideous tyrant for one of royal birth and gentle manners. They may set up the rule of patriots by profession, in place of the dominion of those who have so long pretended that the art of governing descends from male to male, according to the order of primogeniture, and live to wonder that love of country should have so many weaknesses in common with love of itself. They may rely on written charters for their liberties, instead of the divine right of kings, and come perchance to learn, that neither language, ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... law of primogeniture prevails, though, happily, in the United States and Canada it has been abolished. Whether the interests of the mothers and younger members of families ever were in any degree the better provided for by every thing being placed at the absolute ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... considerable importance to my brother. My ancestors were noble Saxons, and possessed large domains in Lusatia. The Prussian wars had destroyed those persons whose right to these estates precluded my brother's. Pleyel had been exact in his inquiries, and had discovered that, by the law of male-primogeniture, my brother's claims were superior to those of any other person now living. Nothing was wanting but his presence in that country, and a legal application to establish ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... come! We've heard the Bluebird! Hurrah! Spring has come. We saw the Phebee on the top of the saw-mill!" Here Spring makes no sensation; takes no sudden leap into the seat of Winter, but comes in gently, like the law of primogeniture or the British Constitution. It is slow and decorous in its movements. It is conservative, treats its predecessor with much deference, and makes no sudden and radical changes in the face of things. It comes in with no Lord ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... Mr. Pendleton. As the law of Descents, and the Criminal law, fell of course within my portion, I wished the committee to settle the leading principles of these, as a guide for me in framing them; and, with respect to the first, I proposed to abolish the law of primogeniture, and to make real estate descendible in parcenery to the next of kin, as personal property is, by the statute of distribution. Mr. Pendleton wished to preserve the right of primogeniture; but seeing at once that that could not prevail, he proposed we should adopt the Hebrew principle, and ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Town,—does not your Royal Highness well know the "Gera Bond (GERAISCHE VERTRAG)"? Duhan: did not forget to inform you of that? It is the corner-stone of the House of Brandenburg's advancement in the world. Here, by your august ancestors, the Law of Primogeniture was settled, and much rubbish was annihilated in the House of Brandenburg: Eldest Son always to inherit the Electorate unbroken; after Anspach and Baireuth no more apanages, upon any cause or pretext whatsoever; and these themselves to lapse irrevocable to the main or ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... of his former friends. The Government failed to carry important measures on Church Rates and Irish Municipal Corporations, while the Radical group pressed persistently their favourite motions in support of the Ballot, and against the Property qualification of members, Primogeniture, the Septennial Act, the Bishops' seats and Proxy Voting in the House of Lords. The Ministry was saved from shipwreck by the demise of the Crown and by the accession of the Princess Victoria, who, on attaining her legal majority ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... oldness &c. adj[obs3].; age, antiquity; cobwebs of antiquity. maturity; decline, decay; senility &c. 128. seniority, eldership, primogeniture. archaism &c. (the past) 122; thing of the past, relic of the past; megatherium[obs3]; Sanskrit. tradition, prescription, custom, immemorial usage, common law. V. be old &c. adj.; have had its day, have seen its day; become old &c. adj.; age, fade, senesce. Adj. old, ancient, antique; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the estate of which the reader has heard. The settlement was natural enough. It simply entailed the property on the male heir of the family in the second generation. It deprived the eldest son of nothing that would be his in accordance with the usual tenure of English primogeniture. Had he married and become the father of a family, his eldest son would have been the heir. But heretofore there had been no such entails in the Newton family; or, at least, he was pleased to think that there had been none such. And when ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... "I don't think I have a right to leave it away from him. It never has been left away from the heir. But I'll tie it up so that he shan't cut a tree on it." John Vavasor perhaps thought that the old rule of primogeniture might under such circumstances have been judiciously abandoned—in this one instance, in his own favour. But he did not say so. Nor would he have said it had there been a chance of his doing so with success. He was a man from whom no very noble deed could be expected; but he was ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... them, Colonel Fabian Gordon, of the Polish cavalry, turned up in Edinburgh in 1783, in connexion with the sale of the family heritage, he knew so little English that he had to be initiated a Freemason in Latin. To this day there is a family in Warsaw which, ignoring our principle of primogeniture, calls itself the ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... classes; and if I have not made the strength and virtues predominant over the faults and vices, I have not painted the picture as I intended. Plantagenet Palliser I think to be a very noble gentleman,—such a one as justifies to the nation the seeming anomaly of an hereditary peerage and of primogeniture. His wife is in all respects very inferior to him; but she, too, has, or has been intended to have, beneath the thin stratum of her follies a basis of good principle, which enabled her to live down the conviction of the original wrong which was done to her, and taught ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... years younger than his brother Napoleon, who by no right of primogeniture, but by right of success, was early looked upon as the head of the family of Bonaparte. He assumed the place of father to his little brother Louis, and a very unsatisfactory father he proved. Louis was studious, poetical, solid, honorable, ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... Austrian succession, according to the pragmatic sanction, by which the dominions of that house were settled on the emperors's heirs general, and declared to be a perpetual, indivisible, and inseparable feoffment of the primogeniture. By the commercial treaty of Vienna, the Austrian subjects were entitled to advantages in trade with Spain, which no other nation enjoyed. His catholic majesty guaranteed the Ostend East India company; and agreed to pay an annual subsidy of four millions of piastres to the emperor. Great ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... to fancy that one man was as good as another. I knew very well that this was not true, either in nature or in the social relations; in political axioms, any more than in political truths. At the same time, I did not believe nature had created men unequal, in the order of primogeniture from male to male. Keeping in view all the facts, I was perfectly disposed to admit that habits, education, association, and sometimes chance and caprice, drew distinctions that produced great benefits, as ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... Conde in France were openly changing their note and proclaiming by the Prince's command that he had left the kingdom in order to preserve his quality of first prince of the blood, and that he meant to make good his right of primogeniture against ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... declare he was a Scotchman, who, for ferrying folks across the Pentland Firth for fourpence, or a 'groat,' received his nickname. Again it is said that he was a Dutchman, with eight stalwart sons, who, having no idea of the law of primogeniture, alike wished to sit at the head of the table, whereupon John had an octagon table made, which, having neither top nor bottom, saved any wrangling for preeminence ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... bounty of Nature, which cast my birth in a free and civilized country, in an age of science and philosophy, in a family of honourable rank, and decently endowed with the gifts of fortune. From my birth I have enjoyed the right of primogeniture; but I was succeeded by five brothers and one sister, all of whom were snatched away in their infancy. My five brothers, whose names may be found in the parish register of Putney, I shall not pretend ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... did not want that Harry should quarrel with his aunt for her sake, or that Madame de Bernstein should be angry with her. Harry was not the Lord of Virginia yet: he was only the Prince, and the Queen might marry and have other Princes, and the laws of primogeniture might not be established in Virginia, qu'en savait elle? My lord her brother and she had exchanged no words at all about the delicate business. But they understood each other, and the Earl had a way of understanding things without speaking. He knew his Maria perfectly ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... land, of which he can always point out the exact boundaries. These properties are subdivided by a father among his sons during his own lifetime, and descend in almost hereditary succession. A man can dispose of or barter his land to others; but a female never inherits, nor has primogeniture among the sons any peculiar rights or advantages. Tribes can only come into each other's districts by permission, or invitation, in which case, strangers or visitors are always well treated. The following extract from Captain Grey's work gives the result of that gentlemen's ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... whom the 18th Brumaire gave birth Bonaparte speedily declared himself the eldest, and hastened to assume all the rights of primogeniture. He soon arrogated to himself the whole power. The project he had formed, when he favoured the revolution of the 18th Fructidor, was now about to be realized. It was then an indispensable part of his plan that the Directory should violate the constitution in order to ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... to Adam and his male descendants. In all this chapter the begetting of the oldest son is made prominent, his name only is given, and the begetting of more "sons and daughters" is cursorily mentioned. Here is the first suggestion of the law of primogeniture responsible for so many of the evils that perplexed our ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... and State are severed, primogeniture will follow; then he will get a slice of the estate ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... sorts, Arbitrary, and Naturall. Arbitrary, is that which is agreed on by the Competitors; Naturall, is either Primogeniture, (which the Greek calls Kleronomia, which signifies, Given by Lot;) or ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... weak circumstances, to a certain degree friendless; with none of the excitement of society around her, with no elder sons buzzing about her and filling her mind, if not her heart, with the glories of luxurious primogeniture. Hugh Stanbury certainly did not dream that any special elder son had as yet been so attracted as to have made a journey to Nuncombe Putney on Nora's behalf. But should he on this account,—because she would be, as ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... gloomy seclusion upon their private funds, wherever the privilege of primogeniture has enabled them to do so; or, having no funds at all (the case of ninety-nine in one hundred), they go into the army; that profession, the profession of arms, being regarded as the only one compatible with an edelmann's pretensions. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... malignant purpose, and absolutely unconscious of their own fatal gift, until awakened to it by the results. Why, therefore, should there be any thing to shock, or even to surprise, in the power claimed by my brother, as an attribute inalienable from primogeniture in certain select families, of conferring knightly honors? The red ribbon of the Bath he certainly did confer upon me; and once, in a paroxysm of imprudent liberality, he promised me at the end of certain months, supposing that I swerved from my duty ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... of sharing landed property among all the sons tended to prevent the growth of Welsh unity. Socially it appears far more just and reasonable than the custom of primogeniture. It is with the growth of feudalism (already apparent in the Welsh laws of the tenth century) that its political dangers become evident. The essence of feudalism is the confusion of political power and landed property; the ruler is lord ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... promoter of his enterprises. The manor consisted of 260,000 acres. The estate of 13,000 acres, given to his second son Robert, was called Clermont. Philip, his first son, inherited 247,000 acres, by old-time primogeniture succession. From each of these two families sprang a line of vigorous and resolute men. Robert R. Livingston, our revolutionary hero, descended from the smaller estate, owned "Clermont" at the time it was burned by the British. It was soon rebuilt and Lafayette was a guest at the ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... through ancestors that were mercantile in occupation and in instinct. During the 17th century the trades were in high repute in England, and to them resorted many younger sons of the gentry. These youths, excluded from a share in the paternal estate by the law of primogeniture, were forced either into the professions or the trades. It was the custom for the country gentleman to leave to his eldest son the whole of his landed estates; the second son he sent to Oxford or to Cambridge ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... artificial. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are the natural and inalienable rights of all men; rights of property, inheritance, etc., are individual and special, and often artificial, as the right of inheritance by primogeniture. A privilege is always special, exceptional, and artificial; it is something not enjoyed by all, or only to be enjoyed on certain special conditions, a peculiar benefit, favor, advantage, etc. A privilege may be of doing or avoiding; in the latter case ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... even more strict. I admit it; but the evil is great in England, and in Scotland it has become intolerable, and must soon be relaxed if not abolished. Perhaps I shall be told that the laws of entail and primogeniture are necessary for the maintenance of our aristocratic institutions; but if the evils of Ireland spring from this source, I say, perish your aristocratic institutions rather than that a whole nation should be in this terrible ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... him from this shadowy prison. But the audience sat still in a sheeplike, grazing sort of attention, and Mrs. Ormiston continued to exercise her distinguished querulousness on the subject of male primogeniture. So he remained rooted in this oppressive sense of ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... since they were not only growing poorer every year, but the distribution of inheritances among the numerous children was completing the work, and very many would be reduced to laboring with their hands for a living. This is perfectly true. There is no law of primogeniture in Russia. The one established by Peter the Great having produced divers and grievous evils, besides being out of harmony with the Russian character, it was withdrawn. All the male children share equally in the father's estate as in title. The female children ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... assumption of superiority, but the variety and extent of his information were soon apparent, for whatever subject was touched upon he evinced the utmost familiarity with it; quotation, illustration, anecdote, seemed ready in his hands for every topic. Primogeniture in this country, in others, and particularly in ancient Rome, was the principal topic, I think, but Macaulay was not certain what was the law of Rome, except that when a man died intestate his estate was divided between his children. After dinner ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... Who can tell? But when our young Sultan is born from the sister of the Sultan, then we know he is of the same blood as the Sultan." There is besides another anomaly of the social system in the town of Ghat. Women here are the hereditary possessors and not men. The law of primogeniture is on the female side. The greater part of the houses of the town of Ghat, although the population is chiefly Moorish, belong to women, bequeathed to them or given them on the day of their marriage by friends or relatives. These two cases ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... workmanship. He is crossed in the game—look at his scowl. Mr. Yorke sees it, and what does he say? In a low voice he pleads, "Mark and Martin, don't anger your brother." And this is ever the tone adopted by both parents. Theoretically, they decry partiality—no rights of primogeniture are to be allowed in that house; but Matthew is never to be vexed, never to be opposed; they avert provocation from him as assiduously as they would avert fire from a barrel of gunpowder. "Concede, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... may imagine, perhaps. My fortune does not come under the law of primogeniture. There is no fidei commissum. I can dispose ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... the oldest, Bernard's brother, the cherished darling of the Jansoulets, father and mother, the hope and the glory of the family of the junk-dealer, who, faithful like so many more in the South to the superstition concerning the right of primogeniture, had made every conceivable sacrifice to send that handsome, ambitious youth to Paris; and he had started with four or five marshals' batons in his trunk, the admiration of all the girls in the village; but Paris—after it had beaten and twisted and squeezed that ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... upon this new soil of America and laid the foundation of a new Empire, which then and forever should be untrammeled by the conservation of princes and unabashed by the sneers of monarchs. They rejected primogeniture and the other institutions of the Middle Ages, and adopted the anti-feudal custom of equal inheritance. They brought with them the Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights; they threw around themselves the safeguard of Anglo-Saxon liberty purified and burned by those years of oppression. ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... the ups and downs of fortune were such that the rich man of to-day was apt to be the beggar to-morrow; also that almost invariably a rich man's sons were reckless spendthrifts. These things, aided by the abolition of primogeniture and entails, it was said, were to prevent the growth of a moneyed aristocracy in this country. The propounders of this amiable theory never explained how the community received reparation for the destruction of wealth which the spendthrift sons were to carry on; but so long ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... important Princely Territory of their own. Margraviate or Principality of CULMBACH (Plassenburg being only the Castle) was the general title; but more frequently in later times, being oftenest split in two between brothers unacquainted with primogeniture, there were two Margraviates made of it: one of Baireuth, called also "Margraviate On the Hill;" and one of Anspach, "Margraviate Under the Hill:" of which, in their modern designations, we shall by and by hear more ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... expenditure on soldiers and ships; reduce our overweening army of diplomatic spies and busybodies; abstain from meddling in everybody's quarrels; redeem from taxation the workman's necessaries—a free breakfast-table; peremptorily legislate against the custom of primogeniture; encourage the distribution and transfer of land; and, under the aegis of the ballot, protect from the tyranny of the landlord and employer their tenants ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... in the agrarian reforms of the Revolution an influence unfavourable to that racial dispersion which, under wise guidance, builds up an oceanic empire. The grievances of the ancien regime had helped to scatter on the shores of the St. Lawrence the seeds of a possible New France. Primogeniture was ever driving from England her younger sons to found New Englands and expand the commerce of the motherland. Let not France now rest at home, content with her perfect laws and with the conquest of her "natural frontiers." Let her rather ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... their mandibles. There remain the young mothers, who alone are charged with the future of the family. To which of them will the inheritance of the old nest revert? As sisters, they have equal rights to it: so our code would decide, since the day when it shook itself free of the old savage right of primogeniture. But the Mason-bees have not yet got beyond the primitive basis of property, the right of ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... as much from esprit de corps as from moral principle, was a man of strict integrity, in all things that related to meum and tuum. He was particularly rigid in his notions concerning the transmission of real estate, and the rights of primogeniture. The world had taken little interest in the private history of a lawyer, and his sons having been born before his elevation to the bench, he passed with the public for a widower, with a family of promising boys. Not one in a hundred of his acquaintances even, suspected the fact; and nothing would ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Greeks were unworthy and regardless of freedom; and in his mind, the lesson of an hour was quickly erased by the prejudices of the age and the habits of despotism. He retained only a jealous fear lest the senate or people should one day invade the right of primogeniture, and seat his brother Theodosius on an equal throne. By the imposition of holy orders, the grandson of Heraclius was disqualified for the purple; but this ceremony, which seemed to profane the sacraments of the church, was insufficient ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... the Lord declares the subjection of Eve to her husband, Gen. iii. 16. I have always thought this passage (Gen. iv. 7.) to allude to Abel; and to promise to Cain the continuance of the priority of primogeniture, if he were reconciled to God."—Remains of Bishop Sandford, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... this there arose a conflict between them, which resulted in Abel's death. Rabbi Huna teaches, however, that they contended for a twin sister of Abel; the latter claimed her because she was born along with him, while Cain pleaded his right of primogeniture. After Adam's first-born had taken his brother's life, the sheep-dog of Abel faithfully guarded his master's corpse from the attacks of beasts and birds of prey. Adam and Eve also sat near the body of their pious son, weeping bitterly, and not knowing how to dispose of his lifeless clay. ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... and the reader will have already inferred from the report of the action that, wherever it prevailed, the youngest son claimed to succeed to his father's estate. It is therefore the antithesis of the right of primogeniture, whereby real estate falls to the eldest son. An old record given to print by the late Mr. Robert Dymond, F.S.A., exhibits in great detail the customs of the Manor of Braunton, in Devonshire, and among them is that of ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... monarchy. And if once you admit election you must admit also the right of the to-be-elected one to offer or refuse his candidature. The nation cannot play fast and loose, as it has done, with the principle of male primogeniture, and at the same time impose upon us, its candidates for election, an unavoidable obligation to accept the burden of heredity. No; let us have the matter quite clear. If the people—as they have done by others in the past—claim ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... do with yourself to-day? If you be disengaged, I vote we dine together at White's, and then we will go down to the House. I will take you to the smoking-room and introduce you to Bright, and we will trot him out on primogeniture." ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... her constitution as the perfection of human wisdom; while in reality it is based on conquest, shaken by revolution, and only qualified by disorder. Her boasted tenures are the relics of a half-abolished serfdom, wherein the cultivator was nothing, and the aristocrat everything, and in which a primogeniture extending from the King to the Gentleman often placed idiocy on the throne, and tyranny in the senate, and always produced disunion in families, monopoly in land, and peculation throughout every branch of the public service. Her laws are complicated, ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... Drohoregan Manor. This ancient homestead of the Carroll family is very well described by Mr. Russell in his "Diary:" his visit, however, was to the late Professor, who died last year. The law of primogeniture does not prevail here, and it was only an accidental succession of single heirs, that brought an undivided patrimony down to the present generation. One cannot help regretting that the estate is to be cut up now into five shares or more. Eleven thousand ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... contemplated a gradual emancipation of the after-born children, their tutelage by the state, their colonization at maturity, and their replacement in Virginia by white immigrants.[15] But a knowledge that such a project would raise a storm caused even its framers to lay it aside. The abolition of primogeniture and the severance of church from state absorbed reformers' energies at the expense of ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... extreme for the parents to lose their son, this departure from his home was, I have no doubt, most bitter also to Cain himself. For he was compelled to leave, not only the common home, his dear parents and their protection, but his hereditary right of primogeniture, the prerogative of the kingdom and of the priesthood, and the communion of ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... the government of the nation could possibly be based. He asked, how was it possible to resist the attack on the Irish Church and the Irish Union after the surrender of the Corn Laws? He wanted to know how primogeniture, the Bishops, the House of Lords, and the Crown itself were to be maintained, now that the leader of the Conservative party had truckled to the League. Sir Robert Peel, he added, had imperilled these institutions of the country more than Cobbett ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... engaged, by a contest among his sons for the succession to the crown (B. C. 486). Artabazanes, the eldest of his family, born to him by his first wife, previous to his own elevation to the throne, founded his claim upon the acknowledged rights of primogeniture; but Xerxes, the eldest of a second family by Atossa, daughter of the great Cyrus, advanced, on the other hand, a direct descent from the blood of the founder of the Persian empire. Atossa, who appears to have inherited something ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... will have him to have been a bishop, but to me that other calling would appear more congenial. The sect of Cainites is not yet extinct, who esteemed the first-born of Adam to be the most worthy, not only because of that privilege of primogeniture, but inasmuch as he was able to overcome and slay his younger brother. That was a wise saying of the famous Marquis Pescara to the Papal Legate, that it was impossible for men to serve Mars and Christ at the same time. Yet in time past the profession of arms was judged to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... arbitrarily trampled under foot on a pretence of consulting for the service of religion; on the next day, with the same unprincipled levity, another party might have trampled on the patrimonial rights of hereditary descent, on primogeniture, or any institution whatever, opposed to the democratic fanaticism of our age. No patron can now thrust an incompetent or a vicious person upon the religious ministrations of the land. It must be through their own defect of energy, if any parish is henceforth ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... said Alaric. 'What is good? David was a man after God's own heart, and a great man too, and yet he did things which, were I to do, I should be too base to live. Look at Jacob—how did he achieve the tremendous rights of patriarchal primogeniture? But, come, the policemen are trying to get rid of us; it is time for us to go,' and so they left the building, and passed the remainder of the evening in concord together—in concord so soon to be dissolved, and, ah! perhaps never to ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... of Anne of Austria, unknown to her husband, had no rights, and could, nevertheless, try to make himself acknowledged, rend France with a long civil war, win maybe over Louis XIII.'s son, by alleging the right of primogeniture, and substitute a new race for the old race of the Bourbons. These motives, if they did not entirely justify Louis XIV.'s rigour, serve at least to excuse him; and the prisoner, too well-informed of his fate, could be grateful to him for not having listened ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... [secondary and earthly]). The fifth commandment, as it stands, would be an excellent compromise between ancestor-worship and monotheism. The larger hereditary share allotted by Israelitic law to the eldest son reminds one of the privileges attached to primogeniture in ancient Rome, which were closely connected with ancestor-worship. There is a good deal to be said in favour of the speculation that the ark of the covenant may have been a relic of ancestor-worship; but that topic is too large ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... England, as they philosophize on the abuses of their government, see plainly that the only way to abolish an order of nobility, a law of primogeniture and an established church, is to give the masses a right by their votes to pitch this triple power into the channel; for all the bulwarks of aristocracy will, one by one, be swept away with the education and enfranchisement of the people. Gladstone, John Bright, and John Stuart Mill see ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and in this capacity entrusted with the government of the French Republic. Secondly, that the title of Emperor and the imperial power be hereditary in his family, from male to male, in order of primogeniture. Thirdly and lastly, that in deciding as regards the organization of the constituted authorities upon the modifications required by the establishment of hereditary power—equality, liberty, and the rights of the people, be ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... hitherto been remarked, that among the Kentish gentry who, from time to time, elected to change the nature of their tenure from gavelkind to primogeniture, were the Lovelaces themselves, in the person of Thomas Lovelace, who, by Act of Parliament 2 and 3 Edw. VI. obtained, concurrently with several other families, the power of conversion. This Thomas Lovelace ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... personal property generally goes according to the statute of distributions; but there are local customs which modify that statute. Now which of all these systems is conformed to the eternal standard of right? Is it primogeniture, or gavelkind, or borough English? Are wills jure divino? Are the two witnesses jure divino? Might not the pars rationabilis of our old law have a fair claim to be regarded as of celestial institution? Was the statute of distributions enacted in Heaven long before it was adopted ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... comes from entail and primogeniture, and old-fashioned English prejudices of that kind," said Madame Goesler. "Lord Chiltern is a friend of yours, Mr. Finn, ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... owned thousands of acres of land, most of it unimproved, besides an interest in some small iron works, but he had been twice married and at his death left two broods of children to be provided for. George, a younger son—which implied a great deal in those days of entail and primogeniture—received the farm on the Rappahannock on which his father lived, amounting to two hundred and eighty acres, a share of the land lying on Deep Run, three lots in Frederick, a few negro slaves and a quarter of the residuary estate. He was also ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... own economic institutions. This means that they had the right to choose their own portion of land, subject, of course, to the will of the existing community, and to utilize it according to their own needs and interests. This meant that no undemocratic and feudalistic practices, such as primogeniture and entail, could exist. Granted that this is self-determination rather broadly interpreted in an economic context, the question is whether or not these people had the right to choose their own plot of ground and work it as they saw fit, unhampered ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... hath Plato intermingled his philosophy with theology, and Aristotle with logic; and the second school of Plato, Proclus and the rest, with the mathematics; for these were the arts which had a kind of primogeniture with them severally. So have the alchemists made a philosophy out of a few experiments of the furnace; and Gilbertus our countryman hath made a philosophy out of the observations of a loadstone. So Cicero, when reciting the several ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... population resulting from the power to cultivate the richer soils, in bringing about the division of land and the union of man is then shown, and illustrated by examples drawn from the history of the principal nations of the world, ancient and modern; and here the European system of primogeniture is examined, with a view to show that it is purely artificial, and tends to disappear with the growth of wealth and population. This leads to the discussion of the relations of man to his fellow-men, which are shown to tend to the establishment of equality wherever ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... In theory the Singhalese monarchy was elective in the descendants of the Solar race: in practice, primogeniture had a preference, and the crown was either hereditary or became the prize of those who claimed to be of royal lineage. On reviewing the succession of kings from B.C. 307 to A.D. 1815, thirty-nine eldest sons (or nearly one fourth), succeeded to their ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... to give some Account of the second Royal House of Scots, the oldest of the Milesian Race, and the Posterity of Eber." This Race then being avowed the oldest, in Respect of Primogeniture, must, of Course, have been prior in Point of Dignity and Sway, or at least, equally entitled to the Election of the People to such Ranks; were not those by violent Measures annexed to the Heremonian Line: Yet, however this might have been, certain it is, that no Houses that we read ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... of contemporary English prose he has left no adequate successor; [Footnote: The nearest being the now foremost prose writers of our time, Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Froude.] the throne that does not pass by primogeniture is vacant, and the bleak northern skies seem colder and grayer since that venerable head was laid to rest by the village churchyard, far from the smoke and din of the great city on whose streets his figure was long familiar and his name was ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... pewees have built immemorially on a jutting brick in the arched entrance to the ice-house. Always on the same brick, and never more than a single pair, though two broods of five each are raised there every summer. How do they settle their claim to the homestead? By what right of primogeniture? Once, the children of a man employed about the place ooelogized the nest, and the pewees left us for a year or two. I felt towards those boys as the messmates of the Ancient Mariner did towards him after he had shot the albatross. But the pewees came back ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... And in my pockets carry I my gold; I'll bury that and curse and soul will save From poverty and death. And if ye mock, I'll curse you with a patriarchal curse— With Isaac's curse! O ye, with voices like The voice of Jacob, but with Esau's hands, Invert the law of primogeniture! Myself, my care! What care I ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... It will be noted that females of equal degree inherited together; and that a daughter excluded a brother of the dead man. Men themselves, if younger sons, have suffered what seems to us a grave injustice in the prevalence of the right of primogeniture, whereby, if there are two or more males in equal degree, the eldest only can inherit. This law might work for the benefit of certain females; thus, the daughter, granddaughter, or great-granddaughter of an eldest son will succeed before ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... shrewd one. He knows that he has the advantage now, but should we gain the upper hand, we could, I believe, rid ourselves of him. Our chance lies in the past. This was first a French and then a Spanish colony. Under both rules the law of primogeniture sometimes held force. That is, an estate passed to the eldest son of a family. Your estate was such a one. In fact, we possess in this very office old charters and papers which state that the property was entailed after the European custom. If that were so, the ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... drawing-room with alcove near; anecdote not lightly to be printed in human types, nor repeated where not necessary. The Mother is now dead; Father still up to the eyes in puddle and trouble: but as for the young Lady herself, she is Niece to the now Czarina Anne; by law of primogeniture Heiress of all the Russias; ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... (2) The law of primogeniture has its origin in the principle here stated, the desire of perpetuating some one palpable and prominent proof of ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... younger sons, however superior in these respects, do not so generally marry. Nor can worthless eldest sons with entailed estates squander their wealth. But here, as elsewhere, the relations of civilised life are so complex that some compensatory checks intervene. The men who are rich through primogeniture are able to select generation after generation the more beautiful and charming women; and these must generally be healthy in body and active in mind. The evil consequences, such as they may be, of the continued ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... space and of simplicity compel me to pass by, to a large extent, most of the other topics with which Maine deals—the place of custom, code, and fiction in the development of early law, the affiliation of international Law to the Jus Gentium and the Law of Nature, the origins of feudalism and of primogeniture, the early history of delict and crime, and that most remarkable and profound passage in which Maine shows the heavy debt of the various sciences to Roman law and the influence which it has exerted on the vocabulary of political ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... their common origin. The clan system prevailed in Ireland, the clans being called Septs, and all having, as a surname, the name of the common ancestor. His representative, the chief, was known as the Carfinny; but the succession was not determined by the rules of primogeniture. It was always in one family, but the choice was made by election of the next heir. When a Carfinny died, another came into office who had been chosen on his accession as heir, or Tanist, and at the same time another Tanist was chosen to succeed him as Carfinny at his death. ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... of evidence might have been woven into our argument. As, for example, the significant fact, that if we trace back our still existing law of primogeniture—if we consider it as displayed by Scottish clans, in which not only ownership but government devolved from the beginning on the eldest son of the eldest—if we look further back, and observe that the old titles of lordship, Signor, Seigneur, Sennor, Sire, Sieur, ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... an extraordinary hitch in the history of primogeniture. His eldest son, John, had died without issue before his father. Peter, the second son, and natural heir of his brother and father, then aged twenty-four, on his father's death found by the inquisition[479] that he died possessed of "no lands,"[480] all his ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... his own words, "a distinct series of labors which formed a system by which every fibre would be eradicated of ancient or future aristocracy." He effected the repeal of the laws of entail, and this prevented an aristocratic absorption of the soil; he effected the abolition of primogeniture, and this destroyed all chance of rebuilding feudal families; he effected a restoration of the rights of conscience, and this overthrew all hope of an Established Church; he forced on the bill for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... benefit of those grasping children in these days, who, dead to all natural affection, and every sentiment but avarice, seize all that the law will grant, whether equity will sanction it or not. Disregarding this claim of primogeniture, he insisted that the whole inheritance should be parceled into equal shares, of which he accepted only his own. But the generous impulses of his noble nature, were not limited to the domestic circle. His heart was warm with the more enlarged sentiments of patriotism. At the age of twenty-one, ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... mind sophisticated and fanatical, would have great pathos and keenness. To reach sublimity, however, that moment would have to epitomise ideals which we deeply respected. We should have to believe in the sanctity of canon law and in the divine right of primogeniture. That a woman may have been very unhappy or that a state may have been held together by personal allegiance does not raise the fate of either to the tragic plane, unless "laws that are not of to-day nor yesterday," ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... I have the rights of primogeniture in my favor," he said. "I was born a day before you were, in the same city of New York. My mother's name was not down in the telephone list as Mrs. Wingfield, however—I look at it all philosophically, you understand—and ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... received in the principal church of the town, in the presence of a numerous concourse of people, after having first fulfilled two conditions which the father had prescribed for him: The first was, to give to the poor all that he had inherited by his right of primogeniture; the second was, to renounce all the rest of his fortune. It was in the same town that he lived a most holy life, as had been foretold, honored by many miracles; now by permission of the Holy See, he ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... had founded, under the name of an English Colony, a community emancipated from feudalism; you had abolished here and doomed to general abolition hereditary aristocracy, and that which is the essential basis of hereditary aristocracy, primogeniture in the inheritance of land. You had established, though under the semblance of dependence on the English crown, a virtual sovereignty of the people. You had created the system of common schools, in which the sovereignty of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... joyless childhood, a guideless youth, and perhaps a mateless manhood, his own life being drained to feed the young of his father's begetting. If we cannot do away with poverty entirely, we ought at least to abolish the institution of primogeniture. Nature invented the individual, and promised him, as a reward for lusty being, comfort and immortality. Comes man with his patented brains and copyrighted notions, and levies a tax on the individual, in the form of enforced cooeperation, for the maintenance of his pet institution, ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... community (so far, at least, as the western branch of the race is concerned) everywhere presents to us the threefold element of King, Lords, and Commons. The King is supreme, he reigns by right of birth (though not according to strict primogeniture), and he not only reigns but governs. Theoretically he is absolute, but practically can do little without taking counsel with his Lords, the aristocracy of the tribe, originally an aristocracy of birth, but constantly ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... system, so different from that of the Celts. The sons of a chieftain could never form a sept, but at his death the eldest replaced him; the younger brothers, deprived of their titles and goods, were forced to separate and acquire a title to rank and honor by piracy; and that right of primogeniture, which was the primary cause of their sea invasions, stamped the feudal system with one of its chief characteristics, a system which probably originated with them. Some, however, entertain a contrary opinion, and suppose that at the death of the father ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... with honor against the Christians in the siege of Constantinople. The primogeniture of the line of Hashem, and the holy character of the grandson of the apostle, had centered in his person, and he was at liberty to prosecute his claim against Yezid, the tyrant of Damascus, whose vices he despised, and whose title he had never deigned to acknowledge. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... a sequel to that of the Edinburgh. Of his other contributions, the most important were an attack on Southey's Book of the Church, in the fifth number, and a political article in the twelfth. Mr. Austin only contributed one paper, but one of great merit, an argument against primogeniture, in reply to an article then lately published in the Edinburgh Review by McCulloch. Grote also was a contributor only once; all the time he could spare being already taken up with his History of Greece. The article ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... hearts they think it almost irreverent to read the service in French. The acquaintance of a few fellow-exiles is made and that of a half-dozen English families, mothers and daughters and a younger son or two, whom the ferocious primogeniture custom has cast out of the homes of their childhood to economize ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... high treason to administer or observe these old Brehon laws. The two enactments especially obnoxious to the English were Gahail Cinne, and Eiric. The former of these enactments was that which in opposition to the English law of primogeniture declared that the estate of a parent should descend in equal proportion to all members of the family. There was another law, or custom, among this people, which provided that the chief of the tribe or people should be ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... younger branches become stronger and greater, by nourishing the ambition of becoming more powerful, and inspiring more closely to the people an air less corrupt than that which pervades courts. Thus, whilst primogeniture gives power to the elder, the people confer ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... not govern. This is a fundamental principle of the constitution; nay, it is more—it is the palladium of our liberties! My lords, it is an easy matter to reign in Leaphigh. It requires no more than the rights of primogeniture, sufficient discretion to understand the distinction between reigning and governing, and a political moderation that is unlikely to derange the balance of the state. But it is quite a different thing to govern. His majesty is ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the Democrat severely. 'Our requirements are few and simple: Universal suffrage, the abolition of the peers, of entail, and of primogeniture, the overthrow of establishments and armaments equally bloated, the right to marry the deceased wife's sister, the confiscation of landed ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... political institutions that prevailed were favourable to the alienation and division of property. Lands that were not cultivated by the proprietor within a limited time were declared grantable to any other person. In Pennsylvania there was no right of primogeniture, and in the provinces of New England the eldest had only a double share. There were no tithes in any of the States, and scarcely any taxes. And on account of the extreme cheapness of good land a capital could not be more advantageously employed than in agriculture, which at the ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... illustrate the manner in which Montesquieu supported the opposite principles, that institutions are moulded by the character and circumstances of nations, not the moulders of them. It is well known that primogeniture, though neither the law of succession in the Roman empire, nor originally of the nations of Northern Europe, in whom the allodial customs at first generally prevailed, came to be universally introduced with the feudal system, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... perfected my instinctive perceptions. All deductions derived only from sufferings endured are incomplete. Happiness has a light to cast. I now allowed myself the more willingly to be kept under the heel of primogeniture because I was not ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... sufficed for success in this task. In order to place an impassable abyss between himself and the world, he made a full and complete renunciation in favour of his brother Jean-Louis of his rights of primogeniture and all his titles to the seigniory of Montigny and Montbeaudry. The world is ever prone to admire a chivalrous action, and to look askance at deeds which appear to savour of fanaticism. To Laval this renunciation of worldly wealth and honour appeared in the ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... founders of a potential landed aristocracy whose possessions were more extended than that of Europe. Wilderness much of it still was, but obviously the time was coming when the population would be fairly abundant. The laws of entail and primogeniture, then in full force, would operate to keep the estates intact and gifted ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... zamindars, and had been given the zamindari status by the Marathas, were subsequently made Feudatory Chiefs of the Nandgaon and Chhuikhadan States. These chiefs now marry and the States descend in their families by primogeniture in the ordinary manner. As a rule, the Bairagi landowners and moneylenders are not found to be particularly good specimens ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... under the shadow of feudalism. Belfast shows, on a grand scale, what might be done on many an estate in Ireland, in many a town and village where the people are pining away in hopeless misery, if the iron bonds of primogeniture and entail which now cramp landed property were struck off. The Greek philosopher declared that if he had a standing-place he could move the earth. Give to capital the ground of perpetuity of tenure, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... hoped to secure the royal acceptance of these resolutions by some previous votes which asserted that, of those laws which were the very foundation of the Constitution, the first was that which assured the "crown to the reigning house and to its descendants in the male line, in the order of primogeniture.[13]" ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... large wealth. From his mother's family he acquired his baptismal name of Winfield. John Winfield survived his daughter, and dying intestate, in 1774, Winfield Mason acquired by descent as the eldest male heir (the law of primogeniture then being the law of Virginia) the whole of a landed estate and a portion of the personal property. The principal part of this large inheritance was devised to Winfield Scott, but, the devisee having married again and had issue, the ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... of real grandees of Spain there were but forty-nine, although the number of titled families was much larger—owned all the country, except that vast portion of it which had reposed for ages in the dead-hand of the Church. The law of primogeniture, strictly enforced, tended with every generation to narrow the basis of society. Nearly every great estate was an entail, passing from eldest son to eldest son, until these were exhausted, in which case a daughter transferred the family possessions to a new house. Thus the capital of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... hundred and fifty thousand souls depend for their existence,) and in the second place, from the subdivision of the land in small portions, arising from the laws of inheritance, which bar the right of primogeniture; the consequence of which is, that the major part of Belgium is cultivated by spade husbandry, and is in the very highest state of fertility. Nevertheless, the proportion of those who receive relief in Belgium from public institutions and ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... hectic flush came over his chalky countenance, whilst a sardonic smile played over his features. "You can speak low enough now. 'Tis a pity that primogeniture is so little regarded in his Majesty's vessels of war; but methinks that you are but little dutiful, seeing that I am some ten years your senior, and that I do not scorn to own you, though you are the son ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... part. The brain will hold out longer than it, and the liver longer than that; they will endure a siege; but an unnatural heat, a rebellious heat, will blow up the heart, like a mine, in a minute. But howsoever, since the heart hath the birthright and primogeniture, and that it is nature's eldest son in us, the part which is first born to life in man, and that the other parts, as younger brethren, and servants in his family, have a dependance upon it, it is reason ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... vengeances, but it was a very lovely oddity. Their property was not large, and she knew every living thing on the place down to the dogs and pigs. And Miss Jemima, as the people always called her, transferring the MISS CROWTHER of primogeniture to the younger, who kept, ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... nothing which ought to offend him,—had, indeed, only obeyed him in coming down to South Wales. That custom of the country was good and valid, and wise. If he believed in anything of the world worldly, he believed in primogeniture in respect of land. Though Isabel was ever so sweet, duty was duty. Who was he that he should dare to say to himself that he could break through what he believed to be a law on his conscience without ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... a good example of that idolatry of number as number which is the "freak religion" of the biometrician. Supposing that the conclusion reached by this method be a true one—which it would need more credulity than I possess to assert—we must conclude that, somehow, primogeniture, as such, affects the quality of the offspring, and, on the other hand, that to be born fifth or tenth or fifteenth involves certain personal consequences of a special kind. Evidently we here approach less sophisticated ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... although he was the youngest born, what a fine king he would make; and the mother, in consequence, tutored her son to expect the command of the country, although the law of the land in the royal family is the primogeniture system, extending, however, only to those sons who are born after the accession of the ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... though there is generally a low rambling attic, occupied by servants, and sometimes by the chaplain, the librarian and the steward, in better rooms. When there were more than two married sons, which hardly ever happened under the old system of primogeniture, they divided the apartments between them as best they could. The unmarried younger children had to put up with what was left. Moreover, in the greatest houses, where there was usually a cardinal of the ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... N. oldness &c adj.^; age, antiquity; cobwebs of antiquity. maturity; decline, decay; senility &c 128. seniority, eldership, primogeniture. archaism &c (the past) 122; thing of the past, relic of the past; megatherium^; Sanskrit. tradition, prescription, custom, immemorial usage, common law. V. be old &c adj.; have had its day, have seen its day; become old &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... ever planned for the welfare of the people confided to him; and the Church ought to feel proud of the part she took in his councils. But the upper classes deserted him in heart and mind, just as they had already deserted him on the great question of the law of primogeniture,—the lasting honor of the only bold statesman the Restoration has produced, namely, the Comte de Peyronnet. To reconstitute the nation through the family; to take from the press its venomous action and confine it to its real usefulness; to recall the elective Chamber to its ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... "free tenants," reserving to the king the seigniory, or proprietary title. The epithet "law-worthy" is equivalent to a declaration that they were freemen, for in the feudal ages none other were entitled to the forms of law; while the right of heirship apparently exempted them from the rule of primogeniture which prevailed among the Norman conquerors;—it is probable, however, that this exemption did not long hold good. In other respects the citizens of London continued to be governed by their own laws and usages, administered by their own magistrates ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... plans put forward in France during the Revolution for interfering with bequests and inheritance. He would, however, check the incentives to accumulation by abolishing the feudal system, primogeniture, titles and entail. Property is sacred—that good men may be free to give it away. Reform public opinion, and a man engaged in amassing wealth would soon hide his treasures as carefully as he now ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... as the Quincys, the Lowells, the Winthrops, and the Adamses, which have maintained their superior position for generations, through sheer force of ability and character, without the external buttresses of primogeniture and entail, may safely measure itself against the stained lineage of many European families of high title. The very absence of titular distinction often causes the lines to be more clearly drawn; as Mr. ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... paupers, or these ladies may be dwelling in some other city, where the visiting cards will bear wholly different names. How idle to attempt to transport into American life the social traditions and delusions which require monarchy and primogeniture, and a standing army, to keep them up—and which cannot always hold their own in England, even ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Leigh, if he survived him. It was, however, obviously most in accordance with the desire of the testator, and with the general opinion of the family, that the estate should go according to the usual rules of succession by primogeniture in the Adlestrop branch; and as all the parties to the transaction were on excellent terms with each other, and as they believed it to be quite doubtful what interpretation a court of law would put upon the will, they settled the matter without any such intervention. ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... are alluded to, who carried on the expeditions here mentioned. They were one branch of the posterity of Ham; who is here spoken of as the eldest son of Cronus. How justly they conferred upon him this rank of primogeniture, I will not determine. By [786]Cronus we are here to understand the same person, as is also represented under the name of Soues. This would be more truly expressed [Greek: Soon], Sooen; by which is meant the Sun: All ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... dealings of the same kind."[22] He can traverse the country for two thousand miles unquestioned by any official. He can follow what occupation he pleases. He can quit his country and re-enter it without a passport. The law of primogeniture does not exist. The emperor appoints his heir, but a younger son quite as often as an elder one. The principle that no man is entitled by birth to rule over them is better known to the three hundred and sixty millions of China ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... the area of colonized land exceeds 400,000 acres. A feature of colonization on that canal is that half the area is held on condition of keeping up one or more brood mares, the object being to secure a good class of remounts. Succession to these grants is governed by primogeniture. On the Lower Bari Doab Canal a very large area is now ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... everything is made to turn upon Guido's cankering doubt of his brother's seniority. One gets the impression that if the doubt could be settled by indisputable evidence in favor of Ferdinando, there would be no casus belli; the younger son would bow to the law of primogeniture and that would end the matter. Schiller, however, felt the need of a bolder contrast to his hero. The 'sublime criminal' required a colossal foil; and as equality with the sword was out of the question, the most obvious ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... There is, however, only one thing to do. He must take up his ball and lose the hole. The real players on his side must be disgusted at being saddled with such a partner. But what is to be done when a fool is born a war-lord by right of primogeniture? In a few years, in the course of nature, this fortunate youth will be the Supreme War-Lord himself; it will be his business to "stand in shining armour" by some luckless ally who has been selected to ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... admit to the father of the woman I love. But you know as well as I do that men nowadays are called to my profession not so much by the Divine summons as by the accident of birth. Were it not for the law of primogeniture, Colonel Saltine, the Church of England would be, for the most part, a ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... or two. "Well, according to our laws of primogeniture, I don't come first, and therefore miss a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... bigoted abstinence. In this belief, however, I do not concur, for I consider that a Turk is a Turk naturally, and without any further constraint than those imposed by the laws of geography and primogeniture. ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... lands, though a great, might have been but a transitory evil. They might soon have been divided again, and broke into small parcels, either by succession or by alienation. The law of primogeniture hindered them from being divided by succession; the introduction of entails prevented their being broke into small parcels ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... 1851, 114 ff., and to some extent Spinoza, Tract. polit., VI, 2. There are now in England several Land-Tenure-Reform-Associations, some of which would "expropriate" all land and vest the title in the state. The programme of the others embraces not only opposition to the right of primogeniture, to family fidei commissa and the assertion of the right of freedom of trade in land, and of a more democratic use of common lands, but also the appropriation by the state of the increase in the rent of land which is caused ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... monarchs had of late found it necessary in a great measure to discard, he dispatched these ministers to Colombia, Buenos Ayres, and Chili without exacting from those Republics, as by the ancient principles of political primogeniture he might have done, that the compliment of a plenipotentiary mission should have been paid first by them to the United States. The instructions, prepared under his direction, to Mr. Anderson, the first of our ministers to the southern continent, contain at much length the general principles ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson
... two great elements in the nation's institutions, to sustain in its pride and efficiency this peculiar advantage, to wit, the entailment of estates, and the right of primogeniture. Those landed estates soon began to be subdivided, and in proportion as they dwindled into insignificance, so began to perish the prestige of their proprietors. The institution of African slavery served for a long time to aid in continuing the aristocratic features of Virginia ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Supreme Being regarded hereditary monarchy, as opposed to other systems of government, with peculiar favour; that the rule of succession in order of primogeniture was a divine institution anterior to the Christian, and even to the Mosaic, dispensation; that no human power, not even that of the whole legislature, no length of adverse possession, though it extended to ten centuries, could deprive the legitimate prince of ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... dignity was named Diederic, of Friesland, and was Count of the whole nation: He was not a vassal of the Empire, and, as Philip of Leyden observes, he was Emperor in his County. He was not so absolute as a Monarch, and though the Dutch in chusing their Counts generally followed the order of primogeniture, they never set up a Prince without first requiring of him an oath, to conform to the laws: so that he reigned rather by the consent of the people, than by right of succession. The power of the Counts was limited by law; ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... which renders possible the actual fulfillment of his ideal. "America, just beginning to exist, has the science and the experience of all nations to direct her in forming plans of government." There is an equal distribution of landed property, freed from the laws of entail and primogeniture; there is no standing army, and there is freedom from ecclesiastical tyranny; education is general; there is no artificial rank in society, and from necessity Americans are not confined to single lines of industry; but various occupations will meet in ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... have built immemorially on a jutting brick in the arched entrance to the ice-house; always on the same brick, and never more than a single pair, though two broods of five each are raised there every summer. How do they settle their claim to the homestead? By what right of primogeniture? Once the children of a man employed about the place oologized the nest, and the pewees left us for a year or two. I felt towards those boys as the messmates of the Ancient Mariner(1) did towards him after he had shot ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... was informed that the Assembly had annulled all the rights of primogeniture—thus depriving him, as the first-born, of his exclusive right to the title and the estate—he threw his arms around his brother, the Duke of Montpensier, and said, "Now, indeed, we are brothers in every respect." The unconcealed ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... any settlement to the contrary, landed property be equally divided among the children or nearest relatives of the deceased. He quoted Adam Smith, Gibbon, Bentham, &c, in favour of an equal partition of property, and insisted that the system of primogeniture tended only to foster all the harsh and selfish passions of the human heart. The attorney-general opposed the motion. Mr. Ewart's arguments, he said, if they went for anything, would bring us to the system of equal distribution prevailing in France, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan |
