Chapter VII

On Younger Brothers

The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice.¹

To be tolerably well assured that when at last we reluctantly loosen our hold upon our property it will be enjoyed and administered by our own children instead of passing into the hands of strangers, is doubtless a great inducement to refrain from consuming it too freely in our immediate personal gratification. But although it affords a motive for accumulation, it can hardly by itself account for the persistent preference throughout centuries of change of the eldest son at the expense of the younger; indeed under the law of equal division in France parents show themselves even more strenuously thrifty and self-denying in the interests of their children than in England. It is the desire to

To be tolerably well assured that when at last we reluctantly loosen our hold upon our property it will be enjoyed and administered by our own children instead of passing into the hands of strangers, is doubtless a great inducement to refrain from consuming it too freely in our immediate personal gratification. But although it affords a motive for accumulation, it can hardly by itself account for the persistent preference throughout centuries of change of the eldest son at the expense of the younger; indeed under the law of equal division in France parents show themselves even more strenuously thrifty and self-denying in the interests of their children than in England. It is the desire to "found a Family," or to maintain one, that upholds the custom of Primogeniture amongst us, and that is not altogether the same thing as the desire to leave our children the means of prosperity and comfort. To some extent, of course, it coincides; but there are other and much more subtle motives combined with it, partly selfish, partly noble and disinterested.

If we are to understand the persistence of a custom which seems at first sight so contrary to natural affection and justice, we must try in the first place to enter into the feeling of those to whom the Family is a very real and spiritual entity, comprising far more than the human individuals who may happen to be in existence at any moment. For them the long line of ancestors still lives; not the shadowy life of ineffectual ghosts haunting the scenes of past activity, but a life of great deeds or noble achievements or unstained reputation still echoing in the souls of their descendants, moulding their characters, influencing their wills, and through them continuing long after the death of the body to be a living force amongst the living. And it is this inheritance, far more than any material wealth, which the noblest desire to preserve, not only for their children's children, but for the nation also. It is an inheritance, indeed, which can never be wholly alienated nor entirely dissipated; we cannot, even if we would, shake ourselves free from those who have preceded us; and from this point of view the man who knows nothing of his own grandfather may boast as long a line of ancestry as the proudest "Family." But for him his ancestors no longer live; his character has not been moulded by the knowledge of strength derived from them, nor his emulation fired by the desire to be worthy of them. He does not see himself as one link in a chain of spiritual life binding the generations together; and he is ignorant of the rich possibilities which lie buried in his nature. No voices speak to him from the past of what men with like temperaments to his may do; no echoes of past failures warn him where his own peculiar dangers lie. His inheritance is there, but he is unconscious of it; and being unconscious of it, he can neither control it nor benefit from it as the man may do to whom it is a living reality.

It seems at first sight a paradoxical thing to suggest that an inheritance such as this, so spiritual in its nature, so strong in its spirituality, can depend upon such a material fact as maintaining a strong hold upon the family acres. Cannot a man be mindful of his ancestors as well in a back street as in a country house? be as nobly worthy of them in poverty as in wealth? Yes, no doubt he can; but then he must be a man of exceptionally fine and imaginative character. Associations of place play a very large, if unrealised, part in preserving this spiritual inheritance. Amongst the peoples who practise ancestor - worship it is always the old domestic hearth which is sacred to the departed fathers, and it is around the family homestead that. their spirits haunt. And so it is with us also. It is on the domestic hearth that the sacredness of the Family is most strongly felt and guarded; it is around the old homestead that we find again most often and most easily the spirits of our ancestors. Their memories and traditions live, not only in the minds and hearts of the neighbouring people, but in the actual features of the country which have been moulded by their hands and wills. It is little wonder if in parting from his ancestral home the owner feels that he has loosened his hold also upon another and a far more important inheritance of which he has no right to deprive his children.

But there is more in it even than this. So long as the old home remains, it is not only a link which binds together past and future into one present Family; it also holds in one the different members of the living Family as no other place can do. The scene of a childhood passed in common, of joys and griefs shared in common, becomes in later life a meeting-place where old relations can be renewed, old feelings revived, and new joys and sorrows awaken the old sympathies, and where again the younger generation can meet and knit the ties of friendship for the future. Unless the family home does this for its sons and daughters, it falls far short of its highest function; but that it does do this in thousands of cases can hardly be denied.

One powerful motive, then, which tends to the perpetuation of Primogeniture is the desire of the Family to preserve for itself a permanent centre of family life, which will not only facilitate intercourse amongst the living members of the Family, but will also enable them to maintain their hold upon the family spirit and tradition. It fears, and with some justice, that division of its property would sooner or later bring about its own dissolution. Even though its members should achieve individually wealth and reputation, yet they would be scattered; and without any permanent common interest the bonds holding them together in one spiritual whole might be weakened. It is the power of the living spirit of the past, even more than the power of the dead hand of the past, which perpetuates the "land-system" of England.

Another element which enters into the motive, and which probably predominates with those who set themselves to "found a Family," is the desire to perpetuate one's own name. There are perhaps few who would not wish to say "non omnis moriar"; but there are few again who can hope to achieve such personal distinction as will of itself rescue their name from oblivion. They look therefore to their children to carry on the name, and pass it forward through successive generations-a lingering relic of its original owners, which may still sound in the ears of men long after their visible forms have been obliterated.

But for this they desire not merely the perpetuation of the name; its actual continuance or extinction depends upon whether or not there are sons to bear it, and that again has little or nothing to do with the possession of property. It is rather that the name should continue to be well known, to be often spoken, to carry weight, and that the bearer of it should by that very fact be influential amongst his neighbours and contemporaries; and the kind of influence desired is one which naturally attaches itself to the possession of land. In former days such possession carried with it, to a large extent, actual proprietary rights over the people occupying the land; and even at the present day the position of the landowner gives him an influence over those who live upon his estate which he could rarely acquire in any other way. Moreover, the possession of land ensures the continued influence of the Family in one neighbourhood; and in England at any rate it generally ensures the actual, if sometimes intermittent, presence of the Family there. Now, there is nothing so fatal to prestige and influence, especially if that prestige and influence have no very solid basis of intrinsic merit, as change of surroundings. The newcomer in a place not only depends upon his own merits for any influence he is to achieve; he may have long to wait before a chance presents itself of manifesting those merits. Hence a Family which leaves its home may fall into obscurity merely because in its new surroundings it has no weight of tradition and familiarity to keep it before men's minds. The policy therefore of the man who desires to found a Family is to attach it as firmly as possible to some definite portion of land which may serve to perpetuate the prestige of the family name irrespective of the merits of any particular representative.

And given the end in view, the means adopted seem at any rate to afford the best chance of success. It is no doubt a loftier ideal that one's descendants should maintain the family influence by pre-eminence in their various vocations; and there is no doubt either that the family influence would thus be far more widely spread. But to the unimaginative eye of the ancestor there is something too intangible about an influence which he cannot foresee in all its details, and for which there may be "nothing to show" which will compare in concreteness with his own power over his tenants or his trees. Moreover, even though he be a man of ability himself, he has no means of ensuring that his ability shall be passed on to his descendants, or even to his own son. Primogeniture fails him and settlements are of no avail when the property consists in personal qualities, and he sees no certainty of rescuing his name from oblivion but by attaching it to the soil through the medium of his eldest son.

But the question is complicated, and has been from the first, by the problem of the younger brothers. To them belongs the line of ancestors, the family spirit, the old traditions, in no less a degree than to the first-born; and it has always been felt necessary to justify the preference of the eldest as being in some way conducive to the interests of the others. It is in the attempt to meet this difficulty that the interests of the feudal Family have most often tended to conflict with the interests of the community at large; while at the same time it is in the younger brothers that we find the natural transition to the essentially modern Family of to-day.

The original theory and practice was, as we have seen, that the eldest born held the estate in trust for the younger members of the Family, and was expected to provide for them out of it or upon it; and this practice has continued longest where the family property is regarded as a business which all take their part in working. The difficulty first becomes acute when the property is expected to maintain the Family without any return on their part, and it is found sooner or later wherever there is an aristocracy which disdains to work for its living. The following story from Xenophon's Memorabilia shows how old is the troublesome question of the "poor relation" who is genteel as well as poor; and it shows also a very practical method of solving the difficulty. Socrates noticing one day that Aristarchus looked gloomy, asked him if he was in trouble. He answered : "Yes, Socrates, I am in sore straits indeed. Ever since the party strife declared itself in the city, what with the rush of people to Piræus, and the wholesale banishments, I have been fairly at the mercy of my poor deserted female relatives. Sisters, nieces, cousins, they have all come flocking to me for protection. I have fourteen free-born souls under my single roof, and how are we to live? We can get nothing out of the soil--that is in the hands of the enemy; nothing from my house property, for there is scarcely a living soul left in the city; my furniture? no one will buy it; money? there is none to be borrowed — you would have a better chance to find it by looking for it on the road than to borrow it from a banker. Yes, Socrates, to stand by and see one's relatives die of hunger is hard indeed, and yet to feed so many at such a pinch impossible."

Socrates then proceeds to remind Aristarchus that other citizens with households quite as large not only manage with the aid of their industry to feed them, but also to make a large profit. Is it because they are better educated in useful arts than Aristarchus' relatives? Aristarchus assures him that, on the contrary, his relatives are quite as capable, but that the others are barbarians, while "my kinswomen are free-born ladies." "Then," asks Socrates, " on the ground that they are free-born and your kinswomen, you think that they ought to do nothing but eat and sleep?" And he presses home the folly of a life spent in genteel idleness: "Do human beings in general attain to well-tempered manhood by a course of idling, or by careful attention to what will be of use? Which will help a man the more to grow in justness and uprightness-to be up and doing, or to sit with folded hands revolving the ways and means of existence? As things stand, I expect there is no love lost between you. You cannot help feeling that they are costly to you, and they must see that you find them a burthen."

Aristarchus is convinced of the wisdom of Socrates' argument, and borrows money to start manufactures. "A capital was provided; wools were purchased; the goodman's relatives set to work, and even whilst they breakfasted they worked, and on and on till work was ended and they supped. Smiles took the place of frowns; they no longer looked askance with suspicion, but full into each other's eyes with happiness. They loved their kinsman for his kindness to them. He became attached to them as helpmates." And so the incident of "distressed gentlewomen" closes.

It is to be feared that, with our modern forms of industry and the greater complexity of the business world, there are few Heads of Families who would find themselves capable of organising their dependent relations into an industrial community; while the unpractical education of our gentlewomen leaves the majority of them hopelessly incapable of earning a living. Moreover, there has perhaps never been a time in England when a Family of the feudal or aristocratic type would not have regarded such an expedient for maintaining itself as unsuited to its dignity and position. Yet many a great Family has sunk into obscurity which might have flourished with increased prosperity if its members had not taken it as a matter of course that they were to be maintained in idleness. But sons and daughters have had to be provided for, so long as the power of doing so remained, and we must describe briefly what have been the actual expedients resorted to, so far as they are known.

In the early days of feudalism in England there was little property of any kind except land,² and therefore practically no means of making provision for the younger children out of capital. daughters seem to have been less of a problem than the sons. Then, as now, there was always the prospect of marriage, and in those days it was the business of the subjects of the feudal lord to provide the dowry for his daughters; while if they did not marry, they might either occupy a corner in the old home when it had descended to the eldest son, or find a last refuge in the cloister.

But the younger sons were less easily bestowed. In the days of fighting, the strength of the Family would depend not a little upon their strong arms, and if they were to be firmly attached to the family fortunes, then proper provision must be made for them. If the Family was great in the land and the estates large, it was common for some of the younger members to hold a part of them under the chief by the system known as "subinfeudation." For others there were rich bishoprics, abbeys, and churches; and others would enter into military service, or become soldiers of fortune. Or again, some would become judges, and (Brentano thinks) would use their influence in that capacity to undermine the power of Primogeniture.

But in 1290 subinfeudation was made illegal, in the interests of the great lords who lost their rights to the dues and services attaching to the land when their tenants sublet it. The land must either be sold outright, in which case the new tenant would owe allegiance direct to the feudal lord, or not divided at all. But the introduction of entails prevented the complete alienation of any portion of the family estate in the interests of the younger brothers; and it would indeed have been contrary to the whole policy of the time. An aristocracy which depends for its influence upon landed property can only maintain its distinction by means of a system of Primogeniture or some modification of it. It is said that at the end of the fifteenth century there were in Brittany no less than twenty-five thousand nobles leading the lives of peasants upon diminutive estates which were constantly being further subdivided.³ And it can hardly be maintained that the English landowners were, from their own point of view, ill-advised in attempting to avoid such a fate for their descendants. Moreover, it was by maintaining the family influence intact in one strong hand that lucrative posts were obtained for the younger brothers in Church and State, and the Family was enabled to maintain its pre-eminence as a whole. So long as promotion in the various professions depended upon family influence it is probable that, generally speaking, the younger brothers benefited-if not as greatly as the elder-yet more than they would have done under the system of division. Bacon, as we have seen, attacked Primogeniture on the ground that it was fatal to the proper upbringing of the eldest son, whose moral character was undermined by his certainty of succession. Sir Matthew Hale defends it on the correlative ground that, while it sacrifices the eldest son to a life of dignified leisure, the younger sons are forced to distinguish themselves in active life; and since his time the argument that it is the younger sons who really benefit by Primogeniture has frequently been repeated. Sometimes it is on the ground of character: by making an eldest son, it is said, you ensure that there is "only one fool in the family"; and there is just so much of truth in the paradox that it undoubtedly is easier for the man who must work to lead a useful life, than it is for the man who can choose whether he will work or not. The civilised world still wavers between two theories of education: the one, that life should be made easy; the other, that life should be left hard. The student of peoples, the sociologist or economist, sees that strength and progress are best attained by the people who can only maintain themselves by strenuous effort, and instances are not unknown of attempts to create artificial hardships as a spur to indolent races.⁴ But the father who is far-seeing and strong-minded enough to choose this method of dealing with his younger sons as a deliberate policy, will hardly fail to give his first-born also the advantage of it.

Generally speaking, however, the argument that Primogeniture is for the benefit of the younger sons has been based upon an economic rather than an ethical principle. It is the family influence, maintained by accumulating the wealth of the Family in the hands of one man, which is to secure the fortunes of the younger brothers, either by establishing them in comfortable sinecures with assured incomes, or by opening out to them a career where even a moderate amount of energy and ability must reap a rich harvest. And this function of Primogeniture has extended beyond the days of feudalism in its stricter sense. Brentano speaks of the eighteenth century as "the time of political corruption, of sinecures, of the distribution of richly endowed places in the Church, the civil service, and the army, not according to merit, but according to family connections the eldest son inherited the estate; the inheritance of the younger sons consisted in the wellpaid places and sinecures in Church and State."

In the first quarter of the nineteenth century much the same system prevailed or was thought to prevail. Writing in 1832, Colonel Perronet Thompson says:

"On the law of Primogeniture there is no necessity to insist upon the fact, that ten thousand a year in the hands of one son would only be a thousand a year apiece in the hands of ten, and that this would not make the sum more than it was before. But, in the first place, there is the direct consequence that the nine junior sons are injured by the rule; and, in the next, there He is referring to Chalmers's argument, quoted below. is the indirect consequence-of vastly greater consequence to the public than the other that the influence and power thus created in the hands of the eldest brother are employed to procure a maintenance for the younger brothers out of the pockets of the public. This is clearly the end and the organised plan of the system of Primogeniture: the ten thousand a year is to be concentrated in the hands of the eldest son, that it may act as a battering ram for procuring a thousand a year for each of the others, or as much of it as may be found practicable, by entry into the public pantry and appropriation of the victual that is therein" (Exercises, vol. ii. p. 177)

This theory of the deliberate organisation of Primogeniture seems to be derived by the author from an article in a French newspaper previously quoted by him, which reflects the whole spirit of the French Revolution in the view it takes of the English hierarchy: "The exercise of aristocratical power being attached to the possession of great landed property, it is easy to see that younger brothers can have no share in the real estate which may be left by their relatives at their decease. The descendants of an artistocratic family would, in fact, all sink into the ranks of the common people if they were to divide what is left by their relatives in equal shares. The eldest son therefore keeps to himself all the landed property, to which is attached the exercise of aristocratic power; and then he makes use of this power to get money for his younger brothers, at the expense of the working classes. It is a mistake to imagine that in England all the property of a family in the higher orders goes exclusively to the eldest son. It is true he takes the landed property, which is exclusively the family estate. But the younger brothers have for their share rich livings in the Church, sinecures or places of some kind which the public is obliged to pay for; and all these are considered as part of the family property as much as the other. For there can never be too much pains taken to impress the fact, that the higher orders consider themselves as having a property, not only in the landed estates which they possess by direct title, but in the working classes besides, on whom they lay taxes as they please, and share the proceeds amongst themselves."⁵

There is a ring of class hatred about this not unnatural in a French writer at a time when the democratic principle was still struggling for existence against the reintroduction of the aristocracy; but it is, of course, a very inadequate analysis of a very complex society. So far as the younger brothers are concerned and it is they in whom we are at present interested-it describes a system which had been so long rooted in English society that it had come to be regarded as natural and inevitable, and it was perhaps a real service to call attention to it, even by means of exaggeration. The evils inherent in the system had only been obvious in cases of glaring incompetency, while it might be argued with some show of truth that the educated sons of the upper classes were likely to be at least as competent for the public service as any others. But as education ceased to be confined to the upper classes the argument lost what force it might have had; while it became continually more obvious that for special services special training was needed of a kind not necessarily included in the ordinary education of a gentleman. Special and arduous training is incumbent to-day in most branches of the public service, irrespective of the rank of the aspirant; but under the Stuarts flagrant incompetency was no bar to the holding of lucrative posts in Army and Navy: "In the year 1672 the French Government determined to educate young men of good family from a very early age, especially for the sea service. But the English Government, instead of following this excellent example, not only continued to distribute high naval commands among landsmen, but selected for such commands landsmen who, even on land, could not safely have been put in any important trust. Any lad of noble birth, any dissolute courtier for whom one of the King's mistresses would speak a word, might hope that a ship of the line, and with it the honour of the country and the lives of hundreds of brave men, would be committed to his care. It mattered not that he had never in his life taken a voyage except on the Thames, that he could not keep his feet in a breeze, that he did not know the difference between latitude and longitude. No previous training was thought necessary."⁶

The good things of the Church have generally been regarded as peculiarly liable to appropriation by the younger members and dependants of noble families; but there was a considerable period in the history of the Church when it afforded comparatively few lucrative positions, and it speaks ill for the disinterestedness of her service that during that period it was held to be unfitting the consideration of a gentleman except in the higher ranks of dignitaries.

"The place of the clergyman in society had been completely changed by the Reformation. Before that event, ecclesiastics had formed the majority of the House of Lords, had, in wealth and splendour, equalled, and sometimes outshone, the greatest of the temporal barons, and had generally held the highest civil offices. Many of the Treasurers, and almost all the Chancellors of the Plantagenets were Bishops. The Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal and the Master of the Rolls were ordinarily Churchmen. Churchmen transacted the most important diplomatic business. Indeed, all that large portion of the administration which rude and warlike nobles were incompetent to conduct was considered as especially belonging to divines. Men, therefore, who were averse to the life of camps, and who were, at the same time, desirous to rise in the State, commonly received the tonsure. Among them were sons of all the most illustrious families, and near kinsmen of the throne, Scroops and Nevilles, Bourchiers, Staffords and Poles. To the religious houses belonged the rents of immense domains, and all that large portion of the tithe which is now in the hands of laymen. Down to the middle of the reign of Henry the Eighth, therefore, no line of life was so attractive to ambitious and covetous natures as the priesthood. Then came a violent revolution. The abolition of the monasteries deprived the Church at once of the greater part of her wealth, and of her predominance in the Upper House of Parliament. The clergy had lost the ascendency which is the natural reward of superior mental cultivation. The spiritual character not only ceased to be a qualification for high civil office, but began to be regarded as a disqualification. Those worldly motives, therefore, which had formerly induced so many able, aspiring, and highborn youths to assume the ecclesiastical habit, ceased to operate. Not one parish in two hundred then afforded what a man of family considered as a maintenance. There were still, indeed, prizes in the Church; but they were few, and even the highest were mean, when compared with the glory which had once surrounded the princes of the hierarchy. Thus the sacerdotal office lost its attraction for the higher classes. During the century which followed the accession of Elizabeth scarce a single person of noble descent took orders. At the close of the reign of Charles the Second two sons of Peers were Bishops, four or five sons of Peers were Priests, and held valuable preferments; but these rare exceptions did not take away the reproach which lay on the body. The clergy were regarded as, on the whole, a plebeian class; and, indeed, for one who made the figure of a gentleman, ten were mere menial servants."⁷

It would be interesting to trace the process by which the Church became once more rehabilitated as a suitable profession for "younger sons," and pleasant to think that the period of probation had led directly to a more disinterested service. But that was not to come till later. Macaulay attributes the change in its first stages to purely mercenary causes : "In the eighteenth century the great increase in the value of benefices produced a change. The younger sons of the nobility were allured back to the clerical profession. Warburton, in a letter to Hurd, dated the 5th of July 1752, mentions this change, which was then recent: 'Our grandees have at last found their way back into the Church. I only wonder they have been so long about it. But be assured that nothing but a new religious revolution, to sweep away the fragments that Henry the Eighth left after banqueting his courtiers, will drive them out again."

But though the increasing wealth might once more attract the younger sons, it seems to have been long before the office of clergyman completely regained its social estimation. Readers of Miss Austen will remember how the worldly heroine of Mansfield Park reproached the younger son, whose father had procured him a comfortable living, with the prospect of a better one to follow. "Oh, no doubt he is very sincere in preferring an income ready made to the trouble of working for one, and has the best intention of doing nothing all the rest of his days but eat, drink, and grow fat. It is indolence, Mr. Bertram, indeed. Indolence and love of ease-a want of all laudable ambition, of taste for good company, or of inclination to take the trouble of being agreeable, which make men clergymen. A clergyman has nothing to do but to be slovenly and selfish - read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work, and the business of his own life is to dine."

But Miss Austen's gentle irony, contrasted as it is with the loftier view which the hero himself takes of his profession, is only a faint reflection of the bitter contempt and antagonism which accompanied the awakening of the democratic spirit in England. It is worth while to illustrate this phase of feeling further, partly because of the influence it could hardly fail to have upon the fortunes of the younger brothers of to-day, and partly to emphasise the magnitude of the change which has taken place. Every generation has one or more of the men who make it their difficult and ungracious task to expose to the public gaze abuses which are apt to pass unnoticed except by those who benefit by them. This they may do with the moderation which carries conviction, or with the invective which makes the disinterested reader suspect even the integrity of statistics. That the writer of the Extraordinary Black Book (1831) is not free from prejudice seems obvious, but it is impossible to question the basis of truth in his accusations. "One of the greatest abuses in the disposal of patronage," he writes, "is monopoly in a few individuals of influence and connection, sharing among them the most valuable emoluments of the Church. In all spiritual offices and dignities there is great difference in value, and also in patronage; and the great object of ecclesiastical intrigue is to secure not only the most valuable, but the greatest number of preferments. Hence arises the present disposition of Church property. Scarcely any preferment is held single, the sees, dignities, rectories, and vicarages being mostly held with other good things, and the most monopolised by the relations and connections of those who have the disposal of them, namely, the Crown, the Bishops, and Aristocracy. The bishops are frequently archdeacons and deans, rectors, vicars, and curates, besides holding professorships, clerkships, prebends, precentorships, and other offices in cathedrals. Their sons, sons-in-law, brothers, and nephews are also pushed in to the most valuable preferments in the diocese." He then quotes the case of a bishop, who with his son and son-in-law held twelve offices and preferments, to the value of £31,645. Again: "The late Archbishop Sutton is an eminent instance of the perversion of ecclesiastical patronage. The Suttons remaining in the Church are very numerous; among seven of them are shared sixteen rectories, vicarages, and chapelries, besides preacherships and dignities in Cathedrals. Of the eleven daughters of the Archbishop several had the prudence to marry men in holy orders, who soon became amply endowed. Hugh Percy, son of the Earl of Beverley, married one daughter, and in the course of about as many years was portioned off with eight different preferments, estimated to be worth £10,000 per annum.⁸

It is not only the appropriation of Church preferment by the aristocracy which arouses the indignation of our author; he denounces the whole system of Primogeniture out of which it has arisen. "Other evils result from this feudal institution. Primogeniture enriches one, and leaves all the other members of a family destitute. Hence they are thrown, like mendicants, on the public for support; but they are unlike mendicants in this, that the public has no option whether they will support them or not. The aristocracy, usurping the power of the State, have the means, under various pretexts, of extorting for the junior branches of their families a forced subsistThey patronise a ponderous and sinecure church establishment; they wage long and unnecessary wars to create employments in the army and navy; they conquer and retain useless colonies; they set on foot expensive missions of diplomacy, and keep an ambassador or consul, and often both, at almost every petty State and petty port in the world; they create offices without duties, grant unmerited pensions, keep up unnecessary places in the royal household, in the admiralty, the treasury, the customs, excise, courts of law, and every department of the public administration; by these and other expedients the junior as well as elder branches of the great families are amply provided for out of the taxes. They live in profusion and luxury, and those by whom they are maintained alone subsist in indigence and privation."⁹

It would probably be hard to find in any section of the community to-day a feeling of resentment to equal this, with its incapacity to distinguish between the persistence of old customs and traditions and deliberate and designing selfishness. The constitution of our whole social fabric and the iniquities of the capitalist are now the objects against which the reformer launches his invectives; and though Primogeniture still prevails, and younger brothers still have to be provided for, we hear little of the abuses of privilege and influence. The change has come about without any revolution such as Warburton predicted, but is none the less real because due to the pressure of public opinion and a deeper sense of responsibility. The very means by which the reform has been achieved is now falling into disrepute, so far has the old state of things fallen into oblivion. Much has been said of late against the prevalence of the system of examination, and its ineffectiveness as a means of selecting the best men; and yet it is chiefly by means of examination that the professions and public appointments have been removed from the deadening influence of patronage, and more or less thrown open to all classes.

Before passing to conjecture what becomes of "younger sons," now that they can no longer rely solely upon family influence, it is interesting to note the more thoughtful and less one-sided view taken by some writers of the situation at the beginning of the last century. Malthus, writing in 1820, says: "If from the abolition of the law of primogeniture the landed fortunes were all very inconsiderable, it is not probable that there would be many large capitals among merchants, and in this case much productive power would unquestionably be lost." (His argument is that merchants are led on to accumulate wealth by their desire to compete with the large landed proprietor, perhaps an unnecessarily subtle way both of accounting for the merchant's activity and of justifying the landed proprietor.) "But however this may be, it is certain that a very large body of what may be called the middle classes of society has been established in this country, while the law of primogeniture, by forcing the younger sons of the nobility and great landed proprietors into the higher division of these classes, has, for all practical purposes, annihilated the distinctions founded on rank and birth, and opened the fairest arena for the contests of personal merit in all the avenues to wealth and knowledge. It is probable that the obligations generally imposed upon younger sons to be the founders of their own fortunes has imposed a greater degree of energy and activity into professional and commercial exertions than would have taken place if property in land had been more equally divided."¹⁰

It is difficult to reconcile this view of the annihilation of distinction founded upon birth and rank with the state of patronage at the time when it was written, and it is doubtful whether for generations to come it can really be the case that the lad of obscure birth will have as good a chance in starting on his career as the lad of "good family." It is much gained that he has a chance; but the mere fact that his friends and family are unfamiliar with the circumstances and details of life in the higher professional ranks will place him at a disadvantage as compared with the lad whose friends have for generations been engaged in similar work, and who know every detail of what is open to him, and how he must set about preparing himself.

Another writer, the famous Dr. Chalmers, propounds an ingenious scheme for preserving the system then in force (1832), while yet depriving it of injustice. "We know," he writes, "that there is a mighty force of sentiment and natural affection arrayed against the law of primogeniture. But here is the way in which we should appease those feelings and make compensation for the violence done to them. We would make no inroad on the integrity of estates; or for the sake of a second brother take off a portion, to the extent of a thousand a year, from that domain of ten thousand a year, which devolved by succession on the eldest son of the family. We should think it vastly better if, by means of a liberal provision in all the branches of the public service, a place of a thousand a year lay open to the younger son, whether in the law, or in the Church, or in colleges, or in the army, or in some other well-appointed establishment, kept up for the good and interest of the nation. We would still have the estate to support the younger branches; yet that, not by the violation of its integrity, but by a more severe taxation than our politicians of the present day have the courage to impose. Under the one system the second brother would have his thousand a year, but give no return for it in any kind of service. Under the other system he would also have his thousand a year, and the public have the benefit of a duty and service from him to the bargain." But though the landowners are to be heavily taxed to support a service in which their younger brothers may find lucrative employment, the benefit is not to be confined to these. "It will not for a moment be imagined, that, while we would apportion a much larger amount of the nation's wealth to the objects of public service, we contend for any hereditary or family right to that portion, on the part of the younger brothers of our aristocracy. It should lie open to all the worth and talent which may exist in any quarter of society." In short, Chalmers seem to have had in mind something not unlike what has actually come about under the unintentional combination of the succession duties and competitive examinations.

So far, however, as concerns provision for the younger brothers, it hardly seems that the heavier taxation of the landed proprietor has had the effect of increasing the numbers employed in the public service. It is difficult to get any accurate or certain information as to how far the "younger brothers" of the present day are earning a living, or how far they continue to be an unprofitable charge upon the family estate, or how far, again, they are provided for in the public services by means of family influence rather than their own merits. An examination of Burke's Peerage and Baronetage (1899) seems to show that comparatively few are in the public services at all. The Church, for instance, seems to have fallen again into disrepute as a career for the "younger brother," for out of 867 younger sons born before 1880 we find only 30 in holy orders. The army is much more popular, and 269 either are serving or have served in some military capacity. It must be borne in mind, however, that, except in the higher ranks, the profession of an officer in the army is not a lucrative one, and that the majority of those who follow it must be regarded rather as volunteers than as burdens upon the public funds. The remaining services fare little better than the Church. The following table sets out the occupations (as stated in the Peerage) of eldest and younger sons respectively:

With regard to sons of spiritual lords, there is little indication of the wrongful use of patronage :

The most striking feature about this table is the large proportion of younger sons who are represented as having no calling. It is hardly to be supposed that both they and their still more numerous sisters are all of them living entirely at the charge of the family estate; and the more sanguine view to take is, that many of them have entered into the arena of professional or commercial life in capacities which are not considered sufficiently dignified for the pages of a Peerage. It is certainly remarkable that so few should be entered as having pursued other than the conventional lines. Wealthy marriages no doubt account for some; and even in the case of the genuinely "unemployed" it must not be assumed that none of them are rendering services in exchange for their maintenance. The greater part of the local and imperial government of the country is still carried on by strenuous voluntary work, and of this work a considerable part is done by members of the " leisured" class.

It is probable that if we were able to push the inquiry further and examine the families of those "landed gentry" who are not of sufficient rank to be admitted into the Peerage, nor wealthy enough to have been made baronets, we should find a much larger proportion of younger sons who have been stimulated by their position into eminence in professional or commercial pursuits. So far as this is the case, and so far as they owe their success more to their own abilities and enterprise than to patronage and influence, they are typical rather of the Modern Family, the characteristics and functions of which will occupy the remainder of this book.

But the most characteristic survivals of the feudal Family are not the sons but the daughters of the house. In feudal days, as we have seen, there were three courses only open to them: marriage, the cloister, or a corner in the eldest bromers house. In families where the aristocratic tradition still prevails, the position is not greatly altered. The main difference is, that at the death of the father it is more usual now for the unmarried daughters, like the younger sons, to receive their portions and to seek a life of their own instead of lingering on in the ancestral home. For many of them, in the absence of either family cares or professional work, their solitary lives are little less confined and narrow than they would have been in a convent; and it is perhaps not wonderful that this generation has devised a modernised form of the convent in the great Anglican sisterhoods, where so many women now seek an imitation of the family and industrial life which they fail to find in the real world. In the modern Family of the best type the daughters are prepared for a career as naturally as the sons, and have no need to seek out artificial refuges; but for women new ideas and new principles work always slower than for men, and a far larger proportion are still subject to feudal conditions. In France this is even more strikingly the case than in England; although it is true that many Frenchwomen have achieved complete and successful economic freedom, the numbers who are still in subjection to traditional convention is very large. "To find out what becomes of the French demoiselle we must refer to statistics. In 1900 no less than sixtyfour thousand women were immured for life within convent walls."¹¹