It may be said that to refuse to indorse would retard trade.  Let it be retarded, then; for why should the capitalist have two chances to the trader’s one?  If the man trusted is unsuccessful, why, to enrich the capitalist who loans his money for his own gain, should an innocent family be impoverished, who reaped no benefit, and were expected to reap no benefit, from the transaction?  How many families have thus been brought to ruin, the day of Judgment alone will reveal.

In many countries the 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 disposal of the eldest son, is a doubtful question.  It may have been that, in the old barbaric times, when women and children were a prey to every bold marauder who chose to prey upon them, that the law was intended for their protection, the eldest son or brother being the person most likely to be able to protect them; and the property, not being subdivided and scattered, was more easily defended; and it might have been expected that natural affection would cause the heir to deal justly with his mother and the other children.

But with the passing away of these days of barbarous forays, passed away the need of any such arrangement; if indeed any good ever was accomplished by it.  Certainly, much mischief has been wrought and foul injustice sanctioned by it, for many centuries.

An arrangement so well calculated to foster selfishness and arrogance, so long established, produced its legitimate fruit.  Since at his father’s death every thing, or nearly so, would come under his control, the eldest son became the one important member of his family.  As his mother could have but her interest on the third of the value of the estate, unless specially provided for by marriage settlement, she necessarily became dependent upon him who inherited the estate; and therefore the lad, even while a lad, was constantly deferred to, until he deemed himself superior to the rest of his family.  The elder members of a family might have been girls, and, there being no boys, might have arrived at the conclusion that the property of their father might be theirs; but a boy born late in the life of their father would sweep away the delusion, and leave them to poverty.  Eldest sons have been known to send their brothers and sisters out into the world penniless, and sell from over their mothers’ heads the homes in which they had hoped to die, obliging them to subsist or starve, as they might, upon their meagre “thirds.”  Whether justice to mother or children was done or not, depended entirely upon this one boy.  And this was the brightest side of primogeniture.  In cases of entailed property, very often the entail specified that it was to go to the heir male for all time.  A father in this case, dying without a son, could do nothing besides willing to these girls such loose property as he might have acquired independently of his estate.  It might revert to his daughter’s most bitter enemy; it was not in his power to help it.