The third reason why Susan’s burial made little stir was the most expansive of all.  It was summed up daringly by Euphemia, the pale, the thin:  “Well, I think people have a right to their own bodies, even when they’re dead.”  Coming from a daughter of Nicholas, a Liberal of the old school and most tyrannical, it was a startling remark—­showing in a flash what a lot of water had run under bridges since the death of Aunt Ann in ’86, just when the proprietorship of Soames over his wife’s body was acquiring the uncertainty which had led to such disaster.  Euphemia, of course, spoke like a child, and had no experience; for though well over thirty by now, her name was still Forsyte.  But, making all allowances, her remark did undoubtedly show expansion of the principle of liberty, decentralisation and shift in the central point of possession from others to oneself.  When Nicholas heard his daughter’s remark from Aunt Hester he had rapped out:  “Wives and daughters!  There’s no end to their liberty in these days.  I knew that ‘Jackson’ case would lead to things—­lugging in Habeas Corpus like that!” He had, of course, never really forgiven the Married Woman’s Property Act, which would so have interfered with him if he had not mercifully married before it was passed.  But, in truth, there was no denying the revolt among the younger Forsytes against being owned by others; that, as it were, Colonial disposition to own oneself, which is the paradoxical forerunner of Imperialism, was making progress all the time.  They were all now married, except George, confirmed to the Turf and the Iseeum Club; Francie, pursuing her musical career in a studio off the King’s Road, Chelsea, and still taking ‘lovers’ to dances; Euphemia, living at home and complaining of Nicholas; and those two Dromios, Giles and Jesse Hayman.  Of the third generation there were not very many—­young Jolyon had three, Winifred Dartie four, young Nicholas six already, young Roger had one, Marian Tweetyman one; St. John Hayman two.  But the rest of the sixteen married—­Soames, Rachel and Cicely of James’ family; Eustace and Thomas of Roger’s; Ernest, Archibald and Florence of Nicholas’; Augustus and Annabel Spender of the Hayman’s—­were going down the years unreproduced.

Thus, of the ten old Forsytes twenty-one young Forsytes had been born; but of the twenty-one young Forsytes there were as yet only seventeen descendants; and it already seemed unlikely that there would be more than a further unconsidered trifle or so.  A student of statistics must have noticed that the birth rate had varied in accordance with the rate of interest for your money.  Grandfather ‘Superior Dosset’ Forsyte in the early nineteenth century had been getting ten per cent. for his, hence ten children.  Those ten, leaving out the four who had not married, and Juley, whose husband Septimus Small had, of course, died almost at once, had averaged from four to five per cent. for theirs, and produced accordingly.  The twenty-one whom they produced were now getting barely three per cent. in the Consols to which their father had mostly tied the Settlements they made to avoid death duties, and the six of them who had been reproduced had seventeen children, or just the proper two and five-sixths per stem.