"What law?"
"There is no law." "You know nothing about it" "Go back and learn."
"What!" cried the Senator coming forward to the extreme verge of
the platform and putting down his foot as though there were
strength enough in his leg to crush them all; "Will any one have
the hardihood to tell me that property in this country is not
affected by primogeniture?" "Go back and learn the law." "I know
the law perhaps better than most of you. Do you mean to assert that
my Lord Lambswool can leave his land to whom he pleases? I tell you
that he has no more than a life-interest in it, and that his son
will only have the same." Then an eager Briton on the platform got
up and whispered to the Senator for a few minutes, during which the
murmuring was continued. "My friend reminds me," said the Senator,
"that the matter is one of custom rather than law; and I am obliged
to him. But the custom which is damnable and cruel, is backed by
law which is equally so. If I have land I can not only give it all
to my eldest son, but I can assure the right of primogeniture to
his son, though he be not yet born. No one I think will deny that
there must be a special law to enable me to commit an injustice so
unnatural as that."
"Hence it comes that you still suffer under an aristocracy almost
as dominant, and in its essence as irrational, as that which
created feudalism.
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