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Untitled Article
prohibits individuals from leaving their property away from their families to the Church , as in days of yore , and the French law , which , besides preventing the same enormity , enacts also that they should make provision for each and every member of it . On the same principle also , the French law provides a remedy against a man ruining himself , and bringing his family to want , by
gambling and other pernicious vices , in all cases where his family and friends may be fortunate enough to detect the practice in time to anticipate such a catastrophe . This may perhaps also , by some , be deemed an unjust interference with a man ' s property , but it is nothing more than the English law practises in other c&ses of insanity , only it is a far less expensive process . It should also not escape notice , when it is so bitterly complained of , that a man under the French laws of succession , * cannot do what 1
he will with his own , that the laws interfere much less than the English laws do , with the disposition of a man ' s property in his life-time , when unquestionably it is his own , and that after his death it can scarcely be called his . * Property is an appurtenant not of the dead but of the living , and this is one of the grounds on which the French law of succession rests . It may be called its moral , relative , and social
principle . Its political basis and economy are of a very different nature . The effect of the system on the interests of society at large , must be judged of on broader principles . Family affection , family duties , and moral accountableness , attach to the one set of considerations peculiarly , excepting in as far as it may be justly pronounced that in all possible cases what is morally wrong cannot be politically right .
By the present French laws of sucession , on his decease a man ' s property , whatever it may be , is to be divided into as many portions as he has children , and one more , this last share amounting at the least to one fourth of the whole ; which the father may add at will to the equal portion of either child , or divide amongst any or all of them as he pleases : so that if a man has one child , he may either
in his life-time , or at his decease , dispose of one half of his property at his pleasure ; the other half belonging by law to the child . If he has two children he is entitled to the free disposition of one-third f each of his children taking a third of right , so that he may in this case make the share of his eldest son equal to two-thirds of his whole property . If a man dies leaving three children , he has
• The illustrious Jefferson , in a letter to Mr . Eppes , dated 24 June , 1813 , says , 'The earth belongs to the living not to the dead . The will and the power of man expire with hia life , by nature ' s law . Some societies give it an artificial continuance for the encouragement of industry ; some refuse it , as our aboriginal neighbou r * , whom we call barbarians . Each generation has the usufruct of the earth during the period of its continuance . When it ceases to exist the usufruct passes on to the succeeding generation , free and uuincumbered , and so on successively from one generation to another for ever . ' Memoirs , &c . of Thomas Jefferson , President of the United States of America , vol . iv . p . 200 .
Untitled Article
French Laws of Succession . 341
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1833, page 341, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2614/page/53/
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