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Untitled Article
and open hostility , with which the French Revolution was assailed more especially , than was to have been expected . After years of deliberation , the laws of succession , as they are now called , were adopted by the legislature , as the means of remedying and preventing in future , without confiscation or injustice , the evils of enormous accumulation of wealth on one hand , and of extreme
poverty on the other , and of giving security to both . After an experience of twenty years , these laws were again brought under the consideration of the legislature , by a government more implacably hostile to freedom than it dared to avow , in the hope of influencing it to revise and to alter them . No means , however base or arbitrary , were left untried to effect this darling object of the despot and the bigot ; the laws , however , had worked too well
to admit of their alteration ; too well for the liberticide projects of the Court ; too well for the freedom and happiness of the people . And it remains to this day a striking proof of the improvement they have wrought in the condition of the people , that complaints against the laws of succession are , in France , confined to those who pant fora counter revolution , and for the restoration of the old order of things ; while all France would become a Paris of July 1830 , if they were attempted to be repealed . *
Whether the French laws of succession are calculated to promote the increase of population in an extraordinary degree , is a question which cannot at present , perhaps , be fully resolved . Unquestionably the population of France has increased since the revolution of 3789 , in a proportion exceeding that of any former period , notwithstanding the dreadful loss of life occasioned by foreign wars , and consequent on the repeated attempts to restore
* Jt is grievous to think that so enlightened and delightful a writer as the authoress of' Brooke and Brooke Farm , ' should nave been misled in regard to the effects of the laws of succession in France . That love of truth , and regard for the best interests of humanity , which characterise the [ perhaps of the kind ! unequalled literary productions of this lady , will doubtless induce her to review what she has written on a subject which must speedily come under the serious consideration of the Kngli&h people . That these laws should excite the suspicion and hatred of certain classes in England , where
prejudice and habit are all on the side of the rich and great , and where a jealous aristocracy trembles for privileges , which , if not further abused , may yet be tolerated for another half century , is not to be wondered at . Nothing can be more characteristic of these classes , than the answer of a great English aristocrat to a friend who was pointing his attention , ou the spot , to certain beautiful districts in Switzerland , where all seemed happiness and comfort . 4 Yes , ' said he , with true aristocratic feeling , * but this is not a country for a gentleman to live in . ' The objection mostly urged against an
experiment for bettering the condition of the labouring poor , attempted by the writer of these ' Notices , ' on his estate , in Monmouthshire , in the year 1818 , was to the encouragement it held out to such a description of persons to congregate not more than half a mile from a gmtltmatC * residence ; and then , and since , down to the period of the late registration of votes for the county , every species of difficulty which pride , prejudice ,
and calumny could devise , has been opposed to the success of the undertaking , it seed hardly be said in vain , when it is added , that out of three experimental villages , after overcoming a two days' most malicious opposition , be for * the registering barristers , the claim of every cottage-freeholder [ possessing , individually , from one to four dwellinghouses and gardens , of the annual value of from five to seven pounds each , ] amounting in number to nearly 100 , was admitted .
Untitled Article
344 French Laws of Succession .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1833, page 344, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2614/page/56/
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