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Untitled Article
In this age of inquiry and theory , of examination and experiment , it is an uncommon advantage to have doubts and mistakes on important subjects permanently silenced and corrected . Many questions , exciting the public mind at the
present moment , have been brought to the test of experience by Mr Laing , whose able work is written in a fifty 1 « of feffiarkable simplicity , and conveys its important information in a most clear and . satisfactory manner . He travelled in Norway , to inquire into the moral and political economy of the country , and the condition of its inhabitants , and remained there
between two and three years . It is on the question of the expediency ot inexpediency of a * ' law of primogeniture , ** that hie observations are calculated to throvt the modi light , and there are few points which more require elucidation * The apprehensions of excessively minute divisions of land , deteriorated cultivation * and redundant population , as iiecess&rilr accompanying the abolition of that law * are rety prevalent . This list of evils is predicted with regard to France , but it is
daid the time has not yet come to verify that prediction . la Norway , however , there is an example which caiiftot be mistaken : — 41 Norway / ' says Mr Laing , " is a country peculiarl y interesting * to the political economist . It is the only part of Europe m which property , ( torn ihe earliest ages , has been transmitted upon the principle of partition among all the children . The feudal structure dt society , With fog law of primogeniture and its privileged class of hereditary nobles , never prevailed in Norway . In this remote comet of the crviliaed worid we
may , therefore , * ee the effects upon the condition of society of this peea ~> liar distribution of property ; it will eihibit , on a stnall scale , what America and- France will be a thousand years hence /'*—p . 1 « This opinion must be taken with considerable limitation . There are moral causes at work which , in the natural c&tfrfte of events , will render the condition of thbsg countries very differ * erti , a thousand yeafrs hence , from that of JX&rwkf at present : —
44 From a period coeval with the establishment of tlie feudal system , the land and the people of Norway have be ^ n under the influence of the mode of succession which tho * e countries have only recently adopted . What eflfect has this produced on the state of society ? on the cotteution of the lower and middle elasaefi in this peculiar cotmntmity ? what ott the arrangement and difttrihotion of its landed property after a thottaand years of division and subdivinon ? A single fact brought home from suoh a country i * worth a voltuno of speculation " , —p . 1 * The answers to these questions , fnrninhed by art ititelligent obsttter in p <** e * mon of HI tho r * q « tisite facts , it is strtBciatitly otof itm * , mntft be highly irfterestJng . Before proceeding to them , it should be understood that if otmty i * fttt Only l ^ ldaA-
Untitled Article
€ 54 Journal of a H ^ rtdtnee in Norway .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1836, page 654, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2663/page/2/
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