haps to the opposite evil. The liberty too, which men enjoy, of leaving their means behind them according to their own free disposal, creates a new bond of union among them, which, though often the source of abuse, may yet be attended with the happiest results. And indeed the whole tenour of the ideas and arguments unfolded in this essay might fairly be reduced to this, that while they would break all social fetters asunder, they discover a thousand new and closer ties to reunite the web of human union, with the force of far deeper and more lasting sympathies. He who is isolated is no more able to develope himself than he who is bound by enthralling fetters. Lastly, it differs little whether a man really gives away what belongs to him at the very hour of death, or bequeaths it by will; and to the former he has an undoubted and inalienable right.
The contradiction seemingly involved in the reasons here advanced on both sides of the question, is reconciled when we remember that the dispositions of a testament admit of two kinds of settlement:—1. Who shall be the next heir to the property bequeathed? 2. How is he to manage it; to whom it is to be willed in turn, and, in general, what is to be done with it for the future?—and when we perceive that all the disadvantages above enumerated apply exclusively to the latter determination, while all the contrasting advantages flow only from the former. For if the laws have only provided, by determining the portion due to his family"[1] (as
- ↑ This restriction on the power of bequeathing property, although it remains in other nations, is no longer a part of the law of England. For the exact nature and history of this limitation, the reader is referred to Blackstone's [[Commentaries on the Laws of England|]]Commentaries, book ii. ch. 32. Quoting Glanvil, he says that "by the common law, as it stood in the reign of Henry the Second, a man's goods were to be divided into three equal parts, of which one went to his heirs or lineal descendants, another to his wife, and the third was at his own disposal: or, if he died without a wife, he might then dispose of one moiety, and the other went to his children; and so, e converso, if he had no children the wife
