/lit/ - Literature

"I am astonished that ancient and modern writers on public matters have not ascribed greater influence over human affairs to the laws governing inheritance. Such laws belong, of course, to the civil order, but they should be placed first among political institutions because of their incredible influence on a people’s social state, of which the political laws are merely the expression. Furthermore, inheritance laws act on society in a sure and uniform way; in a sense, they lay hold of each generation before it is born. Through them, man is armed with an almost divine power over the future of his fellow men. Once the legislator has regulated inheritance among citizens, he can rest for centuries. Once his work has been set in motion, he can remove his hands from his creation. The machine acts under its own power and seems almost to steer itself toward a goal designated in advance. If constructed in a certain way, it collects, concentrates, and aggregates property and, before long, power as well around a single head. It causes aristocracy to spring, as it were, from the soil. If guided by other principles and launched on a different path, its effect is still more rapid; it divides, partitions, and disseminates wealth and power. In that case the rapidity of its progress is sometimes frightening; abandoning hope of halting its progress, people at least try to place difficulties and obstacles in its path. They would counteract its effects by contrary efforts, but in vain. The machinery of the law crushes or shatters anything in its way, it rises up from the earth only to hammer down again and again until nothing remains but a shifting, impalpable dust, on which democracy rests.

When the law of inheritance permits, and a fortiori when it orders, a father’s property to be divided equally among his children, its effects are of two kinds. It is important to distinguish carefully between them, even though both tend toward the same end.

By virtue of the law of inheritance, the death of any owner of property entails a revolution in ownership. Not only do goods change masters, they also change nature, so to speak. They are broken up into ever smaller portions."