Page:Democracy in America (Reeve, v. 2).djvu/438

416 respecting descent have been universally rejected. The first rule that we follow, says Mr. Kent, touching inheritance, is the following:—If a man dies intestate, his property goes to his heirs in a direct line. If he has but one heir or heiress, he or she succeeds to the whole. If there are several heirs of the same degree, they divide the inheritance equally amongst them, without distinction of sex.

This rule was prescribed for the first time in the State of New York by a statute of the 23rd of February, 1786. (See Revised Statutes, vol. iii., Appendix, p. 48.) It has since then been adopted in the revised statutes of the same State. At the present day this law holds good throughout the whole of the United States, with the exception of the State of Vermont, where the male heir inherits a double portion. (Kent's Commentaries, vol. iv. p. 370.) Mr. Kent, in the same work, vol. iv. p. 1-22, gives an historical account of American legislation on the subject of entail: by this we learn that, previous to the revolution, the colonies followed the English law of entail. Estates tail were abolished in Virginia in 1776, on a motion of Mr. Jefferson. They were suppressed in New York in 1786, and have since been abolished in North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Missouri. In Vermont, Indiana, Illinois, South Carolina, and Louisiana, entail was never introduced. Those States which thought proper to preserve the English law of entail, modified it in such a way as to deprive it of its most aristocratic tendencies. “Our general principles on the subject of government,” says Mr. Kent, “tend to favour the free circulation of property.”

It cannot fail to strike the French reader who studies the law of inheritance, that on these questions the French legislation is infinitely more democratic even than the American.

The American law makes an equal division of the father's property, but only in the case of his will not being known; “for every man,” says the law, “in the State of New York, (Revised Statutes, vol. iii., Appendix, p. 51,) has entire liberty, power, and authority, to dispose of his property by will, to leave it entire, or divided in favour of any persons he chooses as his heirs, provided he do not leave it to a political body or any corporation.” The French law obliges the testator to divide his property equally, or nearly so, among his heirs.

Most of the American republics still admit of entails, under certain restrictions; but the French law prohibits entail in all cases.