Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/206

 166 and New-Jersey silently adhered to the English rule of descents under the government of the crown, as royal provinces. On the other hand, all New-England, with the exception of Rhode Island, from a very early period of their settlements adopted the rule of dividing the inheritance equally among all the children, and other next of kin, giving a double share to the eldest son. Maryland, after 1715, and Pennsylvania almost from its settlement, in like manner distributed the inheritance among all the children and other next of kin. New-Hampshire, although a royal province, steadily clung to the system of Massachusetts, which she had received, when she formed an integral part of the latter. But Rhode-Island retained (as we have already seen) its attachment to the common law rule of descents down almost to the era of the American Revolution.

§ 180. In all the colonies, where the rule of partible inheritance prevailed, estates were soon parcelled out into moderate plantations and farms; and the general equality of property introduced habits of industry and economy, the effects of which are still visible in their local customs, institutions, and public policy. The philosophical mind can scarcely fail to trace the intimate connexion, which naturally subsists between the general equality of the apportionment of property among the mass of a nation, and the popular form of its government. The former can scarcely fail, first or last, to introduce the substance of a republic into the actual administration of the government, though its forms do not bear such an external impress. Our revolutionary statesmen were not insensible to this silent but potent influence; and the fact, that at the present time the law of divisible