Page:The English Works of Raja Rammohun Roy Vol 2.djvu/234

222 felt by the community at large; and alienations being thus subjected to legal contests, the courts will be filled with suitors, and ruin must triumph over the welfare of a vast proportion of those who have their chief interest in landed property.

10. Mr. Colebrooke justly observes, in his Preface to the translation of the Dayubhagu, that “The rules of succession to property, being in their nature arbitrary, are in all systems of law merely conventional. Admitting even that the succession of the offspring to the parent is so obvious as almost to present a natural and universal law, yet this very first rule is so variously modified by the usages of different nations, that its application at least must be acknowledged to be founded on consent rather than on reasoning. In the laws of one people the rights of primogeniture are established; in those of another the equal succession of all the male offspring prevails; while the rest allow the participation of the female with the male issue, some in equal, other in unequal proportions. Succession by right of representation, and the claim of descendants to inherit in the order of proximity, have been respectively extablishedestablished [sic] in various nations, according to the degree of favour with which they have viewed those opposite pretensions. Proceeding from lineal to collateral succession, the diversity of laws prevailing among different nations, is yet greater, and still more forcibly argues the arbitrariness of the rules.” (page 1.)

11. We are at a loss how to reconcile this arbitrary change with reason, because, any being capable of reasoning would not, I think, countenance the investiture, in one person, of the power of legislation with the office of judge. In every civilized country, rules and codes are