We shall now make a digression from the opening subjects of this lecture, with the view of adducing additional facts which tend to prove, that the chief moral and political evils which pervade Christendom, sprang from laws and institutions derived from, or sanctioned by, the books of Jewish theocracy, all of which have been uniformly calculated to uphold the injustice of the idle few, against the industrious many. Amongst these, the feudal curse of primogeniture, as "part and parcel of the law," stands prominent in bad eminence. Yet this law, even among the Jews, was not so outrageously cruel as it now is among many European nations; for, with them, the first-born son, though consecrated to the Hebrew god, was not, it seems, entitled to more than a double portion of the inheritance. In regard to the entailing of land, for the most iniquitous purpose of securing it against sale for the payment of just debts, the Jews and their deity, barbarous as they were, would probably have been ashamed of such rank injustice. In early ages, land was considered merely as the means of subsistence; but in the darkest times of ignorance and feudal oppression, it became the overbearing means of obtaining political power, and was monopolised by the aristocratic orders;* whilst their class-law of primogeniture, and its execrable concomitant of entail upon land, were unrighteously resorted to, as the only means of eternising the domineering sway of feudal tyranny, and to perpetuate possession, in defiance of all the just debts which might have been incurred by the possessor. The absurdity of these laws is no less glaring than the injustice of their original object, "when they presume that each successive generation of men have not an equal right to the earth--that the property of the present generation should be restrained and regulated to the fancy of those who lived many centuries ago." * At least nine-tenths of all the land in Great Britain and Ireland, have got into the hands of the aristocracy, lay and clerical, and almost wholly through the means of their selfish legislation. But this is not the worst--they say to the mass of the people: "You shall pay us whatever price we please for the produce of these lands," and they enforce this by corn-laws, and other food monopolies, which they have made for their own advantage. These laws are "a curse equal to the barrenness of the earth, and the inclemency of the heavens." The Roman jurisprudence adhered to the equality of nature, by an equal division of property among the children, whether that consisted of land or other goods, and the cruel prerogatives of primogeniture and entail were unknown.