I have rarely seen any similar signs of attachment
to one of our own native officers. This arises chiefly from the
circumstance of their being less frequently placed in authority among
those upon whose good feelings and opinions their welfare and
comfort, as those of their children, are likely permanently to
depend. In India, under native rule, office became hereditary,
because officers expended the whole of their incomes in religious
ceremonies, or works of ornament and utility, and left their families
in hopeless dependence upon the chief in whose service they had
laboured all their lives, while they had been educating their sons
exclusively with the view of serving that chief in the same capacity
that their fathers had served him before them. It is in this case,
and this alone, that the law of primogeniture is in force in
India.[21] Among Muhammadans, as well as Hindoos, all property, real
and personal, is divided equally among the children;[22] but the
duties of an office will not admit of the same subdivision; and this,
therefore, when hereditary, as it often is, descends to the eldest
son with the obligation of providing for the rest of the family.
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