First, we
perceive the advantages of the law of primogeniture, which accustoms
people to consider the right of the eldest son as sacred, and the
conduct of any man who attempts to violate it as criminal. Among
Muhammadans, property, as well real as personal, is divided equally
among the sons;[3] and their Koran, which is their only civil and
criminal, as well as religions, code, makes no provision for the
successions to sovereignty. The death of every sovereign is, in
consequence, followed by a contest between his sons, unless they are
overawed by some paramount power; and he who succeeds in this contest
finds it necessary, for his own security, to put all his brothers and
nephews to death, lest they should be rescued by factions, and made
the cause of future civil wars. But sons, who exercise the powers of
viceroys and command armies, cannot, where the succession is
unsettled, wait patiently for the natural death of their father--
delay may be dangerous. Circumstances, which now seem more favourable
to their views than to those of their brothers, may alter; the
military aristocracy depend upon the success of the chief they choose
in the enterprise, and the army more upon plunder than regular pay;
both may desert the cause of the more wary for that of the more
daring; each is flattered into an overweening confidence in his own
ability and good fortune; and all rush on to seize upon the throne
yet filled by their wretched parent, who, in the history of his own
crimes, now reads those of his children.
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