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132
Hereditary Genius
married heiresses. Their motives for doing so are intelligible enough,
and not to be condemned. They have a title, and perhaps a sufficient
fortune, to transmit to their eldest son, but they want an increase of
possessions for the endowment of their younger sons and their
daughters. On the other hand, an heiress has a fortune, but wants a
title. Thus the peer and heiress are urged to the same issue of
marriage by different impulses. But my statistical lists showed, with
unmistakeable emphasis, that these marriages are peculiarly
unprolific. We might, indeed, have expected that an heiress, who is
the sole issue of a marriage, would not be so fertile as a woman who
has many brothers and sisters. Comparative infertility must be
hereditary in the same way as other physical attributes, and I am
assured it is so in the case of the domestic animals. Consequently, the
issue of a peer's marriage with an heiress frequently fails, and his title
is brought to an end. I will give the following list of every case in the
first or second generation of the Law Lords, taken from the English
Judges within the limits I have already specified, where there has
been a marriage with an heiress or a co-heiress, and I will describe
the result in each instance. Then I will summarize the facts.
Influence of Heiress-marriages on the Families of those English
Judges who obtained Peerages, and who last sat on the Bench
between the beginning of the reign of Charles II. and the end
of the reign of George IV.
(The figures within parentheses give the date of their peerages.)
Colpepper, 1st Lord (1664). Married twice, and had issue by both marriages; in all,
five sons and four daughters. The eldest son married an heiress, and died
without issue. The second son married a co-heiress, and had only one daughter.
The third married, but had no children, and the other two never married at all,
so the title became extinct.
Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury (1672). His mother was a sole
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