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Justice of South Wales, and also sister of an English judge. She bore him
Lord Keeper Lyttleton, also Sir Timothy, a judge. Lord Lyttleton's
daughter's son (she married a cousin) was Sir T. Lyttleton, the Speaker of
the House of Commons.
There is, therefore, abundant reason to conclude that the kinsmen of Lord
Chancellors are far richer in natural gifts than those of the other judges.
I will now take another test of the existence of hereditary ability. It is a
comparison of the number of entries in the columns of Table I. Supposing
that natural gifts were due to mere accident, unconnected with parentage,
then the entries would be distributed in accordance with the law that
governs the distribution of accidents. If it be a hundred to one against some
member of any family, within given limits of kinship, drawing a lottery prize,
it would be a million to one against three members of the same family doing
so (nearly, but not exactly, because the size of the family is limited), and a
million millions to one against six members doing so. Therefore, if natural
gifts were due to mere accident, the first column of Table I. would have
been enormously longer than the second column, and the second column
enormously longer than the third; but they are not so. There are nearly as
many cases of two or three eminent relations as of one eminent relation;
and as a set off against the thirty-nine cases that appear in the first column,
there are no less than fifteen cases in the third.
It is therefore clear that ability is not distributed at haphazard, but that it
clings to certain families. We will proceed to a third test.
If genius be hereditary, as I assert it to be, the characteristics that mark a
judge ought to be frequently transmitted to his descendants. The majority of
judges belong to a strongly-marked type. They are not men who are
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