Napoleon code causes a stir

MY letter, which you published in the May edition, praising Napoleon’s legal code particularly as concerns inheritance seems to have caused a bit of a stir.

I sympathise with the June letter where the writer thought if money was left to one of her sons it would kill him, but that is her judgment. In practice, it may be otherwise.

Mr Frank indicates in his letter in the July edition that his great grandfather’s thousands of acres of land have been broken up into much smaller pieces over the generations because of the way his estate was split.

But what about all the brothers and sisters who would have been disinherited if the rules were not applied? Large inheritances often cause extravagance and ruin. Many smaller inheritances are the seedcorn of new businesses. A little capital inherited goes a long way in the hand of the enterprising. Sorry, I stick to my point of view, Napoleon got it right.