That is what took place in the majority of cases, and it is not
necessary to go into further details, though of course chance played all
the usual variations upon the theme of ruin.

What distinguishes the period of speculation in Rome from most other
manifestations of the kind in Europe is the prominent part played in it
by the old land-holding families, a number of which were ruined in wild
schemes which no sensible man of business would have touched. This was
more or less the result of recent changes in the laws regulating the
power of persons making a will.

Previous to 1870 the law of primogeniture was as much respected in Rome
as in England, and was carried out with considerably greater strictness.
The heir got everything, the other children got practically nothing but
the smallest pittance. The palace, the gallery of pictures and statues,
the lands, the villages and the castles, descended in unbroken
succession from eldest son to eldest son, indivisible in principle and
undivided in fact.

The new law requires that one half of the total property shall be
equally distributed by the testator amongst all his children. He may
leave the other half to any one he pleases, and as a matter of practice
he of course leaves it to his eldest son.

Another law, however, forbids the alienation of all collections of works
of art either wholly or in part, if they have existed as such for a
certain length of time, and if the public has been admitted daily or on
any fixed days, to visit them. It is not in the power of the Borghese,
or the Colonna, for instance, to sell a picture or a statue out of their