332 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The spur to the accumulation of wealth is undoubtedly sharpened 

 by the power of bequeathing one's possessions to one's family and 

 friends ; yet it is this power of bequest, gradually increased through 

 the centuries to its present breadth, which furnishes the most difficult 

 part of the problem of property. Re-enforced in Great Britain by the 

 laws of entail and primogeniture, it has led to the concentration in the 

 hands of a few of a large proportion of the entire wealth of the coun- 

 try. The heirs of unearned lands, houses, and funds are without the 

 healthy natural spur to useful work which universal experience declares 

 necessity to furnish ; and subtile moral poison is distributed through 

 society when, as in Great Britain, long trains of bequest bestow the 

 choicest estates and social positions in the realm upon a few individ- 

 uals through the mere accident of birth. When merit and the means 

 of enjoyment are so often unrelated, as we see them in Great Britain, 

 there is valid ground for complaint and a plain source of envy on the part 

 of the millions apportioned to toil, while some have unearned luxury 

 and ease. Is it right that, because a man, centuries ago, was successful 

 in battle or a favorite of his king, or generations ago was engaged in 

 lucrative trade and thus gathered possessions together, his posterity 

 should be maintained for indefinite time by the working world ? And 

 is it right that his descendants should reap richer and richer rewards, 

 as years roll by, from the increase in value conferred ujDon their estates 

 as the surrounding population grows more numerous and advances in 

 intelligence and industry ? Why should books and inventions, which 

 are peculiarly the creations of a man, be so imperfectly protected, and 

 only confer rights terminable in a few years, when rights in ordinary 

 property are so nearly absolute ? Such are the questions which are 

 being put to the political economists and legislators of to-day, and their 

 just and peaceful solution will demand a wisdom and forbearance 

 which we may be disappointed in expecting. 



The most patent evils with which the institution of property is 

 commonly charged are those connected with land, and here it is that 

 the agitation for property reform has usually begun. The researches 

 of Sir Henry Maine and M. Laveleye show that the primitive cul- 

 tivation of land was communal. Such still is the Russian mir and 

 Swiss Allmend. Under communal systems every child born upon 

 the land was guaranteed subsistence, and wide disparity in fortune be- 

 tween individual and individual was scarcely possible, so that pauper- 

 ism was unknown. How the communal systems gave birth to our 

 existing methods of individual possession M. Laveleye tells in an in- 

 teresting way in his work on "Primitive Property." The practical 

 fact which concerns us is that, among civilized nations individual prop- 

 erty is established and is held to need reform. The change from com- 

 munal and clan ownership of land to the tenure of recent times has 

 been attended by a gradual divorce of the responsibility which for- 

 merly attached to land-owning ; if the responsibility now exists at all, 



