386 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



all the children. Taking, then, the broad rule for granted that the pos- 

 sessions of the parents must pass in equal portions to the children, 

 there is seen to be wanted some strict guard on what a man bequeaths 

 so that it shall not be squandered by his heirs. We can best follow 

 out the result in regard to possession in land. Entail should be placed 

 on a natural basis and carried out on a broader scale, and it would be- 

 come a mighty instrument for good and for raising the general condi- 

 tion of the people without taking away the stimulus to labor. 



There is provision in nature for the nationalization of the land. 

 As soon as all the direct descendants are treated as heirs, the fact that 

 these rapidly multiply till they are coextensive with the nation shows 

 that, if the property left at death by the present possessors be simi- 

 larly extended, all the land of the country now in so few hands must 

 eventually come into the possession of the whole nation, and that not 

 by any act of confiscation, but by simply acknowledging fact and 

 doing justice. It would not answer, however, to go on subdividing 

 property endlessly down to yards and inches. A limit would have to 

 be set to subdivision and to inheritance by means of it, and after a 

 certain generation, where the descendants had already become scores 

 or hundreds, or after a certain degree of tenuity in the property had 

 been reached, so that the forfeiture of his share would be no particu- 

 lar loss to the individual heir, it would be necessary to annex the 

 whole to the national estate, swiftly accumulating by similar processes. 

 If this rule were universally acted upon, though a man's descendants 

 would cease, say, m the fourth or fifth generation to be his heirs in 

 particular, the little amount they forfeited in this way would be more 

 than made up to them by the many other inheritances of which they 

 would become heirs in common with the nation. The railways could 

 be passed through the same process by the gradual distribution of 

 shares. As far as practicable other property should be dealt with on 

 the same principle. This would bring about a general diffusion of 

 wealth now congested in a few hands, and bring it about, too, grad- 

 ually and safely by the operation of the great natural law of heirship 

 through successive generations. 



Already we have extensive properties that are owned by the nation 

 at large, such as the roads and canals, the post-offices and telegraphs, 

 the board-schools and the Established Churches, the parks, free libra- 

 ries, and Government buildings. The principle is in operation, and, if 

 it had the wider sphere that heirship demands, there would be an im- 

 mense lightening of the burdens which are pressing upon the people. 

 Each individual would commence life at an advantage, a few steps up 

 the ladder instead of being down quite in the ditch, as are the majority 

 — poor and penniless, dependent for everything on the exertions of 

 the present hour. The rent of the national property might, as has 

 been recently advocated, go to the payment of the taxes imperial and 

 local. It might answer for the necessary work of government, for the 



