158 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



what he pleases ? claim — that is — that lie shall still be 

 considered to be the real owner of the property after he is 

 dead ? The thing is so intrinsically absurd, and perhaps 

 even immoral, that nothing but long and universal 

 custom could blind us to the absurdity of it. 



What a man may do, and ought to be enabled to do, 

 either during his life or at his death, is to give property, 

 and recommend (not command) what use he wishes to be 

 made of it. If his morals and his intellect are both good 

 and his judgment sound, his chosen legatees will, at their 

 discretion, carry out his wishes. But to compel them to 

 do so absolutely is monstrous. It implies that the right 

 to property continues after death, and that when a man 

 can no longer use it himself he ought to be enabled 

 to restrict the freedom of others in the use of it. It 

 implies also that a man with much property to leave is 

 necessarily wise, so wise as to know what will be best for 

 people years after his death. A living agent can modify 

 or supplement his plans as occasions arise or as circum- 

 stances require, and he generally does see reason to modify 

 them after a few years' experience. Even acts of 

 parliament, the concentrated essence of the nation's 

 wisdom and foresight, one year, often require alteration in 

 the next. But that every man who chooses to do so 

 should be encouraged to make his little " act " before he 

 dies, minutely directing what shall be done with his 

 property for years after his death, and that this " act " 

 should be held to be a fixed law, against which there can 

 be no appeal, all changes of circumstances notwithstanding, 

 and should be enforced by the whole power and authority 

 of the State, is a circumstance which will one day be looked 

 back upon as an amazing anachronism, since it would 

 seem only fitted to exist in a country where the established 

 religion was the worship of ancestors. 



We English are wisely jealous of too much government 

 interference in the details of our social life ; yet our rulers 

 are living men, imbued with all the ideas and habits and 

 feelings and passions of the age, and are often men of high 

 intellectual attainments, and far in advance of the average 

 of the community. Such a government interferes, at all 



