446 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



permitted to do for individual reasons which may be good 

 or bad, the State may do if it considers it necessary for 

 the good of the community. If an individual may justly 

 disinherit other individuals who have not already a vested 

 interest in property, however just may be their expectations 

 of succeeding to it, a fortiori the State may, partially, 

 disinherit them for good and important reasons. In the 

 second place, it is almost universally admitted by moralists 

 and advanced thinkers, that to be the heir to a great 

 estate from birth is generally injurious to the individual, 

 and is necessarily unjust to the community. It enables 

 the individual to live a life of idleness and j^leasure, which 

 often becomes one of luxury and vice ; while the 

 community suffers from the bad example, and by the 

 vicious standard of happiness which is set up by the 

 spectacle of so much idleness and luxury. The working 

 part of the community, on the other hand, suffers directly 

 in having to provide the whole of the wealth thus 

 injuriously wasted. Many people think that if such a 

 rich man ^ciys for everything he purchases and wastes, 

 the workers do not suffer because they receive an equivalent 

 for their labour ; but such persons overlook the fact that 

 every pound spent by the idle is first provided hy the 

 workers. If the income thus spent is derived from land, 

 it is tlicy who really pay the rents to the landlord, inas- 

 much as if the landlord did not receive them they would 

 go in reduction of taxation. If it comes from the funds 

 or from railway shares, they equally provide it, in the 

 taxes, in high railway fares, and increased price of goods 

 due to exorbitant railway charges. Even if all taxes were 

 raised by an income tax paid by rich men only, the 

 workers would be the real payers, because there is no other 

 possible source of annual income in the country but pro- 

 ductive labour. If any one doubts this, let him consider 

 what would happen were the people to resume the land 

 as their right, and thenceforth apply the rents, locally, to 

 establish the various factories and other machinery needful 

 to supply all the wants of the community. Gradually all 

 workers would be employed on the land, or in the various 

 co-operative or municipal industries, and would themselves 



