CALIFORNIA TO QUEBEC 197 



for utilizing those faculties for its own happiness and for the 

 common benefit. Not only equality before the law, but 

 equality of opportunity, is the great fundamental principle 

 of social justice. This is the teaching of Herbert Spencer, 

 but he did not carry it out to its logical consequence — the 

 inequity, and therefore the social immorality of wealth-in- 

 heritance. To secure equality of opportunity there must be 

 no inequality of initial wealth. To allow one child to be born 

 a millionaire and another a pauper is a crime against humanity, 

 and, for those who believe in a deity, a crime against God ! 1 



Jit is universally admitted that very great individual wealth, 

 whether inherited or acquired, is beneficial neither to the 

 individual nor to society. In the former case it is injurious, 

 and often morally ruinous to the possessor; in the latter it 

 confers little or no happiness to the acquirer of it, and is a 

 positive injury to his heirs and a danger to the State. Yet 

 its fascinations are so great that, under conditions of society 

 in which the yawning gulf of poverty is ever open beside 

 us, the amassing of wealth at first seems a duty, then becomes 

 a habit, and, ultimately, the gambler's excitement without 

 which he cannot live. The struggle for wealth and power is 

 always exciting, and to many is irresistible. But it is essentially 

 a degrading struggle, because the few only can succeed while 

 the many must fail ; and where all are doing their best in their 

 several ways, with their special capacities and their unequal 

 opportunities, the result is very much of a lottery, and there 

 is usually no real merit, no specially high intellectual or moral 

 quality in those that succeed. 



It is the misfortune of the Americans that they had such 

 a vast continent to occupy. Had it ended at the line of the 

 Mississippi, agricultural development might have gone on 

 more slowly and naturally, from east to west, as increase of 

 population required. So again, if they had had another 

 century for development before railways were invented, 

 expansion would necessarily have gone on more slowly, the 

 need for good roads would have shown that the rectangular 

 system of dividing up new lands was a mistake, and some of 

 1 1 have discussed this subject in my " Stuiliflni" ynlj^u^chap. xxviii. 



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fe FIFTY 

 113 L ^ i 



