448 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL CHAP. 



inclination, to cause the slightest real privation, or even 

 inconvenience, to those who are but the product of a 

 vicious system ; but on every principle of justice and 

 equity it is impossible to recognize the rights of deceased 

 kings most of them the worst and most contemptible of 

 men to burthen the workers for all time in order to keep 

 large bodies of their fellow-citizens in idleness and 

 luxury. 



How to deal with Accumulated Wealth. 



By means of the principles now laid down, we can see how 

 to deal fairly with the present possessors of great estates, and 

 with millionaires, whose vast wealth confers no real benefit 

 on themselves while it necessarily robs the workers, since, 

 as we have seen, it has all to be provided by the workers. 

 It will, I think, be admitted that, if a man has an income, 

 say, often thousand a year, that is sufficient to supply him 

 with every possible necessary, comfort and rational luxury, 

 and that the possession of one or more additional ten 

 thousands of income would not really add to his enjoyment. 

 But all such excessive incomes necessarily produce evil 

 results, in the large number of idle dependants they 

 support, and in keeping up habits of gambling and ex- 

 cessive luxury. Further, in the case of landed estates the 

 management of which is necessarily left to agents and 

 bailiffs, it leads to injurious interference with agriculture 

 and with the political and religious freedom of tenants, to 

 oppression of labourers, to the depopulation of villages, and 

 other well-known evils. It will therefore be for the public 

 benefit to fix on a maximum income to be owned by any 

 citizen ; and, thereupon, to arrange a progressive income- 

 tax, beginning with a very small tax on a minimum 

 income from land or realized property of, say, 500, the 

 tax progressively rising, at first slowly, afterwards more 

 rapidly, so as to absorb all above the fixed maximum. 



When a landed estate was taken over for the use of 

 the community, the net income which had been derived 

 from it would be paid the late holder for his life, and 

 might be continued for the lives of such of his direct 



