xxxii] CALIFORNIA TO QUEBEC 197 



of communication, and all other public services, to be 

 monopolized for the aggrandisement of the few — for the 

 creation of millionaires — necessarily leads to the poverty, the 

 degradation, the misery of the many. 



There never has been, in the whole history of the human 

 race, a people with such grand opportunities for establishing 

 a society and a nation in which the products of the general 

 labour should be so distributed as to produce general well- 

 being. It wanted but a recognition of the fundamental 

 principle of "equality of opportunity," tacitly implied in the 

 Declaration of Independence. It wanted but such social 

 arrangements as would ensure to every child the best nurture, 

 the best training of all its faculties, and the fullest opportunity 

 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- 

 inheritance. 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 



It 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 con- 

 ditions 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 

 1 I have discussed this subject in my " Studies," vol. ii. chap, xxviii. 



