184 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



adrift upon the world. This created the idea of an inherent right in 

 children to the possessions of their ancestors. But bequests at random 

 were seldom recognised. Other reasons have usually been assigned by- 

 later writers, such, for example, as the supposition that the State in 

 disposing of property along recognised lines would be likely to do it in a 

 better way than the proprietor would have done, if he had done anything 

 at all. Such reasons were hardly economic in their basis. Mill argued 

 his case almost entirely on ethical and moral considerations, and not from 

 the point of view of any greater economic advantage, either to the 

 individual or the community. He reached more economic ground when 

 he discussed the conflict that may exist between bequests and the 

 permanent interests of the community. He says : ' No doubt persons have 

 occasionally exerted themselves more strenuously to acquire a fortune 

 from the hope of founding a family in perpetuity. But the mischiefs to 

 Society of such perpetuities outweigh the value of this incentive to 

 exertion, and the incentives in the case of those who have the opportunity 

 for making large fortunes are strong enough without it.'- By this, he 

 would appear to imply that economic expansion or betterment in one 

 direction was more than offset by economic contraction or worsement in 

 another, although one is never quite clear whether he is balancing against 

 improved material welfare deficiencies in other kinds of welfare. 



Of the French law he remarked that ' the extreme restriction in the 

 power of bequest was adopted as a democratic expedient to break down 

 the custom of primogeniture and counteract the tendency of inherited 

 property to collect in large masses. I agree in thinking these are greatly 

 desirable, but the means used are not, I think, the most judicious.' 



When Mill comes to his case for limitation of bequests, he touches 

 somewhat lightly several economic considerations — e.g. where capital is 

 employed by the owner himself, there are strong grounds for leaving it to 

 him to say which one person of those who succeed him is the best equipped 

 to manage it and avoid the inconveniences of the French law of breaking 

 up a manufacturing or commercial establishment at the death of its 

 chief. He refers to the upkeep of ancestral mansions. He regards it as 

 advantageous that, while enormous fortunes are no longer retransmitted, 

 there would be, by the limitation, a great multitude of persons ' in easy 

 circumstances,' for from this class the community draws benefits which 

 are semi-economic or non-economic. Moreover, the practice in the 

 United States, neither compulsory partition nor a custom of entail and 

 primogeniture, allows for liberty to share wealth between kindred and the 

 public, leading to munificent bequests for public purposes. 



I will refer later to those other economic considerations which have 

 merged in the discussion of taxation, both for justice and expediency. 



V. The Discussion To-day. 



Scientific economic inquiry into the subject of inheritance from the 

 point of view of its purely economic effects has thus been very scanty 

 amongst the classical economists. It is referred to, in passing, as a 

 powerful factor in producing an uneven distribution of wealth, but its 

 influence upon the direction of wealth production, or t)ie actual aggregate 



'^ Principles, B. II., Ch. II., §4. 



