364 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXI. No. 532. 



laws, imposing succession duties on prop- 

 erty left within the state by deceased citi- 

 zens of other states, without regard to 

 wliether their representatives have already 

 paid similar duties at home, and so are 

 subjected to a double burden for a single 

 privilege. 



AYithin limits no economist will question 

 the propriety of laying taxes on bequests 

 and inheritances. They are collected with 

 ease and reasonable certainty. They fall 

 upon something which the taxpayer has 

 never yet enjoyed and the diminution of 

 which he therefore does not fully miss. 

 The goose, to follow Colbert's maxim, is 

 plucked so as to get the most feathers with 

 the least squealing, and almost with none. 

 Live goose feathers, indeed, are not re- 

 quired. The real victim is dead. 



As to whether the form to be preferred 

 is that of a probate diaty, a stamp duty, a 

 tax on the privilege of transmission, or a 

 tax on the privilege of receiving what is 

 transmitted, opinions may fairly differ. 



Death duties were first imposed in Great 

 Britain towards the close of the eighteenth 

 century. Under the system developed 

 there the movable property, wherever sit- 

 uated, of a person dying domiciled in the 

 kingdom is subject to them, but not such 

 property left in the kingdom by one who 

 died domiciled in any other country."* 



What is taxed is not the interest in prop- 

 erty to which some person succeeds because 

 of the death of its former owner, and not 

 property at all, but the interest in prop- 

 erty which the former owner lost upon his 

 death and which would have ceased to 

 exist altogether had not the state seen fit 

 to prolong it in favor of those whom it 

 recognizes as entitled to the succession. 



It is this prolongation or revival of an 



* Cross V. United States Trust Co., 131 N. Y. 

 043. As to probate duties, the statutes make a 

 different provision. Fernandes' Executors' Case, 

 5 Chancery Appeals, 314. 



estate Avhich death has destroyed — a pro- 

 longation by force of no natural law, but 

 only of the will of the political sovereign, 

 that justifies a succession tax.* 



The earliest American succession duties 

 were levied by Congress in 1797, and took 

 the form of a stamp tax on receipts for 

 legacies. 



Pennsylvania was the first state to im- 

 pose them. She did this in 1826, but the 

 laAv did not extend to goods of those not 

 inhabitants of the state, which had been 

 temporarily left there, f They were left 

 untouched, in deference to the ancient 

 maxim of private international law, 

 mobilia personam seguuntur. 



It was this maxim that had always been 

 the chief measure of the jurisdiction of 

 courts over the settlement of the estates of 

 the dead. The estate had been treated as 

 a kind of a survival of the person who 

 once held and administered it. It there- 

 fore had its principal seat in the place 

 which had been his home. Transfer of 

 goods inter vivos, founded on contract, 

 may be regulated by the law of the place 

 of transfer; but transfers of the whole of 

 a man's goods, upon his death, by force or 

 permission of law, must, in fairness to all 

 concerned, be regulated by the law to 

 which he was subject. In England and 

 America it is settled that this is the law 

 of his domicil. 



Those to whom that law gives them ac- 

 quire a good title the world over. There 

 is but one succession to a dead man's goods, 

 and that takes place once for all when he 

 dies and where he dwelt. J This laAv, which 

 protected him while they were his, and 



*Orcutt's Appeal, 97 Pa. State Reports, 179. 

 tKnowlton v. Moore, 178 U. S. Reports, 41, 

 49, 55. 



J Wharton's Private International Law, §§ 80, a, 

 Reports, 330; 30 Northeastern Reporter, 125; 

 Frothingham v. Shaw, 175 Mass. Reports, 59; 55 

 Northeastern Reporter, 623. 



