this 
ween 
erent 
ional 
glish 
they 
ies a 
iple. 
iting 
pro- 
med 
the 
‘ome 
duty 
but 
the 
tion, 
lisa- 
sion 
cies, 
3176 
|uite 
ving 
efly 
veen 
ate, 
its 
not 
the 
the 
rate 
ave 
aing 
suld 
Property and Inheritance. 
23 
To overcome this difficulty Dr. Dalton makes the 
heroic proposal that the legal ownership of all 
inherited property should be vested in the Public 
Trustee, who would then administer for the State’s 
benefit the portion taken in taxation, and administer 
for the equitable owner (the heir) the portion left 
to him, paying over to him merely the income. The 
device is almost too simple, and suggests certain 
doubts. 
Administrative Difficulties. 
In the first place, the vesting of the proceeds of 
the tax in the Public Trustee hardly seems a sufficient 
safeguard against the temptation to use these pro- 
ceeds to meet the current expenses of Government. 
The vesting in the Public Trustee is advocated in 
part as a method of preventing the dissipation of 
capital accumulations by improvident heirs ; the 
size of the national debts of the States of the world 
suggests that democratic governments are more, 
not less, improvident than the average of heirs. 
If the danger of dissipating capital accumulations, 
however, can be overcome by vesting them in the 
Public Trustee, or in Boards of Public Assets Com- 
missioners, another difficulty suggests itself. The 
Public Trustee would presently find himself in the 
position of the hero of Mr. Wells's early novel, “ When 
the Sleeper Wakes,” who, having fallen into a 
cataleptic trance for several generations, was made 
their heir by a number of rich people, and woke up 
finally to find himself the owner of the whole world. 
Experience, as has been stated recently by Mr. 
Keynes, tends to show that efficiency in administra- 
tion of trustee securities is to be found in a number 
of investment trusts, each handling about £10,000,000 
of securities, rather than in a few big trusts. The 
enormous accumulations which the proposed tax 
aa%