Property and Inheritance. 
entrepreneurs to perform their useful functions. This 
argument confuses two things. One is the desire 
to ensure economic security for one’s offspring, a 
legitimate ambition, but one that does not require 
the present unlimited right of bequest for its fulfil- 
ment, The other is the ambition to secure for one’s 
family the social distinction of belonging to the very 
limited class of the very rich. The ground of this 
distinction is the convention that the ability to be 
idle and expend lavishly is evidence of superiority ; 
if social conditions made such a method of dis- 
tinguishing oneself impossible, other conventions 
would take its place, just as during the war the efforts 
of profiteers to demonstrate how much they could 
spend were balanced by the efforts of other people 
to show how little they could spend, socially a more 
desirable way of distinguishing oneself. In other 
words, the incentive which the power to “ found a 
family ” at present offers is a desire for a sort of 
posthumous social distinction which could be satisfied 
in other, socially more desirable, ways. 
Iv. 
THE RIGHT OF INHERITANCE. 
The way to attack the problem presented by the 
unequal distribution of property, then, is to limit 
the present unrestricted (or almost unrestricted) 
freedom of bequest. In principle there is nothing 
revolutionary in such a proposal; the right is of 
recent development, and it is found in no other country 
in the unrestricted form in which we have it. The 
simplest form of restriction is an extension of the 
Estate Duties, as proposed by the Labour Party, or 
by the assumption at death by the State of all pro- 
perty, in exchange for annuities for the same term 
as an author’s copyright lasts after his death, or 
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