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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