PROPERTY 
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AND INHERITANCE 
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THE PRESENT POSITION OF PROPERTY. 
OLITICAL controversy in this country, so far as 
it is rational, turns mainly on definite, concrete 
proposals. Abstract discussions of fundamental 
institutions have little influence on political practice, 
because the average voter and the average adminis- 
trator make up their minds on principles only 
when some pressing, immediate problem compels 
them to. Yet the fundamental institutions are 
changing all the time. Every new statute modifies 
them in one direction or another; and we can 
perceive the direction and control the modifications 
only if we put ourselves to the trouble of studying 
them. 
Of the fundamental economic institutions, private 
property and freedom of enterprise, this is particu- 
larly true. We tend to take them for granted, and 
assume that our ideas on them are clear; yet every 
decade sees some important change in them, without 
any corresponding modification of our notions. It 
is not a century ago since property in human beings 
became illegal under the British Crown; a longer 
period has elapsed, but still only a short period in the 
life of a nation, since married women became legally 
capable of holding property. In the scope and 
content of the right of property the last century has