SECTION LXXXV.

THE RIGHT OF INHERITANCE.

The right of inheritance to resources has its origin in a combination of the idea of the family with the idea of property. And, indeed, this combination of ideas is a very natural one. The larger portion of mankind consider the pleasures of the family as the highest attainable, and endeavor, whenever their economic means make it at all possible, to secure them. At the same time, the selfishness of most men is not confined to their own persons, but extends also to their posterity. Hence it is that bed and board, connubium and commercium, have, from time immemorial, been considered correlative ideas; and, to all the more logical socialists, a community of wives (or celibacy)1 is as dear as a community of goods. (§ 245.) And in practice, the greater number of nations of hunters, who, according to our conceptions, have no knowledge of a real family and no knowledge of property, have a custom of burying with the dead the things they used, to kill their cattle etc., or to deprive minor children of their inheritance.

healthy system of Political Economy as understood to-day. (Edinburgh Review, January, 1851.)

6 How true freedom is accompanied by what Bastiat calls "true Saint Simonism and true communism," see infra, § 210.

The experiments of a community of goods, which have proved successful in practice, were all based on the more or less complete celibacy of the members of the societies. Compare Hermann, Staatsw. Unters., II, Aufl., 45.

2 Thus Proudhon (Contradictions, ch. 5) says that the many socialists, who would construct their societies after the type of the family, as the molscule organique, are all wrong. The family has a "monarchical, patriarchal” character. In it, the principle of authority is formed and preserved. On it, ancient and feudal society was based; and "precisely against this old patriarchal constitution, modern democracy protests and revolts." Fourier calls marriage, un groupe essentiellement faux: faux par le nombre borné à deux, par l'absence de liberté et par les dissidences du goñt, qui éclatent dès le premier jour. (Nouveau Monde, 57.)

3 On the Indians of North America, see Schoolraft, Information respecting the Indian Tribes of the United States, II, 194; on the South American

SECTION LXXXVI.

ECONOMIC UTILITY OF THE RIGHT OF INHERITANCE.

The certainty, that the material welfare of their children depends, in great part, on their industry and frugality, is one of the most powerful incentives to good, in the case of most men. And this is the basis of the economic utility of the family right of inheritance.1 There is scarcely any other institution which opposes over-population with such efficiency, for the reason, that the obstacle placed in its way here is placed very directly, at the point where it can make itself felt most, viz.: in the life of the family itself. The weaker the family feeling, the less does the abolition of the right of inheritance interfere with the economic interests of a nation. Hence, for instance, it is, that taxes imposed upon legacies, bequests, testamentary gifts etc., are less objectionable in proportion as they affect only those in the more remote degrees of relationship in which inheritance is something merely accidental. While, when a nation is yet in the intermediate stages of civilization, the family right of inheritance seems to be very strong, especially as regards landed property, a consequence of the fact, that a superior kind of title to such property is recognized to exist in the family; at a period, when individualism becomes more developed, the liberty of devise by will is wont to prevail more and more." Then the right of inheritance be

d'Orbigny, Voyage, IV, 220, and passim, on the South Sea Islanders, the Novara- Reise, II, 418; on the ancient Albanians, Strabo, XI, 503.

'The hereditary transmission of property to posterity has an obvious tendency to make a man a good citizen. It ranges his passions on the side of duty, and induces him to make himself profit the common good, and it assures him that his reward shall not die with himself, but that it shall be handed down to those to whom he is joined by the dearest and most tender feelings. (See Blackstone's Commentaries, II, 11.) Without the right of inheritance, credit is scarcely possible, since with the death of the debtor the only stay of the creditor would cease.

2 Testamentary freedom (which obtained in places there about the begin

comes, so to speak, a more elevated species of personal property, a prolongation of the same beyond the grave. Should testamentary freedom be too much hampered, selfishness would manifest itself in a way much more detrimental to economic interests, viz.: in the consumption of wealth, during the lifetime of its owner. Every man would be but a life annuitant of his own property.

But, at the same time, in periods of moral decline, complete freedom may degenerate so as to produce evils equally great. The wealthy Bootians, in the later days of Hellenic history, were wont to form themselves into dissolute drinking companies; and not only the childless, but even fathers of families made over their property to these companies, limiting their offspring to a portion which it was made their duty to let them have. It was so in Rome, also, in Cicero's time, when every acquaintance of standing took it very ill if not remembered in the will of the testator, and where Octavian, for instance, in the last twenty years of his reign, received about 70,000,000 thalers through legacies left him by his "friends." Here,

ning of the eighteenth century) prevails completely in England at present, contrary to the principle of the Roman law requiring an obligatory portion (la légitime) to be left to the heirs, which is still binding in France, but in a very much developed form. The consequence is that last testaments are as frequent in England as they are rare in France. There were, in Paris, in 1825, 7,649 judicial, and only 1,081 testamentary partitions of property. (Mounier.) In Great Britain, in 1838, the number of testamentary alienations of property taxed stood to those in which there was no will, in the proportion of 8:3; and the values of the alienated property as 10:1. (Porter.) Among a people noted, for their high moral tone, testamentary freedom is a powerful means of strengthening paternal authority on the one hand, and of keeping alive, in the minds of parents, on the other, a sense of responsibility for the future of their children. Compare Helferich, Tübinger Zeitschr., 1854, 143, ff. 3 Polyb., XX, 6. Hence it was, that all (?) the wealth of Thebes, when it was destroyed by Alexander the Great, was only 440 talents. (Athen., IV, 148.) Drumann, Gesch. Roms, etc., VI, 333 ff. Cicero, Phil., II, 16. Hoeck, Röm. Gesch., I, 2, 118. Sueton., Octav., 66. An especially scandalous instance in Petron., 140. For a masterly theory of legacy - hunting, see Horat., Sat., II, 5. Compare Lucian, Dialogues of the Dead, 5-9. Petronius speaks of a turba hæredipetarum. (124.)

the repeal of the law making it obligatory on testators to leave a certain proportion of their wealth to their children would remove the last safe-guard of their material welfare.*

SECTION LXXXVII.

LANDED PROPERTY.

As land, in its uncultivated state, has neither been produced by man, nor can be entirely consumed by him, the above demonstration of the necessity of private property cannot with

Even the revolutionary shibboleth, paternité, really means nothing more than the equal right of inheritance of all, i. e., the abolition of the right of inheritance! (R. Meyer.) The strongest attack, from a scientific point of view, made on the right of inheritance in more recent times, comes from Saint Simonism. The founder himself, after a life rich in experience but poor in action, spent in the search of much but in the finding of little, succeeded only in arraying the industrial and proprietary classes against each other, in declaring the poorest class to be the most important of all, and in basing the new religion of love on the emancipation of labor. His disciples went further. In order to abolish all the privileges of birth, Bazard, Exposition de la Doctrine de Saint Simon, 1831, p. 172, ff., taught that it was not enough to distribute public employments according to merit, and in the interest of the people generally, but that the distribution of property should be made in accordance with the same principle. The inequality of ownership should correspond with the inequality of merit. Every one may, during his life, keep what he had acquired himself, but give it to the state at death. Thus would a reconciliation be effected between the general interest and private interest; and the public revenue, supplied in this way, might easily be employed in place of the revenue raised by such taxation as weighs most heavily on the inferior classes. F. Huet, also, Le Regne social du Christianisme, 1853, III, 5, would have all private property, after the death of the owner, fall également à tous les jeunes travailleurs. The practical consequences of this system may now be seen in Turkey. There, the principal military fiefs are held in this way. Hence it is, that the Turkish owner of such a fief builds as little as possible. When one of his walls threatens to fall, it is kept standing by means of props. If it falls in fact, the only consequence is that there are fewer rooms in the house, and the owner settles beside the ruins. (Denon, I, p. 193.) In the Butan, there exists a species of practical Saint Simonism. Robinson, Descriptive Account of Assan, 1841.

out any more ado, be extended to land. Hence, individual property in land is everywhere much more recent than individual property in capital.3

But a certain expenditure of capital and labor is necessary that land may be used productively, and, in most instances, this employment of capital and labor is of long duration, irrevocable in the very nature of things, and one the fruits of which can be reaped only after some time has elapsed. Now, this coöperation of capital and labor is such, that no one would undertake to employ them in the cultivation of the land, had he not the strongest assurance of possessing it. Hence, agriculture in its most rudimentary stage supposes ownership of the land, at least from the time that it is "tickled with the hoe," until it "smiles with the harvest;" or, to express it more accurately, all the time intervening between the work of the plow and the labor of the sickle. The more, afterwards, population and civilization increase, the more products must be wrung from the soil. But this can be accomplished only by means of its more intensive cultivation (higher farming), by lavishing a greater amount of capital and labor on it, and, as a rule, by extending the circle of agricultural operations by means of combinations more and more artificial. Hence, the progress of civilization demands an ever increasing fixity, and a more pronounced shaping of landed property (the specification of jurists), in the interests of all who share in this progress, and even of those who own no landed property themselves. Were there no property in land, every one would find it more

1 It was chiefly fear of the consequences of the declamations of the socialists and their declamation against "monopoly " that induced Bastiat to reduce all the value of landed property to that of the capital employed in its manuring, improvement etc. (Harmonies, ch. 9.) We may, however, unreservedly grant him that, as a rule, until the time of its original possession by man, land had no valeur whatever (278).

Kant thinks the very contrary: Metaph. Anfangsgründe der Rechtslehre, (Werke, IX, 72 ff). Contra, Grotius, J. B. et P., II, 2. Graswinkel, in his Schriften für die Freiheit des Meeres, 1652 ff., in Laspeyres, Geschichte der niederländischen N. Œk., 12. Hufeland, Neue Grundlegung, I, 307.