ts of one kind and another may be
mentioned by means of various trust devices to secure the ends of
primogeniture and entail. (5) Another force operating to concentrate the
ownership of wealth may be called economic inertia. According to the
principle of inertia, forces continue to operate until they are checked
by other forces coming into contact with them.

b) Forces which operate to diffuse wealth: (1) Education, broadly
considered, should be mentioned first of all. (2) Next, mention must be
made of the public control of corporations. (3) Changes in taxation are
the third item in this enumeration of forces. (4) The development of the
idea of property as a trust is next mentioned. (5) Profit-sharing and
co-operation. (6) Sound currency is next mentioned. (7) Public ownership
of public utilities is a further force. (8) Labor organizations. (9)
Institutions, especially in the interest of the wage-earning and
economically weaker elements in the community. (10) Savings institutions
and insurance.

3. Public Opinion: School of Thought and Legislation in England[159]

Public legislative opinion, as it has existed in England during the
nineteenth century, presents several noteworthy aspects or
characteristics. They may conveniently be considered under five heads:
the existence at any given period of a predominant public opinion; the
origin of such opinion; the development and continuity thereof; the
checks imposed on such opinion by the existence of counter-currents and
cross-currents of opinion; the action of laws themselves as the creators
of legislative opinion.

_First_, there exists at any given time a body of beliefs, convictions,
sentiments, accepted principles, or firmly rooted prejudices, which,
taken together, make up the public opinion of a particular era, or what
we may call the reigning or predominant current of opinion, and, as
regards at any rate the last three or four centuries, and especially the
nineteenth century, the influence of this dominant current of opinion
has, in England, if we look at the matter broadly, determined, directly
or indirectly, the course of legislation.

_Second_, the opinion which affects the development of the law has, in
modern England at least, often originated with some single thinker or
school of thinkers. No doubt it is at times allowable to talk of a
prevalent belief or opinion as "being in the air," by which expression
is meant that a particular way of looking at thing