acy, as a political and social
ideal, is founded essentially upon disinterested human action. A
democracy can disregard or defy that truth at its peril.

IV

TAXATION AND INEQUALITIES IN WEALTH

Before dismissing this subject of a national industrial organization and
a better distribution of the fruits thereof brief references must be
made to certain other aspects of the matter. The measures which the
central and local governments could take for the purpose of adapting our
economic and social institutions to the national economic and social
interest would not be exhausted by the adoption of the proposed policy
of reconstruction; and several of these supplementary means, which have
been proposed to accomplish the same object, deserve consideration. Some
of these proposals look towards a further use of the power of taxation,
possessed by both the state and the Federal governments; but it must not
be supposed that in their entirety they constitute a complete system of
taxation. They are merely examples, like the protective tariff, of the
use of the power of taxation to combine a desirable national object with
the raising of money for the expenses of government.

It may be assumed that the adoption of the policy outlined in the last
section would gradually do away with certain undesirable inequalities in
the distribution of wealth: but this process, it is scarcely necessary
to add, would do nothing to mitigate existing inequalities. Existing
inequalities ought to be mitigated; and they can be mitigated without
doing the slightest injustice to their owners. The means to such
mitigation are, of course, to be found in a graduated inheritance tax--a
tax which has already been accepted in principle by several American
states and by the English government, which certainly cannot be
considered indifferent to the rights of individual property owners.

At the present stage of the argument, no very elaborate justification
can be necessary, either for the object proposed by a graduated
inheritance tax, or for the use of precisely these means to attain it.
The preservation intact of a fortune over a certain amount is not
desirable either in the public or individual interest. No doubt there
are certain people who have the gift of spending money well, and whose
personal value as well as the general social interest is heightened by
the opportunity of being liberal. But to whatever extent such
considerations afford a moral justifica