tion for private property, they
have no relevancy to the case of existing American fortunes. The
multi-millionaire cannot possibly spend his income save by a recourse to
wild and demoralizing extravagance, and in some instances not even
extravagance is sufficient for the purpose. Fortunes of a certain size
either remorselessly accumulate or else are given away. There is a
general disposition to justify the possession of many millions by the
frequent instances among their owners of intelligent public benefaction,
but such an argument is a confession that a justification is needed
without constituting in itself a sufficient excuse. If wealth,
particularly when accumulated in large amounts, has a public function,
and if its possession imposes a public duty, a society is foolish to
leave such a duty to the accidental good intentions of individuals. It
should be assumed and should be efficiently performed by the state; and
the necessity of that assumption is all the plainer when it is
remembered that the greatest public gifts usually come from the first
generation of millionaires. Men who inherit great wealth and are brought
up in extravagant habits nearly always spend their money on themselves.
That is one reason why the rich Englishman is so much less generous in
his public gifts than the rich American. In the long run men inevitably
become the victims of their wealth. They adapt their lives and habits to
their money, not their money to their lives. It pre-occupies their
thoughts, creates artificial needs, and draws a curtain between them and
the world. If the American people believe that large wealth really
requires to be justified by proportionately large public benefactions,
they should assuredly adopt measures which will guarantee public service
for a larger proportion of such wealth.

Whether or not the state shall permit the inheritance of large fortunes
is a question which stands on a totally different footing from the
question of their permissible accumulation. Many millions may, at least
in part, be earned by the men who accumulate them; but they cannot in
the least be earned by the people who inherit them. They could not be
inherited at all save by the intervention of the state; and the state
has every right to impose conditions in its own interest upon the whole
business of inheritance. The public interests involved go very much
beyond the matter of mitigating flagrant inequalities of wealth. They
concern at bot