ights both to principal and interest
untouched, and would not even extinguish altogether their existing
powers of bequest, but would limit the exercise of these to the
principal sum only,[23] and prohibit the transmission to any private
person of any right whatever to the usufruct of its productive
employment.

Here, then, at last, we have something definite to discuss--a single
proposed alteration in certain existing arrangements; and by comparing
the situation which actually exists to-day with that which the proposed
alteration, if carried into effect, would produce, we shall see whether
the alteration is workable and practically defensible or no. Let us
begin with the situation which actually exists to-day, confining
ourselves to those features of it which are vital to the present issue.

Let us take two men of practically contrasted types, each of whom has
inherited a capital of fifty thousand pounds. The ultimate object of
each is, in one way or another, to make his capital provide him with the
life that he most desires; but the first man is thoughtful, far-seeing,
and shrewd, while the second cares for nothing but the gaiety and
pleasure of the moment; and they deal with their capitals in accordance
with their respective characters. The first meets, let us say, with the
inventor of an agricultural machine, which will, if successfully
manufactured, double the wheat crop of every acre to the cultivation of
which it is applied. He places his capital, as a loan, in this
inventor's hands. The machine is constructed, and used with the results
desired; and the man who has lent the capital receives each year a
proportion of the new loaves which are due to the machine's efficiency,
and would not have existed otherwise. The second man invests his fortune
in any kind of security which has the advantage of being turned easily
into cash, and draws out month by month so many hundred pounds, without
reference to anything but the pleasures he desires to purchase; and by
the end of a few years both his capital and his income have disappeared.

Now, any one judging these men by the current standards of common-sense
would, while praising the first as a model of moral prudence, condemn
the second as a fool who had brought his ruin upon himself, and curtly
dismiss him, if a bachelor, as being nobody's enemy but his own. But
before we indorse either of these judgments as adequate, let us consider
more minutely what in each case has b