d even harm be excepted if it be
done to yourself alone. If, indeed, you go the length of playing ducks
and drakes with gold pieces, or of lighting cigars with bank-notes, you
are likely enough to be stopped and placed under restraint as a lunatic,
but it is clear that this will be done solely because you are presumed
not to understand what you are doing, and not from any question as to
your right to do it if you do understand, for there are plenty of things
far more objectionable in themselves, only not implying a want of
sanity, which you will be left perfectly at liberty to do. If you
choose, in imitation of Cleopatra, to spoil your fish-sauce by mixing
powdered pearls with it, or, in imitation of a certain Peruvian
viceroy, to shoe your carriage horses with silver, no one will dream of
interfering with you; any more than of preventing courtesans and other
fine ladies from befouling their nether limbs by sweeping the dusty road
with flounces of Brussels lace; or of preventing members of the Cobden
Club from gorging themselves annually, at a cost of five guineas per
paunch, in honour of the prince of practical economists. But property,
which, however great the good it is capable of doing, you are at liberty
to employ solely for your own hurt, you are, of course, at liberty to
destroy, thereby preventing it, at least, from doing any more harm. The
lesser right of abuse is plainly comprehended in the larger. And of that
which is so absolutely your own that you may, if you please, wantonly
waste or destroy it, you may, of course, transfer the ownership, thereby
conveying to another person all your rights in it, and rendering it as
unjust to interfere with the new owner's disposal of the property, as it
would previously have been to interfere with yours. Moreover, since the
gift is a purely voluntary act, you may, if you please, without
impairing its validity, arrange that it shall begin to take effect from
some future date instead of immediately; so that, by naming some date
subsequent to your own decease, you will be converting the gift into an
equally valid bequest. This, I submit, is decisive as to the iniquity of
any legal limitation of testamentary power. The right of bequest is
comprehended within and rests upon the same basis as the right of
possession, so that, unless it would be just to pass a law depriving all
persons of any property possessed by them in excess of a given amount,
it would not be just to deprive t