d reward for his industry, society may justly allow
him to dispose of it by will, which I think is a liberal concession, I
see no sufficient reason for extending his authority beyond that
amount. All above that amount, I hold, should belong to the
commonwealth in justice, for two reasons--first, because it was taken
from the commonwealth, and second, because the commonwealth suffers
from two dangerous classes, which ought not to exist,[7]--the tramps
becoming demoralized and desperate, and the idlers, becoming
demoralized and worthless, who think themselves a privileged class,
born with a right to live in everlasting idleness upon the toil of
those who are not thus well born. This division into the aristocracy,
the proletariat, and the middle class struggling to become the
aristocracy, does not make a republic. It is an ancient falsehood and
injustice established by absurd laws of inheritance (as absurd as the
Hindoo castes), which have cursed the world, and will continue to
curse it until America shall establish democratic justice. Yet as
experience shows that men's opinions in all things are swayed by their
interests, there must be but few of the patrician class who can
perceive these truths, and we must rely for their appreciation upon
the vast majority who are not born to wealth.

[7] To save the nation _we must reform_ and stop the
production of 60,000 boy tramps and the half million of
paupers and criminals which our horrible system has
produced, which at the present rate of increase will,
in fifty years, be a million and a quarter, and in a
hundred years will probably exceed FOUR MILLIONS. I see
no measures but those I propose that will save us from
this terrible condition. They will not be adopted in
time to prevent civil war, but they must be adopted
afterwards.

What policy the commonwealth may observe,--whether it shall allow the
millionnaire to dispose of ten, twenty, or fifty per cent. as an
encouragement and reward for his accumulations,--is a debatable
question. To give him post-mortem control of fifty per cent. would be,
it seems to me, an act of prodigal generosity to millionnaire heirs.
That a dead man of a hundred millions should be allowed to keep fifty
millions hoarded in private possession appears to me an extravagant
claim, for even ten per cent. of that amount would be enough to spoil
his children a