ous difficulty which a man of the respectable
classes finds in completely ruining himself, even by vice,
extravagance, and folly; whereas, there are plenty of honest people
who, in spite of economy and prudence, can scarcely keep outside of the
workhouse. Admitting the appeal to justice, it is, again, often urged
that justice is opposed to the demand for equality. Property is sacred,
it is said, because a man has (or ought to have) a right to what he has
made either by labour or by a course of fair dealings with other men. I
am not about to discuss the ultimate ground on which the claim to
private property is justified, and, as I think, satisfactorily
established. A man has a right, we say, to all that he has fairly
earned. Has he, then, a right to inherit what his father has earned? A
man has had the advantage of all that a rich father can do for him in
education, and so forth. Why should he also have the father's fortune,
without earning it? Are the merits of making money so great that they
are transmissible to posterity? Should a man who has been so good as to
become rich, be blessed even to the third and fourth generation? Why,
as a matter of pure justice, should not all fortunes be applied to
public uses, on the death of the man who made them? Such a law, however
impolitic, would not be incompatible with the moral principle to which
an appeal is made. There are, of course, innumerable other ways in
which laws may favour an equality of property, without breaking any of
the fundamental principles. What, for example, is the just method of
distributing taxation? A rich man can not only pay more money than a
poor man, in proportion to his income, but he can, with equal ease, pay
a greater proportion. To double the income of a labourer may be to
raise him from starvation to comfort. To double the income of a
millionaire may simply be to encumber him with wealth by which he is
unable to increase his own pleasure. There is a limit beyond which it
is exceedingly difficult to find ways of spending money on one's own
enjoyment--though I have never been able to fix it precisely. On this
ground, such plans as a graduated income-tax are, it would seem,
compatible with the plea of justice; and, within certain limits, we do,
in fact, approve of various taxes, on the ground, real or supposed,
that they tend to shift burdens from the poor to the rich, and, so far,
to equalise wealth. In fact, this appeal to justice is a tacit
concess