But we are not left on this point to a mere balancing of probabilities. For it may be made palpably manifest that these great and abiding principles, at the same time that they swell the amount of wealth, tend likewise to distribute it in the most equitable manner among the various classes of individuals who have in any way cooperated in its production. The latter tendency is, indeed, the condition and cause of the former. The certainty of freely and fully enjoying the fruits of productive labour and ingenuity is the most efficient stimulus to the exertion of these powers and the increase of their results. It is the main object of this work to prove, that the greatest aggregate production of wealth flows from the same plain and simple principles of natural right which ensure its most equitable distribution, and tend at the same time to the production of the greatest aggregate of human happiness.*

We say the most equitable distribution. Great was the mistake of those philanthropists who have interpreted an equitable distribution of the good things of life to mean their equal distribution. No

*This is in no degree inconsistent with what was urged in an earlier chapter (p. 53), as to an increase of wealth being no measure of the increase of happiness. Wealth may for a time be increased at a great sacrifice of human happiness, as in the instances we there gave, though, in the long run, such sacrifices will be found to have occasioned a diminution of the aggregate productiveness, by checking the growth of population, and the improvement of the arts and sciences, which require a condition of ease, leisure, and plenty, freedom both of the physical and mental faculties, the stimulus of hope, and the prospect of an indefinite amelioration of our circumstances, for their full development.

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two conditions can be more incongruous than these. Any attempt to effect an equality of property among men, instead of approaching to equity, would involve the extreme of injustice;-instead of being consonant to the law of nature, such a state could only be maintained by the continual infraction of the law of nature.

The difference naturally existing between the bodily and mental powers and dispositions of individuals must necessarily, under the natural law of production and distribution, create great inequality in their several possessions and stations. However equal their position when they began the world, the industrious, sharp-witted, intelligent, active, energetic, ingenious, prudent, and frugal, must speedily leave behind the idle, slow, stupid, careless, improvident and extravagant. The former will acquire considerable property under the same circumstances in which the latter will scarcely perhaps procure a maintenance. But any attempt to counteract this the natural law of distribution, which awards to each workman the produce of his own exertions, must proportionately check the disposition of each to avail himself of his natural capacity, or to acquire additional powers, and would therefore, be no less impolitic than unjust.

Accidental circumstances add, no doubt, to this natural and necessary inequality of conditions. Yet would it not be safe or right to interfere with their influence; since it is almost impossible to separate the advantages that an individual derives by accident from those which are the consequence of foresight and enterprise. A man's property may certainly be improved by accident; as for

example, by the discovery of a productive vein of metal or coal, or a valuable quarry on his estate. But who is to determine whether his discovery was not in a great degree, perhaps wholly, the result of laborious study and research? Were the right of property denied, or interfered with, in such things as appeared to derive a value from accident, it is obvious that much of the ingenuity and inquisitiveness of research which is one of the main springs of economical improvement, would be deadened by the uncertainty of obtaining its just reward.

It has been proposed as an exceedingly just mode of raising a national revenue that the rent of land should be directly taxed; or, at least, that portion of rent which is the result of accidents of position. The same objection (and it is a very strong one) applies to this proposal. It is very true that the value of a landed estate sometimes rises enormously without any exertions on the part of its proprietor, but in consequence either of its fortuitous proximity to a flourishing manufacturing or commercial town,-of a new canal or rail-road being carried through it,-or of its soil or situation being found peculiarly adapted to the growth of some valuable products. The high land-rents of the Grosvenor and Portman metropolitan estates may be adduced as instancing an increase of the first kind; many estates of the midland manufacturing districts will afford examples of the second; and some of the hop-grounds of the southern counties of the third. But is it certain that the proprietor of land under such circumstances is wholly passive, and takes no part in

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promoting and encouraging the improvement which is likely to confer on him so special a benefit? We do not dispute that, in the case of growing towns, it is the duty of every government, acting for the interests of the public, to make an early and sufficient reservation of tracts of land in their immediate neighbourhood, to be applied to purposes of public health and convenience. But further interference, even in such an extreme case, would probably be deleterious. In the improvement and extension of towns,—in the construction of new canals, rail-roads, and turnpike roads, it is usual to see the proprietors of land whose interests are likely to be advanced by such measures, take a very prominent part; and any tax upon the increased rents derived from such general improvements would be certain to delay and discourage their execution.

Of the causes of inequality in the economical condition of men there are none more strikingly obvious, or more frequently declaimed against as artificial and unjust, than the laws of inheritance and succession to property.

In speaking of the natural right to property as founded solely on the labour by which it is appropriated, we purposely deferred the consideration of the question as to the devolution of the right on the decease of the individual labourer. It would clearly be quite contrary to the interests of society that property on the death of its owner should cease to belong to any one; since this could not fail to renew all the dangerous personal struggles and ceaseless contentions which it is the great object of all the primary institutions of society to

prevent. It is equally evident that since the perfect and complete ownership of property, necessary, as we have seen, to stimulate its production, includes the power of freely disposing of it by sale, loan, or gift, in any manner the owner pleases, it must in reason include the power of disposing of it after death. For a denial of that power, or any serious restraint upon it, would be easily evaded by disposing of the property by gift, or sale, during life, instead of by testamentary bequest. The liberty to appoint a successor to property after death is, therefore, part and parcel of the natural right to its ownership and free disposal, and cannot be reasonably or safely separated from it. That it has ever been so considered by the unpre judiced sentiments of mankind is shown by the almost universal prevalence through every age and nation, of a law or custom, giving a dying person the power of disposing of his property by will.

In the absence of testamentary disposition, the natural rule is clearly inheritance; that is to say, that the property devolve on the children, or, in default, on the nearest relatives of the deceased owner, upon the reasonable presumption that, if he had not neglected to make a will, or been prevented from doing so by casualty, he would have disposed of his property in that manner.* The

* Blackstone calls the permanent right to property,' as well as that of children to the inheritance of their parents, 'not a natural but a civil right.' His learned commentator, Professor Christian, justly corrects this very obvious error. "The notion,' he says, ' of property is universal, and is sug gested to the mind of man by reason and nature, prior to