possibly and even probably, give less time and energy to enterprise, and there would be a clog on the wheel of the industrial chariot. But on this subject there has in the last few years been a great change in opinion, and I lately heard that a distinguished American banker had expressed a doubt as to whether he would be wise to leave his children with more than $5,000 a year—a quite moderate income from an American point of view in these days. In any case, the inheritor may also remember that the State shows an increasing tendency to take toll on estates passing at death, and, in this country, now seizes no less than 40 per cent. of the largest properties when their owner dies. As long as it does not check enterprise and the accumulation of capital this determination of the State seems to be both equitable and expedient, and to be in the interest even of those who seem to suffer by it, but actually are thereby, and to that extent, compelled to justify their existence by their own efforts and saved from a possible life of idle boredom.
So far, then, from the capitalist being a thief, he seems to render, or represent some one who has rendered, a service to the community without which economic progress would be impossible. In fact we may say that any
