"Yes: we consider it but just that a man should enjoy the fruits of intellectual, as well as of any other, labor. The royalty is generally small, however, and is fixed by a jury of experts. Yet, having the whole world as customer, a useful improvement often brings in immense sums to the inventor."
"How are such large fortunes disposed of," said I, "seeing that they cannot be left to one person?"
"That is sometimes a puzzle to the owner himself. A great income is, at present, of no personal advantage. It cannot procure a comfort beyond what all enjoy, nor does it confer an iota of social power. It has even become difficult to find conspicuous ways of employing it to the public advantage, our institutions are so numerous, and so liberally endowed by the generosity of a long series of public benefactors. The patentee, accordingly, frequently surrenders all rights to the public, or conveys them to the trustees of the general fund.
"Great wealth, in fact, is neither desired nor desirable among us. It is an imputation on a man's memory, it is true, if he leaves impaired the patrimony inherited from his father. But that maintained as received, his mind is at rest. The tendency has been, therefore, to increase slightly, from generation to generation, the ancestral inheritance; and, pari passu, the legal maximum of bequest has also been gradually raised."
He then went on to explain the origin and manner of administration of the general fund. This, it seems, was a kind of insurance-fund, towards which all married persons contributed a certain amount every year. It was also the recipient of numerous bequests, of nearly all the
