Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 8.djvu/182

166 i66 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. The general theory of such laws is to tax lightly, or not at all, transmissions of property to the immediate family of the deceased, increasing the tax as the relationship becomes more remote. A bill on these lines was introduced into the last session of Congress;^ a similar measure is at present before the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. Such laws seem to me a move- ment, vague and indefinite to be sure, but still in the right direc- tion. They are no new thing. The Roman Emperor Augustus enacted a tax of this sort in the year 6, which, Gibbon says, fur- nished a large part of the Roman revenue.^ England has long had similar statutes, and in 1892, derived from them an income of upwards of fifty million dollars. Many of our States have fol- lowed suit. In 1892, one-third of all the State taxes of New York were collected in this way. Most interesting of all are the laws of Switzerland which provided for a maximum tax of 20 per cent., and amount to a conscious attempt to regulate" the succession to property on the principles for which I have been arguing. It will no doubt be objected that my suggestions are impracti- cable ; that I am assailing the rights of private property ; that a man will not work if he cannot leave his fortune to his children. To the first point, I will make answer that in the long run the law has proved as clever as those who would evade it, and has accom- plished things at first sight much more difficult than this. At any rate, it should not let injustice go on without even attempting to remedy it. As for impairing the rights of private property, — surely no one would say that "The Principles of Political Econ- omy," by Mr. John Stuart Mill, was a sensational work. Yet Mr. Mill takes pains to explain that descent on the death of the owner is not an incident of private property.^ Starting from the side of the economist, he arrives at the same result which I have sug' gested from a lawyer's point of view. To those who would cry that I discourage men from working, this answer can be made : the average American family con^ sists of five members ; if we assume that each individual may rightly inherit from ^50,000 to ;^ 100,000 this objection will have no force till a man is worth from two hundred to four hundred thousand dollars, for to that amount his property will go exactly as he would have it. And I do not regard it as an unalleviated misfortune, if here in the United States of America, some men with four hundred thousand dollars should be driven — though I 1 Harper's Weekly, 6th January, 1894. ' Pol. Econ. Bk. 2, ch. 2. ' Gibbon, ch. 6.