Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 8.djvu/183

167 It will perhaps be felt that I speak too speculatively and under- rate the so called " natural right" to inherit. Against other individuals the child (or near relative) certainly has a paramount title, because the deceased would have wished the property to go to him, and other things being equal the wishes of the former owner should prevail, as we have seen. But the contest is not between the child and another person; it is between the child and the State, and the owner's wishes have never been allowed to override the dictates of public policy. The feudal law utterly dis- regarded them in order to concentrate-property and preserve family power; the State of to-day may rightly disregard them to secure the distribution of wealth. For the most important aspect of great fortunes is not the luxury which they engender, nor yet the envy and discontent which they excite; it is the tremendous power which they give over men, and - it seems - over nations. We may well hesitate about depriving a man of what he himself has fought for and won by his ability or his luck. But to make his conquest hereditary, to put this enormous influence into the hands of a man who may be entirely unfitted for it, violates every principle of law and policy for which the government stands.