The Timaru Herald FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1906. LIMITATION OF WEALTH.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 13152, 7 December 1906, Page 4

The Timaru Herald FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1906. LIMITATION OF WEALTH.

It is rather curious that in places so far apart as America and New Zealand, simultaneous proposal* should bo made by responsible statesmen that the Government should interfere in •the distribution of a man's wealth when he has .passed out flf i the world. In his speech at Onehungn. the other-night in opposition t» Mr McNab's ischeme for preventing the aggregation of large estates in single hands, Mr Massey expressed the opinion that a. better way of dealing with that particular evil would be the adoption of the Ountinental system of distribution at death, while in lis messago to Congress, summarised in yesterday's cablegrams, President Roosevelt advised the imposition of a " graduated inheritance tax" as a check to the operations of the " trusts " which fatten wn the people of the United States. The time hals gone by when such a proposal would be regarded as one of the "seven, devils' of Socialism," even in Conservative England ,for the statute book of Great Britain led the way in providing enactments against dangerous accumulations of wealth. The Thollusson Act directly prohibits the accumulation of -wealth beyond a, life or lives in being and twenty-one years—not from any fear of a new oligarchy, but rather from, fear lest capital .should be isterilisod for long periods of time to the impoverishment of the community. That Act established .the principle that the State, in the interests of the commiunity, was justified in interfering in a man's disposition of his possessions, and although its motive differs frnir. that of the suggestions thrown, out by President Roosevelt and Mr Massey, ; there is no more warrant for insisting that ■ .•wealth shall not be withdrawn from useful occupation, than there is for insisting that ;it shall not be accumulated in few hands ;to become a possible instrument of tyranny over the many. In Europe laws to pro•mete distribution at death are practically •universal in restriction of the Church'h "individual ism, "because, as a, Church cannot die and does not waste, it would otherwise: gradually concentrate t!h« -whole property of the country in clerical hands. Andi. with the small families which are the rule: iki the •wealthy families in America,, gigantic accumulations of wealth, in single hands'can bo prevented only by some new system of distribution at death, for, as the'!'■■■"■ Spectator " —surely a "Conservative enough critic—points out, in the third generation a multi-millionaire aflighit hold several millions sterling and be master of all means of communication in three or four Sttrtes, even.if not of many of.tlhe smaller legislatures. , With the object, of combating tliis menace to society, iPresident Roosevelt has propounded his sfcheme of a " graduated. inheritance, tax.",. . The Message to Congress is not the first occasion on which . he has thrown out this suggestion for breaking up the huge accumulations of .capital which Dvave became such a idistinctive feature, of American,, life. Away back in April, speaking' at a. function in Washington, he said that "it may hereafter be necessary to colteider the adoption of some scheme, such ins 4'progressive tax upon all fortune*, beyond a certain amount, so framed as to put it out of the power of one of these enormous fortunes to hand on more than a certain amount to : any oho individual. Such « tax wouliiy of course, 1 be imposed, by the national], and not by a State, Government..''. Should the giwat Republic 'move in tlik dinßction of restricting the liberty of bequestf, its action will inevitably extend beyond the great "Trusts" -which,are the immediate target iof the President's proposal, and ultimately the relation- of the coinmunitytb the practice of accumulation beyond certain, limits will he rearranged. Such at movement, it is easy >to see, would not stop, in America;- «'. , .'\y