prevent the building up of large leaseholds, but it can hardly forbid the purchase of corn and cotton on the most extensive scale. Neither can it prevent a particular mine from turning out fabulously rich and giving enormous dividends to its lessees. Even the expedient of taxes designed to break up large properties can only be cautiously applied, as it is certain to be met by evasions and corruption of State officials. Therefore, in the most extreme and hypothetical case that seems at present possible, when the State has taken to itself all land, railways, steamers, canals, tramways, waterworks, gasworks, telegraphs, and telephones, has salaried the professions, and has even invaded finance with a State bank, there will still remain infinite possibilities for speculation and for the amassing of great fortunes. The distance between wealth and competence will indeed be more sharply accentuated than it is at present, for large professional incomes and inherited fortunes will be comparatively rare, and these it is which at present fill up the interval between the small ordinary stipends of clerical work and the great gains of the speculator.
That the passion for wealth will be a little changed in one respect is perhaps conceivable. Hitherto it has generally been associated with the desire to found a family. If, however, we conceive the family ties weakened, and it has been argued that many changes are conspiring to this result, and an active interposition of the State to prevent the transmission of property in great sums, wealth will come to be valued especially with a view to present consideration and enjoyment. The type of the old-fashioned miser is already obsolete except among the uneducated, and if these changes in social structure come to pass it will rapidly be discarded
