clearly this economic truth: great wealth is the accumulation in one man’s hands of the right or power of a thousand families to employ labour.
The second source of wealth which invites consideration is the unearned increment on ground-values, or any other unearned and accidental increase of value. It is now very commonly admitted that this belongs to the community, and I need not enlarge on it.
We have, as I said, admitted the community’s right to interfere with this scandalous clotting of wealth, and no doubt a Labour-majority would increase death-duties until money could not be transmitted beyond, at most, the third generation, and not in quantities sufficient to make men and women a lifelong burden on the working community. Possibly some day there will be a general scrutiny of titles to wealth: not merely as far back as the enclosure of the commons a hundred years ago, but back to the landing in this country of William of Normandy. Possibly a day will come when men and women will conceal the fact that their ancestors “came over with the Conqueror,” since it generally implies that the descendants of those lucky adventurers have not done an honest day’s work since that time. Possibly the sons of some of our “captains of industry” of a century ago will burn the family records, lest some prying historian should learn by what horrible exploitation of child-labour the fortune was made. Prescriptive right is a purely artificial right created
