tion; in the persuasion of being able to draw such and such an advantage from the thing possessed, according to the nature of the case. Now this expectation, this persuasion can only be the work of law. .It is only through the protection of law that I am able to inclose a field, and to give myself up to its cultivation with the sure though distant hope of harvest."'1

Though keenly conscious of the fact that large inequalities of property and income lead to the waste of much potential happiness, Bentham regarded the security of established expectation as even more important than an approach towards equality. "When security and equality are in conflict, it will not do to hesitate a moment. Equality must yield." But he qualifies this uncompromising doctrine in a manner more conformable to common sense than to his own premisses. "Is it necessary that between these two rivals, Security and Equality, there should be an opposition, an eternal war? The only mediator between these contrary interests is time. When property by the death of the proprietor ceases to have an owner, the law can interfere in its distribution. The question then relates to new acquirers who have formed no expectations." This attempted distinction is unworthy of Bentham's logical mind. Did he never, one wonders, converse with an expectant heir?

And, in fact, when he comes to deal with inheritance, he shifts from this impossible ground. For "in framing a law of succession, the legislator ought to have three objects in view, first, a provision for the subsistence of the rising generation, second, a prevention of disappointment, third, the equalisation of fortunes."4 But, if it be necessary to prevent disappointment, it is evident that

1 Theory of Legislation, p. 112.

a Ibid, p. 120.

Ibid, p. 122.

Ibid, p. 177.

the "new acquirers "have formed expectations. And if it is legitimate, as Bentham holds, in some measure to disappoint these, then equality does not always yield to security.1

§4. He sketches a model law of succession on intestacy,2 which is based upon two main principles, first, "a preference to the descending line, however long, over the ascending and composite lines," and second, no distinction, on the ground either of age or sex, between brothers and sisters. No relatives more remote than the parents of the deceased, or their descendants, should, he is inclined to think, be permitted to inherit on intestacy, and "in defect of relations in these degrees, the property should go into the public treasury.”

"Those who accuse this plan of being too simple," says Bentham, "and who declare that at this rate the law would no longer be a science, may find wherewith to be satisfied, astonished and delighted, in the labyrinth of the English Common Law of successions. To give the reader an idea of the English Common Law on this subject, it would be necessary to begin with a dictionary of new words; and presently, when he should discover the absurdities, the subtleties, the cruelties, the frauds, with which that system abounds, he would imagine that I had written a satire, and that I had wished to insult a nation otherwise so justly renowned for its wisdom. It is to be observed, however, that the right of making a will reduces this evil within tolerably narrow limits. It is only the succession to the property of intestates which is

It is possible, by a wider interpretation of the phrase new acquirers," to make Bentham's position very nearly logical. Enact, for instance, that no person at present unborn shall inherit, and you stop the creation of all new expectations of inheritance, without defeating any existing expectation, except that of having an infant who shall inherit. But, though this may be what Bentham means, it is not what he says.

2 Ibid, pp. 178-182.

obliged to pass through the crooked roads of the Common Law. Wills in that country may be compared to arbitrary pardons, which correct the severity of penal laws."

The power to make a will Bentham would still permit, chiefly on the ground that "this power given to fathers renders the paternal authority more respectable." But he regards "the institution called in France a légitime, by which each child is protected against a total disinheritance, as a convenient medium between domestic anarchy and paternal tyranny," though, even this provision the father should have the power of taking away, for causes specified in the law and judicially proved."

Apart, however, from the range of relatives who might conceivably inherit on intestacy, should a man have the right to leave his property "to whomsoever he chooses, either to distant relations or to strangers?

It may be argued, says Bentham, that a man "should have the means of cultivating the hopes and rewarding the care of a faithful servant, and of softening the regrets of a friend who has watched at his side, not to speak of the woman who, but for the omission of a ceremony, would be called his widow, and the orphans whom all the world but the legislator regards as his children. Again, if to enrich the treasury you deprive a man of the power of leaving his property to his friends, he will be tempted to convert it into a life annuity. It is to encourage him to be a spendthrift and almost to make a law against economy." He suggests, therefore, that in such cases the right of bequest should be limited to half the property and the other half should be "reserved for the public."5

Bentham's influence was curiously mixed. On many questions, including the problem of inherited wealth, he

1 Ibid, pp. 182-3.

2 Ibid, p. 185.

Ibid, pp. 185-6.

Ibid, p. 185.

Ibid, P. 186.

encouraged clear and fearless thinking, yet, "so full was his mind of the terror of the French Revolution, and so great were the evils which he attributed to the smallest attack on security that, daring analyst as he was, he felt himself and he fostered in his disciples an almost superstitious reverence for the existing institutions of private property." Here, as elsewhere, superstitious reverenceturned to blindness, and many later economists have seemed quite unaware of the relevance of possible changes in the institutions of private property to the problems of distribution, which they have so laboriously studied.

$5. The value of the work of Malthus has been much disputed. "A mild, pottering person, I think Carlyle would have called him," says Bagehot, with "a mist of speculation over his facts, and a vapour of fact over his ideas." He "discovered his Principle of Population' in the course of an attempt to damp his father's hopes of progress. In bringing out the first edition he was inspired, not so much by the desire to publish the existence of the Principle, whatever it may have been, as by the desire to disprove the possibility of any great improvement in the material condition of mankind."

His Essay on the Principle of Population was first published in 1798, and it is tempting, at first sight, to regard it as a study of the effects of an increase in the supply of labour upon real earnings. But the book is far too crude to stand any such modern interpretation. Its main thesis is that population tends to increase more rapidly than "subsistence," and that the wholesale starvation of mankind can only be averted by various checks on the growth of population. These checks are of two kinds, first, a high infant mortality, disease, war and the like, second, abstention from, or long postpone

1 Marshall, Principles, p. 760, n.

• Economic Studies, pp. 193-4.

' Cannan, Theories of Production and Distribution, p. 384.

ment of, marriage. Checks of the first kind obviously involve "misery and vice," and Malthus is inclined to fear that the same is also true of the second kind. Whether his thesis be tested by general reasoning or by observed facts, it is evident that it cannot stand. In some circumstances the tendency which he proclaimed exists, but in others a tendency of an exactly opposite character. It was part of Malthus' central argument that "the means of subsistence, under circumstances the most favourable to human industry, could not possibly be made to increase faster than in an arithmetical ratio."" In this argument he generally takes account both of the supply of labour and of the natural fertility of the soil, though sometimes he seems almost to ignore the fact that, whatever the fertility of the soil, an increase in the number of labourers must add something to the total product. But he leaves out of account altogether the possible effects of improvements in cultivation, due either to the growth of human knowledge or to the accumulation of capital. Nor did the possible development of new countries beyond the seas or of modern conditions of transport by land or sea ever fully occupy his mind." Doubtless, as Marshall observes, "it was not Malthus' fault that he could not foresee " these things, but the fact remains that they have blown this part of his thesis into thin air, and exhibited him, not indeed as a moral delinquent, but as a very inadequate economist.

Nor, if we turn to the other part of his central argument, has history been more kind. In all civilised countries at the present day, while both infant mortality and the

1 Book I., Ch. I., 2nd edition.

Though Ch. VI. of the first edition of his Essay dealt with emigration, and though in 1814 he wrote in favour of the Corn Laws (Observations on the Corn Laws and Grounds of an Opinion on the Policy of Restricting Importation).

Principles, p. 180.