If the collateral relations, with exception of brothers and sisters, depended on mention in the will for any claim—­that is to say, if they could only inherit when a testimentary disposition existed in their favour—­and if, in absence of such disposition, the State stepped in as heir, a yearly revenue of 500 millions, according to a calculation based on official material, could be counted upon.  This is not the place to examine this calculation more closely.  Even if it is put at too high a figure, which I doubt, yet the yield of such a tax would be very large under any circumstances.

Since this, like every tax on an inheritance, is a tax on capital—­that is to say, it is directly derived from invested capital—­it is in the nature of things that the proceeds should be devoted in the first instance to the improvement of the financial situation, especially to paying off debts.  Otherwise there would be the danger of acting like a private gentleman who lives on his capital.  This idea is also to be recommended because the proceeds of the tax are not constant, but liable to fluctuations.  It would be advisable to devote the proceeds principally in this way, and to allow a part to go towards extinguishing the debt of the communes, whose financial soundness is extremely important.  This fundamental standpoint does not exclude the possibility that in a national crisis the tax may be exceptionally applied to other important purposes, as for example to the completion of our armaments on land and sea.

There are two objections—­one economic, the other ethical—­which may be urged against this right of the State or the Empire to inherit.  It is argued that the proceeds of the tax were drawn from the national wealth, that the State would grow richer, the people poorer, and that in course of time capital would be united in the hand of the State, that the independent investor would be replaced by the official, and thus the ideal of Socialism would be realized.  Secondly, the requirement that relations, in order to inherit, must be specially mentioned in the will, is thought to be a menace to the coherence of the family.  “According to our prevailing law, the man who wishes to deprive his family of his fortune must do some positive act.  He must make a will, in which he bequeathes the property to third persons, charitable institutions, or to any other object.  It is thus brought before his mind that his natural heirs are his relations, his kin, and that he must make a will if he wishes to exclude his legal heirs.  It is impressed upon him that he is interfering by testamentary disposition in the natural course of things, that he is wilfully altering it.  The Imperial right of succession is based on the idea that the community stands nearer to the individual than his family.  This is in its inmost significance a socialistic trait.  The socialistic State, which deals with a society made up of atoms, in which every individual is freed from the bonds of family, while all are alike bound by a uniform socialistic tie, might put forward a claim of this sort."[F]