At the present stage of the argument, no very elaborate justification can be necessary, either for the object proposed by a graduated inheritance tax, or for the use of precisely these means to attain it.  The preservation intact of a fortune over a certain amount is not desirable either in the public or individual interest.  No doubt there are certain people who have the gift of spending money well, and whose personal value as well as the general social interest is heightened by the opportunity of being liberal.  But to whatever extent such considerations afford a moral justification for private property, they have no relevancy to the case of existing American fortunes.  The multi-millionaire cannot possibly spend his income save by a recourse to wild and demoralizing extravagance, and in some instances not even extravagance is sufficient for the purpose.  Fortunes of a certain size either remorselessly accumulate or else are given away.  There is a general disposition to justify the possession of many millions by the frequent instances among their owners of intelligent public benefaction, but such an argument is a confession that a justification is needed without constituting in itself a sufficient excuse.  If wealth, particularly when accumulated in large amounts, has a public function, and if its possession imposes a public duty, a society is foolish to leave such a duty to the accidental good intentions of individuals.  It should be assumed and should be efficiently performed by the state; and the necessity of that assumption is all the plainer when it is remembered that the greatest public gifts usually come from the first generation of millionaires.  Men who inherit great wealth and are brought up in extravagant habits nearly always spend their money on themselves.  That is one reason why the rich Englishman is so much less generous in his public gifts than the rich American.  In the long run men inevitably become the victims of their wealth.  They adapt their lives and habits to their money, not their money to their lives.  It pre-occupies their thoughts, creates artificial needs, and draws a curtain between them and the world.  If the American people believe that large wealth really requires to be justified by proportionately large public benefactions, they should assuredly adopt measures which will guarantee public service for a larger proportion of such wealth.

Whether or not the state shall permit the inheritance of large fortunes is a question which stands on a totally different footing from the question of their permissible accumulation.  Many millions may, at least in part, be earned by the men who accumulate them; but they cannot in the least be earned by the people who inherit them.  They could not be inherited at all save by the intervention of the state; and the state has every right to impose conditions in its own interest upon the whole business of inheritance.  The public interests involved go very much beyond