Section LXXXVI.. Economic Utility of the Right of Inheritance.

Economic Utility Of The Right Of Inheritance.

The certainty, that the material welfare of their children depends, in great part, on their industry and frugality, is one of the most powerful incentives to good, in the case of most men. And this is the basis of the economic utility of the family right of inheritance.(515) There is scarcely any other institution which opposes over-population with such efficiency, for the reason, that the obstacle placed in its way here is placed very directly, at the point where it can make itself felt most, viz.: in the life of the family itself. The weaker the family feeling, the less does the abolition of the right of inheritance interfere with the economic interests of a nation. Hence, for instance, it is, that taxes imposed upon legacies, bequests, testamentary gifts etc., are less objectionable in proportion as they affect only those in the more remote degrees of relationship in which inheritance is something merely accidental. While, when a nation is yet in the intermediate stages of civilization, the family right of inheritance seems to be very strong, especially as regards landed property, a consequence of the fact, that a superior kind of title to such property is recognized to exist in the family; at a period, when individualism becomes more developed, the liberty of devise by will is wont to prevail more and more.(516) Then the right of inheritance becomes, so to speak, a more elevated species of personal property, a prolongation of the same beyond the grave. Should testamentary freedom be too much hampered, selfishness would manifest itself in a way much more detrimental to economic interests, viz.: in the consumption of wealth, during the lifetime of its owner. Every man would be but a life annuitant of his own property.

But, at the same time, in periods of moral decline, complete freedom may degenerate so as to produce evils equally great. The wealthy Bœotians, in the later days of Hellenic history, were wont to form themselves into dissolute drinking companies; and not only the childless, but even fathers of families made over their property to these companies, limiting their offspring to a portion which it was made their duty to let them have. It was so in Rome, also, in Cicero’s time, when every acquaintance of standing took it very ill if not remembered in the will of the testator, and where Octavian, for instance, in the last twenty years of his reign, received about 70,000,000 thalers through legacies left him by his “friends.”(517) Here, the repeal of the law making it obligatory on testators to leave a certain proportion of their wealth to their children would remove the last safe-guard of their material welfare.(518)