family life. Moreover-as always happens-such violent and arbitrary interference would be met by evasion, and the owner would effect the passage of the property during his lifetime.

But it is one thing for the owner, at death, to appoint his successor, and another for the owner, when dead, to continue to regulate either the living man or the property he holds. This is a dual ownership of a kind even worse than those which Parliament invented, and one which cannot in reason be justified. From the point of view of liberty, the successor must stand in the same position and enjoy the same perfect rights as the owner. It is plain it must be so. How can the late owner rightly continue to undertake the direction of any human affairs? How can he rightly make conditions? How can he himself having been a man in possession of perfect rights-create a successor with imperfect rights? To do so, means that so far as the rights of his successor are imperfect, they are imperfect just because a certain part of them are retained by the dead owner. That is an altogether unreasonable condition of affairs, nearly as unreasonable as the claim of the State to step in and to appropriate, either a part, or the whole, when an owner dies. The owner at his death may name his successor, for he has a far better right to do so than anybody else; but his successor must be in all respects his own equal in rights and powers. His successor must stand on the same high level; he must live under a system which subjects all world-material to the freest use of faculties, just as the first owner in his day has lived. We are constructing a world for the living and not for the dead, and we cannot confiscate any of the rights of the living in favour of the dead. The owner must leave in his place a wholly free man, such as he himself was, and not a

partly free man, because forsooth he-the owner-wishes to retain some of his privileges after death.

This principle points clearly to what a part of the law should be as regards the ownership of land. B should have full power to leave his land to C, or if he prefers to D, but he should have no power to leave it to D, or E, behind C. He should have no power to create what the lawyers call "estates in expectancy." At present a man may leave his land, for example, to his eldest son John, on John's death to his brother William, and on William's death to any number of other human beings, or he may charge the land with payments to be made to certain persons. All this is continuing the control of the dead hand over the affairs of the living, and is a wholly illegitimate proceeding. It is creating imperfect ownership. The living are left with imperfect rights of ownership just because the dead man is allowed to remain part owner. Every payment tacked on to the land, every condition imposed, every succession (beyond the first), directed by the deceased owner, is an encroachment upon the perfect ownership we have to build up.

It may, of course, be objected that to deprive an owner of the power of regulating successions in the case of land would give him narrower powers than those which he at present enjoys as regards money in the funds, since, by certain legal arrangements, a man may invest money in the funds, may allow A to enjoy the interest during his life, then allow it to pass on to B, after A's death, and to C, D, etc., after B's death. But the proceeding here is equally illegitimate. It is equally the projection of the dead into the affairs of the living; equally the confiscation of the rights of the living in the interest of the dead.

Of course this truer adjustment of right involves a considerable change in our thoughts and customs. We might still leave money for any charity or other purpose that recommended itself to us, but the difference would be that it would have to be left to B and C as individuals, or to B and C as a society, to be administered as they, now become the owners, think right. We should have no power to inflict upon B and C conditions as regards such administration. We might select out of the whole world the man, or the society, which we thought the most trustworthy to carry on our own ideas, but once the property had passed after death to such man or society, there should be no power to complain on the dead man's behalf that his wishes were not being respected. It would seem wrong, I think, even to provide a remedy against fraudulent perversion of funds by such persons.

An important distinction must be drawn between the power of a man to charge property during his lifetime and after his death. Some writers, seeing the mischief that sometimes arises from placing charges of different kinds upon land, have proposed to forbid, not only the power of making a settlement of land to take effect after death, but the power to create a mortgage during life. Such proposals are generally based upon no principle at all, and, therefore, would be sure to produce confusion. Some writers are fond of saying that land must be administered for the public good. There never was such a deceptive phrase. It is simply the exaltation of the nonowner at the expense of the owner, and the consequent confusion of all human efforts and energies. What is the public good? Who shall ascertain or decide for us what it is? And when we have discovered the persons who are able to ascertain and decide authoritatively this most uncertain and most controvertible point, will

it not then be simpler to end the farce by turning the owner out and let the non-owner administer for himself, for the most perverse brain can hardly defend a system where one set of persons is employed to administer not in their own interest but in the interest of somebody else.

Against the mortgage, there is therefore, from the ground of reason, no true objection-at least none which under present circumstances we are called upon to examine in this paper. A living owner must be free to mortgage his property, during his lifetime, as deeply and as many times over as he chooses. He is perfect owner; the thing is his; he may charge it, encumber it as he will during his own life; but with his life all such charges and encumbrances must come to their end, and be satisfied. The property then cleanses itself. The charges placed by A upon his estate must be met at his death by a sale of the estate, or part of it, or in such way as the successor can meet them, but as A's charges placed upon the property they cannot continue. They are the debts of a dead man, and as such must be paid out of his estate. Of course if B, the successor, chooses for his lifetime to re-enact these or any other charges, he is free to do so, but it must be by an act of his own, and not by the act of his predecessor, that such charges can have validity.

Here comes another difficult question from the point of view of liberty. A B marries. He wishes to settle his estate upon his wife, if she survive him, with remainder (ie., rights of eventual succession) to the children. Can he do so? The answer must be "No"; but he should be able to settle, I think, during life, a part of the property upon his wife, and a part upon his children, because such a power of making settlements seems made up

of two legitimate exercises of power-the dealing with the thing that belongs to him during his life, and the naming of his successor at death. What he cannot do is to regulate the successions that are to take place after his death. Whatever share he leaves to his wife he must leave to her absolutely; and it must depend on her whether it devolves hereafter or not to the children.

It may be objected that much inconvenience might follow such an application of the principle. A widow, taking part of the family estate, might marry again and leave the share she had received to the children of the second marriage. It is quite true that there might be such cases; but if we are to consider the practical risks of both systems, the greater risks are to be found under the present system. Where the wife, who enjoys the confidence of her husband, survives, it is better that she should have full power over the property she receives from him. If any of the children grow up with characters unfit to possess property, it is then in her power to do as she thinks best. It is far better that the living hand should guide than the dead hand.

I come now to the third point-State burdens. If we bear our principle in mind-that land is to be treated. in such a way so as to extract the highest human enjoyment from it, and to let it offer the highest reward to human exertions-it is plain that, just as we must not deduct anything from the perfect rights of ownership, so also we must not deduct anything from the return which naturally flows from the industry and intelligence of the owner. Human ingenuity has never devised anything so fatal as the rate which rises with every improvement made. So rude and so barbarous a contrivance is only to be compared to the methods which prevailed in earlier centuries, and still prevail in certain