“Would that be equitable?” asked Alice.
“If the law claims—as it does—the right to regulate testamentary dispositions at all, I don’t see why one should draw the line just here,” replied Mr. Clare. “However, I don’t lay much stress on such a regulation as that; there would be so many ways of evading it, unless it were so worded as to be tyrannous. The next step that I fancy I see sometimes, when the clouds lift a little, is a modified and modern version of the old Jewish land-laws; the main principle of which was that the land belonged, not to individuals, but to the nation or tribe.”
“Eh? I might be better up than I am in Hebrew antiquities, but I thought that at the Jubilee the land, if it had been sold, reverted to the heirs of the original possessor,” said the doctor.
“The fact that he was unable to alienate the land shows that he possessed merely a life-interest. And you know that not one inch of ground was allowed to pass from one tribe to another.”
“I see,” said Dr. Richards; “well! but if the step from the present régime to your modified Hebraism equals one hundred, from modified Hebraism to Socialism equals only about one. I see only a solitary obstacle; but that will make one equal to the m’th power of one hundred.”
“An impossible equation,” said Mr. Clare, smiling. “What is the obstacle?”
“This. Given your equitable division and your Jewish land-laws—why, the people would be too well contented to take any more steps until that state of society had become as rotten as the present.”
“Revolutions never go backward,” returned the other, “and, rotten as our present state of society may be, we are farther on than any nation of the world, and our real progress so far has been steadily in the right direction.”
“Humph! as you never argue, I suppose you can’t prove that.”
“Oh, no! but I can give you a few instances,” said the clergyman, laughing. “Take the idea of duty or allegiance to a man—or woman—who claims it simply as his birthright, because his ancestors oppressed ours, whom they allowed only such rights as were actually extorted from them. Unless your mother was an Englishwoman, as mine was, Dr. Richards, you can hardly realize how utterly obsolete such an idea has become in America. I don’t deny that we feel a sneaking kindness for the royal family of Great Britain; but anything like duty or loyalty”—