170 persons per annum die worth £150,000 each; 80 die worth over £250,000 each; 26 die worth over £500,000 each; and 7 die worth about £2,500,000 each.
Thus, in an average year, 26 persons die leaving between them far more than is possessed by 654,000 poor persons who die in one year. Again, in a single average year, the wealth left by the few rich people who die approaches in amount the aggregate property possessed by the whole of the living poor.
[14] Finance Act, 1894 (57 & 58 Vict. c. 30).
[15] It was in the first edition of this work that attention was first drawn to this new source of information.
CHAPTER V
THE NATIONAL ACCUMULATIONS
WE pass from the consideration of the property which is left at death in a single year to the estimation of the value of the total capital stock of the United Kingdom.
We can proceed by two different methods. We can argue from the property left by those who die in a single year to the property possessed by the living, or we can capitalize that part of the national income which is derived from property. The former method was used as long ago as the 'fifties by Porter in his "Progress of the Nation." The second method has been employed by many statisticians, notably by Sir Robert Giffen.
In the following table I have formed an estimate of the accumulated wealth of the nation at the present time, dividing it into three categories:—
(1) "National" property in the proper sense, i.e. property in the possession of the Imperial Government or Local Authorities.