[18] In 1885 Sir Robert Giffen estimated Government and local property at £500,000,000, but I do not know his reasons for naming that figure.
[19] Lord Eversley seems to think that 25 years' purchase meets the conditions of 1905. See discussion in the Royal Statistical Society's Journal for March 1905.
[20] "Estimates of Agricultural Losses." Paper read to the Royal Statistical Society in March 1905.
CHAPTER VI
THE MONOPOLY OF CAPITAL
IN view of the facts as to rich and poor estates which we examined in Chapter 4, it is obvious that to state that the accumulated wealth of the United Kingdom probably amounts to £300 per head of the population, or £1,500 per family of five persons, is to mask in averages a great inequality of distribution.
Reverting to the Death Duty records, it is possible, by means of them, to give a true idea of the manner of distribution amongst our people of the greater part of the nearly £14,000,000,000 of capital.
I again direct attention to the tables on pages 52 and 53. Year after year, with extraordinary constancy, a certain amount of money passes in each class of estate. So small are the variations in relation to the magnitude of the totals that it is hardly necessary to average the five years in working at the figures.
If about 65,000 persons die every year leaving about £279,000,000, what is the ratio to these figures of the numbers and property of the living?
The question thus raised is an exceedingly interesting one. Porter in his "Progress of the Nation" seems to have assumed a ratio of 45 to 1, but I do not think that the true figure can be so high as this.