Principles of Political Economy, Vol. 1

by Wilhelm Roscher

Section LXXXVI.

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, [pg 261] 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, [pg 262] 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]

Section LXXXVII.

Landed Property.

As land, in its uncultivated state, has neither been produced by man, nor can be entirely consumed by him, the above demonstration of the necessity of private property cannot without [pg 263] any more ado, be extended to land.[519] Hence, individual property in land is everywhere much more recent than individual property in capital.[520]

But a certain expenditure of capital and labor is necessary that land may be used productively, and, in most instances, this employment of capital and labor is of long duration, irrevocable in the very nature of things, and one the fruits of which can be reaped only after some time has elapsed. Now, this cooperation of capital and labor is such, that no one would undertake to employ them in the cultivation of the land, had he not the strongest assurance of possessing it. Hence, agriculture in its most rudimentary stage supposes ownership of the land, at least from the time that it is “tickled with the hoe,” until it “smiles with the harvest;” or, to express it more accurately, all the time intervening between the work of the plow and the labor of the sickle. The more, afterwards, population and civilization increase, the more products must be wrung from the soil. But this can be accomplished only by means of its more intensive cultivation (higher farming), by lavishing a greater amount of capital and labor on it, and, as a rule, by extending the circle of agricultural operations by means of combinations more and more artificial. Hence, the progress of civilization demands an ever increasing fixity, and a more pronounced shaping of landed property (the specification of jurists), in the interests of all who share in this progress, and even of those who own no landed property themselves. Were there no property in land, every one would find it more [pg 264] difficult and laborious to gratify his want of agricultural products;[521] and the products themselves would be of an inferior kind.

Thus, for instance, in Camargo, the lackmus was formerly prepared from plants to be had “free” in the woods. It was then, however, much dearer than it is now that the plants are artificially raised on landed property.[522] It is otherwise with the fisheries. The appropriation of rivers or seas would not tend to increase the abundance of their products, and hence this appropriation is, on the whole, rare.[523]