VII. POLITICAL AND SOCIAL INFLUENCES

There are certain lines of action in this matter that cannot but be beneficial, and it is upon these that the New Republican will, no doubt, go. One excellent thing, for example, would be to insist that beyond the limits of a reasonable amount of personal property, the community is justified in demanding a much higher degree of efficiency in the property-holder than in the case of the common citizen, to require him or her to be not only sane but capable, equal mentally and bodily to a great charge. The heir to a great property should possess a satisfactory knowledge of social and economic science, and should have studied with a view to his great responsibilities. The age of twenty-one is scarcely high enough for the management of a great estate, and to raise the age of free administration for the owners of great properties, and to specify a superannuation age would be a wise and justifiable measure. [Footnote: Something of the sort is already secured in France by the power of the Conseil de Famille to expropriate a spendthrift.] There should also be a possibility of intervention in the case of maladministration, and a code of offences—habitual drunkenness, for example, assaults of various kinds—offences that established the fact of unfitness and resulted in deposition, might be drawn up. It might be found desirable in the case of certain crimes and misdemeanours, to add to existing penalties the transfer of all real or share properties to trustees. Vigorous confiscation is a particularly logical punishment for the proven corruption of public officers by any property owner or group of property owners. Rich men who bribe are a danger to any state. Beyond the limits of lunacy it might be possible to define a condition of malignancy or ruthlessness that would justify confiscation, attempts to form corners in the necessities of life, for example, could be taken as evidence of such a condition. All such measures as this would be far more beneficial than the immediate improvement they would effect in public management. They would infect the whole social body with the sense that property was saturated with responsibility and was in effect a trust, and that would be a good influence upon rich and poor alike.