Their indignation is easily explained. There is certainly something paradoxical in the fact to which they draw attention. If we accept Smith’s view, that government “is in reality instituted for the defence of those who have some property against those who have none at all”—a very narrow conception of the function of government[476]—inheritance is simply inevitable. On the other hand, if we put ourselves at the point of view of the Saint-Simonians, who lived in an industrial society where wealth was regarded, not as an end, but as a means, not merely as the source of individual income, but as the instrument of social production, it seems utterly wrong that it should be left at the disposal of the first comer. The practice of inheritance can only be justified on the ground that it provides a stimulus to the further accumulation of wealth, or that in default of a truly rational system the chances of birth are not much more open to criticism than any other. Such scepticism was little to the taste of the Saint-Simonians. But they were firmly convinced that all the disorders of production, whether apparent or real, were due to the dispersion of property according to the chances of life and death. “Each individual devotes all his attention to his own immediate dependents. No general view of production is ever taken. There is no discernment and no exercise of foresight. Capital is wanting here and excessive there. This want of a broad view of the needs of consumers and of the resources of production is the cause of those industrial crises whose origin has given rise to so much fruitless speculation and so many errors which are still circulating in our midst. In this important branch of social activity, where so much disturbance and such frequent disorder manifests itself, we see the evil result of allowing the distribution of the instruments of production to be in the hands of isolated individuals who are at once ignorant of the demands of industry, of other men’s needs, and of the means that would satisfy them. This and nothing else is the cause of the evil.”[477]