The objections referred to are those embodied in the well-known contention that though the possession of exceptional wealth must be allowed to the exceptional men who are actually engaged in producing it, and the exercise of whose business ability is just as essential to the country’s prosperity as to their own, yet this possession of wealth should be limited to themselves personally, and should not be allowed to distribute itself amongst their idle and inefficient families. In other words, it is urged that whilst the founders and conductors of businesses are entitled to the incomes, no matter how large, that are due to the exercise of their own powers, these incomes should cease with the cessation of the powers that caused them, and should not be allowed to perpetuate themselves, as they do now, in the shape of interest paid to the passive owners of capital. Such an arrangement, it is maintained by those who advocate it, would at once coincide with the dictates of abstract justice, and whilst securing to the exceptional wealth-producer, whose services society requires, the full reward and motive necessary to ensure his activity, would enrich the community at {310} large by distributing amongst it an enormous income, which at present, instead of stimulating anybody to any useful exertion, merely keeps a number of men in idleness. And this contention at first sight does not lack plausibility either in respect of the question of abstract justice which it raises, or of the practical consequences which, according to it, the arrangement in question would produce. When we examine it closely, however, the plausibility vanishes, and abstract justice and practical reason alike condemn the appeals thus made to them as founded entirely on misconception.