As before stated, the power to dispose of property after death by will is conferred by statute, under certain limitations. Why should this privilege be given to dispose of more than a fixed amount of property to any one individual? Say property to the value of not over five hundred thousand dollars to the wife, of not more than one hundred thousand dollars to each child, and of not more than fifty thousand dollars to any other relative, extending to the third or fourth degree, and that the balance of the estate should escheat to the State, to be used by it for the support of schools, charitable institutions, the employment of laborers in making roads, and other good purposes. The law now provides for the escheat of estates of persons dying without heirs. The same limitation might be put upon inheritances where there is no will, and in this way the accumulation of vast estates by inheritance or devise would be checked, and property, especially landed estates, which by nature belong to all, would be more equally distributed. It should not be forgotten that the method of transmitting property from the dead to the living is entirely derived from the state. If public policy requires that the state should give to the dying possessor, no longer able to control or take with him his possessions, the privilege of disposing of so much as may be conducive to the comfort and happiness of his surviving kindred, does it require that this privilege should be extended to his disposition of millions to the injury of the rest of mankind? If it be said that to limit the privilege of disposing of exceeding a million dollars of property by devise or descent would check enterprise and industry, as no man would struggle to acquire property which he could not leave to his surviving kindred, my reply is, that man by his own thrift and industry is seldom able to acquire more than a million dollars’ worth of property. Fortunes exceeding that amount are usually acquired by speculation, trickery, or some device by which one man takes advantage of his fellow-man, and which, if not illegal, is immoral; or by members of privileged monopolies, trusts and syndicates. I don’t mean to say that all great fortunes exceeding a million have been acquired by immoral means, but such as have not are the exception, and to limit the privilege of disposing of more than a million by devise or descent would not affect one in ten thousand of the people. In short, such limitation would tend to discourage, not honest enterprise and industry, but stock-jobbing, trickery and other questionable methods of acquiring vast fortunes.