◆¹ All these schemes, then, for attacking property as it exists, for confiscating and redistributing by some forcible process of legislation the whole or any part of the existing national income, are either obviously impracticable, or their result would be insignificant. Their utmost result indeed would not place any of the workers in so good a position as is at present occupied by many of them. This is evident from what has been seen already. ◆² But there is another reason which renders such schemes illusory—a far more important one than any I have yet touched upon, and of a far more fundamental kind. We will consider this in the next chapter; and we shall find, when we have done so, that it has brought us to the real heart of the question. CHAPTER IV _The Nature of the National Wealth: first, of the National Capital; second, of the National Income. Neither of these is susceptible of Arbitrary Division._ [Sidenote ◆1 A legislative division of the national income is not only disappointing in its theoretical results, but practically impossible,] ◆¹ We have just seen how disappointing, to those even who would gain most by it, would be the results of an equal division of the national income of this country, and how intolerable to all would be the general conditions involved in it. In doing this, we have of course adopted, for argument’s sake, an assumption which underlies all popular ideas of such a process; namely, that if a Government were only strong enough and possessed the requisite will, it could deal with the national income in any way that might be desired; or, in other words, that the national income is something that could be divided and distributed, as an enormous heap of sovereigns could, according to the will of any one who had them under his fingers. I am now going to show that this assumption is entirely false, and that even were it desirable theoretically that the national income should be redivided, it is not susceptible of any such arbitrary division. [Sidenote ◆1 As will be shown in this chapter.] ◆¹ To those who are unaccustomed to reflecting on economic problems, and who more or less consciously associate the qualities of wealth with those of the money in whose terms its amount is stated, I cannot introduce this important subject better than by calling their attention to the few following facts, which, simple and accessible as they are, are not generally known. [Sidenote ◆1 Wealth is utterly unlike money in its divisible qualities.] [Sidenote ◆2 The money of the United Kingdom is an imperceptible fraction of its wealth.]