Not only is it un-American, but especially obnoxious to the people generally, as it tends toward the accumulation of wealth, not only to an unwholesome but to an alarming degree, in the hands of the eldest sons of these families. It is practically the entailment of the estate, without so announcing it. Let us take, for example, the Goulds, Vanderbilts, or Astors, and let this peculiar kind of distribution of their property continue, apportioning out the younger members of the family with a comparatively small sum, but leaving the bulk to the first son. Is it not concentrating wealth in the hands of one man, the income of which it is impossible that he should spend? The accumulation still goes on from generation to generation until, practically, the money power of our land lies within the grasp of the representatives of a few families. Let us imagine the condition of affairs a few hundred years hence, if we allow the Vanderbilts, Goulds, Rockefellers and Astors to apportion off, from generation to generation, the younger sons and daughters of the family, concentrating the vast accumulation from the interests of their tremendous fortunes in the hands of one representative of the family. Some dozen men of this great Republic, by a combination, could then practically control at all times the financial situation of the nation. There is no possibility of an equalizing process and the scattering of the wealth and accumulations of these families. From generation to generation, under this peculiar method of distribution and disposal adopted by our would-be nobility, there would be created a condition exactly similar to that existing in the pre-eminently commercial Venice, from which thraldom the Common People were only relieved by a foreign conqueror, Napoleon, whom they welcomed with unpatriotic joy because he brought relief from the discriminations with which the masses were cursed. No one will deny that, under the existing laws, Mr. W. H. Vanderbilt, the gentleman (?) who so forcefully and elegantly expressed himself in the utterance of his sentiments, “The public be damned,” had a perfect right, under the laws as they now exist, to leave the bulk of his property to his eldest son. Nay, he might have called him the Duke of Vanderbilt, if he pleased. By the pleasure of the people, he had the right to dispose of his possessions as to him seemed best. [Illustration: WM. H. VANDERBILT, AUTHOR OF THE FAMOUS SPEECH, “THE PUBLIC BE D----D.”]