LIMITED POWERS OF MINORS AND GUARDIANSHIP _Limited Powers of Minors._--The legal protection of the child against the consequences of its own acts is closely associated with the questions of parental authority and of guardianship. In fact the regulation of this matter really forms part of the regulation of parental authority and of guardianship. The minor lacks the requisite degree of intellectual maturity and of business experience to enable it to act independently in legal matters without injury to its own interests; hence, in the matter of legacies, it often happens that a child is willing to enter into bargains which its maturer judgment would rightly repudiate. The law, indeed, protects everyone against usury and extortion, and gives to everyone the legal right to dispute the validity of an undertaking extracted from him by knavery or under stress of threats. But these institutions would not suffice to protect children, inasmuch as the right to repudiate an undertaking when that undertaking has already been acted upon would be of extremely questionable value. Moreover, the law of parcimony forbids that persons should enter into legal undertakings, and subsequently attempt to repudiate them. The special legal protection conferred upon minors consists of a limitation of their powers to enter into valid business engagements, the extent and consequences of the limitation being such as to render any engagements made by minors as harmless as possible. In the majority of legal systems, this leading idea is carried into effect as follows. Two classes of undertaking are distinguished: first, those by which the minor acquires certain rights or is freed from certain obligations; and, secondly, those which effect neither the one nor the other. Inasmuch as undertakings of the first-named order are only such as are to the minor’s advantage, no guardianship is necessary in the case of these, and the minor’s powers to act are here unrestricted. But undertakings of the last-named order can be entered into by a minor only with the consent of his legal representative; thus, a disadvantageous undertaking given by a minor without the consent of his legal representative is invalid, and the validity of the undertaking is conditional upon the consent of the guardian. _The Tendency of Evolution._--Two points have especially to be considered in respect of the future regulation of this problem: the abolition of free competition, and the abolition of the right of individual inheritance. Many persons consider that it would be a logical outcome of the abolition of the right of individual inheritance for the State to undertake the maintenance of all widows and orphans, either through the instrumentality of a system of compulsory insurance analogous to Workmen’s Insurance, or else by a method of provision analogous to that now made for the widows and orphans of those in the employ of the State.