INTESTATES AND THEIR PROPERTY.
THE rather dry list of persons,—often very rich persons,— who have died intestate, and whose next-of-kin are vainly inquired for, was given in a letter to the Times of yesterday week. That list would not be very interesting, if it did not give us a very striking evidence of the not incon- siderable number of men who, if not friendless, are at least so far friendless that they seem to attach no importance at all to the power which they have, and do not use to determine to whom their own wealth shall go, when they at least are no longer able to enjoy it. Now, considering how great, how very great, and even excessive an importance, men attach to piling up riches for their own use, it seems a remarkable evidence of their complete indifference to the privilege of making other people happy in the same way withent depriving themselves of any of the coveted satis- faction of property, that, being without near relations, they do not think it even worth while to take the little trouble necessary to designate who shall stand in their place, when they leave it. Of course, in exceptional cases, this may arise from the mere suddenness with which death strikes strong and apparently healthy men. There are cases in which rich men have hardly so much as realised the practical meaning of death, and are struck down in the middle of their eager toil for wealth, before it has occurred to them that their life hangs by a thread which any accident may sever. But these cases cannot be very numerous, and are less likely to happen to those who attach the greatest possible value to riches than to other men. "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also," and the mere fact that the man's whole soul is concentrated on accumulating property is likely to lead him to meditate on the future destiny of that property when he shall be taken away from what seems to him so dear. A parent whose heart is in his child does not often forget to provide for the future of that child when he is removed; and those who attach most im- portance to the wealth for which they have toiled, often regard its future destiny with almost as much tender anxiety and interest, as that with which a parent regards the future of his child. Rich men fix their imagination on the power,—. generally unused power,—which their wealth gives them till they contemplate the destiny of what they must leave behind them almost as if it were the destiny of a personal being. Misers often take the most elaborate pains to provide that their wealth shall go to some one who will hoard and not waste it. And therefore, when rich men show no absorbing interest of this kind, if we carelessly assumed that either they did not care for what they took such pains to accumu- late, or that they cared for it only while it remained in their own hands, we might make a very great mistake. Of course, it is possible enough that a miser might feel so much jealousy of his heir that he would take pains not to have one, but then he would not die intestate, he would carefully dis- tribute his property so as to leave no one who could possess the power which he himself had possessed, and that is just what does not happen in these cases where the next-of-kin are asked for, and so often asked for in vain. If he does die intestate, is there not an explanation consistent, not with indifference on the subject., but with excess of anxiety P
Again, it is hardly to be supposed, except in very rare
instances indeed, that rich men are so well aware of the narrowing and corrupting influence which wealth has had upon themselves, that they are anxious to protect their true friends against it, for then also they would of course take as much pains to distribute it among charities or other impersonal trusts, as the miser who loathes the idea of any one possessing what he himself must surrender. We must confront the fact that a good many of those who really take very great pains to get or keep wealth, often have no friends whom they would take the least pains to place in their own position, and this for some reason which does not spring from indifference to their friends so much as from greater friendship for the property. And this seems to us a very remarkable pheno- menon indeed. Does it not suggest the explanation that the care and accumulation of property has in a certain small, though perhaps not quite inconsiderable, number of cases, the effect of superseding personal attachments, and making men more or less lonely who would not be lonely but for that predominant and absorbing interest ? We are inclined to believe that it is so. Saving or gaining not un- frequently takes the place of friendships. Friendships are dangerous things for eager accumulators. They take time and thought, and time and thought open out temptations to spend, and that is just what the true accumulator and investor is jealously anxious to avoid. He wants time to weigh the advantages of different modes of investing ; and above all, he wants to avoid those embarrassing oppor- tunities for getting him to unite in the benevolent plans of others, whiclz are the most dangerous rivals of his absorbing interest. Moreover, ,there is something like a sentiment of disinterested friendsllip which grows up between such a man and the bulk of his property. You may notice in not a few minds a sort of sympathy for the property itself as if it had a separate personality, though its only unity is really the in- dividual ownership of which the proprietor is conscious, and of which he cannot bear even to realise the transfer. The present writer remembers an instance in which a man who had taken some pains to a.3cumulate land, called out to his friend as they drove past a very limited length of road, "Look, doctor, look, just here it is my property on both sides of the road." And he appeared to be at least as proud that the property had grown, as a parent would be that his child had grown so many inches in the last year. The feeling for a property is not unfrequently a sort of quasi-disinterested friendship, which, though its only root is the keen sense of individual ownership, yet shoots up much beyond the limits of that feeling, and in not a few cases, expresses itself by an effort to designate for the inheritance, not the owner for whom the most hearty affection is entertained, but the owner who will be most likely to make a friend of the property, and to consult for its growth and enlargement. And it seems to us that the stage in which a proprietor shrinks from considering who shall be his heir is preliminary to the stage in which he determines to designate some heir who will feel his own disinterested friendship for the property itself as distin- guished from any one whom he loves to please. What he desires is not the happiness of the next owner, but the safe guardianship and increase of the property itself. He cherishes his own life as he would cherish it were he a fond parent eager to live till he has formed his child's mind as he wishes to form it. In deliberating how he shall make his will, he thinks not of the person best fitted to use and enjoy the pro- perty, but of the person best fitted to protect it against being stunted or neglected. And till he can no longer ignore the fact of his own infirmities and impending death, he puts from him all thought of naming a successor, because he can with diffi- culty imagine any successor who would look upon the pro- perty with so much disinterested affection as he himself does. That is, we fancy, the explanation of many intestacies. It is not the total absence of all other friendships, but the presence of a passionate friendship for the property itself, which over- powers all other friendships. Indeed, it sometimes induces the owner to look out for a guardian whom personally be does not like at all, but whom he credits with a more jealous desire to protect the property, than most of those whom he does like. We are disposed to think that men who are regarded as friend- less because they delay till the last moment, and often till too late, appointing their successor in the ownership of property, are very often not so much friendless as jealous of any ouccessor who will not feel their own personal devotion to
fostering the property as a distinct end of life. They cannot find it in their hearts to supersede themselves as its guardians till they can see some signs of the competence of another to feel their own solicitude for its safety and its growth ; and they die before they succeed in realising their ideal.
Previous page
