non-universal undertakings, are no business for the State; they
commence always as experiments of unascertained value, and next
after the invention of money, there is no invention has so
facilitated freedom and progress as the invention of the limited
liability company to do this work of trial and adventure. The
abuses, the necessary reforms of company law on earth, are no
concern of ours here and now, suffice it that in a Modern Utopia
such laws must be supposed to be as perfect as mortal laws can
possibly be made. Caveat vendor will be a sound qualification of
Caveat emptor in the beautifully codified Utopian law. Whether the
Utopian company will be allowed to prefer this class of share to
that or to issue debentures, whether indeed usury, that is to say
lending money at fixed rates of interest, will be permitted at all
in Utopia, one may venture to doubt. But whatever the nature of the
shares a man may hold, they will all be sold at his death, and
whatever he has not clearly assigned for special educational
purposes will--with possibly some fractional concession to near
survivors--lapse to the State. The "safe investment," that
permanent, undying claim upon the community, is just one of those
things Utopia will discourage; which indeed the developing security
of civilisation quite automatically discourages through the fall in
the rate of interest. As we shall see at a later stage, the State
will insure the children of every citizen, and those legitimately
dependent upon him, against the inconvenience of his death; it will
carry out all reasonable additional dispositions he may have made
for them in the same event; and it will insure him against old age
and infirmity; and the object of Utopian economics will be to give a
man every inducement to spend his surplus money in intensifying the
quality of his surroundings, either by economic adventures and
experiments, which may yield either losses or large profits, or in