The Times of Monday publishes some very curious statistics of
bequests for charitable objects during the eight years ending 189S. The average amount so bequeathed and
reported in the papers is £1,250,000 a year, and even if the addition of unreported bequests brings the amount up to £2,000,000, that is only per cent. on the average amount of personalty annually distributed by will. The amount would be still smaller but that there are usually two or three very large bequests, and always one, the three usually providing £500,000 of the total. Rich women give more than rich men, one hundred and fifty ladies having given 25 per cent, of their total personalty, while three hundred and ten rich men • have bequeathed for charitable uses only llf per cent. One Jewishilady, Baroness Hirsch, has given as much as all the ladies put together. _Land is now very seldom burdened with charitable payments, but if all the rich left a tithe of their moveable wealth to the poor, the amount, according to these figures, would approach twenty millions a year, or four times the Poor-rate. We wonder whether Sir William Harcourt's new Death-duties perceptibly diminished the bulk of charitable bequests. We should fancy not. Outside a rather limited circle, it is the un- married and the childless who give away great sums in philanthropy, and they do not feel the weight of the Death- duties.
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