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legislative act finally obtained, forbidding all similar accumulations.
This act, however, did not prevent young Ellison from entering into
possession, on his twenty-first birthday, as the heir of his ancestor
Seabright, of a fortune of four hundred and fifty millions of dollars.
(*1)
When it had become known that such was the enormous wealth inherited,
there were, of course, many speculations as to the mode of its disposal.
The magnitude and the immediate availability of the sum bewildered all
who thought on the topic. The possessor of any appreciable amount of
money might have been imagined to perform any one of a thousand things.
With riches merely surpassing those of any citizen, it would have
been easy to suppose him engaging to supreme excess in the fashionable
extravagances of his time--or busying himself with political
intrigue--or aiming at ministerial power--or purchasing increase
of nobility--or collecting large museums of virtu--or playing the
munificent patron of letters, of science, of art--or endowing, and
bestowing his name upon extensive institutions of charity. But for the
inconceivable wealth in the actual possession of the heir, these objects
and all ordinary objects were felt to afford too limited a field.
Recourse was had to figures, and these but sufficed to confound. It was
seen that, even at three per cent., the annual income of the inheritance
amounted to no less than thirteen millions and five hundred thousand
dollars; which was one million and one hundred and twenty-five thousand
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