230 THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE v 



and I might plead that I am robbed to smooth the 

 way and lighten the darkness of other people. 

 But I am afraid the parochial authorities would 

 not let me off on this plea ; and I must confess I 

 do not see why they should. 



I cannot speak of my own knowledge, but I 

 have every reason to believe that I came into this 

 world a small reddish person, certainly without a 

 gold spoon in my mouth, and in fact with no dis 

 cernible abstract or concrete &quot; rights &quot; or property 

 of any description. If a foot was not set upon me, 

 at once, as a squalling nuisance, it was either the 

 natural affection of those about me, which I cer 

 tainly had done nothing to deserve, or the fear of 

 the law which, ages before my birth, was painfully 

 built up by the society into which I intruded, that 

 prevented that catastrophe. If I was nourished, 

 cared for, taught, saved from the vagabondage of 

 a wastrel, I certainly am not aware that I did 

 anything to deserve those advantages. And, if I 

 possess anything now, it strikes me that, though I 

 may have fairly earned my day s wages for my 

 day s work, and may justly call them my property 

 yet, without that organization of society, created 

 out of the toil and blood of long generations before 

 my time, I should probably have had nothing but 

 a flint axe and an indifferent hut to call my own ; 

 and even those would be mine only so long as no 

 stronger savage came my way. 



So that if society, having, quite gratuitously, 



