^36 PROPERTY. 



moment, that no expression of the social voice could be so 

 beneficial, as that which should merely say, let there be no 

 restraint of property, but let all the means of provision for 

 the wants of mankind, be distributed according to the more 

 or less imperious necessity of those wants, which all partake. 

 It requires only the consideration of a moment, however, to 

 perceive, that the very distribution, would, itself, be the most 

 injurious boon that could be offered to indigence, — that soon, 

 under such a system of supposed freedom from the usurpa- 

 tions of the wealthy, there would only be one general penury, 

 without the possibility of relief; and an industry, that would 

 be exercised, not in plundering the wealthy, for there could 

 not then be wealth to admit of plunder, but in snatching 

 from the weaker some scanty morsel of a wretched aliment, 

 that would scarcely be sufficient to repay the labour of the 

 struggle, to him who v/as too powerful not to prevail. There 

 would be no palaces, indeed, in such a system of equal ra- 

 pine, — and this might be considered as but a slight evil, from 

 the small number of those who were stripped of them ; but 

 when the chambers of state had disappeared, where would 

 be the cottage, or rather the whole hamlet of cottages, that 

 might be expected to occupy its place ? The simple dwell- 

 ings of the unhappy peasant might be the last, indeed, to be 

 invaded ; but when the magnificent mansion had been strip- 

 ped by the first band of plunderers-, |hese too would soon 

 find plunderers as rapacious. No elegant art could be ex- 

 ercised, no science cultivated, where the search of a preca- 

 rious existence for the day, would afford us no leisure for 

 studies or exercises beyond the supply of mere animal wants ; 

 and man, who, with property, is what we now behold him, 

 and is to be, in his glorious progress even on earth, a being 

 far nobler than we are capable, in our present circumstances^ 

 of divining, — would, without property, soon become, in the 

 lowest depth of brutal ignorance and wretchedness, what it 

 is almost as difficult for our imagination to picture to us, aS 

 it would be for it to picture what he may become on earthj 

 after the many long ages of successive improvement. 



The great inequality of property, strange as it may seem 

 to be at any one moment, is only the effect of that security 

 and absolute command of property, which allows the con- 

 tinual accumulation of it by continued industry. If all 

 things had been common to all,— instead of that beawtiful 



