328 ON TITE NATURAL INEQUALITY OF MEN VTI 



owner system, or any other system that the wit of 

 man has yet devised, would sooner or later have 

 had to face the everlasting agrarian difficulty. 

 And the more the communities enjoyed general 

 health, peace, and plenty, the sooner would the 

 pressure of population upon the means of support 

 make itself felt. The difficulty paraded by the 

 opponents of individual ownership, that, by the 

 extension of the private appropriation of the means 

 of subsistence, the time would arrive when men 

 would come into the world for whom there was 

 no place, must needs make its appearance under 

 any system, unless mankind are prevented from 

 multiplying indefinitely. For, even if the habit- 

 able land is the property of the whole human race 

 the multiplication of that race must, as we have 

 seen, sooner or later, bring its numbers up to the 

 maximum which the produce can support ; and 

 then the interesting problem in casuistry, which 

 even absolute political ethics may find puzzling, 

 will arise : Are we, who can just exist, bound to 

 admit the newcomers who will simply starve them- 

 selves and us? If the rule that any one may 

 exercise his freedom only so far as he does not 

 interfere with the freedom of others is all-sufficient, 

 it is clear that the newcomers will have no rights 

 to exist at all, inasmuch as they will interfriv 

 most seriously Avith the freedom of their pivdr- 

 cessors. The population question is tin- real riddle 

 of the sphinx, to which no political (Edipus has as 



