VTI ON THE NATURAL INEQUALITY OF MKX 



yet found the answer. In view of the ravages of 

 the terrible monster, over-multiplication, all other 

 riddles sink into insignificance. 



But to return to the question of the manner in 

 which individual several ownership has, in our <>\vn 

 and some other countries, superseded commit) ml 

 several ownership. There is an exceedingly in- 

 structive chapter in M. de Laveleye's well-know n 

 work on "Primitive Property," entitled "The 

 Origin of Inequality in Landed Property." And 

 I select M. de Laveleye as a witness the more 

 willingly, because he draws very different con- 

 clusions from the facts he so carefully adduces to 

 those which they appear to me to support. 



After enumerating various countries in which, 

 as M. de Laveleye thinks, inequality and an aristo- 

 cracy were the result of conquest, he asks very 

 pertinently 



But how were they developed in such countries as Germany, 

 which know nothing of conquerors coming to create a privileged 

 caste above a vanquished and enslaved population ? Originally 

 we see in Germany associations of free and independent peasants 

 like the inhabitants of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden at the 

 present day. At the close of the middle ages we find, in the 

 same country, a feudal aristocracy resting more heavily on the 

 soil, and a rustic population more completely enslaved than in 

 England, Italy, or France (p. 222). 



The author proceeds to answer the question 

 which he propounds by showing, in the first place, 

 that the admission of the right of individuals and 

 their heirs to the land they had reclaimed, which 



