ORIGIN OF THE RIGHTS OF PROPERTY. 669 



most virulent or the most dangerous. Since the beginning of the 

 world there has existed a practical conspiracy against it which is 

 not likely soon to cease. War, slavery, imposture, oppressive im- 

 posts, monopolies, privileges, commercial frauds, colonies, right to 

 employment, right to credit, right to assistance, right to instruc- 

 tion, progressive taxation imposed in direct or inverse proportion 

 to our power of bearing it, are so many battering-rams directed 

 against the tottering edifice; and if the truth must come out, 

 would you tell me whether there are many men in France, even 

 among those who think themselves conservative, who do not, in 

 one form or another, lend a hand to this work of destruction ? " 



In America, at the present time, this interminable war on the 

 instinct and institution of private property has taken on all these 

 forms, and many more, which will be treated of in their proper 

 places. The four anarchists, who are at this moment hanging by 

 their necks, were in the van of the procession. When we care- 

 fully study the relation of all these doctrines to the antiquated 

 notion of a sacred and absolute right of private property, those 

 who openly deny the right of property in land, as being itself a 

 denial of property in the products of labor, are seen to be far 

 toward the rear. To that study let us now devote our attention ; 

 and, in order that it may be a scientific and not a partisan study, 

 we must not let private ownership be to us for the nonce either a 

 fetich or a bugbear. We must analyze it dispassionately, as if it 

 concerned us only as a matter of curiosity, though, in fact, our 

 analysis will show that it is in all respects our chief concern. 

 And we must not neglect to note the economic consequences of its 

 being to us and to our fellow-beings a fetich on the one hand, or 

 on the other a bugbear. 



What is property ? We have said it is not wealth ; but that is 

 not saying what it is. We have said it is ownership, but a syno- 

 nym is not a definition. What constitutes ownership ? What is 

 the exact meaning of the words mine and thine, in the sense of 

 ownership ? There is none. Few words are more indefinite in 

 their meaning. There are degrees of mineness and thineness. 

 These apply respectively to different communities at different 

 periods of their history, and to different subjects of property at 

 the same period and in the same community. Thus there have 

 been times and places in which the phrase " my wife " expressed 

 a property relation. The phrase is still everywhere used, but not 

 in the same sense of property. And yet it seems that among us a 

 man has property in his wife's affections, for he has an action for 

 damages against the man who " alienates " them. Yesterday I 

 received a copy of an interesting paper, read before the American 

 Water- Works Association, under the title " Is Water Property ? " 

 This question of what is and what is not ownership or property 



