Page:The Effects of Civilisation on the People in European States.djvu/75

Rh and independent of each, other; and that equality and independence are inalienable; if wealth is a power destroying that equality and independence; if it reduces the bulk of mankind under the subjection of the few; all those authors who have defended the inequality of property, not having considered wealth in that light, will by many be considered as having said nothing on the subject. What they have said is of something else, not of wealth, of which they had formed no just idea. They had no idea that the chief acting and effective power in most civilised states was that of wealth; and that most other powers sprung from and were supported by it. Neither had they conceived any notion of the effects of it; all arguments, therefore, which they have drawn in its favour, from the utility and expediency of it, even if these were real, are of little weight.

Property, as it is established in most civilised states, may be considered in a light in which it has been seldom seen. The possession of land, cattle, corn, and other things which the land produces, at the same time that it confers a benefit and an advantage on the possessor, occasions a prejudice and a disadvantage to the non-possessor;