Page:The Rights of Man to Property!.djvu/31

 for this same bed of Procrustes, even if it were known to have an actual, instead of a fabulous existence. If property was as nearly equal, as we know stature to be, among mankind, there would indeed be folly enough in complaining. But does Mr. Raymond, does any one, after reflecting for a moment, consider it to be as unnatural for every citizen of Rome to be restrained from possessing more than five hundred acres of land, as it would be, for example, to make five hundred thousand families, entirely destitute of every kind of possession and physically & politically dependent on a fiftieth part of that number? Are not greater evils, is not more misery, likely to be generated, by suffering the rich to go on, and engross the State, than there would be, by leaving them a moderate quantity, and giving the balance to their neighbors? For myself, I think it admits of no question; and more particularly so, when there was no restriction on the amount of personal property, which one might acquire, (though indeed, as said before, there was little of this;) and where, for the great mass of the nation, there was no support but labor in the fields, and the produce they afforded.

As to the objection urged against "an equal division of property, as not to be desired, in any country, because it is not a dictate of nature," it strikes me, that it is not founded in truth. Undoubtedly the domain of a State or Nation, pre