Page:The Rights of Man to Property!.djvu/7

 PREFACE.

is no man of the least reflection, who has not observed, that the effect, in all ages and countries, of the possession of great and undue wealth, is, to allow those who possess it, to live on the labor of others. And yet there is no truth more readily, cheerfully, and universally acknowledged, than that the personal exertions of each individual of the human race, are exclusively and unalienably his own.

It would seem, then, to be no bad specimen of argument, to say, inasmuch as great wealth is an instrument which is uniformly used to extort from others, their property in their personal qualities and efforts—that it ought to be taken away from its possessor, on the same principle, that a sword or a pistol maybe wrested from a robber, who shall undertake to accomplish the same effect, in a different manner.

One thing must be obvious to the plainest understanding; that as long as property is unequal; or rather, as long as it is so enormously unequal,