Page:The Rights of Man to Property!.djvu/9

 justify the party injured, in dispossessing the aggressor, of the instrument of his aggression.

But the work which I thus present to the consideration of my fellow citizens and others, does not rest here the defence of its principles. It does not rest contented with merely showing, in this way, that men have no right to their property, (as they call it) when they use it, for the purpose of converting their fellow beings into slaves to labor for their use. It goes farther. It attempts to shew, that the whole system of the laws of property, in all countries, is such: that no man has any just and true title to his possessions at all: that they are in fact, possessions growing out of injustice, perpetrated by all governments, from time immemorial and continued down to the present hour. It depends then upon the success of this attempt, whether I have added strength to the position I have assumed, that all men should live on their own labor, and not on the labor of others. If, in the course of the following pages, I have shewn that the present possessors of enormous property, (I mean more particularly these,) have no just title to their possessions; and if it is apparent, as I trust it is, than when property is enormously unequal, that the men of toil, of all countries, can never have the full enjoyment of their labor; it will be conceded, no doubt, that I have shewn enough to justify my fellow citizens in pulling down the present edifice of society, and to induce them to build a new one in its stead, provided I have