"THE PROPERTY SYSTEM EXPOSED.
" There is no subject to which the attention of mankind—in the pre- sent state of society—can be so usefully directed as that of property. It is, however, a subject so replete with difficulties, that the majority of persons, aye, and persons of enlarged and liberal views, shrink from its investigation. But what is property ?—the means by which the wants of man are satisfied—food, raiment, and shelter for his body—instruction for his mind. This every man has a right to demand. All property is the produce of the soil, cultivated or wrought up into different forms by human labour and ingenuity. The great Being who sent man into the world,—by whom he was furnished with the various organs by which life is to be preserved, perpetuated, and enjoyed, who bade the bounteous earth teem with increase, never intended his creatures to perish in the midst of plenty, or that one man should be enriched with the accumu- lated stores collected by the labour of starving thousands. No : every man has a right to live and to enjoy life. If, then, every man has a right to live, he has a right to the means by which alone life is to be preserved. Life cannot be preserved without the means before enumerated—which is property. Property is the produce of the soil, created by labour—• every man is therefore entitled to such a portion of this produce as is requisite for the support of his physical necessities, and the development of his moral and physical energies—and to this extent, therefore, every man has aright of property in the soil. Talk of civil rights—talk of con- ventional rights—talk of the law of inheritance. What right so sacred as the right of creation—what law so imperious as the law of NECESSITY?"
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