poorest and worst provided, in countries where property, and the consequences of property prevail, are in a better situation with respect to food, raiment, houses, and what are called the necessaries of life, than any one in places where most things remain in

common.

Against the institution of property, it is urged that it is the source of competition among mankind. This, on reflection, will be found a recommendation. Property is mostly the reward of ability, sobriety, and perseverance. Without its stimulating agency, we should have little eminence, social, moral, or intellectual.. The innate tendency of man is to repose, not to persevering exertion; and if superior application, superior enterprise, or superior endowments, were not rewarded, few would sedulously devote themselves to trade, agriculture, manufactures, and the useful arts. In pursuit of these, an honourable-not a greedy, short-sighted, and fraudulent-spirit of competition is salutary, by stimulating invention and rivalry, which tend to general cheapness, excellence, and accommodation.

For competition, Mr. Owen would substitute cooperation. But do not the several classes of society already co-operate in the most advantageous manner for the common benefit of the community? One class is occupied in rural industry, another in manufactures and commerce, another in science and letters. Each is rewarded, not always perhaps, but mostly in proportion to desert: but the claims of merit would not be recognised under Mr. Owen's

system; the indolent would reap the rewards of the industrious, the vicious of the more deserving. This is more like corporation than co-operation, the principle of the old monastic institutions and commercial monopolies associations of whose stagnating, debasing and injurious tendency the world has already had sufficient experience.

- Rousseau, the Abbé Mably, Godwin and Paine, have objected to the institution of property, the partiality of its advantages. They allow that it is advantageous to those who possess property, but contend that it is disadvantageous to those who have none. "It has tended," says Paine, "to make one part of society more affluent, and the other part more wretched than would have been the lot of either in a natural state." The radical difference between the civilized and natural state is, that in the latter, all are poor-all are in a state of discomfort, insecurity, and privation, and none are rich. But even in this state there is not exact equality of condition; all are not equally strong, dexterous, and persevering in fishing, hunting, and hut-building; and these inequalities of endowments produce inequalities in the rewards of their exertions. In the civil or natural state, no two individuals are exactly alike, either in mental or physical qualities; they differ in their habits as in their stature, complexion and strength, and supposing an equality of possessions was at any time forcibly established, it could not possibly continue for a day or hardly an hour,-some would be more

wasteful than others, some more industrious and inventive. There may doubtless be institutions which tend to aggravate the inequalities inseparable from human nature; these institutions may have risen from the predominance of proprietary influence in legislation; but such abuses are wholly unconnected with the utility of the right of property, and the progress of society must necessarily tend to alleviate them; the right of property of itself is an unmixed and universal benefit. Without its protection, the rich would become poor, and the poor be unable to become rich, and all would sink to the same bottomless abyss of misery and barbarism. It gives no exclusive advantage-it only gives general security; it does not take from one to give to another, it only says to all-labour, and I shall take care that none shall be permitted to rob you of the produce of your exertions. "It is the security of property," says Bentham," that has overcome the natural aversion of man from labour, that has given him the empire of the earth, that has given him a fixed and permanent residence, that has implanted in his breast the love of his country and of posterity. To enjoy immediately-to enjoy without labour, is the natural inclination of every man. This inclination must be restrained; for its obvious tendency is to arm all those who have nothing against those who have something. The law which restrains this inclination, and which secures to every individual the quiet enjoyment

of the fruits of his industry, is the most splendid achievement of legislative wisdom-the noblest triumph of which humanity has to boast."-Traité de Legislation, ii. p. 37.

CHAP. VIII.

INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE.

THE civil institution next in importance to that of private property, is the contract of marriage. Writers who have disputed the policy of propertyrights have naturally also disputed the policy of matrimonial rights, and have considered the appropriation of women, like the appropriation of land, an infringement of the common immunities of mankind. The analogy between marriage and property is striking, and the chief arguments which vindicate the utility of one, are applicable to the other.

1. Marriage is favourable to an increase in the number, and improvement in the character of females.

If an increase of women, like an increase of the produce of the earth, be conducive to the happiness of men-which no one will deny-whatever tends to multiply the number must be esteemed advantageous.

But for obvious reasons the irregularities of promiscuous intercourse are unfavourable to the multiplication of the species; even in countries where polygamy prevails it is known to operate as a cheek on the population; and such must be its natural tendency, for this reason, that as the two sexes are nearly equal in number, if one man has more wives than one, another must have less, so that the effect is similar, though in a less degree, to women being held in common.

Not only would the number be fewer, but they would be rendered less valuable. A woman in common would be like a field in common, or a child with many parents; there would be no concentration of care upon any particular female; all those ties and obligations which unite parties in marriage, and give them a mutual interest, would be dissolved. The effect of this would be a general depreciation of women in society; they would be treated with less attention and consideration; they would be like the air we breathe, necessary to life, but not being appropriated, they would have no exchangeable price. But as they lost their value the same pains would not be bestowed on their cultivation; their education and bringing up would be neglected: all the graces and accomplishments which add as much to the value of females as the arts of the horticulturist add to the products of the conservatory, would be abandoned, as an useless expenditure on a commodity so ordinary as women would then become.