an to fall into any of the
modern absurdities on the subject of equality, and a community of
interests. One or two individuals, even in that day, had wished to
accompany him, who were for forming an association in which all property
should be shared in common, and in which nothing was to be done but that
which was right. Mark had not the least objection in the world to the
last proposition, and would have been glad enough to see it carried out
to the letter, though he differed essentially with the applicants, as to
the mode of achieving so desirable an end. He was of opinion that
civilization could not exist without property, or property without a
direct personal interest in both its accumulation and its preservation.
They, on the other hand, were carried away by the crotchet that
community-labour was better than individual labour, and that a hundred
men would be happier and better off with their individualities
compressed into one, than by leaving them in a hundred subdivisions, as
they had been placed by nature. The theorists might have been right, had
it been in their power to compress a hundred individuals into one, but
it was riot. After all their efforts, they would still remain a hundred
individuals, merely banded together under more restraints, and with less
liberty than are common.

Of all sophisms, that is the broadest which supposes personal liberty is
extended by increasing the power of the community. Individuality is
annihilated in a thousand things, by the community-power that already
exists in this country, where persecution often follows from a man's
thinking and acting differently from his neighbours, though the law
professes to protect him. The reason why this power becomes so very
formidable, and is often so oppressively tyrannical in its exhibition,
is very obvious. In countries where the power is in the hands of the
few, public sympathy often sustains the man who resists its injustice;
but no public sympathy can sustain him who is oppressed by the public
itself. This oppression does not often exhibit itself in the form of
law, but rather in its denial. He, who has a clamour raised against him
by numbers, appeals in vain to numbers for justice, though his claim may
be clear as the sun at noon-day. The divided responsibility of bodies
of men prevents anything like the control of conscience, and the most
ruthless wrongs are committed, equally without reflection and without
remorse.

Mark Woolston had