the public. The right to live also implies the
right to use the things about us which go to make life comfortable and
enjoyable, and which have not been already appropriated by others. It is
evident, however, that the use of anything by one must necessarily take
from the personal liberty of all others who otherwise would be able to
use it. And it is perfectly plain that just in proportion as one's
wealth increases, the wealth of others must decrease. This to a certain
extent is legitimate, and cannot be prevented. But when the wealth of
one increases to such an extent as to deprive others of food, shelter,
and even existence itself, it infringes upon the equality of personal
liberty far more than could any law that placed a limit to individual
wealth. When men are starving, when paupers are increasing, when to the
misfortune of poverty is added the curse of industrial slavery, when the
great concentration of wealth affects the life and liberty of all, is
not a law just which takes from a few a portion of their wealth and
indirectly restores it to the hands of the many? Does not the right to
property involve and rest upon the admission of the right to live?

Cardinal Manning startled the world some years ago when he declared:
"The obligation to feed the hungry springs from the natural right of
every man to life and to the food necessary to the sustenance of life.
So strict is this natural right that it prevails over all positive laws
of property. Necessity has no law, and a starving man has a right to his
neighbor's bread."

Strong words these for a cardinal. Sentimental philosophy it may be
called, but it is the philosophy of justice. Enormous wealth has always
been irreconcilable with equality. Its growth has caused the downfall of
many democracies. Will it bring about the ruin of the greatest democracy
in history? Are we, with the awe with which we regard the institution of
property, becoming a nation of millionaires and mendicants?

Property is only absolutely safe when those who hold it are far more
numerous than those who do not. When the middle class disappears from a
nation and the property falls into the hands of a few over-rich men,
then property is unsafe. We call such a condition an aristocracy of
money, and an aristocracy of money is always the child of a degenerated
or degenerating democracy. Some people, however, regard the
concentration of wealth as an indication of progress. In matters
political the ob