n for that loss, and has thereby
created a species of poverty and wretchedness that did not exist before.

In advocating the case of the persons thus dispossessed, it is a right,
and not a charity, that I am pleading for. But it is that kind of right
which, being neglected at first, could not be brought forward afterwards
till heaven had opened the way by a revolution in the system of
government. Let us then do honour to revolutions by justice, and give
currency to their principles by blessings.

Having thus in a few words, opened the merits of the case, I shall now
proceed to the plan I have to propose, which is,

To create a National Fund, out of which there shall be paid to every
person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen
pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or
her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed
property:

And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person
now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall
arrive at that age.

MEANS BY WHICH THE FUND IS TO BE CREATED.

I have already established the principle, namely, that the earth, in its
natural uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the
_common property of the human race_; that in that state, every person
would have been born to property; and that the system of landed
property, by its inseparable connection with cultivation, and with what
is called civilized life, has absorbed the property of all those whom
it dispossessed, without providing, as ought to have been done, an
indemnification for that loss.

The fault, however, is not in the present possessors. No complaint is
intended, or ought to be alleged against them, unless they adopt the
crime by opposing justice. The fault is in the system, and it has stolen
imperceptibly upon the world, aided afterwards by the agrarian law of
the sword. But the fault can be made to reform itself by successive
generations; and without diminishing or deranging the property of any of
the present possessors, the operation of the fund can yet commence, and
be in full activity, the first year of its establishment, or soon after,
as I shall shew.

It is proposed that the payments, as already stated, be made to every
person, rich or poor. It is best to make it so, to prevent invidious
distinctions. It is also right it should be so, because it is in lieu of
the natural