of the State, our meed is the
same. _Loris non ureris. Non pasces in cruce corvos_, is what we are
told. We may congratulate ourselves on having escaped the
cat-o'-nine-tails and the gallows. Well, we have, most of us, so much
self-sufficiency, that to deprive us of all ground for it might be a
fault on the right side. But now comes a second and more awkward
reflection. If you will not of your own accord do your duty, those to
whom performance of the duty is owing have a right to use means to make
you--foul means if fair means will not avail. If, then, you hesitate to
do your utmost for the interests of society, society is warranted in
taking measures to accelerate your movement. If you are not, or what is
practically the same thing, if a numerical majority of your
fellow-citizens think you are not, making the most beneficial use of
your property; if it be generally considered that it would be for the
greater good of the greater number to divide your park and garden into
peasant properties and cottage allotments, to double the wages of the
workmen in your employment, or to subject you and the likes of you to a
graduated income tax for the purpose of setting up national workshops to
compete with you in your own trade; and, if you do not readily enter
into the same views, then the said numerical majority are not simply
warranted in taking the law into their own hands and doing, in spite of
you, what they think ought to be done with your property, but would be
culpably remiss if they neglected so to act.

Now it is needless to dwell on the extent to which that large numerical
majority of our fellow-citizens which consists of the working classes is
imbued with this notion, nor, except to those who are similarly imbued,
can it be necessary to insist that there is no notion of which it is
more indispensable to disabuse the working-class mind. This,
accordingly, I strove to do throughout a recent work of mine, 'On
Labour,' particularly in the chapter which treats of the claims and
rights thereof. I there earnestly pleaded that there may be, and are,
private rights independent of utility which no public needs can cancel;
that all which any man, or set of men, is entitled to exact from another
is payment or fulfilment of what is due to him or them from that other;
that unless the poverty of the many has been caused by the few, the many
are not warranted in extorting relief of their wants from the few; that
the mere circumstance