ed to restraint as such. For those who understand that all social
liberty rests upon restraint, that restraint of one man in one respect
is the condition of the freedom of other men in that respect, the taunt
has no meaning whatever. The liberty which is good is not the liberty of
one gained at the expense of others, but the liberty which can be
enjoyed by all who dwell together, and this liberty depends on and is
measured by the completeness with which by law, custom, or their own
feelings they are restrained from mutual injury.

Individualism, as ordinarily understood, not only takes the policeman
and the law court for granted. It also takes the rights of property for
granted. But what is meant by the rights of property? In ordinary use
the phrase means just that system to which long usage has accustomed us.
This is a system under which a man is free to acquire by any method of
production or exchange within the limits of the law whatever he can of
land, consumable goods, or capital; to dispose of it at his own will and
pleasure for his own purposes, to destroy it if he likes, to give it
away or sell it as it suits him, and at death to bequeath it to
whomsoever he will. The State, it is admitted, can take a part of a
man's property by taxation. For the State is a necessity, and men must
pay a price for security; but in all taxation the State on this view is
taking something from a man which is "his," and in so doing is justified
only by necessity. It has no "right" to deprive the individual of
anything that is his in order to promote objects of its own which are
not necessary to the common order. To do so is to infringe individual
rights and make a man contribute by force to objects which he may view
with indifference or even with dislike. "Socialistic" taxation is an
infringement of individual freedom, the freedom to hold one's own and do
as one will with one's own. Such seems to be the ordinary view.

But a consistent theory of liberty could not rest wholly satisfied with
the actual system under which property is held. The first point of
attack, already pressed by the disciples of Cobden, was the barrier to
free exchange in the matter of land. It was not and still is not easy
for the landless to acquire land, and in the name of free contract
Cobden and his disciples pressed for cheap and unimpeded transfer. But a
more searching criticism was possible. Land is limited in amount,
certain kinds of land very narrowly lim