time appears to have had no misgivings about the excellence
of the scheme or of that article of Natural Rights that underlies it.

This complexion of things, as touches the effectual bearing of the
institution of property and the ancient customary rights of ownership,
has changed substantially since the time of Adam Smith. The "competitive
system," which he looked to as the economic working-out of that "simple
and obvious system of natural liberty" that always engaged his best
affections, has in great measure ceased to operate as a routine of
natural liberty, in fact; particularly in so far as touches the fortunes
of the common man, the impecunious mass of the people. _De jure_, of
course, the competitive system and its inviolable rights of ownership
are a citadel of Natural Liberty; but _de facto_ the common man is now,
and has for some time been, feeling the pinch of it. It is law, and
doubtless it is good law, grounded in immemorial usage and authenticated
with statute and precedent. But circumstances have so changed that this
good old plan has in a degree become archaic, perhaps unprofitable, or
even mischievous, on the whole, and especially as touches the conditions
of life for the common man. At least, so the common man in these modern
democratic and commercial countries is beginning to apprehend the
matter.

Some slight and summary characterisation of these changing circumstances
that have affected the incidence of the rights of property during modern
times may, therefore, not be out of place; with a view to seeing how far
and why these rights may be due to come under advisement and possible
revision, in case a state of settled peace should leave men's attention
free to turn to these internal, as contrasted with national interests.

Under that order of handicraft and petty trade that led to the
standardisation of these rights of ownership in the accentuated form
which belongs to them in modern law and custom, the common man had a
practicable chance of free initiative and self-direction in his choice
and pursuit of an occupation and a livelihood, in so far as rights of
ownership bore on his case. At that period the workman was the main
factor in industry and, in the main and characteristically, the question
of his employment was a question of what he would do. The material
equipment of industry--the "plant," as it has come to be called--was
subject of ownership, then as now; but it was then a secondary factor
a