these things in my thoughts, I grow more favourable to Plato,
and do not wonder that he resolved not to make any laws for such as would
not submit to a community of all things; for so wise a man could not but
foresee that the setting all upon a level was the only way to make a
nation happy; which cannot be obtained so long as there is property, for
when every man draws to himself all that he can compass, by one title or
another, it must needs follow that, how plentiful soever a nation may be,
yet a few dividing the wealth of it among themselves, the rest must fall
into indigence. So that there will be two sorts of people among them,
who deserve that their fortunes should be interchanged--the former
useless, but wicked and ravenous; and the latter, who by their constant
industry serve the public more than themselves, sincere and modest
men--from whence I am persuaded that till property is taken away, there
can be no equitable or just distribution of things, nor can the world be
happily governed; for as long as that is maintained, the greatest and the
far best part of mankind, will be still oppressed with a load of cares
and anxieties. I confess, without taking it quite away, those pressures
that lie on a great part of mankind may be made lighter, but they can
never be quite removed; for if laws were made to determine at how great
an extent in soil, and at how much money, every man must stop--to limit
the prince, that he might not grow too great; and to restrain the people,
that they might not become too insolent--and that none might factiously
aspire to public employments, which ought neither to be sold nor made
burdensome by a great expense, since otherwise those that serve in them
would be tempted to reimburse themselves by cheats and violence, and it
would become necessary to find out rich men for undergoing those
employments, which ought rather to be trusted to the wise. These laws, I
say, might have such effect as good diet and care might have on a sick
man whose recovery is desperate; they might allay and mitigate the
disease, but it could never be quite healed, nor the body politic be
brought again to a good habit as long as property remains; and it will
fall out, as in a complication of diseases, that by applying a remedy to
one sore you will provoke another, and that which removes the one ill
symptom produces others, while the strengthening one part of the body
weakens the rest." "On the contrary," answered I,