Page:The Rights of Man to Property!.djvu/30

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just fee-simple title, to the soil of the State, to the entire exclusion of nearly six times their number of families, as good as themselves; or even to any portion of such lands, beyond that of equality. This is not the place; it shall be done, however, in due time, in the course of this work. But 1 have drawn this strong, yet I trust, true picture of the operation of the Agrarian Law, because I have felt, ever since I read it, that the opinion of Mr. Raymond respecting it, deserves to be controverted, and because I feel that such a controversion, falls within the province of this work. In vol. 2nd, page 12. and second edition of his Political Economy, published in Baltimore, in 1823, after declaring that, " an equal division of property is not to be desired, in any country, because it is not a dictate of nature," a very excellent reason, indeed, if it be true; he proceeds to say that "an agrarian law, ************* is as unnatural, as it would be, to reduce all men to the same stature, by stretching them on the bed of Procrustes."

I have myself objections to agrarian laws, especially in any form, in which they have yet been presented to the world—but the reason I shall offer in support of those objections, will be very different from those of Mr. Raymond. As it regards man, wherever he is found on the habitable globe, there is so little difference in the stature of his various species, that there would be little use