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 burthensome
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 effects, 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