The subject of property is the key-stone that completes the fabric of political justice. According as our ideas respecting it are crude or correct, they will enlighten us as to the consequences of a simple form of society without government, and remove the prejudices that attach us to complexity.
There is nothing that more powerfully tends to distort our judgement and opinions than erroneous notions concerning the goods of fortune. Finally, the period that must put an end to the system of coercion and punishment is intimately connected with the circumstance of property's being placed upon an equitable basis.
Various abuses of the most incontrovertible nature have insinuated themselves into the administration of property. Each of these abuses might usefully be made the subject of a separate investigation. We might enquire into the vexations of this sort that are produced by the dreams of national greatness, and the sumptuousness of public offices and magistrates. This would lead us to a just estimate of the different kinds of taxation, landed or mercantile, having the necessaries or the luxuries of life for their subject of operation. We might examine into the abuses which have adhered to the commercial system; monopolies, charters, patents, protecting duties, prohibitions and bounties. We might consider the claims of the church:Chapter irst fruits and tithes. All these disquisitions would tend to show the incalculable importance of this subject. But, excluding them all from the present enquiry , it shall be the business of what remains of this work to examine the subject in its most general principles, and by that means endeavour to discover the source, not only of the abuses above enumerated, but of others of innumerable kinds, too multifarious and subtle to enter into so brief a catalogue.