It was inevitable, however, that, owing to inequalities of men and of things, the very system instituted to give security, liberty, and leisure to all, should end by giving security, liberty, and leisure to a few at the expense of the many.
Property, therefore, came to include two very different principles:
I. That men should securely enjoy the product of their toil. This is believed by Socialists to be the desirable principle of property.
II. That a few should without any toil enjoy the products of the toil of the majority. This is the principle of property that actually prevails to-day.
Now the bourgeois claims that the first or desirable principle of property is unattainable and that the second is the only practical system. This is the whole question we have to discuss.
I think that if we carefully reduce to its simplest terms the effort of civilization to make men happy it will be found to be this:
It seeks to rescue men from the two restraints under which they labor in a savage state:
Natural restraint due to our needs, i.e., shelter, clothing, food, etc.
Human restraint due to the needs of others, i.e., theft, violence, slavery, despotism, etc.
In other words, it seeks to secure for men Liberty, which, properly understood, is emancipation from these two restraints. And the blessings that ought to follow such liberty as this are two-fold: Security and leisure. So that liberty, security, and leisure may be described as the Trinity of human happiness; and all the more justly because just as it is from the First Person of the Holy Trinity that the other Two emerge, so it is from liberty that we get security and leisure.