“It must require more patience, father, than I shall ever have, to hold property which is needlessly insecure.”
“How do you mean needlessly insecure?”
“I mean insecure through bad institutions. I do not see at present how we are to guard against hurricanes; but if I were convinced that the other evils you mention could not be removed, I would as soon go into Turkey and hold my chattels at the pleasure of the sultan, as be your heir. There is little to choose between any two countries where there is not security of property.”
“But what I complain of, Alfred, is, that the law does not secure us our property. If the same law secures property in England, why does it not here?”
“Aye, there is the question, father. Is it not clear that there is some flaw in our institutions here which keeps them out of the pale of the protection of law? Hurricanes and bad seasons are answerable for a very small portion of our distress; and to set against them, we have, as with all our complaints we cannot deny, a very extraordinary degree of protection from government; though we cannot manage to benefit much by it. By far the larger share of our evils are such as law cannot remedy; and since that law works far better in England than here, it is plain that the fault does not rest with the law.”
“I am sure it is time we were looking into it, son.”
“High time, indeed: but people are unwilling to look deep enough. If some of the pains that are spent in providing expedients for the management of property, were employed in examining into its nature and tenure, we should be more in the way of finding out what part of our system is wrong.”
“My dear son, you really are too hard upon us. Do you think we do not know what property is?”
“I do; because I think we hold a great deal that does not belong to us. We can find that out presently by going back to the beginning. Taking the old pagan fable of the first pair of human beings coming out of a cave, and supposing that cave to be in yonder hill,—what property,—what of their own would that man and woman have on first coming into the day-light?”
“As soon as they chose to take possession, they might have a whole continent.”