“This is novel doctrine, indeed! but it is in direct hostility to the social-stake system.”
“You were never more right, Sir John, as respects your own theory, or never more wrong as respects the truth. In Leaplow we contend—and contend justly—that there is no broader or bolder fallacy than to say that a representation of mere effects, whether in houses, lands, merchandise, or money, is a security for a good government. Property is affected by measures; and the more a monikin has, the greater is the bribe to induce him to consult his own interests, although it should be at the expense of those of everybody else.”
“But, sir, the interest of the community is composed of the aggregate of these interests.”
“Your pardon, Sir John; nothing is composed of it, but the aggregate of the interests of a class. If your government is instituted for their benefit only, your social-stake system is all well enough; but if the object be the general good, you have no choice but to trust its custody to the general keeping. Let us suppose two men—since you happen to be a man, and not a monikin—let us suppose two men perfectly equal in morals, intelligence, public virtue and patriotism, one of whom shall be rich and the other shall have nothing. A crisis arrives in the affairs of their common country, and both are called upon to exercise their franchise, on a question—as almost all great questions must—that unavoidably will have some influence on property generally. Which would give the most impartial vote—he who, of necessity, must be swayed by his personal interest, or he who has no inducement of the sort to go astray?”
“Certainly he who has nothing to influence him to go wrong. But the question is not fairly put—”
“Your pardon, Sir John—it is put fairly as an abstract question, and one that is to prove a principle. I am glad to hear you say that a man would be apt to decide in this manner; for it shows his identity with a monikin. We hold that all of us are apt to think most of ourselves on such occasions.”
“My dear brigadier, do not mistake sophistry for reason. Surely, if power belonged only to the poor—and the poor, or the comparatively poor, always compose the mass—they would exercise it in a way to strip the rich of their possessions.”
“We think not, in Leaplow. Cases might exist, in which such a state of things would occur under a reaction; but reactions imply abuses, and are not to be quoted to maintain a principle. He who was drunk yesterday, may need an unnatural stimulus to-day; while he who is uniformly temperate preserves his proper tone of body without recourse to a remedy so dangerous. Such an experiment, under a strong provocation, might possibly be made; but it could scarcely be made twice among any people, and not even once among a people that submits in season to a just division of its authority, since it is obviously destructive of a leading principle of civilization. According to our monikin histories, all the attacks upon property have been produced by property’s grasping at more than fairly belongs to its immunities. If you make political power a concomitant of property, both may go together, certainly; but if kept separate, the danger to the latter will never exceed the danger in which it is put daily by the arts of the money-getters, who are, in truth, the greatest foes of property, as it belongs to others.”
I remembered Sir Joseph Job, and could not but admit that the brigadier had, at least, some truth on his side.
“But do you deny that the sentiment of property elevates the mind, ennobles, and purifies?”