The Right of Property.

Since all material objects capable of being owned, are in one way or other obtained from the Earth, it results that the right of property is originally dependent on the right to the use of the Earth. While there were yet no artificial products, and natural products were therefore the only things which could be appropriated, this was an obviously necessary connexion. While absolute ethics thus asserts the right of property, and while no such breach of it as is implied by the schemes of communists is warranted by that relative ethics which takes account of transitional needs, relative ethics dictates such limitation of it as is necessitated for defraying the costs of protection, national and individual.