ABSTRACT
All schemes of equality which have been proposed are bound to fail, because the motive to the preventive check of moral restraint is destroyed by equality and community of goods. The operation of the natural check of moral restraint depends exclusively upon the laws of property and succession; and in a state of equality and community of property could only be replaced by some artificial regulation of a very different stamp, and a much more unnatural character. In a publication of 1797, Thomas Paine came to deal afresh with some of the special property problems he had raised in the Rights of Man. In writing Agrarian Justice he was impelled by the need he felt to oppose the sophisms of Bishop Watson’s much-applauded sermon, The Wisdom and Goodness of God in having made both Rich and Poor.
