William McCombie

“...a social state in which only a few are ever becoming richer, and many poorer, and in which the majority of the middle-class can barely maintain their standing by a life-and-death struggle, is certainly adapted to raise the question, whether immense accumulations of property are, in a densely-populated country like ours, compatible with social welfare. When, especially, we contemplate the progressive depression of such large masses of the people in our own times, we need not wonder that the most fundamental questions as to property have been raised. Nay, when we review the fearful wrongs to which the masses have been subjected in every European nation - the iniquity which has obtained in social usage, and been 'established by public law' - we will not feel very much surprised to find that, what we have been accustomed to regard as the corner-stone of civilisation - the institution of private property - has been assailed with a vehemence which has sought its ultimate expression in the tremendous aphorism of the great French Socialist, Proudhon, that 'Property is Theft'.”