But such a system can be devised; one under which the right of new-comers may be respected without disturbing those of possessors. This can only be done by putting entirely aside the complete and absolute form of property which is in so much favour with Liberalism, and by making the right of property in any actual possession a strictly limited and circumscribed right from the first--the right not to an arbitrary control over a thing, but to a just control over it. So long as property is always thought of as an arbitrary and absolute dominion over a thing, the proprietary right cannot possibly be explained in a way that does not make it a right given to some to rob others. Why not, therefore, define property from the beginning as subject to limitations, and contrive a new form or system of it, in which these limitations shall for ever receive due recognition, and no man be thereafter denied the opportunity of acquiring as much of the bounty of nature as is necessary for him to carry out his personal development? That is Marlo's task, and it would have been an easy one, if all goods, if everything that satisfies a human want, had been supplied directly by nature, as air is supplied, without the need of industry to procure it or the power of industry to multiply it. Then the problem would be solved very simply as the earlier communists desired to solve it. Every member of society would be entitled to partake of nature's supplies, as he now does of air, in the measure of his need, and when those supplies ran exhausted, just as when the air became vitiated, society would be entitled, nay obliged, to suppress further propagation. But the question is far from being so simple. Nature only yields her bounties to us after labour; they are only converted into means of life by labour; and they are capable of being vastly multiplied by labour. This element of labour changes the situation of things considerably, and must be allowed a leading _rôle_ in determining a just right and system of property. The only case where a proprietary right can be recognised which is unmodified by this consideration, is the case of those who are unable to labour. They fall back on their original right to a share in the bounty of nature in the measure that their personal development requires; in other words, according to their needs. Their share does not lie waste, though they are unable to work it themselves, and their share belongs to them immediately because they are persons, and not because they may afterwards become labourers. Marlo recognises, therefore, antecedently to labour the right to existence, and this right he proposes to realize for the weak and disabled by means of a compulsory system of national insurance.