“If man retains, even in society, the inalienable right of property which nature has given him, nothing can take it from him, nothing can prevent his exercising it. If the other members of society concentrate in their own persons the possession of all the soil; if those who are robbed by this spoliation and forced to have recourse to labor cannot by this means secure their whole subsistence, then they have the right to exact from the others, who hold property, the means of satisfying their needs. They have a claim upon the wealth of others in proportion to their own necessity, and force used to resist this claim is violence. The rich man is the only thief; he alone ought to hang from those infamous gallows which are raised only to punish the man born in poverty for being needy; only to force him to stifle the voice of nature, the cry of liberty; only to compel him to subject himself to a harsh servitude in order to avoid an ignominious death.” [22] X. W. GODWIN. In the third chapter of the First Book of his “Enquiry Concerning Political Justice”, Godwin treats of two important kinds of crime, theft and fraud. Of these he says: “Two of the greatest abuses relative to the interior policy of nations which at this time prevail in the world, consist in the irregular transfer of property, either first by violence, or secondly by fraud. If among the inhabitants of a country there existed no desire in one individual to possess himself of the substance of another, or no desire so vehement and restless as to prompt him to acquire it by means inconsistent with order and justice, undoubtedly in that country guilt could scarcely be known but by report. If every man could with perfect facility obtain the necessities of life, and, obtaining them, feel no uneasy craving after its superfluities, temptation would lose its power. Private interest would visibly accord with public good; and civil society become what poetry has feigned of the golden age. Let us inquire into the principles to which these evils are indebted for their existence.” [23] According to him these crimes are the consequence: First, Of poverty, which has reached enormous dimensions (in England one person out of every seven has at some time received public aid). The situation has become such that for the poor man the state of society is a state of war. He considers society not as a body whose object is to maintain personal rights and to procure to each individual the means of providing for his own support, but as a body that protects the advantageous position of one class of persons, while holding others in a state of poverty and dependence. Second, Of the ostentation of the rich, who make the poor man feel all the more what he is deprived of. Third, Of the tyranny of the rich, made permanent by legislation, by the administration of the laws, and by the distribution of wealth.