The Louisiana populist. [volume] (Natchitoches, Natchitoches Parish, La.) 1894-1898, 1896-06-19
LIMITED OWNERSHIP.
HAS A MAN THE RIGHT TO OWN
A WHOLE STATE?
Getting at the Funda m entail Principles
OF Limited Ownership What the
Great Scholar and Historian Think.
About 1t.

a articles IN the April Arena Is one fron
' DIR. Ridpath on the limitation of owner
ship of property. We present the fol
lowing extract from it:
! The hints of limitation are to b,
found alike in man and nature. Maj
Is naturally limited animal. Their,
| is no part Of him, no element In him
that is not by nature under limitations
He Is not composed of infnities but fin
tiles. His life is meted and bounded
at every exereme. He begins In proto.
plasm and ends in dissolution. His
entrance is an ascent and his exit a
tumble down. All of his powers ars
naturally and wholesomely circum-
scribed; and the limitation is not such
as he himself regards as slavery.
Take the case Of the senses. The
sight of a good eye reaches from one
mile to six miles. according to the big
ness OF the thing seen. The finer
sounds we do not hear at all, and the
heaviest cannonade of thunder, beyond
the horizon of a few miles, is mere 81
lence. No animal can feel what it
does not touch. or taste what it does
notfeel. Raund about the nature of man
there Is drawn such a limit that his
whole world ofsense is not twenty miles
In diameter. He does not fly; and his
swimming is a fit subject for humor;
he Is walker or at most a rider. 1t
takes time for him to go abroad, and
other time most tedious for him to get
home again. The young man full of
hope, coming back from across the sea
to the wicket gate of his adored, finds
the last five miles thousand.
She for her part. leaning out of the
window, reckons the last hour to be
eternity. Both are limited: not even
the exulting hope and the bounding
heart Of youth can cancel time and
space.
large fraction of life-a third, they
say, is spent in sleep; another fraction
In eating and idling; another in the
weakness of childhood and the weari-
ness of old age; still another in sickness
and accidents and the mistakes of avo-
cation. A fifth fraction is expended in
going about and in useful intercourse
with others in like employment. The
sixth and last fraction is consumed in
marrying and giving in marriage and in
attending to the principal business of
life-which in America is voting a |
party ticket.
Certainly these limitations, partly |
natural and partly artificial, are .iuffi- |
cient to curb life within a narrow cir
Gle of activities.
1t is enough to make happy even |
miserable member of human society to |
look around him in the world. to walk
abroad, to hear the song of birds, the |
clamorous music of the circada, the
bark Of the distant squirrel; to see the
flight Of many creatures, the swimming
OF some and the scampering away of
others. Though there is limitation
upon them ala limitation drawn
around all activity and power as if with
a geometer's hand-yet there is no
or anguish, or hunting for
change or symptom of revolt. Ma
ture and the living creatures that in
habit her domain are all visibly and
manifestly meted and bounded with
principles and confines which may not
be passed; and yet, taken as a who-.
nature is an orderly place, well fitted
Tor happiness, given to hospitality.
and pervaded with much good cheer.
The only creature that seems to be dis
orderly, troubled, vexed with cross pur-
poses and unsound sleep, is the princi-
pal inhabitant. What is the matter
with him?
There is much the matter with him.:
Ind his ailments are hard to define. On |
he whole, the trouble with mankind
seems to be that the limitations de- {
handed in order that society may exist
md the individual be free have rot q
'een laid with the right intent, by the q
light authority, in the right place.
They have been laid with wrong in s
ent, by iilegitimate authority, in the q
'ery place where they ought not to y
ave been laid at all. They have been
aid by power, by selfishness, and by 4
rganized tyranny, on the weak and un- y
rganized elements of society, where
here was no need of Limitation or any a
uggestion of it except the suggestion I
enslave. So much distress, so much c
onfusion, have arisen from the mis-
lacement Of limitation that human be-
ngs have become distrustful of the !,
rinciple of limitation; and as a result =
hey md no stable equilibrium between
he extremes of anarchism and slavery. >
There Is, we must admit, no well-or- :
cred, well-defined, and welI-established :
uman society in the world. Every q
ling is slipping in the one direction or =
the other. Every human oeing h
'ems to be pushing his neighbor either :,
Ito slavery or into anarchy. Each ell o.
'ws the other into one of the extremes v
unhappiness and conflict Nobody h
ems to stop to consider whether It ID n
1t possible that social state can exist d