Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1896-05-27

LIMITED OWNERSHIP.
HAS A MAN THE RIGHT TO OWN
A WHOLE STATE?
Getting at the Funda mental Principles
of Limited Ownership What the
Great Scholar and Historian Thinks
About It

Among the profound and scholarly
articles in the April Arena is one from
DR.. Ridpath on the Limitation of owner
ship of property. We present the fol-
lowing extract from it:
The hints of Limitation are to be
found alike in man and nature. Man
is naturally limited animal. There
is no part of him, no element in him,
that is not by nature under limitations.
He is not composed of infinities 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 are
scribed; and the Limitation is not such
as he himself regards as slavery.
Take the case of the senses. The
sight Of 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 few miles, is mere si-
lence. No animal can feel what it
does not touch, or taste what it does
not feel. Raund about the nature of man
there is drawn such a limit that his
whole world of sense is not twenty miles
in diameter. He does not fly; and his
swimming is fit subject for humor
he is a 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.
A large fraction of life-a third, they
say, is spent in sleep; another fraction
in eating and idling; another in tine
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 ir
going about and in useful intercourse
with others in like employment. The
sixth and last fraction is consumed il
marrying and giving in marriage and il
life-which in America is voting &
party ticket.
Certainly these limitations, partly
natural and partly artificial, are 3uffi
cient to curb life within a narrow cir
Gle of activities.
1t is enough to make happy even {
miserable member of human society Il
look around him in the world, to wall
i abroad, to hear the song of birds, thu
clamorous music Of the circada. tht
bark of the distant squirrel; to see The
| flight of many creatures, the swimming
of some and the scampering away o.
| others. Though there is a Limitation
| upon them ala limitation drawn
around all activity and power as if will
geometer's hand-yet there is NJ
complaint, or anguish, or hunting fol
| change or symptom of revolt. Ma
| ture and the living creatures that in
habit her domain are all visibly ant
manifestly meted and bounded will
principles and confines which may no
be passed; and yet. taken as a whole
nature is an orderly place, we'll fittet
| for 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 matte
with him?
| There is much the matter with him
and his ailments are hard to define. Oh
the whole, the trouble with mankin
seems to be that the limitations de
manded in order that society may exis
| and the individual be free have no
been laid with the right intent, by tn
right authority, in the right place
They have been laid with wrong in
tent, by illegitimate authority, in tn
very place where they ought not t
have been laid at all. They have bee
laid by power, by selfishness, and b
organized tyranny, on the weak and un
1
there was no need of Limitation or an
suggestion Of 1t except the suggestio
to enslave. So much distress, so muc
confusion, have arisen from the mis-
| placement of limitation that human be
ings have become distrustful of tn
principle of limitation; and as resu
they find no stable equilibrium betwee
the extremes of anarchism and SLAYER,
There is, we must admit, no well-ol
dered, well-defned and well-establishe
human society in the world. Every
thing is slipping in the one direction {
in the other. Every human oein
seems to be pushing his neighbor eithe
into slavery or into anarchy. Each e
bows the other into one of the extreme
of unhappiness and conflict. Nobod
seems to stop to consider whether 1t
not possible that social state can exi
in which the limitations are so laid tn;
life in 1t may be as easy and natural {
| is the life of the irrational and uncoI