I cannot speak of my own knowledge, but I have every reason to believe
that I came into this world a small reddish person, certainly without
a gold spoon in my mouth, and in fact with no discernible abstract or
concrete "rights" or property of any description. If a foot was not
set upon me at once, as a squalling nuisance, it was either the natural
affection of those about me, which I certainly had done nothing to
deserve, or the fear of the law which, ages before my birth, was
painfully built up by the society into which I intruded, that prevented
that catastrophe. If I was nourished, cared for, taught, saved from the
vagabondage of a wastrel, I certainly am not aware that I did anything
to deserve those advantages. And, if I possess anything now, it strikes
me that, though I may have fairly earned my day's wages for my
day's work, and may justly call them my property--yet, without that
organization of society, created out of the toil and blood of long
generations before my time, I should probably have had nothing but a
flint axe and an indifferent hut to call my own; and even those would be
mine only so long as no stranger savage came my way.
So that if society, having, quite gratuitously, done all these things
for me, asks me in turn to do something towards its preservation--even
if that something is to contribute to the teaching of other men's
children--I really, in spite of all my individualist learnings, feel
rather ashamed to say no. And, if I were not ashamed, I cannot say that
I think that society would be dealing unjustly with me in converting
the moral obligation into a legal one. There is a manifest unfairness in
letting all the burden be borne by the willing horse.