"With the expropriation of the individual the whole vast catalogue of
crimes against property shrank to nothing. The thief could only steal from
the community; but if he stole, what was he to do with his booty? It was
still possible for a depredator to destroy, but few men's hate is so
comprehensive as to include all other men, and when the individual could
no longer hurt some other individual in his property destruction ceased.
"All the many murders done from love of money, or of what money could buy,
were at an end. Where there was no want, men no longer bartered their
souls, or women their bodies, for the means to keep themselves alive. The
vices vanished with the crimes, and the diseases almost as largely
disappeared. People were no longer sickened by sloth and surfeit, or
deformed and depleted by overwork and famine. They were wholesomely housed
in healthful places, and they were clad fitly for their labor and fitly
for their leisure; the caprices of vanity were not suffered to attaint the
beauty of the national dress.
"With the stress of superfluous social and business duties, and the
perpetual fear of want which all classes felt, more or less; with the
tumult of the cities and the solitude of the country, insanity had
increased among us till the whole land was dotted with asylums and the mad
were numbered by hundreds of thousands.
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