The complaints of the free proprietors, and the groans of the plebeians at the time of the Gracchi, were one and the same.

It is said that, whenever a poor man refused to give his estate to the bishop, the curate, the count, the judge, or the centurion, these immediately sought an opportunity to ruin him.

They made him serve in the army until, completely ruined, he was induced, by fair means or foul, to give up his freehold."-- Laboulaye: History of Property.
How many small proprietors and manufacturers have not been ruined by large ones through chicanery, law-suits, and competition?
Strategy, violence, and usury,--such are the proprietor's methods of plundering the laborer.
Thus we see property, at all ages and in all its forms, oscillating by virtue of its principle between two opposite terms,--extreme division and extreme accumulation.
Property, at its first term, is almost null.

Reduced to personal exploitation, it is property only potentially.

At its second term, it exists in its perfection; then it is truly property.
When property is widely distributed, society thrives, progresses, grows, and rises quickly to the zenith of its power.