Title: The Sphere of State, or The People as a Body-Politic
This book is written by Frank Sargent Hoffman in the year 1894.


Pg. 57

1. The supreme ownership of all the natural sources of property is with the State

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Indeed, no State has ever given up that ownership. It has only allowed individuals, under certain conditions and limitations, to possess and use its territory. If a State should unconditionally give up its control, it would thereby cease to be a State. Its sovereignty would be gone.

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If a State, at any time, adopts the system of individual control of its territory, the titles to the land are derived from the State, and each citizen holds his land ever subject to the super control of the State. Whenever the land of the community gets into the hands of the few, to the exclusion and injury of the many, or whenever the good of the State for any reason requires it, these titles may justly be revoked, and individual control abolished.
Page 58

2. The State has the ultimate control of and responsibility for the methods of acquiring property. If the sources of property are under the supreme control of the State, it is easy to see that all property derived from those sources should be under its control also. No individual can take any of the materials of wealth without the consent of the State, and by his labor make them his property, and the State can never rightly give this consent except with the limitation that the ultimate ownership and control of all property is with itself. While the State, therefore, fully recognizes that natural right to property that comes from labor, it cannot regard this right as absolute, but most itself determine in what way and by what means property is to be acquired. It must prescribe the legitimate spheres of labor, and check the useless and wicked expenditure of labor. It should prevent by every means in its power the acquisition of property by trickery, by chance, by counterfeiting, by combinations to force up prices without increasing values, and by immoral practices of any kind whatever. .....
Page 59

3. The State is also the supreme authority for determining how property should be used after it is acquired. No individual member of the State has a right to use his property as he pleases. ....