Laws of property have been changed from time to time. Many proprietary laws of the middle ages have been abolished without compensation. For example, when the law of slavery was abolished in America, no compensation whatsoever was paid to the slave-owners although many of them had to pay hard cash while acquiring that claim. The property of the entire people, it must be understood, is the main-stay of the State in the development of national economy and the right to private property cannot be allowed to stand in the way or used to the detriment of the community. The State must have the full right to regulate, limit and expropriate property by means of law in the common interests of the people. The doctrine of compensation as a condition for expropriation cannot be accepted as a Gospel truth. Death duty is a form of partial expropriation without compensation and it forms an essential feature of the financial systems of many a progressive country in the world.
