The Prime Minister went on to trace the evolution of the institution of property. I think that ideas about property have ranged from the divine right to property, in other words, the sanctity of private property, to the almost whilst dictum of M. Proudhon that “Property is theft.” The movements for and against property have been based on this whole gamut of conceptions relating to property. On the one, hand, on the one extreme we have the divine right of property, the sanctity of private property; but that to my mind is now exploded. It is dead as the dodo, it has gone the way of the Divine Right of Kings. If at all there is right to property, I can only slay that it is not the divine right of the individual to property, but it is the right of God himself to all property, and so for all His children on earth. All this trouble about property could have been obviated, could have been got over if only men had clearly understood what the divine right meant, that it meant that the property should be utilised justly and wisely in the interests of the whole of mankind.
