But the limitation upon government is everywhere emphasized.  “Government,” he says, “... is in the very nature of it a trust; and all its powers a Delegation for particular ends.”  He rejects the theory of parliamentary sovereignty as incompatible with self-government; if the Parliament, for instance, prolonged its life, it would betray its constituents and dissolve itself.  “If omnipotence,” he writes, “can with any sense be ascribed to a legislature, it must be lodged where all legislative authority originates; that is, in the People.”  Such a system is alone compatible with the ends of government, since it cannot be supposed that men “combine into communities and institute government” for self-enslavement.  Nor is any other political system “consistent with the natural equality of mankind”; by which Price means that no man “is constituted by the author of nature the vassal or subject of another, or has any right to give law to him, or, without his consent, to take away any part of his property or to abridge him of his liberty.”  From all of which it is concluded that liberty is inalienable; and a people which has lost it “must have a right to emancipate themselves as soon as they can.”  The aptness of the argument to the American situation is obvious enough; and nowhere is Price more happy or more formidable than when he applies his precepts to phrases like “the unity of the empire” and the “honor of the kingdom” which were so freely used to cover up the inevitable results of George’s obstinacy.

The Essay on the Right of Property in Land (1781) of William Ogilvie deserves at least a passing notice.  The author, who published his book anonymously, was a Professor of Latin in the University of Aberdeen and an agriculturist of some success.  His own career was distinctly honorable.  The teacher of Sir James Mackintosh, he had a high reputation as a classical scholar and deserves to be remembered for his effort to reform a college which had practically ceased to perform its proper academic functions.  His book is virtually an essay upon the natural right of men to the soil.  He does not doubt that the distress of the times is due to the land monopoly.  The earth being given to men in common, its invasion by private ownership is a dangerous perversion.  Men have the right to the full product of their labor; but the privileges of the landowner prevent the enjoyment of that right.  The primary duty of every State is the increase of public happiness; and the happiest nation is that which has the greatest number of free and independent cultivators.  But governments attend rather to the interest of the higher classes, even while they hold out the protection of the common people as the main pretext of their authority.  The result is their maintenance of land-monopoly even though it affects the prime material of all essential industries, prevents the growth of population, and makes the rich wealthier at the expense of the poor.  It breeds oppression and ignorance, and poisons improvement by preventing individual initiative.  He points out how a nation is dominated by its landlords, and how they have consistently evaded the fiscal burdens they should bear.  Only in a return to a nation of freeholders can Ogilvie see the real source of an increase in happiness.