Liberty and Property.pdf - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

Liberty and Property 13their privileges against the rising power ofroyal absolutism. In most parts of continentalEurope, the princes remained victoriousin these conflicts. Only in England andin the Netherlands did the gentry and theurban patricians succeed in defeating thedynasties. But what they won was not freedomfor all, but only freedom for an elite, fora minority of the people.We must not condemn as hypocrites themen who in those ages praised liberty, whilethey preserved the legal disabilities of themany, even serfdom and slavery. They werefaced with a problem which they did notknow how to solve satisfactorily. The traditionalsystem of production was too narrowfor a continually rising population. Thenumber of people for whom there was, ina full sense of the term, no room left by thepre-capitalistic methods of agriculture andartisanship was increasing. These supernumerarieswere starving paupers. They werea menace to the preservation of the existingorder of society and, for a long time, nobody