He thought that in a new colony the equalization might be
accomplished without difficulty, not so easily when a state was
already established; and that then the shortest way of compassing
the desired end would be for the rich to give and not to receive
marriage portions, and for the poor not to give but to receive them.
Plato in the Laws was of opinion that, to a certain extent,
accumulation should be allowed, forbidding, as I have already
observed, any citizen to possess more than five times the minimum
qualification But those who make such laws should remember what they
are apt to forget- that the legislator who fixes the amount of
property should also fix the number of children; for, if the
children are too many for the property, the law must be broken. And,
besides the violation of the law, it is a bad thing that many from
being rich should become poor; for men of ruined fortunes are sure
to stir up revolutions. That the equalization of property exercises an
influence on political society was clearly understood even by some
of the old legislators. Laws were made by Solon and others prohibiting
an individual from possessing as much land as he pleased; and there
are other laws in states which forbid the sale of property: among
the Locrians, for example, there is a law that a man is not to sell
his property unless he can prove unmistakably that some misfortune has
befallen him.
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