THE

I.

THE origin or ultimate source of the great fund from which the various individuals who, together, form a community, are supported or derive their means of existence, is sometimes a momentary puzzle to the school-boy in political economy, though it soon becomes manifest to a reflective mind. Simplifying the problem for convenience of statement, and supposing that a number of individuals doing an equal amount of business obtain their livelihood by making thereon an equal average profit per cent., the question is, Why would it not come to the same thing as everyone knows it would not-if each sold his commodities at prime cost? Absurd as such a question is, upon its answer really depends the principle upon which, sooner or later, men must deal with the land question; for it will immediately be found that, so long as we look upon either land or any other commodity simply as so much 'property'-so long as we look upon the various transactions of industrial life as merely connected with things which can be owned,' and because they are thus owned can be bought and sold, we can find no answer to it. Indefinite notions about 'labour' will not help us either; for mere labour will not fill an empty stomach, any more than the most authentic tokens of the Bank of England. We are at once brought face to face with another element, and have to recognise an active, or as we may call it, fecund, source of subsistence which the Sustainer of all has provided, in the shape of the productive power of the earth, and its ability either by itself or under the stimulus of human labour-to sustain the lives of the creatures which it bears. If the products of

the ground did not 'increase and multiply,' all must perish; and this increase it is that really forms the vast fund of wealth and life which society, by its various media, and in various proportions, distributes to those various units which when united form the whole.

This is so fundamentally true and obvious, that it is seen as soon as stated; and hence, at the very threshold of any real inquiry into the questions connected with land, we see that the right decision of those questions is of vital interest to every human creature. Every individual, whether he knows it or not, has a direct connection with the land, which is essential to his very being; for all the necessaries of life are products of the earth, and unless he can secure for himself a due share of those products, he must of necessity cease to exist. He must literally 'eat to live;' if Canaan will not yield to him, he must 'go down into Egypt to buy food;' and he cannot, even if he would, sever that intimate and close (however disguised) relation in which he stands to the soil, which is one of the most fundamental truths of all political economy worthy of the

name.

From these evident facts certain eminent thinkers have deduced some very 'radical' conclusions. Dismissing the more visionary dreams of the Communists, who would have all the products of the land shared by the individuals who form the State, and fully admitting the desirability of land being actually held by individual occupants, Mr. Herbert Spencer and those who think with him have attempted to establish, that only from the State can it be equitably held. Starting with the axiom that every man has a right to pursue the gratification of his desires, provided only that such gratifica

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tion does not interfere with the similar liberty of others, he argues that all men born into the world have in equity equal rights to the use of this world. Each of them,' he says, 'is free to use the earth for the satisfaction of his wants, provided he allows all others the same liberty; and conversely, it is manifest that no one, or part of them, may use the earth in such a way as to prevent the rest from similarly using it; seeing that to do this is to assume greater freedom than the rest, and consequently to break the law. Equity, therefore, does not permit property in land.' He escapes the communistic consequences which might at first sight be supposed to flow from his doctrine, by showing how an individual might rent the use of a given portion of land from the State or community to which it is supposed in equity to belong, as he now rents it from a private landlord; and thus obtain a valid right to all the surplus products he can obtain. The necessity and propriety of such an arrangement he urges by further arguments; and, in fine, considers it the sole method by which the various questions connected with land tenure can be equitably adjusted.

Such a theory as this naturally leads to some highly curious consequences. Mr. Spencer, of course, comes into immediate collision with Locke's well-known explanation of the origin of property, which it may be well to quote exactly as referred to by him. Though the earth and all inferior creatures,' says Locke, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands we may say are properly his. Whatever, then, he removes out of the state that nature hath provided and left

it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by his labour something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men. . . at least, when there is enough and as good left in common for others.' Mr. Spencer is, of course, bound to object to this—and he accordingly does object that as by the premises all things which the earth produces are 'common to all men,' the consent of all men must be obtained before any article can be equitably 'removed from the common state nature hath placed it in.' He suggests that the very point in debate is whether the man had any right to gather or mix his labour with' that which, by the hypothesis, previously belonged to mankind at large; and urges that his previous reasoning on a slightly different point might be employed to show that no one can, by the mere act of appropriating to himself any wild unclaimed animal or fruit, supersede the joint claims of other men to it. It may be quite true,' he says, that the labour he expends may give him a better right

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than any one other man, but the question at issue is, whether by labour so expended he has made his right

greater than, the preexisting rights of all other men.

To such an argument it may be obviously replied, in the words of the very reasoning which a few pages further on Mr. Spencer brings to bear against such as deny all rights of property, that if this be so, it follows that no man (in a primitive state at least) can have a right to the things he consumes for food. And if these are not his before eating them, how can they become his at all? As Locke asks, When do

they begin to be his? when he digests? or when he eats? or when he brings them home? Wherefore we arrive at the curious conclusion, that as the whole [of his body] has been built up from nutriment not belonging to him, a man has no property in his own flesh and blood -can have no valid title to himselfand has as good a right to his neighbour's body as his own!' It is indeed true that Mr. Spencer himself has beforehand provided a theory or principle of tenure from the State by which this argument would be disarmed, as a man would have a clear right to all he can obtain from the land after paying to the community his rent for it: but as the absurdity can be evaded in no other way, and as this way is not at present adopted, or perhaps likely to be adopted, in any civilised community, it exists logically-according to his view-in full force at the present moment; and since we all derive our sustenance from land thus inequitably held, we must, according to this reasoning, be all in the happy condition stated. It is, perhaps, not to be wondered at if, after this, Mr. Spencer should find it necessary to observe, that the circumstances of savage life render the principles of abstract morality inapplicable;' but in reply to such an extraordinary assertion it is only natural to ask, Can a system or principle of morality be really abstract' which is not applicable to life under any circumstances? Fallacy in reasoning which leads to such conclusions as these there certainly must be; and in this case the fundamental error does not appear very difficult to find.

It is not necessary here to do more than point out one very large assumption, involving a great deal more than can possibly be granted without proof-that all men born into the world have equal rights' to the use of it. Later on we shall have to consider-but even then only very briefly-how impossible it

is to isolate thus the 'rights' of any given generation, or to regard it as separated from that which preceded it; and how equally impossible and immoral it would be for the children of the slothful and improvident really to have' equal rights'-in the sense of possibilities of enjoymentwith those of the provident and diligent. But at present we may come at once to the primitive question. When one man 'mixes his labour' with, let us say, an apple, he does so, on Mr. Spencer's own supposition, in virtue of the right to gra tify his desires, so long as he does not interfere with the similar grati fication of other men. Accordingly, desiring an apple, he gathers one. The point is, does he, in doing this, infringe the common rights of other men? Mr. Spencer argues that he does; and the root of all the false reasoning which follows appears to lie in the assumption that it is this apple to which all other men have an equal right, and which, according to 'abstract morality,' he ought not therefore to take without their consent. We need hardly point out the absurdities which would followhow, for instance, if industry and providence conferred no superior rights, it would be difficult to argue against the very beasts claiming 'in equity' equal rights' with mankind; or how, on this supposition, the very civilisation under which alone Mr. Spencer considers the principles of abstract morality' to be applicable, since its very root is that instinct of claiming property the rightfulness of which is here denied, would involve the self-contradiction of making men moral by the practice of immorality-because it will readily be perceived that the case is really not as assumed. What other men have an equal right to is the equal gratification of their desire for an apple, should they feel such desire; and hence, so long as there are apples enough, their rights are not violated at all. In this way, Locke's

proviso that there be sufficient for the rest, which moves Mr. Spencer's ridicule by its indefiniteness, becomes perfectly clear and logical; and is, moreover, of special practical value to our subject, as showing how the State may become possessed of certain supreme rights which qualify and control private rights of property, without in general superseding or violating them. To some extent the process may be illustrated thus:

Supposing a shipwrecked crew to land upon an uninhabited island of only limited capacity to support life, with the intention of only remaining there for a few days to recruit, and then leaving in their boat for the main land; the fruits of the island would be gathered and eaten by individuals without question, and no one's right to eat what he had thus gathered would be challenged. The gratification of any man's desire would not interfere with the similar gratification of others; and hence, even according to Mr. Spencer's axiom, when rightly interpreted, no common rights would be violated. But while in this condition, supposing their boat also to be suddenly wrecked or lost by an untoward accident, and a continued residence thus made necessary, all this might become changed. The rights of individuals to gratify their desires would now be qualified by the supreme rights of the community; and the necessity of husbanding the scanty resources of the place would rigorously demand that individual rights should be held in abeyance, since the gratification of individual appetites might imperil not only the equal gratification, but the very lives of the rest. This is, of course, an extreme case; but it illustrates well the principle on which, in certain contingencies, a community may take into its own hands the rights of every individual member of it, repaying each

for the sacrifice by guarding his own.

It cer

Hence we conclude that property in land is not of itself necessarily inequitable or immoral. tainly was not immoral at first, when there was ample land for all; and if not immoral or inequitable then, it is impossible to see how it could afterwards become so, of itself and apart from special conditions, which may convert almost any positive act, generally moral, into a breach of morality. It will now be well, however, to consider the origin and nature of Property in Land, and its modification by various circumstances inseparably connected with it, rather more particularly.

II.

IN entering upon this inquiry we started with the axiom, that as all necessaries of life are derived directly or indirectly from the soil, and human labour applied to the productive power of the earth is the means by which they are evolved from it, so the end of all labour is really to procure for each man a proportionate share of those products. (We say a share of those products, rather than a share of the earth itself, because-obvious as the distinction is-it guards us at once from many errors of the Communistic school, which otherwise would have to be met with direct argument.) But each man's share will vary, and perhaps may vary very widely. So great is the bounty of nature, that in a sparsely populated country a quantum of labour very far below that which he is capable of performing will obtain for a man the means of subsistence from the soil. Anyone, therefore, who works daily longer or more skilfully than his fellows, will obtain in a given time-other things being equal-a greater share of the fruits of the earth; and should he thus within one year

obtain sufficient for two years, he may during the second year forbear to work or should his disposition or family affection impel him so to labour all his life, his son after him may be able to dispense with labour entirely. Hence from a very early period we have the acquisition of property, and its transmission to posterity; and that the possibility and recognition of both these is the strongest motive to exertion, and could not be interfered with without entailing the most disastrous results both to morality and to society itself, need not here be pointed out, but will be taken for granted. It is easy to It is easy to speak of every man born into the world having in equity equal rights to the use of this world,' but if by these rights are to be understood opportunities and possibilities of enjoyment, it is obvious how very early they must become differentiated. The man who did not labour on the piece of ground he might have enclosed and cultivated for his own wants, would not have an equal right to those fruits of the ground which can only be raised by tillage; and if by degrees all the available land became appropriated, in the end his family would and must reap the fruit of their progenitor's idleness or neglect. To attempt to overrule this law, in any way, is to come much nearer to Communism than may at first sight appear; for 'Capital' cannot be regarded as distinct from 'Labour it is surplus labour stored up by the provident for the future use of themselves or families; and to interfere with the transmission to posterity of such surplus, or to put-if they really could be put-the children of the idle and improvident on the same level as those of the provident and industrious, would only work social ruin, and take away the greatest stimulus to all healthy civilization.

The only fallacy it seems neces

sary to guard against before proceeding further is that of regarding trade,' or profit, or buying or selling themselves, as if any of them were something with which labour had nothing to do. The tradesman or merchant is simply an individual who directs his labour to the conveying of commodities from the man whose labour immediately produces or helps to produce them, to the man who uses or consumes them. At first every man would manufacture his own tools for use in agriculture or the chase; but if one excelled in the making of tools, it would early be the case that he would direct his labour entirely to the production of these, thus supplying two neighbours with more efficient implements; whilst they on their part, applying their labour entirely to the soil, would share the total produce between the three. Now if the respective parties live far apart, rather than expend their own labour in carrying and fetching their respective productions, it may enable them to divide more ultimately to each if they give a fourth man his share of the produce to do the carrying for them; and this principle may obviously be indefinitely extended throughout the community. It may further be extended even to nations; as, for instance, where one nation has not enough land to produce food for its own numbers; such nation only forms part of a still larger community in which the balance is redressed by the purchase of corn in exchange for its manufactured goods, and being only an example on a larger scale of that division of labour which is found to be for the profit of all. And hence we see still more clearly than at first, that however apparently remote the connexion may become between any individual and the soil, the sum of the fruits of that soil, less the amount expended on seed or other fructifying agencies, repre