> 
 
 REESE; LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 Deceived SEP IS 1893 
 
 +_ *. s-, * . 
 
 ^Accessions No. 
 
SYMPOSIUM 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 BY 
 
 AUBERON HERBERT, 
 SYDNEY OLIVIER. 
 ROBERT SCOTT MOFFAT. 
 LIEUT.-COL. W. L. R. SCOTT. 
 HENRY W. LEY. 
 
 WORDSWORTH DONISTHORPE. 
 J. C. SPENCE. 
 MICHAEL FLURSCHEIM. 
 HERBERT SPENCER. 
 J. B. LAWRENCE. 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 J. H. LEVY, 
 
 Late Lecturer on Logic and Economics at the BirJcbeck Institution 
 and the City of London College. 
 
 LONDON : 
 1 T. FISHER UNWIN, 
 
 PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 
 
 1890. 
 
PRINTED BY PEWTRESS & Co., 
 LITTLE QUEBN STREET, LONDON, W.C. 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 MY part in the following Symposium has been 
 little more than the choice of the disputants and 
 passing it through the press. With the exception of 
 the ninth, the whole of the essays were written 
 specially for this Symposium. Strictly speaking, 
 there are two Land Questions one of property and 
 one of tenure ; of which the first only is here dealt 
 with. My own views are sufficiently expressed in 
 the note on pp. 77-8, and in Mr. Lawrence's 
 contribution. 
 
 J. H. LEVY. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 AUBEBON HERBERT ... ... ... ... 1 
 
 SYDNEY OLIVIER ... ... ... ... 8 
 
 ROBERT SCOTT MOFFAT ... ... ... ... 18 
 
 LIEUT. -CoL. W. L. B. SCOTT ... ... ... 18 
 
 HENRY W. LEY ... ... ... ... 23 
 
 WORDSWORTH DONISTHORPE ... ... ... 83 
 
 J. C. SPENCE ... ... ... ... ... 41 
 
 MICHAEL FLURSCHEIM ... ... ... ... 45 
 
 HERBERT SPENCER ... ... ... ... 58 
 
 J. B. LAWRENCE ... ... ... ... 62 
 
 AUBERON HERBERT, reply ... ... ... 68 
 
 EKEATUM. 
 
 For "put," on page 76, line 14 from bottom, read 
 " putting." 
 
SYMPOSIUM 
 
 ^ ON 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION, 
 
 I. BY AUBEEON HEEBEET. 
 
 I WOULD urge 
 1. That neither as an abstract matter of right, nor 
 as a matter of practical convenience, ought land to be treated 
 as the common property of the nation. 
 
 The abstract right. 
 
 The land either belongs to the whole nation or it does not. 
 If it belong to the whole nation, then it is the whole nation 
 (minus nobody) who must decide upon the use of it. Such 
 decision cannot possibly be made by a majority, for a majority 
 is not the whole nation, and cannot by any exercise of 
 ingenuity be shown to bo the whole nation. Until a part 
 becomes equal to the whole, such ingenuity might as well 
 expend itself in twisting sand-ropes. It is in this matter 
 beside the point to say that a majority represents the whole 
 nation. A majority is itself, and nothing but itself, and it 
 is only by a fiction or convention which fiction can have 
 no application where we are philosophically discussing what 
 is claimed as an abstract and natural right that it can be 
 looked on as anything more than itself. A little accurate 
 thinking will be enough to explode this bubble. It may be 
 practically useful (or mischievous) on occasion to treat the 
 majority as the nation, but in philosophical questions a 
 majority cannot possibly be counted for more than what it 
 is a part of the nation. 
 
 If the land belong to the whole nation (say 100,000 
 persons), then every person has equal rights to it, and, 
 except by the consent of every person, the land must remain 
 free and open to all (which will be rather inconvenient as 
 regards cultivation, building, &c.). If the 100,000 persons 
 agree to modify their rights, they are, of course, able 
 to do so ; but as soon as there are 100,100 persons, all 
 
such arrangements must be re- sanctioned or modified 
 according to the decision of the 100,100 persons ; otherwise 
 the land would not belong to the whole nation then 
 existing. 
 
 This is not to be looked upon as a mere argument used for 
 dialectical purposes. It is only our excessively loose way of 
 thinking which leads us to confound things essentially 
 different like the larger part and ihe whole. 
 
 If the proposition is to be that the land belongs to the 
 majority, we come at once to a proposition that admits of 
 practical application ; but it will require some courage to 
 assert, as a Divine law, or as a natural right, that a certain 
 unstated proportion of the 100,000 (say 50,000 + 1, or 
 75,000?) have full rights over the land, and the remainder 
 have none, except such as the larger portion concede to 
 them. 
 
 In truth, whoever claims that the land belongs to the 
 majority has, before he arrives at this stage, to crack an 
 impossible nut, and show either that the part is the same as 
 the whole, or that the land, of natural right, belongs to 
 A., B., and C., but not, of natural right, to D. Whoever 
 claims the land for the majority must first establish that 
 which is impossible to establish, that the majority has some 
 rights besides those of force. 
 
 Having said this, I need hardly speak of such a proposal as 
 Mr. George's tax from an abstract or philosophical point of 
 view. The truth is that when we assert that the land 
 belongs to the whole people of natural right, and that the 
 majority may in consequence proceed to tax every person 
 who holds it, we are making sad havoc of logic and the 
 consistent use of words. If the whole nation of 100,000 
 persons has a right to the land, then has A. T^UO r ig nt to 
 it ; and by what possible authority can he be deprived of this 
 right, and given in exchange for his right the i^oVon P art 
 of an unknown something provided out of a tax levied off the 
 land ? Suppose he does not want this unknown something ; 
 suppose he positively dislikes it ; or even suppose he cares 
 nothing one way or the other ; in any case by what authority 
 can you commute a right into something quite distinct from 
 the right ? A right is by the very term used a thing which 
 inherently belongs to the person concerned, and cannot be 
 taken from him or converted into something else without his 
 consent. The truth is, Mr. George and those who go with 
 him build up a right in order to gain the admission that they 
 wish to gain, and as soon as it is secured, conveniently ignore 
 their own handiwork altogether. 
 
8 
 
 Yet another difficulty. Assume this right of the people to 
 the land, and the question has to be answered, what people 
 to what land ? Is there any reason to suppose that 
 imaginary geographical boundaries will limit the right so set 
 up ? Why are those who live in unfavourable districts and 
 who are densely crowded in their own areas to leave the 
 fiiore attractive spots of the earth to other peoples ? 
 The right of the majority is simply and absolutely let 
 this be clearly seen by those who have not yet seen 
 it the right of the strongest, and when once that law 
 is established, there will be, for example, a Russian and a 
 Chinese land-question as against other nations, as well 
 as a question between different parts of the same nation. 
 The philosophy of the fragment will be the philosophy of 
 the whole. 
 
 Now let me look at some more special considerations 
 affecting the abstract right. Some of my own friends 
 who are Individualists whilst strongly defending private 
 property in all other things, abandon it in land. I 
 am now speaking as an Individualist to Individualists, 
 and will try to point out the contradiction involved in such 
 a position. 
 
 1. A certain field is claimed as national property, whilst the 
 crop growing on it is admitted to be private property. But 
 a field is not an abstract entity ; it contains certain very 
 concrete and valuable materials, such as lime, potash, soda, 
 ammonia, phosphoric acid, &c., but so also does the crop 
 contain these very same valuable materials, all of which come 
 from the field, and what has been added to the field as manure. 
 Therefore actually part of the field, and generally the very best 
 part of the field, is actually embodied in the crop, so much so, 
 that as we all know, crop after crop is often taken from rich 
 virgin soil until the soil, without rest or manure, can yield no 
 more. Now, can a more imaginary line between State 
 property and private property be invented ? Are we to 
 believe that so many of those potash, phosphorus, &c., 
 molecules belong to the individual, and so many to the 
 nal'on ; or is it only the large and comparatively worthless 
 part, made up of insoluble silica, &c., that belongs to the 
 nation ? If so, what a good chemical education we ought 
 to have to be able to distinguish national property from 
 ndividual property, and national rights from individual 
 rights ! 
 
 We are therefore in this strange perplexity. Almost 
 everything (we must except water products and the part 
 played by air in production) that we use conies from this 
 
national property, land ; but from having been national 
 property yesterday, they, the very same molecules, are 
 changed into private property to-day. I, A. B., cannot 
 possibly own the molecules as long as they are in the field, 
 but by some metaphysical hocus-pocus, I become their rightful 
 owner as soon as I can draw them out of the field. If I am 
 a clever chemist and know certain ways of drawing them out 
 by means of my crops, I am within my rights ; should I still 
 be within my rights if I took a horse and cart and carried off 
 some of this national property in the shape of a cart-load of 
 soil ? Now if with the Socialist we say all things belong to, 
 all things are at the disposition of the majority, the molecules 
 in the field, and equally the molecules out of the field, we 
 are saved a great deal of mental difficulty, and whether we 
 approve or not, we can recognise a certain consistency in the 
 claim ; but short of the Socialist position, there seems very 
 little terra firma for the land-nationalizer. 
 
 Now look at other objections of a less theoretical character 
 from the individual point of view ; and I here claim as 
 Individualistic that which can be shown to inhere logically 
 in the system of individual rights as opposed to majority 
 rights. The Individualist objects to great Government 
 departments, to things managed by official inspection, or 
 managed on one general plan, or from a central office, to 
 huge sums of money collected and then expended by the 
 Government, to the settlement of economical questions by 
 votes in the House of Commons, to interferences with 
 freedom of contract, and all forms of Earthly-Providence 
 Administration, things which would be the almost necessary 
 results of land ownership by the State. If it were replied, 
 that land might be let by the State, without favour of any 
 kind shown to anybody, but straight off to the highest bidder, 
 then you would have the present system only complicated 
 by many disadvantages. For how many years is it to be 
 let ? Is a man to be turned out at the end of his life to 
 make room for another? How are improvements to be 
 valued ; and is the State-rent never to be raised the raising 
 of it being in some cases the equivalent to the confiscation of 
 improvements ? This is but a very small sample of the many 
 unanswerable questions which the State would have to 
 decide questions, which the thorough-going Individualist 
 sees that the State is thoroughly incompetent, morally or 
 intellectually, to settle. 
 
 The Individualist believes in the power of voluntary 
 association to solve many present difficulties, and to win 
 many future victories, bnt if this is to be so, associations 
 
5 
 
 on the voluntary principle must have no impediments thrown 
 in their way. Difficulties in the ownership of land would 
 be a serious impediment. There are already signs that 
 co-operative societies are likely to become owners of land, 
 and it is most important not in any way to check such 
 an important movement. One may believe that labour 
 associations would gradually become owners of land with 
 the) most happy results to themselves. 
 
 The Individualist has a strong aversion from taxes. He 
 believes that no yearly burdens should be compulsorily thrown 
 on the individual. But a system of State land would force 
 upon every holder of land such yearly pajonent, taking from 
 him his present choice of investing his savings in land, and 
 being free from annual payment during the rest of his life. 
 A man advanced in life knows what he does when he invests 
 100 in land and incurs no future liability; he does not 
 quite know, with the uncertainties of life and strength before 
 him (and the uncertainties of other forms of investment), 
 what he undertakes when he agrees to pay, say, 4 or 5 
 a year for the rest of his life. I look upon freehold land 
 as the investment specially fitted for the poor man. He is 
 an excellent judge in this one matter of what he buys ; he 
 cannot lose it through the fraud or incapacity of others. He 
 can almost always improve its value. To deprive the small 
 man of this investment is greatly to depress the qualities that 
 belong to Individualism. 
 
 The Individualist dislikes all strengthening of the Govern- 
 ment ; all throwing of unnecessary functions upon the 
 Government. He sees that whenever a matter is devolved 
 upon the Government, about which opinions are sharply 
 divided, that then the desire to get hold of the Govern- 
 ment machine becomes stronger amongst different sections, 
 party spirit burns more fiercely, political bribes are more 
 recklessly offered, and the Individualistic temper becomes 
 impossible. 
 
 Moreover, believing strongly in private property, he 
 disbelieves in every form of State confiscation. It is a 
 violent thing to take the land ; it is a yet more violent thing 
 not to pay its full value. But how can it be paid for ? The 
 Individualist, who understands his creed, has a horror of State 
 debts and the sums raised to pay for these debts. His idea of 
 the individual's prosperity, is that of a free man, with 
 the minimum of artificial restraints and of compulsory 
 obligations ; but if the State is to own the land honestly, 
 an enormous addition to debt must be made, and Indi- 
 vidualism is again pushed far to the rear. (I do not 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
speak of a case like Ireland, where having deserted the free 
 trade system and got into entanglement upon entanglement, 
 the remedy must necessarily be one that is faulty in 
 itself). 
 
 The Individualist hates exceptions. If he is to preach the 
 doctrine of the sanctity of private property about the leg of 
 mutton, the coat, the oak beam, that have all come from the 
 land, he wants some very convincing reason to show him 
 why the land from which they have come should not be 
 squally sacred. He knows that private property, like every 
 human thing, has its evil as well as its good ; he knows that 
 the landowner may abuse his power, but so also may the 
 flour merchant, who makes one in a flour-corner. Yet, 
 just as this last possibility is not sufficient to frighten him 
 into any Socialistic arrangement about flour, so neither should 
 it about land. The land of all countries tends more and 
 more to become one whole, and as the power and oppor- 
 tunities of the individual are multiplied by increased locomo- 
 tion, fuller information, improved voluntary association, the 
 hypothesis that has done so much service of the landlord 
 not allowing any person to dwell on his land, fades into 
 comparative insignificance. In fact, the violent and aggressive 
 use by any landlord of his power, would (unless it were made 
 an excuse for legislation) do probably more good than harm, 
 as it would strengthen the desire for freehold ownership. 
 The Individualist who is often also an evolutionist sees 
 only one true system. The free and open market is the one 
 system that does most justice amongst iodividuals, being the 
 only impartial institution that exists, and at the same time is 
 the only system that gives the evolutionary forces free play. 
 As regards the individual, he who most desires land, and 
 makes most sacrifices to get it, and is most fitted to manage 
 it, gets it and keeps it under this system ; whilst as regards the 
 future, it is the only system which allows new conditions to 
 arise freely and without violence. If the new circumstances 
 lend themselves to peasant proprietorship, peasant pro- 
 prietorship will come into existence ; if to co-operative 
 holding of land, then co-operative holding of land will arise. 
 Whoever destroys the free and open market in land or in 
 any other matter, proclaims himself wiser than his unborn 
 fellow-men, a sort of infallible prophet about the wants of the 
 world, and calmly refuses to believe that men would know 
 their own wants better than he does, and fulfil them better. 
 He does his little best to stand in the path of the evolutionary 
 forces forces, which eventually will have their way, 
 whatever may be the obstacles momentarily opposed to 
 
them, and whoever it may be, individuals or nations, that 
 they may crush in doing so. 
 
 I scarcely need add that at present we have not a truly 
 free and open market for land. All artificial impediments 
 should be removed, and no/new ones invented. At the same 
 time, all compulsory burdens should be got off the land. 
 Tithes should be redeemed on easy terms ; and all rates and 
 taxes made voluntary. It is these burdens that prevent 
 the small man buying land. They are a constant terror to 
 him. As happens in so many other cases, it is the State 
 itself which causes the special mischief, which it then tries 
 to remedy in some awkward, ungainly, and mischievous way 
 of its own. 
 
II. BY SYDNEY OLIVIER. 
 
 SECRETARY OF THE FABIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 THE contributor to such a discussion as the " Symposium 
 on the Land Question," opened by Mr. Auberon 
 Herbert, is always under strong temptation to aim at continuity 
 in the treatment of the subject, by criticising his precursors' 
 views and exhibiting his own in the form of counter- 
 arguments. But this course is only profitable when there is 
 fundamental agreement as to the method of reasoning which 
 will be accepted as appropriate and cogent. Now, although 
 a Socialist, writing for a journal professedly " Individualist," 
 must naturally feel some doubt of his commanding entire 
 agreement as to the most fruitful method of investigating 
 " the ethical basis of rights of property;" he may, perhaps, 
 take it for granted that most of those who have devoted any 
 attention to sociology as a positive science would reject, as 
 entirely unprofitable and unreliable, the whole of the argument 
 of the first column and a half of Mr. Herbert's article. The 
 assertion that no satisfactory conclusion either for, or against, 
 any particular form, or limitation, of private property, can 
 be arrived at by d priori deductions from notions of 
 " abstract right," is sufficiently justified by the fact that, by 
 precisely the same method, Mr. Herbert Spencer* arrives at 
 a conclusion precisely the opposite of Mr. Auberon Herbert's, 
 and demonstrates the iniquity of private property in land. 
 Anyone who has ever exercised himself in the application of 
 that method to sociology, or who has studied the amusing 
 variety of the results of its application, from Pythagoras 
 downwards, will be aware of its versatility, and would 
 probably acknowledge not only, as does Mr. F >rbert, that 
 t" short of the Socialist position there seems very little terra 
 firma for the land nationalize^" but that no claim of natural 
 rights of private property of any kind can resist the solvent of 
 judicious dialectic. That ultimate refuge of the Individualist, 
 the right of a man over his own body and capacities (which 
 is itself a large assumption, not necessarily admitted by 
 Socialists) cannot be the foundation of rights of property 
 
 * " Social Statics," Chapter ix., and passim. 
 
 f See Fabian Tract, No. 7. " Land and Capital." Freethought 
 Publishing Co., 63, Fleet Street, E.G. 
 
9 
 
 over external things whose prior material existence v/as a 
 condition of the possibility of his using and modifying them. 
 The method, we repeat, is barren, and we may leave Mr. 
 Herbert's arguments therein to their own decay. 
 
 Turning to his " objection* ,(to land nationalization) of a 
 a less theoretical character," we find that they are all 
 presented as deductions from what " the Individualist" likes 
 or dislikes, or from some " system of individual rights," 
 whichras perhaps common ground for Mr. Herbert and our 
 editor, but which cannot be claimed as universally familiar 
 and acknowledged. But the method is still entirely deductive. 
 For instance, "the Individualist has a strong aversion from 
 taxes." So have a great many other people, on grounds 
 entirely discreditable and unworthy of free individuals. " He 
 believes that no yearly burdens should be compulsorily thrown 
 on the individual." So thought J. J. Kousseau about his 
 babies, and threw them on the streets. What we want to 
 know is whether the social organization which necessitates 
 the payment of taxes and the bearing of certain other burdens 
 does or does not increase individual freedom in other respects 
 to an extent which more than compensates. It is of no use 
 to refer us to " the Individualist " when we are- considering 
 whether the Individualist is right or wrong in his judgment, 
 or his prejudice, on a particular question of practical life. 
 When Mr. Herbert does come down to this level, he tells us 
 such tales as that " the individual who most desires land, 
 . . . . and is most fitted to manage it, gets it and keeps 
 it under this system ; " and though others of his arguments are 
 somewhat more cogent, fuller light will probably be thrown 
 on the Socialist case against private property in land by a 
 brief re-statement of the whole position than by further 
 examination of Mr. Herbert's hypothetical objections. 
 
 Avoiding, as of doubtful profit, any attempt to deduce a 
 theory of property rights from any postulate as to the 
 fundamental rights of individuals or societies, we are left free 
 to criticise them (1) statically regarded, in respect of their 
 utility, and (2) historically, by examination of their origin 
 and course of development. It is, perhaps, not necessary to 
 protest against the assumption, sometimes made, that there 
 is a fundamental difference between Individualists and 
 Socialists, and that he who adopts the former name must 
 necessarily advocate the utmost possible sub-division in the 
 ownership and administration of material riches. No 
 Individualist, it may be assumed, actually identifies personality 
 with personalty, or believes that a man's life consists in the 
 abundance of the things that he has. He regards freedom 
 
10 
 
 of self- development as the summum bonum for every man, 
 material riches as part of the indispensable furniture of the 
 conditions of freedom, and the institution of private property 
 in certain forms of riches as a useful arrangement for ensuring 
 to each individual the undisturbed command of more or less 
 of such furniture. Every Individualist is in practice a 
 Communist in respect of his command of much of his material 
 commodities : there is natural Communism in all such 
 advantages as cannot be monopolised or made subject to 
 private ownership ; there is State Communism in roads, 
 bridges, national defence, which most Individualists approve, 
 and in an increasing number of other advantages which they 
 approve more or less, according to the austerity of their 
 Individualist faith. Now, the institution of private property 
 in things which can be monopolised implies the existence of 
 the State as a condition of its maintenance and defence. 
 Private property in any developed society implies a 
 judicial system and a police to define and protect it. 
 That is to say, as soon as the transition from natural 
 Communism to private property begins, the transition from 
 natural Communism to State Communism, i.e., to the 
 common enjoyment of material advantages guaranteed by 
 institutions resting on social consent and co-operation, begins 
 concurrently. The Individualist, nowadays, is up to his 
 waist in Socialism as a mere condition of finding standing 
 ground at all. The actual controversy between him and the 
 Socialist is now engaged about the question, " what further 
 adjustment of property form in modern industrial societies 
 will best guarantee conditions of equal freedom to all citizens?" 
 It is a question purely of utility, and is not to be answered 
 except by consideration of practical advantages. It is no use 
 for Mr. Herbert to demonstrate the absurdity of majority 
 rule, and the impossibility of public ownership of land 
 (which, by the way, has been found possible in 
 all parts of the world in all ages), so long as it 
 remains the fact that the actual institutions of the State 
 which are the guarantee of its private ownership have 
 no support whatever except in the will of the majority, 
 which will only be exercised to maintain such institutions as 
 appear to conduce to the greatest happiness of the greatest 
 number. The Socialist asserts that private property in land 
 (inter alia) does not conduce to this end. Individualists 
 sometimes tell him (in spite of Lord Bram well's contradiction) 
 that private property in land does not exist in England. 
 This is a mere quibble, bu*- it may be accepted, as more 
 clearly defining the issue. Assuming then that private 
 
v 
 
 11 
 
 ownership of land is only apparent and on sufferance, the 
 Socialist contends that the private appropriation of Rent has 
 a very real existence, and that it is socially mischievous. 
 Rent is the effect of natural monopoly. Its nature and the 
 laws determining its amoufct have been so thoroughly 
 analysed by the economists that it may be assumed that there 
 will be no serious dispute of the proposition that private 
 landowning enables the proprietor to take from the persons 
 occupied in productive industry upon any land an amount of 
 the produce of their industry approximately equal in value to 
 the advantages of that land as a field for industry over the 
 worst land on which labour can obtain its normal competitive 
 wages. The effect of landlordism is to equalise for agriculturists 
 and miners the advantages of special qualities in the soil, to 
 equalise for tradesmen the advantages of position for business 
 purposes, &c. If the landlord does not exact the rack rent, 
 the tenant of the favoured situation himself enjoys the 
 advantage of his monopoly of position. Now these advantages 
 are plainly not due to any activity of the tenant, far less of 
 the landlord. They are due either to natural elements in the 
 soil or to geographical position, and they are made valuable 
 or profitable by the presence and development of society 
 about them. The effect of the private appropriation 
 of rent is to tax society of this joint product for 
 the benefit of a few individuals. Where enormous 
 prizes are drawn in this lottery of exploitation, as in the 
 case of town lands, other people besides the economists 
 are now beginning to see this. Not even the breaking up of 
 these large properties, and a greater subdivision of owner- 
 ship would remedy the evil. Individuals would still enjoy, to 
 the exclusion of their fellows, the advantages of natural 
 monopolies. Those advantages can only be distributed to 
 the common advantage of the society to which they are due 
 by the application of Rent to the provision of utilities which 
 can be communally enjoyed, a principle which is recognised 
 in practice by the rates already laid on rent for roads, 
 lighting, sanitation, police, education, &c. We need not 
 even assert that the facts that Rent is a social and not an 
 individual product, and that it constitutes a toll in England 
 of some two hundred millions annually,* paid by the workers 
 to persons who render no service towards its production, 
 give sufficient reason for its confiscation. We can meet the 
 Individualist on common ground. He objects, says Mr. 
 Herbert, to the payment of taxes. Well, here is a tax 
 
 * See Fabian Tract, No. 5. " Facts for Socialists." Freethought 
 Publishing Co,, 63, Fleet Street, E.G. 
 
12 
 
 which he does not seem to know that he pays, but which we may 
 all very reasonably object to paying. The question is, whether 
 he prefers the system under which he pays both this tax of 
 rent for his landlord's consumption, and his own taxes to the 
 State for the advantages which the State guarantees, to one 
 under which he would pay his rent for the provision of those 
 advantages and be freed from all other taxation altogether ? 
 
 Historically, private property has not originated in any 
 metaphysical illumination as to the rights of the individual. 
 It was founded simply on the power to get and keep ; it has 
 been progressively extended and limited in accordance with 
 the general convenience of such individuals as could make 
 their power felt in social institutions. Private property in 
 land superseded early Communism because of its obvious 
 economic advantages for those who could share in the 
 distribution. Private property in economic Bent is of no 
 obvious advantage to anybody but the small minority who 
 own large estates and who have a chance of a prize in the 
 lottery of unearned increment. As soon as it is perceived 
 that the communalisation of Rent, by increasing the real 
 wages of the worker, and the enrolment in useful industry 
 of a class now parasitic, will improve the environment of 
 the average man, and thereby increase his freedom, so soon 
 will the people, now able to make their power felt in social 
 institutions, proceed to undo, in the interests of the greatest 
 number, some of the legislative work that has been done in 
 the interests of classes. No other principle can be found 
 to direct legislation. Property law has always been the 
 expression of the economic interests of the efficient members 
 of society. Its moderating ethical principles have been 
 chiefly the common precepts of justice among equals, 
 teaching that each man must recognise for others the claims 
 which he makes for himself, and that law should aim at 
 establishing conditions under which equal good-will and 
 industry will ensure an equal reward for citizens of 
 the same status. Socialists would abolish the system by 
 which one man may claim to be idle while others must 
 work to support him ; they would equalise the reward of 
 equal industry by communalising that Rent which represents 
 the advantage of monopoly. They regard these as preliminary 
 conditions for giving true Individualism a chance, and they 
 have no respect whatever for the professed Individualist who 
 regards the claim on himself, that he shall aid in maintaining 
 such conditions, as a tax and a burden to be shirked, while he 
 claims State protection for the private property which only 
 the State has enabled him to get. 
 
13 
 
 III. BY EOBEET SCOTT MOFFAT. 
 
 MR. AUBERON HERBERT has adequately shown the 
 crassity of the notion that land can be inalienable 
 common property, and that individuals may take from it 
 whatsoever they please, and make it private property. I 
 shall leave in his able hands the defence of private property, 
 premising only that the right of property, whether in land or 
 in other things, rests, in my opinion, primarily on the 
 instinct of each individual to appropriate whatsoever he finds 
 useful to him ; and shall deal in the brief space allotted to 
 me with the utility of private property, upon which my view 
 may possibly be somewhat divergent from his. 
 
 In approaching the theme I find myself face to face with 
 prejudices which have been fostered by generations of 
 economical writers. I have to complain, in particular, that 
 the leading English school of Political Economy, that of 
 Adam Smith, has done great injustice to the institution of 
 private property in land. Adam Smith himself speaks of 
 it sneeringly in this wise : " As soon as the land of any 
 country has all become private property, the landlords, like 
 all other men, love to reap where they have never sowed, 
 and demand a rent even for its natural produce." Book I., 
 chap. 6 ; see also chap. 11. Ricardo's theory of rent is 
 based on the assumption that the landlord, as such, is a mere 
 rent-receiver, and has no active function in the organization 
 of industry ; and on this theory John Stuart Mill has found a 
 basis for his theory of the unearned increment, and Mr. 
 Henry George for his theory of Land Nationalization. In 
 the scheme of throwing all taxes upon land, Mr. George was 
 preceded in this country by John Locke, the philosopher ; in 
 France, by Quesnay and his followers; and here, again, by 
 Dr. Chalmers ; but the first two of these not knowing, and 
 the last not believing in, the theory of Ricardo, did not 
 imagine that this was a "Land Gospel." They advocated 
 putting all taxes directly on land, because they held that 
 land paid them all already. 
 
 Adam Smith is the less excusable in his treatment of 
 property in land, because he had before him the work of 
 Quesnay, who clearly shows that property, in lanl, which 
 is the source of all other material property, is the physical 
 
14 
 
 basis of individual liberty, and consequently of marriage and 
 of civilized society. Had land ever been inalienable common 
 property, no private property in any material thing could ever 
 have existed, and community of goods necessarily excludes 
 individual responsibility, and would transfer the charge of 
 children from parents to the State. This is a fundamental, 
 and also a transcendent utility of private property. 
 
 To show the utility of the landlord as a functionary of the 
 industrial organization, it is necessary to get rid of the 
 notions instilled by Eicardo's theory of rent. Bicardo 
 defines Kent as " that portion of the produce of the earth 
 which is paid to the landlord for the use of the original and 
 indestructible powers of the soil." Rent, according to him, 
 again, is the surplus earned under any circumstances superior 
 to the most unfavourable " under which the quantity of 
 produce required renders it necessary to carry on the 
 production." Land of this last class, according to him, pays 
 no rent, but it pays a profit ; and the profit on this class of 
 land determines all other profits, consequently the profit 
 prevailing at any given time is an equal, or uniform rate ; 
 therefore " the laws which regulate the progress of rent are 
 widely different from those which regulate the progress of 
 profits, and seldom operate in the same direction." 
 
 These two definitions do not agree with each other. They 
 are both fictions, and the inference drawn from them in the 
 last sentence quoted is false. The land, to begin with, has 
 no indestructible powers. It is capable of being improved 
 or deteriorated by use, and the tenant acquires the use of it 
 as it is. No rent is paid for the use of the original powers 
 of the soil. Rent is always paid for the use of the land as 
 it is, improved or unimproved. Both definitions assume 
 that rent accrues without the performance of any function 
 whereby it is earned. This also is a fiction. The man who 
 hires land does not become its owner. The landlord retains 
 his ownership, and it is for performing the functions of 
 ownership that he receives Rent. What are the functions of 
 ownership ? First, to guard the land against intrusion, and 
 to maintain the right of the owner or his representative to 
 its fruits ; secondly, to procure and maintain tenants capable 
 of cultivating it to advantage ; thirdly, to maintain or improve 
 the condition of the land, whether directly, or by agreement 
 with the tenants. Finally, Ricardo's distinctive law of Rent 
 is also a fiction. Ricardo speaks of the " land last entered 
 upon," or as he more significantly says in the passage quoted 
 above, the least favourable land " rendered necessary " to 
 raise the "produce required," as determining both rent and 
 
15 
 
 profit. I have repeatedly asked, Is the land last entered 
 upon all of the same value, if not, which part of it determines 
 Bent and Profit ? The only answer we get to this question 
 from Ricardo is that it is the land rendered necessary to 
 raise the produce required. /But by whom is this produce 
 required ? Not by the producers, but by the population 
 generally. Now no demand of the population, whether of 
 landlords or of labourers, for produce, however urgent, will 
 causi it to be produced unless the demand raises the price 
 so as to give a profit to the producers in proportion to the 
 demand. Yet Ricardo holds that with the increase of this 
 demand, as production is forced on to poorer land, profit of 
 production, not only on that land, but on all produce declines, 
 while rent, absorbing the entire margin above this reduced 
 profit, continually increases. 
 
 It is not true that there is a fixed rate of profit, or that all 
 profit is determined by the profit on a certain class of land. 
 It is not true that production is forced on directly by the 
 wants of the people. It is forced on by the speculation of 
 producers, seeking to realise a profit from these wants. Nor, 
 although the stimulus will decline as profit grows inadequate, 
 is there any such fixed standard of profit as Ricardo sets up. 
 Land is often cultivated at a loss, and all other production is 
 carried on at a loss, because producers are not upon an 
 equality, and new comers have to make sacrifices to attain a 
 paying level. It is advantage of circumstance and position 
 that determines profit as well as rent ; and the graduation of 
 such advantages is quite as great in the one case as in the 
 other. Wages also are differentiated by skill, strength, or 
 fertility, reputation, situation, and other conditions, and if 
 they were not usually advanced by the Capitalist they would 
 share in the positive losses of rent and profit. There is, 
 therefore, no foundation for the distinction which Ricardo 
 draws between the nature and laws of Rent and Profit. Rent, 
 Profit and Wages are all determined by one law, commonly 
 called the law of Supply and Demand, which has been 
 disintegrated and degraded by the theories of Ricardo and 
 John Stuart Mill. The true theory of Rent is that the 
 aggregate surplus over cost of the produce of land 
 is divided between the landlord and farmer according 
 to the demand on either side for the co-operation of the 
 other, modified, as in all cases of bargain-making, by the 
 respective knowledge of the market of the parties concerned, 
 and their respective keenness in making bargains. The 
 profit of the farmer of the good land is not determined by 
 the profit of the farmer of bad land. The owner of good 
 
1C 
 
 land wants a highly skilled tenant, and he pays for him 
 accordingly. The owner of bad land cannot afford to do so, 
 unless he is prepared to incur a heavy loss. Therefore the 
 profit of the cultivator, like that of every other earner of 
 profit, depends on his rank, skill, reputation, and other 
 opportunities. 
 
 I regret that, as I have barely left myself space to state in the 
 most general terms the advantages of the system of separate 
 ownership, I must pass over the interesting speculations 
 suggested by the theories of J. S. Mill and Heury George. 
 
 The uniform course of industrial progress has been towards 
 the separation of functions and the increase in the scale of 
 production. This has everywhere increased the productiveness 
 of industry ; but, the advocates of peasant proprietary say 
 that land is an exception to this rule. They do not, indeed, 
 venture to affirm that cultivation on the small scale is equally 
 productive, relatively to the quantity of labour employed, 
 with production on the large. Their contention is that the 
 " magic of proprietorship " causes men to work with an energy 
 which hired labour does not inspire, and therefore they 
 advocate peasant-proprietorship as a means of doing away 
 with hired labour. But in this contention they condemn 
 themselves. It is not less degrading for men to be enslaved 
 by their own avarice than by the avarice of others ; ther. fore, 
 the economic measure of productiveness of industry is simply 
 the labour it costs. Moreover, these advocates forget that, 
 according to their own testimony, the abnormal exertions 
 they so much admire are inspired by the motive of acquiring 
 more property. The peasant- proprietor has no objection to 
 hired labour, except his inability to hire it. 
 
 If land, then, is to be cultivated on the large scale, it 
 would obviously lessen the liberty of the owner to get it 
 cultivated to the best advantage, if he were compelled to 
 cultivate it himself. He may be old, or inefficient, or 
 unskilled. It is also for the advantage of cultivation that 
 the owner should act through an agent. The owner may not 
 be a skilled estate manager ; but almost any one can find a 
 man of skill to take that, or any other post. Thus the land 
 being left free to the owner to do with as he pleases, naturally 
 gravitates into the best hands. 
 
 The interest of the public generally in the cultivation of 
 the land is singularly mistaken by popular sentiment. It is 
 thought that the landlord gets a great deal of money for doing 
 very little work, and that if he is strict in exacting rents, he 
 is a most unconscionable character, and worthy of general 
 reprobation. Now rent is determined by a natural economical 
 
17 
 
 law, which is not confined to land, but pervades all industry, 
 that each function is rewarded not according to the exertion 
 it costs, but according to its economical value in relation to 
 the joint result, as affecte^by time and circumstances. 
 Moreover rent is the natural capital for the improvement of 
 the land. The aggregate of rent undoubtedly grows with the 
 growth of population ; but not necessarily more than the 
 aggregate of profit and wages. Mr. George makes an 
 ingenious use, in relation to this question, of the abstractions 
 into which, after the method of Eicardo, he divides the 
 proceeds of production. But the proceeds of production 
 are not exhausted by the abstractions either of Ricardo, or 
 of Mr. George ; but only by Rent, Profit and Wages, direct 
 and indirect, in their most concrete which, in the case of 
 all of them, is a highly differentiated form. They include, 
 in respect to Profit and Wages, the gains of speculators, 
 which Mr. George serenely dismisses as " Spurious Capital ; *' 
 the wages of skilled artizans and professionals, including, 
 among others, the salaries of Lord Chancellors, Archbishops. 
 Opera Singers, &c. No grander delusion ever entered the 
 mind of man than that Land is a " natural monopoly," and 
 that Capital and Labour are not so. Land, Capital and 
 Labour are all monopolies when they, or any portions of 
 them, are scarce. And there is nothing more natural in any 
 one of these monopolies, than in either of the others. 
 Nothing can make rent excessive but excess of population, 
 and the excess of rent is then due to the high cost of 
 food, which would exist in the same circumstances under any 
 form of cultivation. 
 
 A large proportion of the population must live apart from 
 the land, and the more productive the land is, the larger will 
 this proportion be. To this section the division of profits 
 between landlords and farmers is of no concern, except as it 
 affects the productiveness of agriculture ; and it is well known 
 that laxity in exacting rent encourages laxity in cultivation. 
 Agricultural labourers have only the same concern as the 
 general public in this division of profits, and the farmers 
 themselves are protected by the need of their services. 
 
 From these considerations it will appear that the true 
 direction of Land Reform is to increase the liberty and 
 security of owners, precisely the opposite direction to that of 
 our recent legislation. 
 
18 
 
 IV. BY LIEUT.-COL. W. L. E. SCOTT. 
 
 IN answer to Mr. Auberon Herbert's remarks, I 
 would urge 
 
 That some land, " as an abstract matter of right," as well 
 " as a matter of practical convenience," is now and always 
 has been " treated as the common property of the nation." 
 I refer to the roads, and also to the land between high and 
 low water-marks where there are tides, which is absolutely, 
 or to a great extent, common property. 
 
 If we are to wait until the whole nation " minus nobody " 
 can decide upon the use of anything, we shall never come to 
 a decision, for the sick, prisoners, and many others, can 
 never be heard on any question ; and, even if all duly 
 qualified persons could settle a question, their decision could 
 not be considered as binding for more than the day after 
 that there would arise other persons duly qualified to demand 
 a modification of that settlement. 
 
 I agree generally with the paragraph beginning "If it" 
 (the land) " belong to the whole nation," &c. At the same 
 time, I cannot see how the whole nation " minus nobody " 
 can decide anything, for the reason above stated. 
 
 Mr. Herbert says, " This is not to be looked upon as a 
 mere argument used for dialectical purposes," but what that 
 means in this case I do not clearly understand. I suppose, 
 however, that in so saying he may desire (for one thing) to 
 anticipate the remark that what immediately follows in his 
 article would lead one to infer that there are no such things 
 as rights at all. 
 
 I cannot think that any one claims " that the land belongs 
 to the majority," and I have therefore nothing to say in reply 
 to Mr. Herbert's proposition to that effect. 
 
 As far as I can judge, the truth is that no one proposes 
 that the majority should, in consequence of the land belonging 
 to the whole people of inherent natural right, proceed to 
 tax every person who holds it, but what I understand, 
 " Mr. George and tbose who go with him " to urge, is that 
 the land is the property of the people and produces everything, 
 and that therefore the simplest way to obtain what may be 
 necessary for carrying on the government is to tax the land 
 
19 
 
 through its occupiers, who may be either a majority or a 
 minority of the people, each one who occupies land doing so 
 voluntarily. If the land were acknowledged as public 
 property, the right of each ttlember of the community in it 
 would still be inherent in him, and that right would not " be 
 taken from him and converted into something else without 
 his consent," each having an equal right (periodically) with 
 the rest of the nation to claim a share of the land for his 
 own use. 
 
 Mr. Herbert further says " a right by the very term used 
 is a thing which inherently belongs to the person concerned," 
 then how can " Mr. George and those who go with him " 
 build up a right in any one ? But however this may be, I 
 feel sure that Mr. Goorge and those who think with him do 
 not wish to gain any " admission," or " to ignore their 
 own handiwork ;" and I trust that others do not intentionally 
 misrepresent their views in order the more easily to establish 
 their own. He says further : " assume this right of the 
 people to the land, and the question has to be answered what 
 people to what land ? " The answer, I imagine, would be, 
 any of the people to that land which they chose to pay for. 
 
 There would be the choice between " unfavourable 
 districts " with low taxation, or rather with low bids for 
 them, and " attractive spots " at enhanced rates as at present ; 
 for the land being let to the highest bidder, its value would 
 be rightly appraised by the hirers, and there would be no 
 compulsion on any to live in a particular district. It seems 
 to me that the Russian and Chinese land questions have 
 little to do with us, and should such questions arise in the 
 future, no doubt our descendants will deal more wisely with 
 them than we seem to be able to do with our own land question. 
 Probably Mr. Herbert's Individualist friends " abandon 
 private property in land," because land is a gift of nature and 
 not a product of industry, and claim private property in 
 flour, because flour is not a gift of nature, but the result of 
 industry. 
 
 Like " a field," neither air nor water is " an abstract 
 entity," but each contains " certain valuable materials ;" yet 
 air and water are not, speaking broadly, private property, 
 and all freely consume them. We do not allow anyone to 
 take away our air, so to speak, in cart loads ; in other words 
 we do not let oar neighbours deprive the air of its molecules 
 further than may be convenient to the community, and 
 whether I may be " a clever chemist " or not, I shall not be 
 permitted to draw all the good out of the air either by 
 contaminating it or in any other way. So with the water. Of 
 
20 
 
 course a private trespass may be made on light, air, or 
 water ; i.e., each owner has a right to prevent his light, air, 
 or water being obstructed, but this fact seems only to prove 
 that these natural gifts are property to be used by the public 
 freely, but not to be abused to the injury of any. 
 
 As part of the land is public property ; as that part of the 
 sea which is near the land is claimed and acknowledged as 
 public property ; and as all air is public property, so far that 
 all may use but not abuse it ; perhaps Mr. Herbert will tell 
 us why these gifts of nature are so differently dealt with as 
 regards ownership ? If it is necessary, as Mr. Herbert 
 argues, that land should be private property, why should it not 
 be equally necessary for the public good that all other gifts of 
 nature should likewise be private property ? But as some 
 land, most of the water, and all the air are public property, 
 one may be excused if one doubts whether Mr. Herbert's 
 argument on the land question is conclusive. It is no reply 
 to the proposition that " any other gift of nature should be 
 private property if it is good that one of them, land, should be 
 so," to say that we cannot make air, and it would be difficult 
 to make water, private property. Such a reply would only 
 be an acknowledgment that we have the power of making 
 land private property, and, therefore, it is good to make it 
 so, which is another form of the sentiment " might is right ;" 
 at least most people would suspect such a reason for such an 
 opinion, and everybody would be doubtful whether the power 
 to make land private property had not biassed the judgment 
 of those who made it so in the belief that they were thus 
 guilty of no immoral act. 
 
 " We are, therefore, in this strange perplexity." Mr. 
 Herbert seems to mention air and water only to exclude 
 them from the possibility of becoming subject to a 
 claim of private right. But why ? The sea produces food ; 
 nothing could live without the " valuable materials " in the 
 air ; and why should it not be right and good for the com- 
 munity that they should be private property if it is better 
 that land, a gift of nature as they are, should be private 
 property? I, X. Y., " cannot possibly own" molecules as 
 long as they are in either the air or the water, but, " by 
 some metaphysical hocus pocus, I become their rightful 
 owner as soon as I can draw them " therefrom. I fancy 
 that however clever a chemist I might be, the public would 
 not allow me to monopolize the " molecules " of the air as 
 the private owner of land can monopolize those of the land. 
 It seems to me that there is very little terra firma for the 
 land ^-nationalizer. 
 
Mr. Herbert asks, if the land is lot to the highest bidder, 
 " for how many years is it to be let ? " That, it seems to 
 me, is a detail; at any rate, it might be let (if only by way 
 of experiment) for a specific term, according to the option of 
 the hirer, e.g., for his life if he so desired, and at a rent 
 fixed from time to time according to other biddings for land 
 in the neighbourhood of his plot. In other words, the State 
 should not be at liberty to take it from the hirer without his 
 consent, or at least without paying for improvements and 
 compensation for disturbance whilst he lived and paid the 
 dues in respect of his share. 
 
 Mr. Herbert asks, "How are improvements to be valued?" 
 I should reply, as they are now valued. A man who died 
 would be " turned out " by nature, and not by the State. 
 
 Mr. Herbert seems to be anxious about the poor, and 
 those advanced in life. A man advanced in life now makes 
 all his purchases and investments in the hope that he may 
 enjoy them in the future, or recoup himself in some way for 
 his outlay, whether his mode of investment be a payment 
 down, or so much a year, or otherwise. I do not see how 
 the fact of the land becoming public property could injure 
 such a man financially. The poor man could not possibly 
 lose his outlay through fraud or incapacity if the State were 
 the landowner instead of the individual. Mr. Herbert seems 
 to think that the poor man's money would be safer if he was 
 dealing with an individual for land than if he should deal 
 with the State. The fact of the land being public property 
 need not deprive anyone of a life interest in it, and I fail to 
 see why any period more extended than that should be 
 provided for. 
 
 Mr. Herbert says it is (and it may be) " a violent thing to 
 take the land," and " a yet more violent thing not to pay its 
 full value ;" but the most violent thing of all, as it appears to 
 me, is for an individual to claim as his what was the property 
 of all until it was confiscated for the few by kings or chiefs, 
 when the people were ignorant and weak, and at the 
 mercy of the more intelligent. I deny that it would 
 be dishonest to take back the land which was so taken 
 by force or fraud, at any rate whilst the rightful owners 
 (the people) are living ; and it would be perfectly just, in 
 my opinion, to do so when there can be no doubt as to the 
 fraudulent holding of the present owners, as is the case where 
 land originally granted by the Crown is still in the possession 
 of the descendants of those who received the grant. The 
 receivers must be held to have known that the Crown had 
 no right to give the land away. The Crown in such cases 
 
being the representative of the people, it cannot be supposed 
 that the latter assented to the gift of such land to anyone. 
 The people would not have been such fools as to assent to such 
 an arrangement ; and even if it be assumed that they would 
 have consented to gifts of land, it is quite impossible that they 
 would have exercised so little discrimination as to consent to 
 make their property over to the worthless favourites or 
 mistresses of their kings, or to the descendants of such. 
 
 Mr. Herbert says, further, " The Individualist hates 
 exceptions ; " but some exceptions he must accept, such as 
 free air and free light (gifts of nature). Why should not all 
 gifts of nature, including land, be exceptions ? Flour is not 
 an exception, because, as I said before, it is not a gift of 
 nature, but the product of man by his industry. 
 
 I fear that Mr. Herbert's dream of " a free and open 
 market for land " will not be realized whilst laud remains 
 private property ; for the individuals who own it will prevent 
 the " free and open market" for their property, and justly 
 so, in my opinion, if they are the rightful owners. The chief 
 impediment to " the free and open market for land," I 
 should say, is the private owner. 
 
 In conclusion, I would remark that the land was made 
 private property probably by a minority of the people ; 
 therefore no wrong will have been done when the same land 
 again becomes public property by the act of the majority 
 or of the whole nation ; to say nothing of its being 
 quite as just for a minority to restore it to its 
 original state as public property, as for a minority to have 
 made it private property. Anyhow, the whole nation, or a 
 majority or a minority of the nation made the land private 
 property in the first instance, and consequently the right of 
 the present private owners of land to it is not " inherent in 
 them." Mr. Herbert's definition of a right is, "a thing 
 which inherently belongs to the person concerned." If 
 therefore private owners of land obtained it by inheritance or 
 purchase from those who had no "inherent" right to it, 
 because it was to them or their ancestors a gift of the Crown, 
 or of the nation, or of a part of the nation, the right to hold 
 it never was and never can be (according to Mr. Herbert's 
 definition of a right) "inherent" in such private owners. 
 The " inherent " right of ownership must be in the original 
 holders (the people) and inseparable from them by any 
 " metaphysical hocus pocus." 
 
V. HENBY W. LEY. 
 
 LATE HON. SEC. OF THE LAND NATIONALIZATION 
 SOCIETY. 
 
 npO commence a reply to Mr. Herbert with complete assent 
 to his proposition looks like a contradiction. Seeing, 
 however, that he finds in " land common property " the 
 alternative to private property in it, and thinks there is 
 " very little terra firma for the Land-Nationalizer short of 
 the Socialist position," it will be to reply to him, to set forth, 
 as Land-Nationalizer and not Socialist (at any rate as 
 denned by Mr. Herbert), what I take to be the sound land- 
 nationalization position. The term "Land-Nationalizer" 
 and its congeners I accept for want of better, but do not 
 approve them. 
 
 Defining land as meaning not only the soil, but as 
 including all natural forces and conditions, the standing- 
 ground of the Land-Nationalizer, so far from being land- 
 common-property, is (1) that land is not property at all, 
 either common or individual ; and more, that it never can 
 become property ; (2) that the individual heritage of man, in 
 other words, what man, the individual, has abstract right to, 
 is (a) place-to- be-in on and (b) use of land, (because man 
 cannot otherwise exist) ; and (3) that the common heritage 
 of man is (a) that which of Nature exists in the land ; (b) 
 that which, irrespective of man, comes of natural forces ; 
 and (c) the value that accrues to land by increase of 
 population and general industry. 
 
 To this statement of the Land-Nationalizer's position, it is 
 only requisite, in respect of individual right, to add, that, in 
 a community, its exercise is necessarily bounded by equality 
 of right in all the members of the community ; to quote a 
 motto of this Journal, " either all persons have equal rights 
 or none has any " ; and, in respect of the common heritage, 
 (1) that what exists of Nature in the land, and what, 
 irrespective of man, comes of natural forces, may be disposed 
 of, at the option of the nation on terms and conditions that 
 are just to the living and the unborn ; and (2) that the value 
 accruing to land by increase of population and general 
 industry may not be disposed of, but is untransferable. In 
 regard to what is the common heritage, in other words, 
 
24 
 
 " belongs to the whole nation," question of abstract or 
 natural right does not arise. The common property of the 
 nation is common property, merely because, belonging no 
 more to one individual than to another, it belongs to all. 
 
 For convenience of reference to Mr. Herbert's paper, and 
 to as much as possible avoid quotation, I number its para- 
 graphs ; 1 being his proposition, 2 commencing with the 
 words " The land," and so on up to 18, the last paragraph. 
 The numbers that appear in brackets in the remarks that 
 now follow are reference numbers to his paragraphs. 
 
 How does Mr. Herbert's "majority" difficulty (2 7) 
 stand in relation to the doctrine of man's individual right of 
 only use of land but not of property in it ? If a community 
 consists of but a single individual the difficulty does not 
 arise. In this case, the right of use, in exercise, finds its 
 limits in the individual's powers. And we may quite assume 
 that this means he can only use a portion of the land. 
 
 But suppose a new comer, and that the nation consists of 
 two individuals. Illustration of the limits of the abstract 
 right may now be seen in that the two individuals cannot at 
 one and the same time both have the same place-to-be-in, use 
 the same land, or resort for water to the same spring. If the 
 natural right, instead of being that of use had been that of 
 property, then, the land having become already the property 
 of the first comer, in order that the second comer shall have 
 any land at all, and the land belong to the whole now-existing 
 nation, the first comer will have to agree to modify his 
 rights (3). The first comer might be the stronger ; in 
 which event his right would be like to that of a majority 
 (8), and having taken possession of the whole land, he might 
 refuse to make any arrangement in modification of his right 
 to be sanctioned by the two of them (3), under which 
 circumstances the second settler would become perforce the 
 vassal of the first, and have no rights except such as the first 
 conceded to him. Number one might say to number two, 
 " Had you been contemporary with me here, then we two and 
 not I alone should have been the nation, and the land would 
 have been our common property. As things did happen, it 
 was I who was first squatter, and by virtue of my natural 
 right as then having alone constituted the nation, the land 
 belongs to me. But I will do this ; I will ' let ' you a portion 
 of my land and you shall pay me ' rent ' for it. Or, as I 
 think the free and open market is the only impartial institution 
 that can exist (17), I will sell you a bit of my land. I am 
 under no necessity to either let you or sell you any of my 
 land, because, having the land, I can live. You on the 
 
contrary needs must rent or buy of me, or you will die. As 
 however I love the impartiality of ' heads I win, tails you 
 lose,' I institute, for your sake, the ' free and open ' market." 
 But the abstract right of the, first comer being only that of 
 use and not of possession, and as the first comer can but use 
 what he can use, there is plenty of room for exercise of right 
 of use by the second comer, if he chooses to exercise it. It 
 is quite supposable, however, that the second comer may 
 take up his heritage merely as far as he cannot help doing, 
 that is, for plaee-to-be-in, and instead of using land distinct 
 from that of the first comer, may prefer, " seeking his own 
 happiness in the way that seems good to himself " (Kant, 
 quoted in March Journal), and number one, who is doing the 
 same, as husbandman say, and so doing being nothing loth, 
 (evolution (17) ), to aid number one to obtain a larger 
 produce, sharing that produce as equivalent for labour 
 contributed. 
 
 Now consider a larger nation, of 100,000 persons (3). 
 The abstract T o<j*oi>o th r ^g nt of A. (7), will now, in exercise, 
 be closely circumscribed ; but it remains. And no matter 
 how large a nation may be, the abstract right never comes 
 for confirmation either to a majority of the nation, or to "the 
 whole nation minus nobody" (2). So far as the nation is 
 concerned, it is simply that the right exists and has to be 
 provided for. Nor do " imaginary geographical boundaries 
 limit the right " (8), for "the philosophy of the fragment 
 is the philosophy of the whole," (as yet, alas, even the 
 fragment waits for the philosophy in realisation). When, as 
 regards the future (philosophy may suppose this), the globe 
 becomes so crowded that A.'s Bright of use of land is so 
 circumscribed that he cannot continue his existence by means 
 of it, then, the evolutionary forces having free play (17), 
 whatever the new circumstances lend themselves to will 
 arise freely and without violence, and if the new conditions 
 lend themselves to the co-operative working of land, on no 
 matter what scale, then co-operative working of land will 
 come about. This is the one system, and not the free and 
 open market claimed by Mr. Herbert as being the only 
 impartial institution that exists, that does most justice 
 amongst individuals. The free and open market in land has 
 no analogy at all with other free and open market, for when 
 and how, philosophically, did land first come into the market, 
 a marketable commodity ? How, by violence ( "it is a violent 
 thing to take the land," says Mr. Herbert (16) ), it became 
 merchandise has just above been explained. And where is 
 the impartiality as an institution, of the free and open market 
 
in land, when one man must buy and the other need not 
 sell ? It is the advocate of the free and open market in land, 
 and not its opponent, who does his little best to stand in the 
 path of the evolutionary forces (17), who " proclaims 
 himself wiser than his unborn fellow-men, a sort of infallible 
 prophet about the wants of the world, and calmly refuses 
 to believe that men would know their own wants better 
 than he does, and fulfil them better." Precisely with the 
 recognition of individual right of use of land is it, that, (to 
 more fully give the editorial quotation from Kant referred to) 
 " every one may seek his own happiness in the way that 
 seems good to himself, provided that he infringe not such 
 freedom of others to strive after a similar end as is consistent 
 with the freedom of all." 
 
 The Land-Nationalization non-Socialistic position as to 
 abstract right is then this, that what belongs to man of 
 natural right is that upon which, primarily, the continuation 
 of his existence depends, namely, place-to-be- in on and use 
 of land ; and this is the natural right of the community ; of 
 the single individual when the community is of one, and of 
 the community, as individuals, when the community consists 
 of more than one. As the land belongs to nobody, Mr. 
 Herbert's proposition becomes a mere truism. There is no 
 " the land must remain free and open to all " (3) because of 
 rights of property in it. No matter whether the nation is 
 of one or of 100,001, the abstract right appertains to each 
 and all. Natural conditions may make the use of field X 
 more desirable than that of field Y ; but rights of use 
 admit of equalisation (not commutation (7) ), and can be 
 equalised, absolutely or approximately, without running 
 counter to philosophy, in the acceptance, by the whole 
 of the nation, of the decision of a part as the decision of 
 the whole. 
 
 In respect of the portion of "what belongs to the whole 
 nation" that I have laid down may be disposed of, I think 
 Mr. Herbert would not suggest the " majority " difficulty, as 
 there is not here any question of procedure as to natural or 
 abstract right. Still, as the matter is of property of " the 
 whole nation," even if we suppose that, philosophically, 
 decision as to disposal of it could not possibly be made 
 because "a majority is not the whole nation" (2), how are 
 we advanced ? At philosophy we cannot stop ; to do so is 
 to starve with food before us, because there is no clergyman 
 to say grace. And even though, on occasion, we do mischief 
 in treating the majority as the nation, we are compelled 
 thus to become practical. Philosophically, the relation 
 
27 
 
 of the circumference of a circle to its diameter is incom- 
 mensurable ; in practice very excellent results follow 
 from taking that relation to be even so far off truth as 
 three to one. 
 
 Proceeding further with 'Mr. Herbert's paper. I am in 
 agreement with him as to the absence of logic in Mr. 
 Henry George's " tax," (7). Elaborately arriving at land 
 "common" property, Mr. George's "remedy" leaves it 
 private property, to be " bought, sold, bequeathed, and 
 devised." The remedy, instead of sweeping away the evils 
 of private property in land, intensifies them. 
 
 That which exists of Nature in the land being common 
 property and transferable, the community may demand of a 
 field-user an equivalent for such part of the field as is 
 embodied in a crop (10), or may decide not to interfere with 
 such embodiment. Either way, the very same molecules 
 of potash, phosphorus, &c., that were national property 
 yesterday, may be changed into private property to day (11), 
 and A. B., in very deed, may, by purchase from, or allowance 
 of, the community, become their rightful owner. But A. B. 
 would not be within his rights if he took a horse and cart 
 and carried off a cartload of soil (11) ; for it is only the use 
 of the soil that is his right, and what he extracts from the 
 soil by the aid of natural forces put into operation by his 
 agency. Suppose there is a tree in the field before its 
 occupation by A. B. The community may consider it 
 advisable to raise no objection to its appropriation by A. B., 
 or, if they think proper, may demand equivalent for it. 
 Initiating the operation of natural forces, A. B. may himself 
 grow trees and rear sheep. And the reason why leg of 
 mutton, coat (or, rather, wool), and oak beam (16), are 
 A. B.'s private property, while the land from which they 
 have come is not, is that no forces put into operation 
 by man produced the land, but the forces of which 
 came mutton, wool, and beam, were set in action 
 by A. B. 
 
 " The Individualist objects to great Governmental depart- 
 ments, to things managed by official inspection, to interferences 
 with freedom of contract, &c., which things would be the 
 almost necessary results of land ownership by the State," 
 (12), Mr. Herbert says. And in the same paragraph he 
 raises other objections to such land ownership. Is there 
 any force in these objections from the position I have taken 
 up ? The field in use by A. B., he can either improve, say 
 by drainage and barns, or he can work till it will yield no 
 more (10) ; which will he do ? Not the latter, certainly, 
 
28 
 
 because, in the long run, he does not thus gratify his desires 
 with the least exertion. On the other hand, if he improves 
 the field he gives to it additional value, which is his individual 
 property. This property of his, which I will term tenant- 
 right, he can give away, sell, bequeath, or devise, and the 
 ownership of it will entitle the possessor to occupy, of right, 
 the field to which it appertains, subject merely to any impost 
 sanctioned by the community in their equalisation of rights 
 of use. This is the idea propounded by Mr. Alfred Kussel 
 Wallace in an article by him in the Contemporary Review of 
 November, 1880 ; and is there not perfect freedom of contract 
 here ? Is there not also entire absence of Government manage- 
 ment, inspection, or interference ? Further, the evolutionary 
 forces have free play, and new conditions could arise freely 
 and without violence (17). Would sub-letting again exhibit 
 itself ? Yes, if the new circumstances lent themselves to it. 
 But as the State would look to the owner of the tenant-right 
 of a plot of land for tribute due, and give no legal recovery 
 against a sub-tenant, I am quite prepared, as a Land 
 Nationalizer, to leave sub-letting to the free play of the 
 evolutionary forces. 
 
 But, although we are on the way, the Individualist's idea 
 that the individual's prosperity is that of his being a free 
 man, with the minimum of artificial restraints and of 
 compulsory obligations (16), is by no means yet realised. 
 Not only must man be independent of his fellow-man for 
 use of land, but he must also be independent of him for 
 place-to-be-in. A. B., having right of occupation and use of 
 a plot of land, as also of occupation and use of the space 
 (place-to-be-in) above it, (it is impossible for me here to 
 explain my unphilosophical usage of words, or talking of 
 space as an entity ; please tolerate), must have no right of 
 property in that space. Nor soil nor space come of the 
 labour of man. Space is a natural condition ; it is to space, 
 first of all, that man is co-related to the universe. The 
 definition I have given of land includes both soil and space ; 
 nevertheless, land, the soil, is not space, the natural 
 condition, and to ignore the distinction is to bid philosophy 
 good-bye. Mr. Wallace's discovery of the solution of the 
 land (soil) -tenure question in the discreting of tenant-right 
 from other value in a plot, and making tenant-right owner- 
 ship the title to occupation, points the way as plainly as 
 can be to the solution of the space question. It works 
 out thus : 
 
 As with the soil-land, so with space-land, its value is in 
 its use. If A. B., owning the tenant-right of a plot of 
 
29 
 
 ground, in London, suppose, builds upon it a house, and lets 
 to me a room (garret, say), in that house, then he is making 
 not use of space, but property of it ; by levying tribute on 
 my using it. What is a room ? It is a volume of space 
 enclosed ; and the value of it, to me, is in the space, which 
 A. B. is not using, but I am. As to the enclosing materials, 
 which, having been set up by A. B., belong to him, why 
 cannot I buy them as I do any other manufactured article 
 that I need ? The sheltering boundaries of the garret-space 
 constitute its tenant-right. That my garret-space (mine by 
 mere form of speech), is in connection with the soil is not in 
 point, and does not make soil of the space. The crank-shaft 
 of the steam-engine is in connection with the cylinder, but 
 it is not the cylinder. As with the tenant-right of a plot of 
 land (soil), so with the tenant-right of a volume of space, it 
 must become the property of the user of the space, and its owner- 
 ship must, against all comers, carry title to the use of the space. 
 Any system of soil-tenure under which A. B. can parcel-out 
 and let the space above the plot he holds, puts into his 
 hands the power to compel me to pay my whole life long for 
 the walls, &c., that bound my garret, and yet never own 
 them. Indeed, until the house begins to totter, though they 
 are always being paid for, through half-a-dozen generations, 
 may be, they always are the property of A. B. or his 
 inheritors ; and when, finally, the house has to be pulled 
 down, another is erected on the spot, and the like round 
 again begins. If A. B. makes forme a table, say, I pay him 
 for it only once ; if he asks continuous payment for it, I laugh 
 at him, and get a table elsewhere. If the table-makers, all 
 of them, conspire to demand for their tables continuous pay- 
 ment, I do without a table. But place-to-be-in, and space 
 as a starting-ground for my livelihood, I must have in order 
 to exist. For this reason it is that A. B. makes property of 
 the space above the plot he holds ; it gives him the power 
 he is gratifying his desires with the least exertion to gratify 
 them by exploiting me. To say, as do Mill and the rest, that what 
 I pay A. B. is not rent, is absurd. How else than by making 
 a property of space, is A. B., instead of living by his own toil, 
 enabled to live by forcing me and others to go on paying him 
 all our lives for his manufactured article house ? Were the 
 rent I pay A. B. simply interest on capital, he could no more 
 coerce me to pay continuous interest in respect of garret 
 (and grin and bear it, though the water comes in) than he 
 can coerce me to continuous interest in respect of table. If 
 I go elsewhere than to A. B. for the space I need, I fare no 
 better, for A. B. is but one in a " corner " who monopolise 
 
80 
 
 all, for me, available space ; unless indeed it is to fare better 
 to go where I am practically cut off from my means of 
 livelihood. 
 
 I have supposed A. B. to hold the plot of ground by virtue 
 of ownership of its tenant-right. If he were freeholder of it 
 the state of affairs would be still worse for me. He is not now 
 one of the space " corner " only, but he is one of the land 
 (soil and space) " corner," and discreting his space- property 
 from his soil-property, he leases the former to C. D., who 
 now builds the house, but himself tenaciously holds on to 
 the soil. He holds on to the soil because it commands the 
 space, and he can make his own terms with C. D. for 
 permission to build the house on the soil. Where am I, the 
 garret holder, now ? I am pillaged by C. D. ; but, as he is 
 pillaged by A. B., he takes from me enough to pay over to 
 A. B., and yet leave him, C. I)., all possible surplus after he 
 has satisfied A. B. This spoliation upon spoliation sometimes 
 obtains even four-deep. Commencing with A. B. it is in 
 turn taken up by C. D., E. F., and G. H. ; and I, the garret 
 holder, pay them all. In fact, I am in slavery to these my 
 owners, and what with their grinding my bones to make 
 them bread, and the whip ever over me, ask myself 
 doubtingly, if life is worth living. Uproot, as well in 
 space-land as in soil-land, the right of property which makes 
 man dependent on his individual fellow-mau for permission 
 to live, and all this is changed. With space conditioned for 
 tenure according to the method I have indicated, the freedom 
 of contract that starts in Mr. Wallace's system of soil-tenure 
 perfects itself, at the same time entirely excluding Departmental 
 management or interference. The owner of the tenant-right 
 of a room would pay the local dues ; the community would 
 know no other occupant. Hence, if a house- owner would, 
 by sub-letting garret to me, live by my labour, he could not 
 enforce the one-sided contract. With no possible making 
 property of space, the finishing touch is given to the free 
 man of the Individualists' idea. He could not now be 
 exploited as to space ; he has right of use of soil and space ; 
 able to help himself, he could " seek his own happiness in 
 the way that seemed good to himself;" and "the most 
 self-reliant liberty, the least of statutory restriction or 
 compulsion " would find its full realisation. 
 
 What, under the circumstances existing at the present day, 
 should be done in respect of man's abstract right of use of 
 land ? In Mr. Wallace's Land Nationalization, its Necessity 
 and its Aims, it is laid down that " Every Englishman should 
 be allowed once in his life to select a plot of ground for 
 
31 
 
 personal occupation." This right of free-selection was one 
 of the leading features of the first Land Nationalization 
 Society, the Society that existed from 1882 to 1887. and in 
 the Programme of that Society it thus appears : " It should 
 be declared the right of every one, once in their lifetime, to 
 choose a piece of agricultural land (say, not less than one, 
 nor more than five acres) for personal occupation, on paying 
 fair compensation to the occupier, and under such conditions 
 and regulations as would minimise the inconvenience of such 
 free-selection." It seems to me that in this practical shape 
 effect might, under present day conditions, be wisely 
 given to man's individual right of use of land. 
 
 To Mr. Herbert's " it is a violent thing to take the land " 
 (16), I reply, it was a violent thing to take it ; and that to 
 hold it is to continue the violence, just as in the case of a 
 slave. In taking the land, all then- unborn generations were 
 deprived of their means of existence. Does Mr. Herbert aver 
 that the violent taking has given title ? If so, title can again 
 be by violence obtained. The second comer of the two 
 individuals I have above supposed to constitute the nation 
 might have been the stronger, and made vassal of the first, 
 as did the first of him. And to Mr. Herbert's, " it is a yet 
 more violent thing not to pay its full value," I reply, that 
 the most violent thing of all was the inexorable appropriation 
 of this very value, in addition to the appropriation of the 
 land itself. Too lazy themselves to use what they had 
 fastened upon, the spoilers most graciously amerced outsiders 
 for using it, and, as its value increased of outsiders' 
 multiplication and industry, ever hungrily raked the addition 
 in. It is absurd to talk of paying the landlords the full 
 value of the land in nationalizing it. All that the landlords 
 have right to is what is theirs in equity, and in annihilating 
 the landlord function of the land all equitable claims of the 
 landlords on the community must be respected and discharged. 
 In appraising such claims no hard-and-fast rules can be laid 
 down ; landlords are not of one genus, and each case must 
 stand on its own merits. The case, for example, of the 
 Duke of Bedford has very little, if anything, in common with 
 that of the poor man who, to adopt for the moment Mr. 
 Herbert's words, has " invested his savings in land " (14). 
 And this equity is no respecter of nations, and applies to 
 Ireland (16), exactly as to other parts of Great Britain. No 
 man has right to more than equity ; no man has his right 
 with less. i 
 
 The analogy drawn by Mr. Herbert between abuse of 
 power by landowner and by flour merchant (17) does not 
 
32 
 
 hold. With free access to land we are, after all, at the 
 mercy of the flour- corner no more than one round of 
 seasons ; but we are at the mercy of the land-corner for 
 ever. And surely Mr. Herbert is forgetting philosophy 
 tfhen he would prove that with increased opportunities of 
 locomotion the hypothesis of the landlord not allowing 
 any person to dwell on his land fades into comparative 
 insignificance (17). Is now the philosophy of the fragment 
 not the philosophy of the whole (8) ? Geographical 
 boundaries are imaginary (8) when we regard private 
 property in land, as Mr. Herbert does Mr. George's tax (7), 
 from the abstract or philosophical point of view, and the 
 hypothesis will still have to do service (17). Land (soil or 
 space) -lords do not empty their land of people, not because 
 they could not do so did they choose, but because they have 
 discovered the alchemy by which they can keep their own 
 cake and live on other people's. Of the violent and aggressive 
 use of their powers by the landlords (17), has come about, 
 not the strengthening of the desire for freehold ownership, 
 which Mr. Herbert thinks would be its outcome, but the 
 determination to make a clean sweep of ownership. No 
 increasing the number of freehold owners (14), will relieve 
 the heavily-burthened nation. For, no matter to what 
 extent landowners may be multiplied, there is no escape from 
 this, that the earth is always the lords', and the fulness 
 thereof, and that tenants live always by landlords' forbearance, 
 and are their tribute-paying slaves. 
 
VI. BY WOEDSWOETH DONISTHOEPE. 
 
 ME. AUBERON HERBERT'S defence of private 
 property in land is based on one argument, which is, 
 I humbly confess, utterly unintelligible to me. I can no more 
 define Natural Rights than I can Abracadabra. I wish some 
 one would bring in a Bill for the abolition and annihilation 
 of capital letters. If I see ten men at one end of a rope 
 pulling eleven men along at the other end, I say, Behold the 
 minority pulling the majority. Then up steps a politician. 
 "Excuse me," says he, " if you will kindly spell Majority 
 with a big M, you will perceive that the ten men are the 
 majority the effective Majority, don't you know." This is 
 all very puzzling to me. If Majority means those persons 
 who wield the force majeure, then I admit at once that the 
 Majority has a right to take over the land with or without 
 compensation, and to melt down the landowners into 
 oleomargarine. The Majority, like everybody else, has a 
 right to do whatever it likes, subject to the will of a stronger 
 power call it the Law, or the State, or the Sovereign Power, 
 or the Bigger Crowd. But there is no stronger power than 
 the Majority with a big M, by hypothesis. Ergo, it has a 
 right to do whatever it likes. In old English, the king can 
 do no wrong. But if by majority we mean the greater 
 number the Plurisy, as Shakespeare punningly called it 
 then the statement may or may not be true. It is a question of 
 fact to be solved by observation. If in a population of 100 
 persons on an island the 50 women and 20 babies voted one 
 way, and the 30 men voted the other, I guess the laws of 
 that island would square with the vote of the 30 men ; and 
 the rights of the citizens would be just what the minority 
 chose to recognise. 
 
 At this point, up steps the moral philosopher. " Fetch 
 out that big R," says he, " and you will find that the Rights 
 of the citizen have a deeper and a firmer basis than the will 
 of the effective majority." Here I retire. It may be so. I 
 know the Fox and the Ass said the same thing when the 
 Lion explained what his own share of the spoil was to be. 
 And possibly they were correct, metaphysically and 
 transcendentally and in-nubibus-ly, but somehow what the 
 Lion said turned out to be in accordance with fact ; anything 
 they said or thought to the contrary notwithstanding. It is 
 
34 
 
 a terrible thing to be a slave to Fact ; but such is my lot, 
 and I cannot help it. Such is my woodenness in this respect 
 that I can almost hear the reply of Gulliver to some 
 Lilliputian Jacobin on majority-rule ; La Majorite, c'est 
 moi. 
 
 Is there, then, no ethical basis for the rights of majorities ? 
 Yes ; it has been lucidly stated by one of our most 
 distinguished living judges: "We count heads to save 
 the trouble of breaking them." Where the units are 
 pretty evenly matched, it saves time and trouble and 
 the sundry little inconveniences of civil war to accept 
 the fiat of the bigger crowd. It is a rough-and-ready 
 arrangement, but, on the whole, it works better than fighting 
 it out. 
 
 We are thus brought to the question of fact. Is the 
 numerical majority in this country the effective majority? In 
 other words, Is the force majeure wielded by the Plurisy ? 
 The answer is, Yes. It is a simple answer based on 
 observation. We have beheaded and abolished our Charles' 
 and Louis' and other Gullivers in these parts, and for us the 
 " common sense of most " is law. It is not so in the 
 poultry-yard ; it is not so in the public school ; but it is so 
 in merry England ; and that is a political fact. We can 
 strut around and crow about it, an we list ; or we can 
 bewail it with gnashing of teeth. It matters not ; the fact 
 remains. 
 
 The majority, then, has the right to take the land. But, 
 would the majority be doing right to take the land ? Here 
 we are confronted with a fresh ambiguity. In one sense of 
 the term Right, as we have seen, and as Austin has pointed 
 out, the question is vain. The will of the sovereign power 
 is right. Henry Beauclerc had a right to gorge himself to 
 death with lampreys a right which he promptly and perhaps 
 beneficently exercised. But the term is used in another 
 sense. Those acts are right which conduce to the greater 
 welfare of the agent. In this sense Henry did wrong. 
 Similarly, if it can be shown that the majority would inflict 
 injury on itself by taking the land, it has no right to take 
 it. We are not concerned with the sufferings of the minority. 
 That is no part of the argument. I say, if the majority can 
 take the land (with or without compensation) with permanent 
 advantage to itself, it has a right to do so ; a legal right, 
 of course, and a moral right also. 
 
 And first as to the wisdom of taking it without compen- 
 sation. I fear the space you can spare me will not suffice 
 for an analysis of this part of the subject. I believe there 
 
35 
 
 are well-known works, to which I must refer, in which it is 
 contended with some cogency, that on the whole thieving is 
 not ultimately beneficial to the thief. Personally I incline to 
 this view, without wishing to be too dogmatic. I may also 
 refer to the experience of your readers, which I trust is 
 limited. And I do not see any good ground for supposing 
 that majority-thieving of land would form an exception to 
 the general rule. Mr. Ley, I observe, proposes to thieve in 
 the garb of Equity. Here again I am out of my depth. 
 Equity, with a big E, has no meaning for me. For choice 
 I would rather be inequitably robbed by Dick Turpin than 
 equitably robbed by the majority. I am injured by the 
 former process, but by the latter 1 am both injured and 
 insulted. Like a crown of thorns, it hurts and it is a 
 mockery. 
 
 Let us pass at once to the question whether it would be a 
 wise act on the part of the State (by whatever name known) 
 to take the land by purchase and keep it. The experiment 
 might be tried on a small scale first by the municipality of 
 Little Pedlington. I will not ask how the late lamented 
 Metropolitan Board of Works would have managed a county, 
 because Mr. Ley " and those who go with him," would 
 think I was poking fun at them. 
 
 The price of agricultural land is considerably above its 
 true commercial value by reason of sporting facilities, family 
 associations, and county prestige. Now the municipality 
 might let the fishing and the shooting, or the mayor and 
 aldermen might do a little for the glory of the borough ; but 
 it could not let the prestige by the year. Consequently this 
 element in the price would be absolutely thrown away, 
 sunk unproductively. Oddly enough too, landowners are 
 willing to take less for the use of their land than even the 
 State pays its creditors for use of money. How then is it 
 going to get its money back in the shape of interest or rent ? 
 Is it going to raise the rents ? But there are several 
 objections to that ; firstly, it is impossible ; secondly, but 
 perhaps that will do. Is it going to invest money very 
 productively in land which is now capital- starved by short- 
 sighted and penny-wise landlords ? But a free and open 
 market would effect that. Capital flows into the most 
 productive channels in every other industry ; and it would 
 do the same in agriculture, but for certain Socialistic 
 obstacles. Aristocratic Socialism and democratic Socialism 
 seem to have conspired to prevent capital from finding its 
 way to the soil : and it is hard to say which has been most 
 effective. 
 
36 
 
 But why should I rack what does duty for my brain in 
 order to discover some conceivable advantage in land- 
 nationalization, when there are so many obliging 
 " nationalizers " around ready and anxious to inform me? 
 By the way, may I ask, en passant, whether every believer 
 in public vaccination is a Public Vaccinator ? Land- 
 nationalizationist is, I admit, a plaguy long word, but then 
 it denotes a long-headed people and a far-seeing policy. 
 However, let me interrogate Col. Scott and Mr. Ley, and 
 " those who go with them." We are not told whither they 
 go, but they ought not to be long in reaching what I once 
 heard a Finsbury Orator describe as the ultimate gaol of his 
 ambition. The only reason for nationalizing the land put 
 forward by Col. Scott is that it once belonged or does now 
 really belong to " the people " whoever they may be. But 
 assuming that by " the people " is meant the plurisy, we 
 must remember that there is such a thing as a damnosa 
 hereditas. We have also heard of white elephants. And the 
 question for us is not whether " the people " has a right to 
 the land, but whether it would be wise to exercise that right. 
 And to this question, Col. Scott gives positively no answer 
 at all. " The inherent right of ownership," says Col. Scott, 
 " must be in the original holders (the people), and inseparable 
 from them by any metaphysical hocus-pocus." Very likely ; 
 I have no objection to its being vested in the Grand Lama, 
 provided I have the use of it. Mr. Spurgeon once confided 
 to a visitor who was admiring his flocks and his herds, his 
 flowers and his furniture, that they all belonged to the Lord, 
 and that he himself had only the use of them. He didn't 
 seem to mind. But then he is not afflicted with property-lust. 
 Apart from this aspect of the matter, is it not odd what 
 stress some liberal reformers seem to lay on ancient title ? 
 Col. Scott forgets that Abstracts of Title are bulky things, 
 and that there was no room for them in Noah's Ark. But 
 if he will insist on going back to the original holders, I really 
 feel bound to see justice done to the Troglodytes and their 
 descendants. We know that we (the People) took these lands 
 by force from the Celts ; so we are out of it. But as amicus 
 curiae, it is the duty of Col. Scott to look into the title of 
 the Celts. Some people affirm that the descendants of the 
 holders who were evicted by the Celts are to be found among 
 the Basques of the Pyrenees. Then is Col. Scott ready to lead 
 the English back to the Elbe, and make way here for the poor 
 Basques ? 
 
 Mr. Ley objects to private property in land because 
 " land is not property at all " and " can never become property." 
 
87 
 
 Then what is the matter ? Secondly, he points out that man 
 has an abstract right to elbow-room (place-to-be-in on, he calls 
 it), and use of land. Why? "Because man cannot other- 
 wise exist." But who wants him to exist? Why need he 
 exist ? If I and another man are on a raft only big enough 
 for one, I have no objection to sign a paper granting him 
 his abstract right to place-to-be-in on, but I precious soon 
 shove him off the raft, if I can ; not otherwise. But it 
 seems it is not a question of room which fires the ambition 
 of Mr. Ley, it is his abstract right to the best bit of room in 
 the country. Mr. Wallace has laid it down (and that in 
 itself is a powerful argument), that " every Englishman 
 should be allowed once in his life to select a plot of ground 
 for personal occupation." This plot should be between one 
 and five acres, and it should be paid for by him at a " fair " 
 valuation. If I came of age a week after Mr. Ley, and 
 "selected" the plot which he had "selected" the week 
 before, what then ? I suppose it would be a case of the raft 
 again. Now I myself never experienced any difficulty in 
 obtaining a plot of land or a garret, or other place-to-be-in 
 on, and I do not suppose any " Nationalizer " ever did ; the 
 only difficulty I have experienced is raising the money for 
 the fair compensation formerly called the price. But there 
 is a possible danger lest landowners should conspire together 
 to oust the rest of the population. Or, what is nearly as 
 bad, to refuse to sell at a good offer and insist on letting, and 
 drawing an annual rent instead. If they try to do the 
 former I am quite ready to join Mr. Ley in doing the 
 conspirators down into oleomargarine with or without the 
 abstract right to do so. But if they merely insist on drawing 
 rent I have no objection to paying it, so long as I can invest 
 the capital sum at an interest which is higher than the rent. 
 If all the table-makers conspired to let their tables out on the 
 hire system instead of selling them, Mr. Ley would " do 
 without a table." I should hire one. Some small farmers 
 that I know in Herefordshire are unable to pay for a 
 threshing-machine. The squire lets one to them in turns 
 and draws an annual payment from each of them. Mr. Ley 
 would do without it as lots have done before ; he would 
 thresh his wheat with his own flail, and breakfast on the 
 floor. 
 
 One word more. The fact is (and I am sorry to obtrude 
 facts again, because I know what troublesome nuisances they 
 are in discussions like this), the fact is, when we speak of 
 " property " we are all talking about different things. Property 
 is a species of use. It is that bundle of uses which cannot be 
 
88 
 
 enumerated and specified by reason of their indefiniteness. 
 Such uses may be forbidden to all. In which case the thing 
 itself is not property at all. When Mr. Olivier says the roads 
 are common property he is, I think, in error. If they were 
 common property, I could camp out with my family in the 
 middle of Piccadilly which, as a fact, I cannot. The 
 definite uses of roads are common, but proprietary right is 
 prohibited; This is true of a pawned watch. The proprietary 
 right is suspended. It is true of all cases of sequestration, 
 where the proprietary right, instead of being common to both, 
 is exercised by neither. It is not held desirable to vest the 
 residuum of indefinite rights to roads in anyone. But in the 
 case of agricultural land and building land, it has been found 
 economical to vest this residuum of powers in private 
 individuals. It is well known that the productivity of this 
 country, acre for acre, is greater than that of any equal area 
 of land held under any other form of tenure, and this again 
 is a fact. The People, the Plurisy, the Majority, the State, 
 is interested in getting as much as it can out of the soil, and 
 the system of separate ownership of land is found to conduce 
 to this end. 
 
 Let us suppose all the landowners in the country to die 
 suddenly, leaving the whole of their land to the State 
 absolutely. There is nothing antecedently improbable in 
 this, when we remember the fate of the firstborn in Egypt 
 some years ago. If Mr. George or Mr. H}ndman should 
 happen to fill the post then occupied by Moses, the denouement 
 is rather probable than otherwise. What now is the State 
 going to do with it ? My advice would be, put it up to 
 auction and sell it in lots to the highest bidders. Mr. Olivier, 
 Mr. Ley, and Col. Scott would say : " No, let the State keep it 
 as national property and let it in lots to the highest bidders." 
 If not to the highest bidders, to w 7 hom ? But this is rack- 
 renting. In order to avoid this odious arrangement, the 
 State, we are told by Socialists, would let the land at a fair 
 rental. In other words the local representative of the State, 
 better known to all of us as Jack-in-ofnce, would let the lots 
 to his sisters, his cousins and his aunts, and those whose 
 behaviour entitled them to be regarded as " friends of the 
 family." In plain English the whole land- system would be 
 a maze of officialism, jobbery and corruption. But could it 
 not be so arranged that it should be the interest of the State- 
 agent to make the most of the land ? Certainly it could. 
 The land could be put out to Land-tax-farmers as in Turkey 
 and (formerly) in Bengal. The State would still remain 
 the owner and the rents would be as high as they are now. 
 
39 
 
 Good ; but that is precisely the present system under another 
 name. The Tax-farmer has to pay for the post precisely 
 what a landowner now pays for the fee simple of the land. That 
 is the market value of the post. The Tax-farmer would do 
 just what the landowner tan do now. He would let the 
 fishing to one man, the farming to another, a right of way 
 to a third, rights of common to a crowd of others, mining 
 rights to another, and perhaps reserve some rights to 
 himself. In other words, he would make the most of the 
 land and squeeze as much as he could out of it. At present 
 the State reserves, and always has reserved, the right to buy 
 up the owner's proprietary rights at their full market value. 
 A wise State avoids doing this, except in cases where the 
 public need for the particular piece of land is urgent, as in 
 the case of roads and railways, docks and harbours, public 
 buildings, and the like. It reserves the same right with 
 regard to every kind of property. In case of invasion, the 
 State takes horses and grain from citizens at full market 
 value, and it uses the railways and railway stock of private 
 companies ; and if some lunatic should proclaim his intention 
 of burning his own collection of Murillos or Hogarths, the 
 State would take them from him at full market value. At 
 least, if it did not, it would be acting with foolish forbearance. 
 Some of us would do it, and chance it. The reason why 
 the State should exercise this right, or rather this undoubted 
 power, to take property from its owners, with extreme 
 caution, and only in cases of emergency, is that security of 
 lawful possession is (as Bentham showed) the greatest blessing 
 a people can enjoy. 
 
 I believe the most zealous Socialist admits the necessity of 
 recognising the right of exclusive use at all events, for a 
 limited time. He does not pretend that society would be 
 happier if a dozen men began digging the same plot and 
 hustling one another about till the strongest remained master 
 of the situation. This condition of things is usually described 
 (erroneously and ignorantly described) as Anarchy. Very 
 good ; admitting then the individual right of exclusive use (a 
 right based not on his own physical strength), it can, I think, 
 be shown that the nationalization of the land and of every- 
 thing else (Socialism) would result in a state of things not 
 materially different from the system of private property under 
 which we live. 
 
 Suppose no property to be recognised but property in 
 money ; suppose the only money recognised to be made of 
 paper costing absolutely nothing; suppose the minting of 
 this worthless stuff to cost absolutely nothing, and to be 
 
 UNIVERSITY > 
 
40 
 
 indestructible and inimitable, and also to be absolutely 
 limited, so that not even the Government officials could in- 
 crease the quantity ; and suppose the whole world to be brought 
 into the arrangement. What would happen ? The Duke of 
 Bedford would receive counters marked fifteen million pounds 
 in exchange for his land ; Mr. Ley would receive counters 
 marked three pounds in consideration of his table. What 
 next ? The State would come to the Duke of Bedford and 
 say, " Look here, you know more about this land than we 
 do, and the value of the exclusive use of the parts thereof. 
 Give us those counters marked 15,000,000 and you can 
 make what terms you like with those who want the exclusive 
 use." Mr. Ley would go to the State and say, "If you 
 please, I hate paying annual or quarterly instalments for the 
 exclusive use of this table, I would rather do without 
 one ; let me compound. Of course, you can reserve the 
 right to take the table away from me on paying me 
 the then market value." Both bargains would be struck, 
 both being reasonably and beneficial to all parties con- 
 cerned ; and we should have exactly what we have now, 
 except in name. 
 
VII. BY X 'C. SPENCE. 
 
 MR. WORDSWORTH DONISTHORPE'S very clever 
 contribution to the Symposium on the Land Question 
 shows that the solution of the land question involves the solution 
 of the fundamental problem which underlies every political 
 question when reduced to its lowest terms. This problem 
 is : Should laws be framed in accordance with our ideas of 
 expediency or our ideas of justice ? Like all who adopt the 
 expediency theory, Mr. Donisthorpe quotes and endorses the 
 dictum of Austin that where law is supreme the people 
 have, as a matter of fact, no rights, except such as the law 
 will enforce ; that is, that our rights are not natural and 
 absolute, but legal and limited. This proposition appears to 
 be impregnable, and a necessary consequence of the supremacy 
 of the law ; but to infer that, because all our rights are legal, 
 therefore all our laws are right, is such a manifest non- 
 sequitur that one could hardly believe it possible that such 
 an acute reasoner as Mr. Donisthorpe could seriously 
 propound it. But, however incredible it may be, it is a 
 fact, that this feeble pun it is not an argument is, time 
 and again, gravely brought forward by such men as Lord 
 Coleridge, Professor Huxley, and others too numerous to 
 mention, among whom are many of the ablest writers on the 
 philosophy of politics. 
 
 Except as an instance of the perverting influence of power 
 worship, I can see no force in the argument at all. Let it 
 be granted that our rights depend absolutely on the will of 
 the sovereign power, whether that power is a person, a 
 class, or the majority. Does that throw any light on what 
 it would be best for the sovereign will to enforce ? Under a 
 representative Government, the citizens have a double 
 function to perform ; as subjects the law is supreme over 
 them ; as electors they are supreme over the laws. Now all 
 arguments on such subjects as this appeal to the citizen in 
 his character of an elector. The question discussed in this 
 JOURNAL is not whether we will obey the laws or break them, 
 but what we as legislators or fractional parts of legislators 
 think to be good or bad laws. An elector having to 
 determine whether to vote for, or against, a certain measure, 
 
42 
 
 receives, from the theories of Austin the valuable information 
 that, whichever way the question is decided will be right. 
 Surely then, in discussing what the law ought to be we can 
 get no guidance from these theories. And we must be guided 
 either by our ideas of expediency, or by our ideas justice. 
 
 Mr. Donisthorpe says that he can no more define Natural 
 lights than he can Abracadabra, but appears to think it is 
 a simple and easy thing to define what is advantageous or 
 injurious to the majority. Yet, in the vast majority of cases, 
 when the question asked is : What is fair and just between 
 man and man ? you can get a jury of twelve men to give a 
 unanimous verdict ; but when the question is : What is 
 beneficial for the majority ? it is difficult, if not impossible, 
 to get two men to agree exactly. To estimate all the 
 consequences, good and bad, direct and indirect, present and 
 future, of confiscating the landed property of the country, 
 and to strike a balance between the good and the bad effects 
 of this confiscation, is not a difficult task, it is an impossible 
 one. On the other hand, the intelligence and sense of justice 
 of the ordinary elector is quite sufficient to tell him that it 
 would be unjust to take from a man (by force and without 
 compensation, because of some fancied benefit to be conferred 
 on the majority, and some specious arguments that property 
 in land differs from property in other products of nature, 
 such as horses, cattle, gold or silver) a farm which he had 
 honestly and legally bought. 
 
 Unquestionably, expediency has always been the guide 
 accepted by the sovereign power in the past ; but the result 
 is not such as to encourage us in continuing the same 
 guidance. Governments have always hitherto attempted to 
 regulate the production and distribution of wealth according to 
 their ever-changing views of expediency. The tenure of land 
 has been altered again and again ; at one time to encourage 
 the growth of large estates, at another to break them down, 
 to benefit the owner at the expense of the occupier, or the 
 occupier at the expense of the owner, or both at the expense 
 of the general public. 
 
 The law has fixed maximum wages, minimum wages, 
 levied rates in aid of wages, enacted and enforced poor laws, 
 laws of settlements and allotments, has forbidden trades unions 
 in some cases and enforced them in others. It has constantly 
 interfered with manufactures and commerce, encouraging 
 this trade and repressing that, fixing rates of interest, prices 
 of goods, hours of work, &c., &c. All this has been accom- 
 panied by grinding and unjust taxation, a large part of which 
 always has been and still is, raised from the necessaries of 
 
43 
 
 the poor, their food, drink, and houses, and has been spent 
 in enriching the rich, in waste and corruption, in sinecures 
 and pensions. The result of this interference is not 
 encouraging. The distribution of wealth in this country, 
 where one man may own a county and another be indebted 
 to charity for the rags that 'cover him, is neither just nor 
 expedient. We have neglected justice to follow after 
 expediency, and we have obtained neither. 
 
 Had our legislators limited their interference with the 
 distribution of property to administering justice in any 
 disputed case brought before them, it is not possible that the 
 distribution could have been worse than it is at present. 
 There is considerable difference between men in size of body, 
 in mind and in character. The difference between a giant 
 and a dwarf is very great ; but 'such cases are rare enough to 
 be exhibited in a show, whilst the vast majority of men vary 
 but little either above or below the average. Were the 
 distribution of wealth allowed to follow its natural course, it 
 would, judging from all analogies in nature, most probably 
 have the same result. In the vast majority of cases, wealth 
 would differ but slightly either above or below the general 
 average ; in exceptional cases the difference might be as great 
 as that between the giant and dwarf. But, for such monstrous 
 contrasts as the prince and the pauper we must thank our 
 law makers, who have been constanty interfering with the 
 equalizing effects of natural law. To attempt to put matters 
 right by further interference based on the expediency theory 
 is absurd. The only benefit the sovereign power can confer 
 upon the subject people is the one that seems least likely for 
 them to do namely sweep away all their innumerable 
 restrictions on free trade, especially in land, and leave us to 
 work out our own welfare of ourselves. 
 
 To sum up these arguments. I have endeavoured to show 
 that Austin's theory of the supremacy of the law does not 
 and cannot give us the slightest guidance as to what the 
 laws should be that the theory that we should do what is 
 advantageous to the majority, does not and cannot give us 
 the slightest guidance as to what is advantageous ; that a 
 true estimate of expediency is impossible, an untrue estimate 
 is certain to be erroneous ; and, finally, that by reasoning from 
 what is fair between man and man we can pass to what is 
 fair between one man and several, and from several to all ; 
 that this method, which is the method of all science of 
 reasoning from the particular to the general, from the simple 
 to the complex, does give us reliable information as to what 
 should be law. 
 
44 
 
 Applying this method to the land question, we find that, it 
 would not be in accordance with strict justice to confiscate 
 property in land to obtain some imaginary or real public 
 good ; and that the duty of the State is not to regulate the 
 tenure of the land but merely to administer justice in cases 
 of disputed right. 
 
45 
 
 VIII. BY MICHAEL FLURSCHEIM, 
 OP BADEN BADEN. 
 
 I FIND it hard that limitation of space forces me to 
 abstain from answering some of my predecessors. 
 Perhaps it is better so, as I am afraid I might have somewhat 
 lost my temper in answering Mr. Herbert. Abstract 
 philosophy has a tendency to affect me as a red rag is said to 
 affect a bull. It has always seemed to me that there ought 
 to be a special planet in which these people might be allowed 
 to sport their theories. Ours is not large enough for that. 
 I would like to see Mr. Herbert expounding his theories in a 
 meeting of stockholders, to which he denies the right of 
 doing anything in regard to the administration of the joint 
 property without the consent of every single shareholder, 
 and would prefer to see everything go to ruin rather than 
 earn good dividends by such unphilosophical proceedings 
 as the one implied in majority rule. 
 
 If Mr. Herbert would have made me lose my temper, I 
 think Mr. Scott Moffat would have made me regain it ; for 
 there is something so infinitely enjoyable in his definition of 
 the functions of ownership. It is so correct, too. You can 
 see that immediately, when you take, for instance, Mr. 
 Winans, the American, who owns a part of Scotland from 
 sea to sea. First, " to guard the land against intrusion " 
 of the cultivator ; "to maintain the right of the owner or 
 his representative to its fruits " driving away the original 
 owners of the soil, the people who cultivated it for many 
 centuries, who fought for their country's glory on many battle 
 fields, to Canada, Australia, or the United States. Secondly, 
 "to procure and maintain (drive away and starve) tenants 
 capable of cultivating it to advantage. ' ' Thirdly, ' ' to maintain 
 or improve the condition of the land " changing it back into 
 the original desert, to afford a hunting ground for idlers. 
 Formerly these went to the American West to shoot deer. 
 Now the Scotch cultivator goes there, and his fields are 
 turned into western wilds so that the Americans can hunt 
 there. " Whether directly, or with agreement with the 
 tenants." For form of agreement see Sutherland clearances. 
 Instead of " agreement with " read also " with the rent 
 paid by the tenants." It is equally refreshing to read 
 
46 
 
 about the excess of rent being due to the high cost of food, at 
 a time when rents are too high because wheat is so cheap. 
 
 All this is very nice ; and I never had the least doubt that 
 landlords and their friends can prove quite to their own 
 satisfaction that private ownership of land is an unmixed 
 blessing to them ; for I have lived among Virginian farmers, 
 who proved to me equally well, to their own satisfaction, 
 that slavery was an excellent institution for the slaveholders. 
 But I cannot quite see how they can make it clear to those 
 unphilosophical masses, commonly called the people, thai 
 the present parties are always to be the owners and they, 
 the people, the tenants and the labourers. 
 
 At one of the meetings where Mr. George spoke, a 
 young scion of nobility asked him if he thought it just that he 
 should give up a place which his family had possessed 
 for centuries ? " Don't you think you have had it long 
 enough ? " Mr. George asked. What are Messrs. Herbert, 
 Scott Moffat and Co. going to answer, when those 99/100 of 
 the English nation, who are not landowners, begin to ask that 
 ticklish question : " Don't you think you have had it long 
 enough?" And there is not the least doubt that they will 
 ask that question, one day or the other, and mean to have it 
 answered, too. Education, once the privilege of the few, is 
 rapidly forcing its way downward ; and, though it will not be 
 sufficiently developed to make them see Mr. Herbert's 
 philosophy that they have no rights as long as a single 
 landlord says " nay," yet they will know as much as this 
 that the power is in their hands to take the land from its 
 present owners ; and depend upon it, they will take it. 
 They will do it the more certainly, when once they know 
 how entirely their present misery is derived from private 
 landownership, which the greatest part of land nationalizes 
 do not themselves see as yet. 
 
 In a short paper I cannot fully develop principles which, 
 according to my view, govern the true relation between the 
 land question and the great social question in general ; and 
 which I am happy to say, have been adopted by German, 
 Dutch, and Swiss land nationalizers. An English translation 
 of my last book on this question is in preparation. I shall 
 try to give a short sketch of its contents. 
 
 How is it that millions of willing workers, who are at the 
 same time willing consumers, cannot find paying work in 
 mutually exchanging the produce of their labour ? This 
 problem is the social question of the 19th century. Tho 
 question of wages is only subordinate to it ; for if work were 
 easily found, there would be no unoccupied reserve army of 
 
47 
 
 workers, no mutual underbidding, and consequently we 
 would have high wages. Over-production can be no solution 
 of the problem, for it is only another expression for the 
 same. There is no single article of production, there never 
 was a single one, which/oan be considered as having 
 been over-produced in the real meaning of the word, viz., in 
 having nobody needing it. What we call over-production is, 
 in reality, nothing but under-consumption, caused by a 
 deficiency of purchasing power on the part of the masses. 
 How does this deficiency originate ? To answer this question 
 is to give the cause of our commercial crises, is to solve the 
 social question ; for both are the same thing. I say, they 
 are, which does not mean that they always have been. One 
 of our greatest difficulties consists in the very fact that the 
 meaning of both expressions has changed in the course of 
 time. In an age in which the full exertion of man could just 
 provide for his most pressing wants, the luxury of the few could 
 only be obtained by the privations of the many. The social 
 question of that day was easily understood. So were the 
 commercial crises of that time. When wars, famines, pests, 
 floods, earthquakes, revolutions, ravaged a country, the 
 crisis was easily accounted for. It is evident, that in a time 
 in which over-production is considered as the cause of the 
 depression by all superficial observers, neither the social 
 question nor the crises can be explained by a deficiency of 
 production. Misery from want is a familiar conception ; 
 misery through abundance is an astonishing puzzle. 
 Formerly, wars ruined business, fires damaged production ; 
 now there is nothing like a war to stimulate business, and a 
 big fire, like that of Chicago, has a very invigorating 
 influence on production. What is the solution of the 
 riddle ? It can only be found in that cause which prevents 
 the producing masses from exercising their purchasing 
 power to the full extent of the facilities of production. What 
 is this cause ? It is that they have to give up part of what 
 their labour produces to somebody else, which of course is 
 bound to diminish their purchasing power in proportion. 
 
 Even this could not prevent free exchange of products, and 
 consequently full working opportunities, if one very 
 important and essential condition were fulfilled, viz., if 
 those to whom labour gives up part of its produce would 
 consume it sooner or later. Are they not forced to do this ? 
 They would be, if there were not the possibility of using 
 their income as a means of increasing their tribute-levying 
 power, their power of preventing the workers from con- 
 suming, without filling the gap by their own consumption. 
 
48 
 
 Before, however, we can see how this possibility can arise, 
 I must first illustrate by an example, from actaal life, how the 
 crisis is caused by the increase of large incomes. The 
 Rothschild family, in its different branches, has got an 
 income of not less than 8,000,000. Their consumption 
 does not exceed 1,000,000. This means that they demand 
 from the working masses a tribute to the amount of 
 8,000,000, of which they take only 1,000,000 in 
 produce. For the remainder they want new tribute-rights, 
 or that means of exchange, called " money," with which 
 they can purchase these rights. To exchange their goods 
 for such capitalized tribute-rights or money, the producers 
 have to sell them in a market, in which the Rothschilds only 
 buy l,000,000's worth, and in which they, the producing 
 masses, would very willingly buy the remaining 7,000,000's 
 worth, if they could afford it, viz., if they had not to pay the 
 exchange value of their goods to the Rothschilds. The total 
 sum, which in this way is not consumed, but invested in 
 new tribute-rights all the world over, is calculated to exceed 
 500,000,000 yearly. 
 
 The natural objection we here meet with is that the 
 savings of capitalists, being invested in new machines, new 
 factories, railroads, &c., give employment to labour in some 
 other way ; they only turn it into some other channel, which 
 is even of more advantage to the community than if goods 
 for direct personal consumption were produced. This would 
 be right enough if it were true, which unfortunately it 
 is not. To prove what I advance, I have to begin with 
 the investigation of what we understand by a word always 
 used in connection with the question of investments, the 
 word " capital." No other word in the dictionary of political 
 economy is used with so many different meanings. The 
 definition mostly heard is : "produce of labour used as an 
 instrument of new production." Interest in this sense 
 means hire paid for borrowed instruments of production. 
 Is this really the definition of capital and interest as we are 
 accustomed to meet them in daily life? Certainly not. 
 Only a comparatively small part of the world's capital can 
 come under this heading. Look over the stock-exchange 
 list, and see how much of all the values quoted there will 
 bear the test. Not one-tenth, certainly. All the rest will 
 have to get quite a different definition. The whole of this 
 so-called capital is nothing but " capitalized tribute-rights." 
 A government bond of 100 bearing 3 interest is nothing 
 but the capitalized value of the right to levy a tribute of 3 
 from the workers of the nation through the agency of the 
 
49 
 
 tax-gatherer. All land-titles, all mortgages, all that part of 
 the value of shares not represented by the tools of production 
 owned by joint stock companies all this is nothing else 
 but capitalized tribute-levying power.* Let us from now 
 call all this capital " false'- , capital," its interest " false 
 interest," and the capital consisting of instruments of 
 production (in which, of course, houses, stock, &c., are 
 included) " real capital," its interest " real interest." It is 
 to the latter capital that Socialists pay most attention, which 
 is a great mistake ; not only because this capital forms only 
 a small part of the whole, but because it is also the least 
 dangerous part. There is a great deal of risk connected with 
 its handling, because it consists of human productions, subjected 
 to all the destructive influences to which man's handiwork is 
 liable from its birth. It is " quite different with the false 
 capital ; at least with that part of it and it is by far the greatest 
 part which is based upon well secured monopolies, such as 
 land ownership, mortgages, government securities, railroads, 
 canals, etc. Now the Kothschilds know this very well, and 
 so do most of the large capitalists ; or, ten to one, they would 
 never have become large capitalists. Most of their invest- 
 ments are made in false capital of the securest description. If 
 this false capital did not exist, there would be no Eothschilds. 
 The larger the investments in real capital are, the greater is 
 the risk run by the investor, for the capacities of supervision 
 diminish in proportion to the extent of the field ; whereas 
 false capital of any quantity can easily be watched. 
 
 We can now easily see how the new investments of 
 the large capitalists can increase and mostly do increase 
 their tribute-claiming power, without giving employment to 
 labour. Let us suppose the case of a manufacturer owing a 
 mortgage of 10,000 to Rothschild, at 5 per cent. This 
 means a tribute of 500 due by the manufacturer to 
 Rothschild. A year has gone round and 500 have become 
 due, though, business having been dull, the manufacturer has 
 not earned it. Rothschild is kind enough to add the amount 
 to the capital. This means that, from now to all eternity, the 
 tribute due by the manufacturer to Rothschild has increased 
 by 25. Has the new investment of Rothschild given 
 
 * Perhaps only the odd 5,000 of the 195,000 for which a share 
 in a London water company is sold represents the value of the pipes, 
 reservoirs, fittings, &c., i.e., the real capital. The remaining 
 190,000 represents nothing but the capitalization of the legal right 
 to collect rates from London householders, based on the monopoly 
 enjoyed by the said water company. 
 
50 
 
 employment to labour ? No, for it was nothing but a simple 
 booking operation. It was an increase of Rothschild's false 
 capital to the amount of 500, the capitalized tribute-right 
 to 25 per annum. It means further that the manufacturer 
 has to dimmish his private expenditure to the amount of 25, 
 whereas Rothschild, who does not spend his present income, 
 will not spend one penny more than before. 
 
 The same operation goes on a hundred thousand times 
 a day all over the world. Man's genius meanwhile works 
 with all its might to invent more powerful machines, better 
 processes of manufacture, etc., thus increasing the productive 
 and consumptive power of the people. It is all in vain. 
 Demon interest, with his son compound interest, grows much 
 faster than the genius of invention. There is no fighting 
 possible against the laws of arithmetic. Like that Persian king 
 who found that the doubling of a single'grain on the squares of 
 the chess-board reached a sum exceeding the fortunes of the 
 whole kingdom, we shall be forced to recognise that the genius 
 will have to give in to the demon even if the wonders it 
 holds in reserve for humanity should exceed those of the 
 Thousand and One Nights. The reason why the law 
 of compound interest did not ruin us long ago is the same 
 which prevented the penny invested at the time of Christ 
 from reaching the fabulous sum mentioned in the books of 
 arithmetic. The insecurity of the investment was so great 
 that the penny got lost. Since the beginning of this century 
 this has changed. Investments in land, government securities, 
 railroads, etc., a reign of law and order never before known, 
 combined with an unexampled productiveness of human 
 labour, have given the demon full play. We are already too 
 far on the chessboard ; another square and we are lost. We 
 cannot stand the Rothschild's fortune at 400 millions, with 
 all the others, the Westminsters, the Goulds, Vanderbilts, etc., 
 growing at the same ratio. Shall we wait till the problem 
 is solved in the old accustomed manner, till terrible wars and 
 more terrible revolutions have settled the interest account 
 by destroying the capital ? 
 
 Do not forget, ye owners of tribute-rights, that the destruc- 
 tion of your false capital need not involve the loss of a single 
 penny's worth of real capital. Suppose that land nationaliza- 
 tion, by taking away the selling value of land, destroys 
 those 4,000 or 5,000 millions at which the statistics of British 
 national wealth estimate the capitalized tribute-rights exercised 
 through rent collection, would the nation be the poorer or 
 richer by it ? Have the United States become richer or poorer 
 by the disappearance of 500 millions sterling of slave value 
 
51 
 
 from the columns of national wealth statistics ? Are land 
 values anything else than slave values ? Improvements ? 
 Why, slaves were improved too. Self-sacrificing owners even 
 went so far as to improve their blood themselves, picking 
 out the prettiest negro girls Jbr that noble end. Landlords do 
 not go as far as that. All they do is to allow a small part of 
 labour's exertions to return to the land after having taken 
 the way through their pockets. The best friends of the 
 Southern slaveholders were those abolitionists who offered 
 them full compensation. They were the best friends oi 
 their country, too ; for the slaves would have been a good 
 deal cheaper than the costs of the war. But how can land 
 nationalization do any good if interest and compound interest 
 continue especially if the interest of government bonds 
 takes the place of rent, which would only change the mode 
 of collection, this being undertaken by the government for 
 the landlords instead of by these themselves ? 
 
 If Henry George were right if the tribute-compelling 
 power of capital not only would continue after land 
 nationalization, but even would increase, Socialists would be 
 justified in asserting that the proposed reform would make 
 the people's situation worse than it is now. Socialism would 
 be the only remedy. Fortunately, Mr. George is wrong. 
 Not only interest will not increase when private rent-exaction 
 ceases, but it will disappear with it. To prove this has been 
 the principal part of my efforts. It is difficult to put these 
 proofs before the reader in the narrow space here allowed 
 me. I shall have to limit myself to a short outline, 
 referring the reader to my book in which also the crisis 
 theory is more fully developed. Before giving this outline, I 
 only want to add a few words about the fluctuating nature 
 of the crisis ; for if the causes I have assigned are the real 
 ones, the only puzzle will be how we ever can have a stoppage 
 of the crisis how revivals of business can at all happen, 
 when, according to my theory, the crisis ought to increase 
 in violence from day to day. The explanation is a very 
 simple one. Social developments never go in a straight line, 
 but in undulatory wave-motions. Improvements in business 
 are but the advancing waves of a receding tide. What we 
 call an improvement in business nowadays would have been 
 considered a bad crisis 30 years ago. These temporary 
 improvements, which are continually getting shorter, and are 
 divided by growing intervals of crisis, are caused by wars or 
 large armaments destroying wealth and creating a demand 
 for work. The temporary increase of demand caused in this 
 way is as little understood by the business community as the 
 
52 
 
 real cause of the crisis. Everybody thinks that at last the 
 bad times are over, and the long expected revival has arrived 
 for good. Shopkeepers give large orders to the merchants 
 and these to manufacturers, to be in a position to meet the 
 expected demand. Manufacturers engage more hands and 
 enlarge their works to satisfy their customers. All this 
 increases the amount of wages paid and, as a consequence, 
 the consumption of goods. It thus further stimulates the 
 hopefulness of the business world, the laying in of stock, the 
 demand for goods, &c. But, all this time, the old causes of 
 the crisis have been at work, not only with uninterrupted, 
 but with increased force. The loans emitted for reparation 
 of war losses or the purchase of armaments have increased 
 the tribute-exacting power of the capitalist minority, without 
 proportionately increasing their consumption. On the other 
 hand, they diminish the purchasing power and consumption 
 of the masses by increasing the taxes. Soon shopkeepers 
 and merchants begin to discover that they overestimated 
 the demand, and they reduce their orders. Manufacturers 
 begin to dismiss hands, thus further diminishing consumption; 
 and the crisis begins with renewed intensity, often with the 
 preliminary of a crash, the intensity of which is in proportion 
 to the temporary improvement. 
 
 And now for the interest question. I can pass over those 
 definitions which see in the element of time or in natural 
 forces the origin of interest. Time is a destructive element 
 as well as a creative one, and in every case in which we 
 have to ascribe to natural forces a certain part of production 
 we shall, on closer inspection, find that it is rent and not 
 interest we have to do with. The only definition of 
 interest which can be admitted is, that it is a certain part of 
 the produce of labour, paid for the use of capital. The justice 
 of such payment is demonstrated by the mutual service 
 theory. A. lends a plane to B., by means of which B. can 
 produce more boards in a given time than he could 
 without the plane, and of course B. ought to pay for 
 the service rendered to him by A. in giving him one or 
 more of the additional planks made by means of A's. loan. 
 All right ; but did B. render no service to A. by agreeing to 
 take his plane and to give him a new plane at the time when 
 A. needed the same ? If A. had to keep his plane himself he 
 would have had to spend labour to preserve it from being 
 stolen, from rust, fire, etc., and even with all his labour he 
 would never have had as good a plane as before. If B. 
 there/ore saved him all this work, he rendered him a service, 
 too. To compare the value of two services we have to take 
 
53 
 
 their market value as a standard of comparison, not the 
 standard at which it is valued by the parties personally. 
 This is the law governing any barter. A starving wanderer 
 coming into a town and buying a piece of bread sets a greater 
 personal value upon the service rendered to him by the baker 
 than the baker upon the payment of the penny he received 
 for his bread. Still, only one penny was exacted, because 
 the market value of the service rendered by the baker is only 
 put at one penny. It is, therefore, supply and demand in 
 the market which has to determine the mutual value of the 
 two services rendered by the lender to the borrower and 
 vice versa. If there are more planes needed than offered, 
 planes will command a rent. If on the other hand the offer of 
 planes for hire exceeds the demand, planes will have to pay 
 for the keeping. If the offer of capital exceeds the demand, 
 capital will have to pay for its preservation. Is this ever 
 likely to happen ? It would be the rule, if production were 
 untramelled. Every worker would soon produce more capital 
 than he could use himself; only those beginning anew in business 
 would require capital, which they could soon repay out of their 
 earnings. Capital would be a drug in the market, interest would 
 be a thing of the past. Well, what prevents this desirable state 
 of things ? Private ownersJiip of land is the cause. Rent is 
 the father of interest. It was the great reformer, Calvin, 
 who already, three and a-half centuries ago, proclaimed the 
 great truth that " as long as money will buy land which 
 produces rent, money will be able to claim interest, and 
 capital can be said to be productive of interest, as the object 
 with which you can buy another capable of producing 
 anything can be considered as being the producer of the same." 
 The moment a capitalist owning 100 can purchase with 
 it land bringing 3 rent, this capitalist will not lend out 
 these 100 if he does not get at least 3 interest. Nationalize 
 land, and interest will soon go down to the premium of risk 
 and to the wages of supervision, or below this. Neither of these 
 can be called interest proper ; for the one, in the long run, 
 only replaces the loss of capital, the other is only a form of 
 wages. Neither can form the source of the continual self- 
 increase of capital, which is the cause of all our misfortunes. 
 I know that objections will rain down upon this, and in my 
 book I have tried to anticipate them. Habit makes us look 
 at the most unnatural state of things as a matter of course, 
 and at self-evident truths as lies. That the loan of an 
 object involves the right, not only to get it back tenfold in the 
 course of years through multiplying interest claims, but an 
 eternal right for the lender and his heirs to claim a tribute 
 
from the borrower and his heirs, and still to retain an 
 undiminished claim on the capital, such a state of things 
 appears to us perfectly just and natural, \vhereas the idea 
 that a time might come when the claim of the lender will end 
 with the repayment of his capital, whether such repayment 
 be made in a lump or in instalments, appears to us as 
 ridiculous and not to be thought of. 
 
 The dangers inherent in interest and compound interest 
 claims were not unknown to lawgivers. From the Holy 
 Writ to the canonical laws we find a profusion of laws 
 against interest. Cato considers the taker of interest as 
 worse than a murderer. All this was nonsense. All laws 
 were forced to remain dead letters, as long as the natural 
 foundation of interest remained intact as long as capital 
 could buy land and claim rent for the same. The best proof of 
 this truth can be found in the way in which the laws against 
 interest were evaded during the Middle Ages by making 
 feigned land sales, to be cancelled after repayment of the 
 debt. The rent was collected by the lender, the imaginary 
 owner, until he was repaid. Calvin was much more logical 
 than Romanism, in authorising interest under its real name, 
 as rent made its indirect collection possible. Laws 
 against compound interest were equally useless, for how 
 could the capitalist be prevented from lending out his yearly 
 interest-income? As the new capital consisting of saved 
 interest could not be distinguished in any way from the old 
 capital both being in most cases only false capital, capitalized 
 tribute -claims how could compound interest be distinguished 
 from real interest ? 
 
 One of the most remarkable proofs how even great thinkers 
 are influenced by current thoughts can be found in the fact 
 that our first economists have not been able to see how 
 lending could go on without interest. Even Adam Smith 
 did not believe that anybody would lend without interest 
 unless it was from motives of friendship or charity. He did 
 not see that lending against good security was anyhow better 
 than the preservation of capital by oneself, with all the 
 dangers inherent to the same. Anyhow, he did not go so 
 far as some others, who did not see how anybody would save 
 without the possibility of getting interest. Such economists 
 consider man inferior to animals like the bee, the squirrel, 
 the ant, &c., which save without getting interest, or even 
 with the risk of minus interest, viz., of losing part of their 
 savings. What induces man to save is not the hope of 
 getting interest, but the wish to live without care for the 
 morrow, to provide for old age, for those he leaves behind, 
 
55 
 
 and for the sake of enjoying leisure at his will. All this can 
 be accomplished without interest. 50,000 will, without 
 interest, enable a man to provide a thousand a year income 
 during his own lifetime and that of his wife and children. 
 33,000 will do it, if invented at 3 per cent. It will be a 
 great deal easier in the reform time to save 50,000, than 
 to-day 33,000, especially to the great majority of people, 
 who to-day cannot save a penny. The advantages of 
 interest are to the working man of our time like those of 
 cheap potatoes in Ireland to that Irishman in the United States, 
 who said : ** In ould Ireland ye can git a bushel of taters 
 for sixpence, but the difficulty is to git the sixpence." 
 Insurance companies will be able to equalize risks, make 
 arrangements for life annuities, issue life insurance policies, 
 make provision for sickness and accidents, as well as to-day. 
 Interest only cheapens their terms, but has nothing to do 
 with the principle of insurance, which consists in the 
 generalisation of risks. 
 
 The indirect influences of land nationalization upon 
 capital and interest are much greater than its direct effects. 
 As long as Henry George does not see this, he can 
 never successfully meet Socialists in public discussion, 
 especially in old countries, where the speculative retaining 
 of land plays a very unimportant part, and where the reform 
 of having rent go into the pockets of the State would not of 
 itself make it much easier for a worker without capital to 
 compete with capitalist farmers. It is only by showing that 
 land nationalization will abolish false capital and interest, 
 and thus will make real capital accessible to workers, thus 
 rendering it easy for them to work for their own account, 
 be it singly or as members of associations, and to refuse 
 wages inferior to the profits made in this way, gaining all the 
 advantages of Socialism without its drawbacks, it is only in 
 this way that Individualism can hope to beat Socialism. It 
 is only then that natural laws will accomplish what blind 
 economists pretend they are accomplishing to-day. The 
 dispute between Individualists and Socialists to-day is like 
 that between a gardener who has planted beans which the 
 hogs have eaten without his knowledge, and who insists that 
 his beans have sprouted because natural law wills it so, 
 and a looker on who denies the existence of such a law, there 
 being no sign of a single sprout. Individualists like Griffen, 
 Atkinson, &c., bring us false statistics, by which they attempt 
 to prove that the sprouts of general well-being are visible 
 all around us though nobody with sound eyes can see 
 them because economic laws ought to bring such results. 
 
Socialists on the other hand deny economic laws because the 
 results are so bad. Both schools have forgotten the hogs, 
 which ate the beans, viz. , private landowner ship, the only cause 
 which made beneficent economic laws bring such bad results. 
 Keep the hog " landlordism " out by re-erecting the good old 
 safeguard common ownership of land foolishly torn down by 
 our forefathers, and the law of " laisser faire, laisser passer " 
 will produce the most delicious fruits. Another important 
 consequence of relations between rent and interest will be 
 that we can see our way to full compensation, without 
 depriving the existing generation of the benefits of reform. 
 The production of capital increasing at a greater and greater 
 rate, and land, the most elastic field of investment, the 
 value of which continually increases with the quantity of 
 capital looking for investment, being withdrawn from the 
 capital market, interest will rapidly go down. The 
 government bonds issued at 3 per cent, soon can be 
 converted to 2, 1, , J-, J per cent., and to no interest at all. 
 Rent on the other hand, will rapidly increase with national 
 prosperity. The profits from both causes combined would 
 pay off the present national debt, as well as that incurred 
 in land purchase, within less than 25 years. The period 
 might be further reduced for England by putting the old land 
 tax of 4s. in the pound on present rental values, before settling 
 with landlords, which would reduce the sum of compensation 
 20 per cent. The effects of the reform would be felt as 
 soon as interest had gone down low enough to arrest the 
 flood of unconsumed income now increasing the tribute-rights 
 of a satiated minority and diminishing the power of 
 consumption of the masses. 
 
 When the George school has once seen these truths, its 
 march to certain victory will be rapid. Its celebrated leader 
 is too deep a thinker to keep from seeing them, after he once 
 has looked them squarely into the face. In " Progress and 
 Poverty" he already begins to distinguish false from real 
 capital, by recognising that mortgages are not capital, but landed 
 property, and that their interest is disguised rent. He cannot 
 make a stand at this point. He cannot help seeing that the 
 interest on a capital lent to a worker to buy machines, 
 cannot be legitimate and beneficent to labour to-day and 
 become the very reverse to-morrow, when the same worker 
 allows his creditor to execute a mortgage for the better 
 securing of his credit. Socialists cannot help looking at land 
 nationalization with different eyes when they once understand 
 that it also breaks the power of capital, or rather makes 
 it the slave of labour instead of its domineering master. 
 
They can easily be brought to see that we do not suffer under 
 anarchy of production, as they call it ; for there is not a 
 single article in existence which is overproduced, if the wants 
 of the people are in question, and not a single article of 
 which there is not too much in stock, if the purchasing power 
 of the masses is considered. There is anarchy in the waste 
 caused by unnecessary overstocking of unproductive occupa- 
 tions ; but this will soon be righted when the present barriers 
 to the full development of productive work have been laid 
 low. The social question is one of distribution, not one 
 of production of wealth. When once convinced that, with 
 the nationalization of land, Individualism will accomplish 
 their ideal much better than Socialism, Socialists cannot 
 fail to become Individualist land nationalizers. So will 
 Conservatives, if they once understand that we land 
 nationalizers are the real Conservatives. 
 
IX. BY MB. HERBERT SPENCER. 
 
 AS some doubts had arisen with respect to Mr. Spencer's 
 maintenance of the views on property in land set 
 forth in his Social Statics, we asked him, some months ago, to 
 banish these uncertainties by making a brief contribution to 
 our Symposium. This he was unable at the time to do, 
 because of ill-health ; but he has since been induced, by the 
 "heckling" to which the Right Hon. John Morley, M.P., 
 was subjected by a body of his constituents, to write a letter 
 to the Times (7th November, 1889) which, as it exactly serves 
 the purpose of our Symposium, we take the liberty to 
 transcribe. ED. 
 
 . Sir, During the interview between Mr. Morley and some 
 of his constituents, reported in your issue of the 5th inst., I 
 was referred to as having set forth certain opinions respecting 
 land ownership. Fearing that, if I remain silent, many will 
 suppose I have said things which I have not said, I find it 
 needful to say something in explanation. 
 
 Already within these few years I have twice pointed out 
 that these opinions (made to appear by those who have 
 circulated them widely different from what they really are, 
 by the omission of accompanying opinions) were set forth in 
 my first work, published 40 years ago ; and that, for the 
 last 12 or 15 years, I have refrained from issuing new editions 
 of that work and have interdicted translations, because, 
 though I still adhere to its general principles, I dissent from 
 some of the deductions. 
 
 The work referred to " Social Statics " was intended to 
 be a system of political ethics absolute political ethics, or 
 that which ought to be, as distinguished from relative political 
 ethics, or that which is at present the nearest practicable 
 approach to it. The conclusion reached concerning land 
 ownership was reached while seeking a valid basis for the 
 right of property : the basis assigned by Locke appearing to 
 me invalid. It was argued that a satisfactory ethical warrant 
 for private ownership could arise only by contract between 
 the community, as original owner of the inhabited area, and 
 individual members, who became tenants, agreeing to pay 
 certain portions of the produce, or its equivalent in money, 
 in consideration of recognised claims to the rest. And in the 
 
59 
 
 course of the argument it was pointed out that such a view 
 of land ownership is congruous with existing legal theory 
 and practice ; since in law every landowner is held to be a 
 tenant of the Crown that is, of the community, and since, 
 in practice, the supreme righi of the community is asserted 
 by every Act of Parliament which, with a view to public 
 advantage, directly or by proxy takes possession of land after 
 making due compensation. 
 
 All this was said in the belief that the questions raised 
 were not likely to come to the front in our time or for many 
 generations ; but, assuming that they would some time come 
 to the front, it was said that, supposing the community 
 should assert overtly the supreme right which is now tacitly 
 asserted, the business of compensation of landowners would 
 be a complicated one 
 
 " One that perhaps cannot be settled in a strictly equitable 
 manner . . . Most of our present landowners are men who 
 have, either mediately or immediately, either by their own 
 acts or by the acts of their ancestors, given for their estates 
 equivalents of honestly-earned wealth, believing that they 
 were investing their savings in a legitimate manner. To 
 justly estimate and liquidate the claims of such is one of the 
 most intricate problems society will one day have to 
 solve." 
 
 To make the position I then took quite clear, it is needful 
 to add that, as shown in a succeeding chapter, the insistence 
 on this doctrine, in virtue of which " the right of property 
 obtains a legitimate foundation," had for one of its motives 
 the exclusion of Socialism and Communism, to which I was 
 then as profoundly averse as I am now. 
 
 Investigations made during recent years into the various 
 forms of social organization, while writing the " Principles of 
 Sociology," have in part confirmed and in part changed the 
 views published in 1850. Perhaps I may be allowed space 
 for quoting from " Political Institutions " a paragraph 
 showing the revised conclusions arrived at : 
 
 " At first sight it seems fairly inferable that the absolute 
 ownership of land by private persons must be the ultimate state 
 which industrialism brings about. But though industrialism 
 has thus far tended to individualize possession of land, while 
 individualizing all other possession, it may be doubted 
 whether the final stage is at present reached. Ownership 
 established by force does not stand on the same footing as 
 ownership established by contract : and though multiplied 
 sales and purchases, treating the two ownerships in the 
 same way, have tacitly assimilated them, the assimilation 
 
may eventually be denied. The analogy furnished by 
 assumed rights of possession over human beings helps 
 us to recognize this possibility. For while prisoners 
 of war, taken by force and held as property in a vague 
 way (being at first much on a footing with other members of 
 a household), were reduced more definitely to the form of 
 property when the buying and selling of slaves became 
 general ; and while it might, centuries ago, have been thence 
 inferred that the ownership of man by man was an ownership 
 in course of being permanently established ; yet we see that 
 a later stage of civilization, reversing this process, has 
 destroyed ownership of man by man. Similarly, at a stage 
 still more advanced, it may be that private ownership of land 
 will disappear. As that primitive freedom of the individual 
 which existed before war established coercive institutions 
 and personal slavery comes to be re-established as militancy 
 declines, so it seems possible that the primitive ownership of 
 land by the community, which, with the development of 
 coercive institutions, lapsed in large measure or wholly into 
 private ownership, will be revived as industrialism further 
 develops. The regime of contract, at present so far extended 
 that the right of property in movables is recognised only as 
 having arisen by exchange of services or products under 
 agreements, or by gift from those who had acquired it under 
 such agreements, may be further extended so far that the 
 products of the soil will be recognised as property only by 
 virtue of agreements between individuals as tenants and the 
 community as landowner. Even now, among ourselves, 
 private ownership of land is not absolute. In legal theory 
 landowners are directly or indirectly tenants of the Crown 
 (which in our day is equivalent to the State, or, in other 
 words, the community) ; and the community from time to 
 time resumes possession after making due compensation. 
 Perhaps the right of the community to the land, thus tacitly 
 asserted, will in time to come be overtly asserted, and acted 
 upon after making full allowance for the accumulated value 
 
 artificially given There is reason to suspect 
 
 that while private possession of things produced by labour 
 will grow even more definite and sacred than at present, the 
 inhabited area, which cannot be produced by labour, will 
 eventually be distinguished as something which may not be 
 privately possessed. As the individual, primitively owner of 
 himself, partially or wholly loses ownership of himself during 
 the militant regime, but gradually resumes it as the industrial 
 regime develops, so, possibly, the communal proprietorship 
 of land, partially or wholly merged in the ownership of 
 
61 
 
 dominant men during evolution of the militant type, 
 will be resumed as the industrial type becomes fully 
 evolved." (Pp. 643-46.) 
 
 The use of the words " possible," " possibly," and 
 "perhaps" in the above extracts shows that I have no positive 
 opinion as to what may hereafter take place. The reason 
 for this state of hesitancy is that I cannot see my way 
 towards reconciliation of the ethical requirements with the 
 politico-economical requirements. On the one hand, a 
 condition of things under which the owner of, say, the 
 Scilly Isles might make tenancy of his land conditional 
 upon professing a certain creed or adopting prescribed habits 
 of life, giving notice to quit to any who did not submit, is 
 ethically indefensible. On the other hand, " nationalization 
 of the land," effected after compensation for the artificial 
 value given by cultivation, amounting to the greater part of 
 its value, would entail, in the shape of interest on the required 
 purchase-money, as great a sum as is now paid in rent, and 
 indeed a greater, considering the respective rates of interest 
 on landed property and other property. Add to which 
 there is no reason to think that the substituted form of 
 adminstration would be better than the existing form of 
 administration. The belief that land would be better 
 managed by public officials than it is by private owners is a 
 very wild belief. 
 
 What the remote future may bring forth there is no 
 saying ; but with a humanity anything like that we now 
 know, the implied re-organization would be disastrous. 
 
 I am, &c., 
 
 HERBERT SPENCER. 
 Athenaeum Club, November 6th, 
 
X. BY J. B. LAWRENCE. 
 
 I HAVE not Mr. Fliirsclieim's hatred of abstract philosophy, 
 which is or ought to be truth in its most generalized 
 form ; neither can I find such philosophy in Mr. Auberon 
 Herbert's paper. The fault which I have to find with that 
 is the very reverse. Mr. Herbert has unconsciously no 
 doubt evaded the statement of principle which he was 
 called upon to make, and which I challenge him to make in 
 his reply. The burthen of proof which lay upon him was 
 to set forth the fundamental principle of private property 
 from the Individualistic standpoint, and to show that it 
 justifies private property in land, using the term " land " in 
 its economic sense, that is, apart from improvements. 
 
 <( The Individualist," says Mr. Herbert, "hates exceptions " 
 which, I suppose, means that the Individualist is a man of 
 principle, and adheres to that principle. He who employs 
 the term " exception " implies that there is a principle to 
 which it is an exception. But the enunciation of this 
 principle is nowhere to be found in Mr. Herbert's paper. 
 Instead of this, we have a paralogism which bears a striking 
 resemblance to the ancient one of the Greek sophists in proof 
 of the impossibility of motion. A thing must move, argued 
 these learned gentlemen, either where it is or where it is 
 not ; and they then proceeded laboriously to prove that this 
 dialectical dummy was weak in both its joints. " The land," 
 argues Mr. Herbert, " either belongs to the whole nation or 
 it does not; " and he assumes that those with whom he is 
 contending will choose the first horn of the dilemma. But 
 taking the assertion to mean that which his subsequent 
 reasoning shows he intends it to mean this is a mistake. 
 If by the whole nation be meant the whole of the persons at 
 present constituting the nation, and if by the land belonging 
 to the whole nation be meant that, " except by the consent of 
 every person, the land must remain free and open to all," 
 then I unhesitatingly say that the land does not or ought not 
 to belong to the whole nation in this sense. 
 
 Let me supply Mr. Herbert's omission, and state what I 
 hold to be the theory of proprietary rights which follows 
 from the principle of Individualism. Why should any 
 person have exclusive possession and enjoyment of anything ? 
 The answer of the Individualist must be : Because he is morally 
 
63 
 
 entitled to the exclusive use of his own faculties, and there- 
 fore to the things which are produced by those faculties. 
 Proprietary rights flow from personal rights. This is denied 
 by the Socialist, and the denial is significant. Mr. Sydney 
 Olivier, who represents the Socialists in this Symposium, 
 says : " That ultimate refuge of the Individualist, the riglit 
 of a man over his own body and capacities ... is itself a 
 large assumption, not necessarily admitted by Socialists." 
 I content myself here with noting that, whatever else 
 Socialism means, it certainly means slavery. Blackstone 
 says : " There is nothing which so generally strikes the 
 imagination, and engages the affections of mankind, as the 
 right of property ; or that sole and despotic dominion which 
 one man claims and exercises over the external things 
 of the world in total exclusion of the right of any other 
 individual in the universe. And yet there are very few that 
 will give themselves the trouble to consider the original and 
 foundation of this right. Pleased as we are with the 
 possession, we seem afraid to look back to the means 
 by which it was acquired, as if fearful of some defect in our 
 title ; or at best we rest satisfied with the decision of the 
 laws in our favour, without examining the reason or 
 authority upon which those laws have been built. We 
 think it enough that our title is derived by the grant of tbe 
 former proprietor, by descent from our ancestors, or by the 
 last will and testament of the dying owner ; not caring to 
 reflect that (accurately and strictly speaking) there is no 
 foundation in nature or in natural law why a set of 
 words upon parchment should convey the dominion of 
 
 land These inquiries, it must be owned, would be 
 
 useless and even troublesome in common life. It is well 
 if the mass of mankind will obey the laws when made, 
 without scrutinizing too nicely into the reasons for making 
 them." * 
 
 This is evidently an esoteric appeal to the " haves " not 
 to talk too loud. The doctrine which Blackstone teaches 
 sotto voce is that property was " originally acquired by the 
 first taker." In the statement of this doctrine, it is always 
 difficult to make out whether its defenders intend to state 
 an historical or a moral truth whether they wish to saj- 
 what is or has been, or to lay down what ought to be. 
 Some of them can scarcely be said to ring the changes on 
 these two assertions, for they regard them as one. For 
 instance, Mr. Wordsworth Donisthorpe writes: "If 
 
 * Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book II., Chap. I. 
 
64 
 
 Majority means those persons who wield the force majeure, 
 then I admit at once that the Majority has a right to take 
 over the land with or without compensation, and to melt 
 down the landowners in oleomargarine. The Majority, like 
 everybody else, has a right to do whatever it likes, subject 
 to the will of a stronger power call it the Law, or the 
 State, or the Sovereign Power, or the Bigger Crowd/' 
 This makes might identical with right. It is, of course, 
 true that those who wield the force majeure can make what 
 laws they like, and can thus confer on themselves any legal 
 rights they choose ; but when we are judging law when 
 we are seeking the ethical basis of law, it is useless to refer 
 us to law itself. The question at issue is a moral, not a 
 legal one. The great weakness and it is a fatal one of 
 Mr. Donisthorpe's very able presentment of his own view 
 of Individualism is that he persistently looks at moral 
 questions from the point of view of positive law. If he 
 strays upon quasi-ethical ground, he takes up the position 
 of egoistic hedonism, from which it is eminently necessary 
 to dissociate Individualism. This persistent legal set of 
 Mr. Donisthorpe's mind results in natural rights being, 
 as he says, " utterly unintelligible " to him. He can 
 see no rights anterior to law. He does not see that law, 
 in so far as it is not a mode of warfare, is an endeavour 
 to give natural or moral rights a political sanction. But to 
 deny that any rights exist save those sanctioned by law 
 when it is anything more than a mere logomachy is to 
 deny all force to moral considerations and to treat every 
 social question as one of ihe force majeure. 
 
 The right of occupancy the right of " the first taker " is 
 the ethics of scramble, and is undeserving of the slightest 
 respect. In a world where all are necessarily dependent on 
 the use of natural agents, the notion that those who are first 
 able to appropriate them are justified in doing so is prepos- 
 terous. "No man made the land," says John Stuart Mill. 
 "It is the original inheritance of the whole species. . . . 
 It is no hardship to any one to be excluded from what 
 others have produced: they were not bound to produce 
 it for his use, and he loses nothing by not sharing in 
 what otherwise would not have existed at all. But it is 
 some hardship to be born into the world and to find all 
 Nature's gifts previously engrossed, and no place left for 
 the new-comer. To reconcile people to this, after they have 
 once admitted into their minds the idea that any moral 
 rights belong to them as human beings, it will always be 
 necessary to convince them that the exclusive appropriation 
 
65 
 
 is good for mankind on the whole, themselves included."* 
 Mill's general contention appears to me unanswerable ; 
 but I cannot admit that the Legislature would be justified 
 in depriving any man of that to which he is morally 
 entitled, on the ground of a judgment of the effective majority 
 that this would be good for him and for the community. The 
 good of the community is best attained by absolute respect 
 for moral rights. If the majority think that a man would do 
 well to surrender a portion of his rights, they ought to 
 endeavour to convince him of this, but not to coerce him. In 
 the domain of his rights the individual is sovereign. 
 
 The right of occupancy or, as Mr. Scott Moffatf would 
 call it, the instinct of appropriation cannot be ethically 
 sustained. Res nullius occupanti concediturl might do very 
 well for the old world. It breathes the spirit of militarism. 
 In res nullius was included enemy's property of every kind. 
 The modern spirit of industrialism and exchange is more 
 consonant with the words of the French code: " Les 
 liens qui riant pas de maitre appartiennent a I'Etat." That 
 which nobody made, and therefore which belongs to 
 nobody by right of production, belongs equally to every- 
 body. Especially must this be so with that which everybody 
 needs, and without which the concession of the right to the 
 use of our faculties is as much a mockery as was the 
 concession to Shylock of his right to his pound of flesh without 
 a drop of blood. 
 
 Here, however, it is needful to clear away a misconception 
 on which Mr. Auberon Herbert and Mr. Scott Moffat build 
 a large part of their argumentative edifice. Locke says : 
 " The labour of a man's body and the work of his hands we 
 may say are properly his. "Whatsoever 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 of his own, 
 and thereby makes it his property. " To this argument it has 
 rightly been objected that if that on which a man works is 
 not his originally, it is not made so by his work, though he 
 may equitably be entitled to compensation for improvements. 
 Mr. Auberon Herbert wants to know, if a field is national 
 
 * Principles of Political Economy, Book II., Chap. II., 6. 
 
 f With one sentence of this gentleman I cordially agree : " To 
 show the utility of the landlord as a functionary of the industrial 
 organization, it is necessary to get rid of the notions instilled by 
 Ricarclo's theory of rent." True; but are they to be got rid 
 of by stumbling over Eicardo's use of the term " indestructible " ? 
 
 J See Maine's Ancient Law, Chap. VIII. 
 
 On Government, Chap. V. 
 
66 
 
 property, how the crops which absorbed part of the 
 material of that field can be private property. Mr. Scott 
 Moffat argues that labour cannot be the source of property, 
 since property in the material on which the labour is used 
 must be antecedent to that labour. These contentions are 
 really one, and involve a misunderstanding of the doctrine 
 against which they are urged. That doctrine is that, as a 
 matter of natural right, all persons are equally entitled 
 to ,the use of land, and, therefore, no person should be 
 conceded any proprietary rights in the soil which are 
 inconsistent with the exercise of equal rights by his fellows. 
 The raising and private use of a crop are not necessarily 
 inconsistent with the maintenance of such rights. Provided 
 the grower has not more than his fair share in the use of the 
 land, or has compensated the community using this term 
 in its widest sense so as to include posterity for what they 
 have allowed him to use in excess of this, the conditions of 
 equity are satisfied. Allpersons donot want direct access to the 
 land for the purposes of production ; but those who have not 
 this access should be adequately and efficiently recouped in 
 some way satisfactory to themselves. They should not be left 
 merely with the use of their bodily faculties without any- 
 thing on which to use those faculties. I warn Mr. Herbert 
 and Mr. Scott Moflat that they are wielding a two-edged 
 sword ; and that they may find they are really playing into 
 the hands of the Socialists, and, so far as they produce any 
 effect at all, are cutting away the foundations of all 
 industrial property.* 
 
 The main reason why so much unnecessary opposition has 
 been roused against the doctrine I am advocating is that people 
 confound it with the practical measures of Mr. Henry George, 
 to which no one could be more opposed than I. The 
 following paragraphs from Mr. J. H. Levy's lecture on " The 
 Outcome of Individualism"! indicate the solution which I 
 think best. 
 
 " Mr. George is not a Socialist. To give him his 
 proper name, he is a Repudiationist. He would wipe 
 out the National Debt by means of a sponge, and would 
 nationalize land by seizing by taxation or otherwise the 
 whole of the land of the country. To this I could not for a 
 moment agree. However lacking private property in land 
 may be in moral justification, it has been recognised by the 
 
 * See the Fabian Tract on " Land and Capital" referred to by 
 Mr. Olivier. 
 
 f Published by P. S. King and Son, 5, King Street, Westminster. 
 Price Twopence. 
 
67 
 
 State ; innocent persons have been induced to make invest- 
 ments in it ; the transfers have been made according to forms 
 prescribed by the State, which has also received a commission 
 on each such transaction in the shape of a stamp duty. 
 Under such circumstances, if we resolve as I hope and 
 believe we will that private property in land shall cease to 
 be, the cost of the change must be borne by the whole 
 nation, as in the case of slave emancipation, and not by those 
 only who happen to be in the possession of land when it is 
 determined that this change must be made. 
 
 " Here, once more, honesty is the best policy. But when the 
 abolition of private property in land is spoken of, and it is 
 agreed that this cannot or ought not to be done by 
 expropriation, visions of a gigantic scheme of purchase at 
 once present themselves to the public mind. I believe that 
 this is not at all necessary or expedient. If once the right 
 principle were adopted by Parliament, it would soon fructify 
 and yield a bounteous harvest. When that principle became 
 the moral basis of a settled policy, public lands would not be 
 allowed to slip from public hands ; the permanent fiscal 
 burthens on land which are really a reserved rental belonging 
 to the State would be jealously maintained ; lands held in 
 trust by corporations might be transferred to the State on 
 equitable terms ; the pruning away of some of the absurdities 
 of the law of inheritance would result in many rich windfalls to 
 the State ; reversions, whose market value is little, might 
 advantageously be acquired ; and, last but not least, I think 
 we might reasonably look forward to bequests and gifts of 
 land and other property to the State becoming much more 
 frequent. Especially should I hope that many of the large 
 landholders would voluntarily turn their permanent ownership 
 into a terminable one ; for they would gain far more in the 
 love and esteem of their fellow- citizens than they would lose 
 in point of wealth. In other words, the system I would 
 adopt would be that of patience, forbearance, and faith in 
 the vivifying effect of a great moral principle." 
 
 I will only say in conclusion that the defence of 
 Individualism plus a system of private property in land 
 by which any human being is shut out from access to labour 
 material seems to me impossible, and that the practical 
 alternatives are Collectivism and a complete and consistent 
 Individualism that is, a full recognition of jsej^onal rights 
 and equal rights in the gifts of Nature. 
 
68 
 
 XL BY AUBEEON HEEBEET. 
 
 KEPLY. 
 
 IPEOPOSE to touch on some important points ; others I 
 must regretfully pass by. 
 
 Mr. Olivier objects to " a priori deductions from notions 
 of abstract right." I hardly understand how he is going to 
 get through the world without them. Clearly he does not 
 get through his article without them. When he maintains 
 that the increased value, given to land by the presence of a 
 community on it, entitles the community to " grab " that 
 increased value, he is using the very weapon he condemns. 
 When he says that these abstract notions lead to different 
 conclusions according to the mind of the writer, and 
 proposes to substitute utilitarian and historical reasoning 
 (both excellent methods in their own place), he forgets that 
 the weakness of the former method is the impossibility of 
 arriving at any conclusion which will command general 
 assent men being hopelessly divided as to what is good and 
 useful ; and that the weakness of the latter is, that when 
 separated from moral considerations, it is a very insufficient 
 guide. Unless you have some abstract good before your 
 mind towards which, as you believe, the human race is 
 travelling, or ought to travel, any historical statement (which 
 itself will generally admit of very large discussion) that we 
 have gone from Communism to Individualism, or from 
 Individualism to Communism, is not of very great importance. 
 The working of evolution is of enormous importance, if you 
 believe that it is tending towards some definite end, but of 
 slight importance, if you do not. 
 
 Mr. Olivier questions if he does not deny the right of 
 the individual over his own faculties. But in doing it he 
 commits logical suicide. For if the individual has no rights 
 over his own faculties, and no claim to property arising from 
 such rights, neither can that congeries of individuals, called 
 the community, have any such rights. If the individual 
 may not claim any increased value in the world's material 
 on account of his faculties, then the mass of individuals, called 
 the community, is necessarily under the same disqualification. 
 Mr. Olivier has destroyed at one fell swoop all the claims 
 that have been hitherto advanced by his party on behalf of 
 
69 
 
 the right of the community to seize increased value, on the 
 ground that it is they, the community, who have helped to 
 create it. 
 
 Mr. Olivier must pardon me a minute's amusement at the 
 line he takes. He objects to ray appeal to abstract rights on 
 behalf of the individual, and then betakes himself to a much 
 less legitimate use of abstraction, I mean the recognition of 
 rights, as regards the use of faculties, in the mass of 
 individuals. A man has no rights, but a million of men 
 have. Clearly Mr. Olivier thinks that if you multiply a 
 stone by a million, it will at the end of the process be 
 something different from a million stones. Strong believer 
 as I am in abstract reasoning, I can assure Mr. Olivier I have 
 never indulged myself in such a magical use of abstract 
 notions. 
 
 And what a theory itself an a priori notion is this theory 
 that those who indirectly, unconsciously, and unintentionally, 
 help to impart value to what another man possesses, may 
 claim that value ! If the theory is good for anything, it / 
 should be applied generally to the circumstances of life. If 
 I help to make a tradesman's income by buying his goods, I 
 may claim part of his income. If I go to an hotel at a busy 
 season, and help to raise the price of hotel accommodation, I 
 may make a claim upon the landlord in consequence. If I 
 buy and read an author's books, I ought to share in the 
 profits. If two nations trade together, each may send a bill 
 in to the other for increased prosperity. But, as a matter of 
 fact, is it the community, as an entire whole, which does 
 impart the increased value to either houses or land ? Is it 
 not the labour, the enterprise, the skill of certain members 
 which impart the largest part of the value, whilst other 
 members of a community, by their ways of going on, actually 
 deduct from the value rather than impart to it ? Under 
 what rule of equity are you going to place these two classes 
 on the same footing, the man who has added, and the man 
 who has deducted rather than added ? If it is true that we 
 may claim in regard to the indirect effect of our actions, 
 then I say that Mr. Olivier must find some tribunal or process 
 for estimating the nature and amount of the indirect effect of 
 each man's actions, for we certainly do not all act in the 
 same manner. 
 
 Lt.-Col. Scott, amongst other criticisms, seems to ask 
 why should not land be common property, as sea and air are 
 common property ? The great distinction is overlooked. In 
 the one case (land) the particles remain, being fixed in situ. 
 They, the land particles, can be treated as property, just 
 
70 
 
 because they do not change. The air and sea particles are not 
 property, just because they are ever changing. You cannot 
 identify the air and water particles for they are in a constant 
 state of flux. You can identify the soil particles, for they 
 remain within the four corners of your field, and are modified 
 by your treatment of them. A great deal more can be said ; 
 but the necessity of treating the same particles of soil 
 according to long continued processes extending over 
 years essentially separates land from sea or air. 
 
 Lt.-Col. Scott goes back to the favourite topic that land 
 was taken for the people ; and that the present holders hold 
 because they are descendants of the successful invading 
 chiefs or nobles. That argument conveniently passes by the 
 fact that a very large part of the land has passed by free 
 sale from the families of the chiefs to others who have 
 purchased ; and secondly, that if land was taken from Saxon 
 by Norman, it had been previously taken by Saxon from 
 Briton, and by Briton from the long-headed race. The 
 ancient history therefore to which he appeals gives no true 
 title for another taking of the land, since it discloses no true 
 previous title existing anywhere. If property has been stolen, 
 and restitution has to be made, you must be able to show the 
 person from whom it has been stolen, and to whom it is to 
 be restored. 
 
 Mr. Ley seems to me to avoid the mistake, into which 
 Mr. George has led so many people, of building up a right, 
 and then, when it has served its purpose, quietly knocking 
 the poor thing on its head. Every individual, contends Mr. 
 Ley, has an abstract right to a place to-be-in, and to use. 
 Very good ; then he ought to have that right conceded to 
 him. Either all land ought to be free for all purposes to all, 
 which is pretty far on the road to absurdity ; or every person 
 ought to have his share, whatever it may be say an acre 
 which is also a proposition tending in the same direction. I 
 can hardly think Mr. Ley is prepared though he talks a 
 little vaguely about five acres in one place to take this last 
 step. Conceive the dislocation of existing things ; the 
 roads to be made (and paid for by whom ?) ; the creation of 
 an enormous mass of small holders, fit or unfit ; the capital 
 required for building cottages ; the complaints of the ever- 
 increasing population who had not shared in the distribution. 
 But if Mr. Ley does not mean that, what does he mean ? 
 Will he, too, in common with Mr. George, commute a right ? 
 Will he tell a landless man that he, as an individual, has a 
 right to a place to-be-in (and he quietly says, as if we were 
 all Irishmen met to make " bulls," " without which he 
 
71 
 
 cannot exist " though he is in existence and as large as life 
 nil the time) ; and having said that, will he proceed not to 
 give him his place to-be-in ; which we can all see to be an 
 impossibility but to give him a share in a free library, or a 
 bad gratuitous education, or 'some other blessed contrivance 
 of somebody's, which we are to ask him to take in exchange 
 for his right a right of such peculiar nature, that whilst 
 society is to be revolutionized in its name, it cannot by any 
 possibility be granted to everybody, or even to half every- 
 body, as the Irishman said. By what authority, I ask, can 
 we commute a right ? If a man, in real sober earnest, has 
 a right to an acre of land, treat that right as a sacred thing, 
 and concede it, whatever it costs you. If it is not a real 
 right, but simply a piece of brain-cobweb, do not play with 
 it and make it an excuse for transferring an enormous 
 money- value from one set of holders to another set. Better 
 do your transference simply by naked force, and use no fine 
 words about it. 
 
 I confess, however, that I am puzzled by Mr. Ley's 
 doctrine, because one part seems to conflict with another. 
 He says that the land belongs to nobody. But then, how am I 
 to accept the statement that the individual has a right to a place 
 to-be-in, if it is true that the land belongs to nobody ? If 
 it belongs to nobody, I am obliged to ask not only how can any 
 person rightly have a place to-be-in ; but how can we come to 
 any arrangement in the matter ? How are we to assign it, or let 
 it, or tax it, or cultivate it, or have anything to do with it ? 
 All these things imply a right of disposing of it, according 
 to our own ideas of fitness ; and how, if it does not belong 
 to us, if we have no right over it, can we do anything of 
 the sort with it ? Such a proposition makes us all equal 
 intruders and usurpers one with another. 
 
 Mr. Ley says the leg of mutton or sack of wheat grown 
 from the soil may be private property, but the land cannot ; 
 because the forces which produced the sack of wheat were 
 set in motion by an individual, but the forces which pro- 
 duced the land were not. But is it so ? As regards the 
 soil, have not the forces often been set in motion I use the 
 phrase protesting against it by men ? Much of the soil 
 which is used for production actually owes as much to man's 
 intervention as does the sack of wheat. Y/hen soil is carried 
 up the mountain side to form vineyards ; where tracts of 
 sand are by slow processes reclaimed ; when forests are 
 cleared ; swamps drained ; and years of careful treatment 
 given to land to put good heart into it, the soil is not simply 
 the soil of nature, but also of the art and manufacture of 
 
72 
 
 men. In all such cases the difference between the soil itself, 
 ind the produce raised from it becomes of a very shadowy 
 aature. It is true that in all cases Nature is the great pro- 
 ducer, and man's share is comparatively small ; but it must 
 be conceded that the difference is but slight, where Nature 
 has changed the grains of corn into a sack of corn, or where 
 she has ground down the rocks and deposited the detritus 
 under water to form soil. Such a difference is of far too 
 unsubstantial a character to build upon, and to justify the 
 tremendous dogma that land belongs to nobody, because 
 man did not help to grind down the rocks ; but that all the 
 produce of land belongs to him because he has sown the 
 seed, leaving Nature to form the plant. The whole thing is 
 metaphysical and abstract in the extreme. All that I can do in 
 any case as regards nature is, with more or less skill, to avail 
 myself of existing forces and existing materials ; and if I have 
 no right to own what already exists in nature, I can never own 
 the sack of wheat any more than I can own the acre of 
 soil. But when we pass to the further applications of 
 Mr. Ley's scheme, I feel, and I presume others do, 
 more away than ever from solid footing. He and Mr. 
 Wallace seem to have arrived together at a small plan 
 by which the world is to be easily and comfortably housed. 
 Some persons are to build houses, and others to live in 
 them. No rent is to be paid, because to charge rent is to 
 charge for space, which is a natural product ; though the 
 value of the wall-material, &c., may be paid for. Now 
 what difference the air-space makes, I cannot see. A 
 tenant is not charged now, I suspect, for air-space, but for 
 interest on value of building site, and cost of materials, etc. 
 Under Mr. Ley's plan he would still have to pay these 
 charges. Only Mr. Ley proposes that he should pay it all 
 in one payment and not as rent. Certainly, if convenient to 
 both parties ; but I am afraid in a good many cases, if the 
 week's lodging could not be had without payment of the 
 capital sum, a good many people might sleep in the open- 
 air. But in truth I suppose it is only a part of that favourite 
 plan of transferring property by force, which is always 
 doomed sooner or later to defeat itself. Either Mr. Ley 
 intends to deduct something from the property of the house- 
 owner and house builder, or he does not. If he does, it may 
 very likely result in houses not being built. If he does not, 
 who has profited ? 
 
 My friend Mr. Wordsworth Donisthorpe raises an old 
 quarrel with me. There are no natural (or abstract) rights, 
 he says. To which I can only answer that he can no more 
 
ta 
 
 escape from abstract rights than Mr. Olivier can escape from 
 deductive reasoning. To deny such rights is to be involved 
 straightway in logical contradictions. You say that the 
 individual has no abstract right, and in the same breath, and 
 as a resulting consequence, you say that the majority has a 
 right to do what, it likes. Its rights extend, says Mr. 
 Donisthorpe benignantly, to the manufacture of landlord 
 oleomargarine. Why, what strange logical process is here ? 
 A. has no rights, but one hundred A.'s have unlimited rights. 
 Merciful Heaven ! What a transformation ! By simply 
 multiplying A. you have transformed him from a being without 
 rights to a being with unlimited rights ! 
 
 Does it make matters any better if you say bluntly, 
 "Force is Eight." (As I have put them both on the same 
 footing, I hope Mr. Donisthorpe will not object to the capital 
 letters.) I, too, try to cling to fact ; and I say, as a matter 
 of fact, they are not the same. Ever since man differentiated 
 from animal (if that great guess is true) reason and force have 
 been differentiating from each other, until force, from being its 
 own unconditioned master, seems to be slowly becoming the 
 servant of reason. You may say that is an eternal struggle 
 between the two, and that sometimes force enlists and 
 enchains reason on its side ; sometimes reason enlists and 
 enchains force. That is true ; but the fact that the struggle 
 exists is sufficient to show that the two forces have separate 
 individualities and are not one. 
 
 About the word itself I will not dispute with my friend. 
 If instead of calling them rights he should like to call them 
 "the higher and more remote conveniences " that will not 
 change their nature. They are what they are, because of a 
 universal element in their nature ; because of their essential 
 connection with fundamental facts of human nature ; because 
 of their conformity with our reason, which has its own 
 imperative needs for satisfaction, as much as our body has ; 
 and if you could once get rid of this idea of rights, and 
 take your stand upon the proposition that every man might 
 do just whatever he liked, so far as he had, either singly, or 
 in conjunction with others, the force to do it, you would 
 have, I think, to abandon all use of such words, as just and 
 unjust, equitable and inequitable, tolerant and oppressive, 
 reasonable and violent, and to recreate a large part both of 
 our language and ideas. 
 
 I regret that Mr. Fliirscheim was irritated with me. Had 
 he not been so, he would have seen the difference between 
 the State and a Joint- Stock Company. I join the latter at 
 my own option, and only submit myself to the will of the 
 
74 
 
 majority because I individually desire to do so. With the 
 State I have no such option. It forces the will of the 
 majority upon me at point after point, whether I wish it or 
 not. As regards the rest of his paper, Mr. Flurscheim must 
 forgive me for saying that he has planted a seed and produced 
 from it a growth as wonderful as did Jack the Giant-Killer 
 from his bean in our nursery legends. If I understand him 
 rightly, the fact of A. and B. paying their rents for land to 
 the State and not to the landlord will lead to the abolition of 
 all payment of interest. I might ask him why we do not 
 see any fulfilment of his prophecy in India, where rents are 
 paid to the State ; but I prefer to rest upon the simple fact 
 that as long as one man wants what another possesses, he 
 will give some equivalent, call it by what name you like. 
 If 100 can produce 101, there will always be an induce- 
 ment for the capable man to borrow 100 from the less 
 capable, and to pay some equivalent for the advantage ; 
 when 100 ceases to produce 101 in capable hands, the 
 world will be in such a bad case that we need not consider 
 what will happen. This profitable use of capital in the 
 more capable hands I look upon as an unalterable fact that 
 cannot be got rid of ; and it will always produce its 
 consequences. It should not for a moment be mixed up 
 with the possibility that some persons might be willing, as 
 to a certain extent men now do with their bankers, deposit 
 money without receiving interest, because they prefer 
 absolute safety or convenience to increase. But granting 
 for a moment that interest at some future time might 
 cease, why will the transference of land-rent from the 
 individual to the State bring about this tremendous 
 change ? Why should not A. borrow money for the 
 very purpose of hiring land from the State, or to stock it, or 
 build on it ? Supposing no capitalist could invest in land ; 
 what serious difference would it make as regards the fact of his 
 investing in other forms of wealth ? The income of the 
 land is very small, in thin country at least, as compared with 
 the income arising from other forms of property ; and can 
 any man suppose that after Government had grabbed the 
 land, men would cease to invest in mills, machinery, buildings, 
 ships, and all the rest of it ? To say that because you could no 
 longer put your money in one of the safer forms of investment, 
 which, as far as the investing market goes, is of a subordinate 
 and unimportant character, that as a consequence of this, 
 capital will grow so plentiful that men will cease to be able 
 to invest it for interest, and will be grateful to lend it to any 
 person who will return it eventually to them undiminished, 
 
75 
 
 is a statement that it is as impossible to criticise as my saying 
 that discussion in the Personal Rights Journal will create a 
 social revolution in Jupiter. Perhaps it may ; but it is the 
 proofs of such a statement that I should have liked to have 
 seen, and those I cannot discover in Mr. Flurscheim's paper. 
 
 Mr. Fliirscheim separates a mortgage from other productive 
 investments of capital. It is difficult to follow him. If I 
 own a cotton mill and mortgage it for 20,000 in order to 
 develop my business ; where is the economic difference 
 between the lending by the mortgagee to me of this sum, or 
 of his investing it himself in a cotton spinning company ? 
 You may say that the mortgagee has to pay tribute if you 
 are amused by using such words but why should he not, 
 since this was the only way of his making a profit for 
 himself? 
 
 Mr. Lawrence challenges me to give the basis for private 
 ownership in land. It is as follows : Each man owns and 
 possesses his own faculties. He therefore rightly owns what 
 he has produced by means of his faculties, provided only he 
 has exercised his faculties under a general system which 
 allows all others to exercise their faculties.* Now, if 
 each man owns his own faculties, he may not only use his 
 faculties to produce directly for himself, but he may lend his 
 faculties to others on such terms as may be agreed between 
 them, or hire the faculties of others, or purchase or sell 
 the product of such faculties ; in other words, the 
 ownership by each man of his own faculties means the 
 establishment of the open market for everything, since it is 
 only in the open market that faculties and products of 
 faculties can find their true value. If then the open market 
 results from the ownership of faculties, why is land to be 
 
 * Note. It is important to distinguish, between the universal 
 freedom of exercising faculties and the right of using the material on 
 which the exercise of faculties depends. They are quite distinct, though 
 in discussion some Socialists love to mix them up. In practice, what 
 the State-Socialist does, is to suppress the first, which is the great 
 natural inalienable right of men, on the promise of supplying the 
 latter. Unfortunately, this promise cannot be kept. It only 
 requires a careful examination of all State-Socialism to see that the 
 larger the rights given to the State, the lesser must be the rights 
 remaining to the individual. When all the implements and material 
 of production are State-owned, the individual is at once shut off 
 from any choice or selection as regards the exercising of his faculties 
 and the possessing of the material on which they are exercised. 
 Such opportunities as he may be allowed to possess cannot be 
 won by himself or selected by himself, but are simply conceded 
 in quantity and quality according to the mind of the ruling 
 authority. 
 
7G 
 
 the one solitary exception as regards the selling and the 
 purchasing capacities of men ? The soil and the sack of 
 wheat cannot be shown to differ in essence from each other ; 
 and we can only ask what fetish is this which men set up in the 
 shape of land, placing it above human faculties, and declaring, 
 with a revival of the mediseval and metaphysical spirit, that 
 there is some special sacro-sanct quality about it, so that it 
 cannot be sold or owned ? 
 
 For what does anything exist in this human world of ours 
 but as the creature of human faculties ? And is it not mere rank 
 superstition to hold that by locking up land in the hands of 
 the incapable State, denying to hundreds of thousands of 
 the fittest men the happiness and security of ownership, 
 bewildering us all with those violent changes in management, 
 which always accompany State-ownership, shaking all sense 
 of honesty and security by taking that which it is impossible 
 for the State to pay for at its real value, and inflicting on us 
 all another new and most widely extended system of 
 officialism is it not, I ask, a mere superstition to hold, as 
 the State-worshippers do, that such a change will act 
 straightway in the nature of a charm upon men, unlocking 
 capital, exorcising poverty, and setting rivers of milk and honey 
 flowing through our midst ? The truth is that men are just 
 as ready today to fall down on their knees before Mumbo- 
 Jumbo slightly altered with a coat of modern paint and to 
 believe in hocus-pocus as they were in the old days. Our 
 superstitions only change their form ; and the State 
 now-a-days has the same crowd, shouting and hoping and 
 praising, as that which kissed the toe of St. Peter's statue, 
 and wore away the pavement with their knees. 
 
 As regards our Editor's statement in his " Outcome 
 of Individualism " (pp. 27-8), it is refreshing to find him 
 put^his foot firmly and manfully down as regards the modern 
 finely-spun ethics of expropriation. " Have you not had 
 the land long enough," quotes Mr. Fliirscheim a remark 
 which in no case has any application to the recent buyer 
 without seeing that the Socialist is waiting to make exactly 
 the same remark to him as regards the shares he holds in a 
 joint stock company. As I have often said, I understand 
 the expropriation of the State- Socialist. The State- Socialist 
 platform, that " Nobody has a right to anything, and therefore 
 one somebody has a right to expropriate another somebody 
 and take his place as possessor " may have its failings 
 as logic, yet has the great merit of consistency. But to play 
 at expropriation, like Mr. George and his followers, to be 
 moral and virtuous during one portion of the day over the 
 
77 
 
 rights of property, and the other half of the day to advocate the 
 expropriation of a class, some of whom hold by free purchase, 
 some of whom hold, as it is said, in virtue of an ancient act 
 of force, which, if it is to be condemned, carries surely and 
 certainly with it the condemnation of the new expropriation 
 this seems to me simply one more example of that skilful 
 cultivation of fog within one's own mind that has become 
 such a fine art with our modern politicians. Mr. George 
 seems to be one of those happily constituted men who thinks 
 that expropriation is a patent safety process, which he can 
 pull out of his pocket when he likes, and quietly put back 
 again when he likes. There is a Hindoo story of a 
 philosopher who, to show his power, undertook to call the 
 dead bones of a tiger back into life. The experiment succeeded 
 admirably. There was neither hitch nor flaw ; only when 
 the tiger was fully alive, the first thing it did was to eat up 
 the philosopher. Should Mr. George be finally gobbled up 
 by his own philosophy, whatever regret there may be for 
 him or for ourselves there will be, it must be confessed, 
 some amusement also. 
 
 I have said enough to show that I cannot agree with 
 our Editor's remark, that " to be free we require not only 
 the use of our faculties but something on which to use 
 them."* As mere soil would hardly help the larger number 
 
 * Outcome of Individualism, p. 27. The whole passage is as 
 follows : " I have thus dealt with wages and interest under 
 Individualism. What about rent ? 
 
 " What is rent ? Let me quote some of the economists. ' Rent,' 
 says Adam Smith, ' may be considered as the produce of those 
 powers of nature, the use of which the landlord lends to the 
 farmer.' (Wealth of Nations, McCulloch's Ed., p. 161.) 
 
 " ' Bent,' says Ricardo, 'is that portion of the produce of the 
 earth, which is paid to the landlord for the use of the original 
 . . . . powers of the soil.' (Ricardo's Works, McCulloch's Ed., 
 p. 34.) 
 
 " ' Wages and profits,' says Senior, ' are the creation of man. 
 They are the recompense for the sacrifice made, in the one case of 
 ease ; in the other of immediate enjoyment. But a considerable 
 part of the produce of every country is the recompense of no 
 sacrifice ; is received by those who neither labour nor put by, but 
 merely hold out their hands to accept the offerings of the rest of 
 the community.' (Political Economy, 6th Ed., p. 87.) 
 
 " Now, to go no further than these quotations, it is evident that 
 rent, properly so called, stands upon an altogether different footing 
 from interest and wages. As an item of private incomes, it rests 
 on private property in land. But this, I contend, is an unjustifiable 
 institution. Land in the economic sense that is, the raw material 
 of the globe no man made or can make. He can make improve- 
 ments in it, and this is al) te can do. Those improvements are his 
 
78 
 
 of men and women to use their acuities, the argument 
 necessarily involves much more not merely soil, but the 
 products of soil. In truth my friend unconsciously slips 
 into the Socialist position. But the Socialist position is 
 itself but a mere mirage of the imagination. There is no 
 conceivable plan by which you can give men the materials 
 which are needed for the use of their faculties. Seizing the 
 materials of the world, putting them under a State lock 
 and key, and doling out certain portions of them, 
 according to the judgment of the few, who govern on 
 a sublimed workhouse system, is certainly not giving 
 the individual access to the world's material. It is easy to 
 see that, under such a system, when once perfected, the 
 individual (even if he absolutely owned the clothes on his 
 back, about which there is a serious question, for evidently 
 there would be a State row if he had sold them or destroyed 
 them, and therefore could not make his appearance at the 
 proper hour of work in the State factory) could not raise 
 a brick or turn a sod, or do a day's work with any 
 materials and any tools, without first obtaining State 
 permission. Can it then be claimed in any true sense, 
 that the individual would have access to the world's material ? 
 If the State-Socialist wishes to state quite exactly what he 
 offers to the world, he should say, " I propose to confiscate 
 all the world-material ; place it under State custody ; and 
 dole out to individuals such portions of it in such manner, 
 and under such regulations, in return for their compulsory 
 labour, as the State thinks fit." This is a really true 
 
 by right of his labour embodied in them. He must, therefore, be 
 allowed possession of that land or material sufficiently long to 
 enable him to get his crop off of it using the term ' crop ' in tho 
 widest sense. Farther than this, however, he has no moral claim 
 to it. It is no outcome of his energies. It is the gift of nature, 
 not to him alone, nor even to his generation. It is the inheritance 
 of the human race, and all he is entitled to is an equal right to use 
 it with others. If more than this be conceded to him, it can only 
 be at the expense of injustice to his fellows. This injustice reaches 
 its climax when persons are allowed to possess far more than their 
 share of the land, as previously denned, not for the purpose of 
 using it productively, but to be periodically bought off by their less 
 favoured fellow-citizens. 
 
 " Private property in land apart from improvements is 
 essentially inconsistent with Individualism. To be free, we require, 
 not only the use of our faculties, but something on which to use 
 them ; and they are mocked, whether they know it or not, who are 
 told they have freedom while all access to the raw material, 
 without which they can produce nothing, is barred to them by a 
 privileged few. Their liberty, under such circumstances, is that of 
 a bird to fly in a vacuum." ED. 
 
79 
 
 description of State Socialism, stripped of all imaginative 
 colouring. How under such a system, or how under a 
 system of land nationalization, the ordinary individual is going 
 to pass, as a matter of every-day life, into possession of the 
 world's material, to use it in his own fashion and after his 
 own likings which is the only true means of developing his 
 faculties has not been explained, and never can be. Apart 
 from the free market there is no free use of faculties, but 
 only the regulation of the faculties of some by the faculties 
 of others. Whatever follies men may be persuaded to indulge 
 in at the present moment, the free and open market in 
 everything is the gaol which lies before the human race. 
 
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION 
 
 FOR 
 
 THE DEFENCE OF PERSONAL EIGHTS, 
 
 (SHORT TITLE : THE PERSONAL EIGHTS ASSOCIATION.) 
 
 OFFICES;-3, VICTORIA STREET, S,W. 
 
 VICE-PRESIDENTS : 
 
 Professor STEADMAN ALDIS. 
 
 Mr. JACOB BRIGHT, M.P. 
 
 M. LEON DONNAT, of the Municipal Council of Paris. 
 
 M. YVES GUYOT, Member of the Chamber of Deputies, and Minister of 
 
 Public Works, of France. 
 Mr. AUBERON HERBERT. 
 
 Mr. CHARLES H. HOPWOOD, Q.C., Recorder of Liverpool. 
 Mr. WALTER MCLAREN, M.P. 
 Signer ERNESTO NATHAN, Rome. 
 Mr. J. BIRKBECK NEVINS, M.D. 
 Mr. H. C. STEPHENS, M.P. 
 Mr. CHARLES BELL TAYLOR, M.D., F.R.C.S.E. 
 Mr. JOHN P. THOMASSON, ex-M.P. for Bolton. 
 
 HON. SECRETARY: Mr. R. HAMPSON. 
 BANKERS : THE CONSOLIDATED BANK (CHARING CROSS BRANCH) LIMITED. 
 
 OBJECT OF THE ASSOCIATION. 
 
 The object of this Association is to uphold the principle 
 of the perfect equality of all persons before the law in the 
 exercise and enjoyment of their Individual Liberty and 
 Personal Eights. 
 
 It seeks the attainment of this object 
 
 I. By labouring to effect the repeal of all exist 'ng laws which 
 
 directly or indirectly violate the aforesaid principle. 
 II. By opposing the enactment of all new laws which violate the 
 said principle. 
 
 III. By promoting such amendments of the law and its administration 
 
 as are necessary for giving practical effect to that principle. 
 
 IV. By watching over the execution of the laws so as to guard the 
 
 maintenance of that principle in so far as it has already 
 received legislative sanction and to show the evil results of 
 its violation when Jaws or administrative methods are carried 
 out in disregard of it. 
 
 V. By spreading among the people a knowledge of the rights and 
 liberties to which they are or ought to be legally entitled, 
 and of the moral grounds on which those legal rights and 
 liberties are founded. 
 
 SUBSCRIPTIONS AND DONATIONS are earnestly requested and may 
 be made payable to the Hon. Secretary, Mr. ROBERT HAMPSON, from 
 whom may be obtained the 
 
 "PERSONAL RIGHTS JOURNAL" 
 
 (price Is. Gd. per annum, post free), 
 and other publications of the Association. 
 
THIS ROOK TS DUE ON THE I.AST DATE 
 
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 University of California Library 
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