FOOTNOTES:
[52] ‘Political Economy,’ by J. S. Mill, Bk. I. Chap. V.
[53] Mr. S. Smith, M.P., who is connected with cotton industry, has recently stated that “with all the toil and anxiety of those who had conducted it, the cotton industry of Lancashire, which gave maintenance to two or three millions of people, had not earned so much as 5 per cent. during the past ten years. The employers had a most anxious life; and many, after struggling for years, had become bankrupt, and some had died of a broken heart;” and he added that he believed “most of the leading trades to be in the same condition.”
The cheap production of Belgian fabrics is stated by the employers to be the cause of the depression in the cotton trade. (Times, Dec. 1883.)
[54] ‘Wealth of Nations,’ Bk. IV. Chap. II.
[55] A writer in Vanity Fair, in analyzing the Board of Trade’s statistics for the year ended March 31st, 1883, when compared with those for the year ended March, 1880, or the three years of the Gladstone Ministry, says:
“We were promised cheaper Government, cheaper food, greater prosperity. We find that so far from these promises being verified, they have every one been falsified by the result.
“Our Imperial Government is dearer by £8,000,000; our Imperial and Local Government, together, is dearer by £10,000,000.
“As to food, wheat has become dearer 1s. 3d. per quarter; beef, by from 3d. to 5d. per stone; Mutton, by 1s. 3d.; money is dearer than 1¾ per cent.
“As to prosperity, our staple pig iron is cheaper by 22s. 2d. per ton. We have 398,397 acres fewer under cultivation for corn, grain and other crops; 50,077 fewer horses; 129,119 fewer cattle; 4,789,738 fewer sheep in the country. We have, in spite of the Land Act and the allegation of increased prosperity, 18,828 more paupers in Ireland on a decreasing population. We find that 115,092 more emigrants have left the country in a year, because they cannot get a living in it. We lose annually 349 more vessels and 1,534 more lives at sea. The only element of consolation that these figures” (Board of Trade Returns) “have to show is, that we have 778,389 more pigs and 4,627 more policemen in the country. In fact, we are more lacking in every thing we want; more abounding in every thing we don’t want.
“The price of everything we have to sell has gone down; the price of everything we have to buy has gone up; and what has gone up most is the price of Government.
“Dearer Government, dearer bread, dearer beef, dearer mutton, dearer money; cheaper pig iron; less corn, potatoes, turnips, grass, and hops, fewer horses, fewer cattle, fewer sheep; more paupers, more emigrants, more losses of life and property at sea, more pigs, more policemen.
“These are the benefits that three years of liberal rule have conferred upon us!!!”
[CHAPTER XVI.]
SACRED RIGHTS OF PROPERTY.
I have already stated that Mill, when he allows that which Herbert Spencer terms “political bias,”—and Luigi Cossa terms his “narrow philosophic utilitarianism,” to warp his better judgment,—is guilty of absurdities and inconsistencies that would disgrace a schoolboy. This is notably apparent when he attempts to draw a fundamental distinction between land and any other property, as regards its “sacred rights.”
Mr. Mill greatly admired the prosperity of the peasant proprietors in France and Belgium, unfortunately forgetting that a system, suited to the sober thrifty peasantry of the Continent, might possibly not be equally suitable to the improvident lower classes of Ireland and England,[56] neglectful also of the sensible view taken by M. De Lavergne that “cultivation spontaneously finds out the organization that suits it best.”[57] He wished therefore to establish an Utopia of peasant proprietors in England and Ireland as a panacea for the evils which Free Trade in the first place, and mischievous legislation in the second place, had brought upon agriculture. Without presuming to offer an opinion on the debated subjects of “Grande” and “Petite Culture,” or peasant and landlord proprietorship, I may say that cultivation appears to have found out spontaneously the organization best suited to it, and that, in England and Ireland, landlordism seems best suited to the improvident character of the lower classes, in providing capital to help the tenants over bad times, and enabling improvements to be made in prosperous times.
Be this as it may, peasant proprietorship has proved to be a failure in Ireland, and is rapidly becoming extinct.[58] Writers on the subject state that, under that system, labour was so ill-directed, that it required six men to provide food for ten; and consolidation of holdings is recommended. Mr. Mill, however, thought otherwise, and biased by this political conviction, he has propounded the following extraordinary arguments to prove that the sacred rights of property are not applicable in the case of landed property[59]:—
(1) “No man made the land.”
(2) It is the original inheritance of the whole species.[60]
(3) Its appropriation is wholly a question of general expediency.
(4) When private property in land is not expedient, it is unjust.
(5) It is no hardship to any one to be excluded from what others have produced.
(6) But it is a hardship to be born into the world and to find all nature’s gifts previously engrossed.
(7) Whoever owns land, keeps others out of the enjoyment of it.
Now let us apply Mr. Mill’s arguments to any other kind of property.
Suppose I say to you:—“My friend! you have two coats; hand one of them over to me! Sacred rights of property don’t apply to it; you did not make it; and Mill says—‘it is no hardship to be excluded from what others have produced;’ but it is some hardship to be born into the world, and to find all nature’s gifts engrossed. Your argument that you paid for it in hard cash is worthless. No man made silver and gold, ‘it is the original inheritance of the whole species, the receiver is as bad as the thief, and you have connived in the robbery of those metals from the earth, leaving posterity yet unborn to be under the hardship of finding all nature’s gifts engrossed.’
“The manufacture of your coat is based on robbery and injustice, and you have connived at it; the iron and coal used in its production were made by no man, they are the common inheritance of the species, those who have obtained them have robbed posterity. You have bribed them to do so by silver and gold, also robbed from posterity.
“The very wool of which your coat is formed was made by no man, it was robbed from a defenceless sheep. Your argument that the sheep was the property of the shearer is useless. No man made the sheep, it is the common inheritance of all, &c. Your argument that his owner reared the sheep, is equally worthless. Monster! if you find a child, have you a right to rob him and make a slave of him? such an argument would justify slavery[61] or worse.
“When private property is not expedient it is unjust, and from my ground of view, it is not expedient that this private property should be yours; public only differs from private expediency in degree. ‘He who owns property keeps others out of the enjoyment of it,’ the sacred rights of property don’t apply to this coat; so hand it over without any more of your absurd arguments. Nay! if you don’t, and as I see some one is approaching who may interfere, its appropriation is one of expediency,—individual expediency must follow the same law as general expediency,—it is expedient that I should draw my knife across your throat, otherwise I shall lose that which is my inheritance in common with the rest of the species.” And so I might argue ad infinitum.
Mr. Mill’s sophisms however are, what Cossa terms, “concessions more apparent than real to socialism,” for further on, in his Political Economy, he completely stultifies his argument by stating that the principle of property gives to the landowners:—
“a right to compensation for whatever portion of their interest in the land it may be the policy of the State to deprive them of. To that their claim is indefeasible. It is due to landowners, and to owners of any property whatever recognised as such by the State, that they should not be dispossessed of it without receiving its pecuniary value.... This is due on the general principles on which property rests. If the land was bought with the produce of the labour and abstinence of themselves or their ancestors, compensation is due to them on that ground; even if otherwise, it is still due on the ground of prescription.”
“Nor,” he adds, “can it ever be necessary for accomplishing an object by which the community altogether will gain, that a particular portion of the community should be immolated.”[62]
Unfortunately, however, his mischievous denial of the sacred rights of property in land is eagerly read, while his subsequent qualification of it is neglected by those who, like Mr. Bright, aim at the destruction of a political opponent; or, like Mr. Gladstone, are bent on a particular policy, reckless of the results in carrying it out; or, like Mr. Parnell and his followers, whose hands itch for plunder; and it has produced a general haziness of ideas amongst that well-meaning class of people who are good-naturedly liberal with the property of other people.
Yet, clothe it with what sophism you will, any attempt, whether legalized or otherwise, to deprive the landowner of his property and to violate his rights, is as unjustifiable as the depredations of the burglar or the pickpocket. Nay more so; because the statesman or political economist cannot plead poverty or want of education as his excuse.