CHAPTER XX. NATIONAL LANDS AND CREDIT FOR THE USE OF THE PEOPLE.
Unjust Laws to enable the Few to deprive the Working Class of their Earnings—Private Property in Land the Basis of Wages-Slavery—Raw Materials of Wealth belong to all—Land and Money Lords govern the World—Right of Working Class to the Use of Credit—Surplus of Earnings of Working Class beyond Consumption the Source of all Capital.
To provide a full, adequate, and permanent remedy for the manifold and all-pervading ills that are the consequence of land-monopoly and usury, the people must reclaim their right to the National Territory, which has been gradually and surreptitiously usurped by private and sinister interests; the enactment of laws to secure for all, co-ordinately therewith, the mighty engine of Credit, which must be utilized for the industrious orders of society, who are the strength and mainstay of the nation, and therefore the most entitled to its benefits.
The fourth and fifth resolutions of the League run as follows:—
“The gradual resumption by the State (on the acknowledged principle of equitable compensation to existing holders or their heirs) of its ancient, undoubted, inalienable dominion and sole proprietorship over all the lands, mines, turbaries, fisheries, &c., of the United Kingdom and our Colonies, the same to be held by the State, as trustee in perpetuity for the entire people, and rented out to them in such quantities as the law and local circumstances may determine; because the land, being the gift of the Creator to ALL, can never become the exclusive property of individuals; because the monopoly of the land in private hands is a palpable invasion of the rights of the excluded parties, rendering them, more or less, the slaves of landlords and capitalists, and tending to circumscribe or annul their other rights and liberties; because a monopoly of the earth by a portion of mankind is no more justifiable than would be the monopoly of the air, light, heat, or water; and because the rental of the land (which justly belongs to the whole people) would form a national fund adequate to defray all charges of the public service, execute all needful public works, and educate the population, without the necessity of any taxation.
“That as it is the recognised duty of the State to support all those of its subjects who, from incapacity or misfortune, are unable to procure their own subsistence—and as the nationalisation of landed property would open up new sources of occupation for the now surplus industry of the people (a surplus which is daily augmented by the accumulation of machinery in the hands of the capitalists)—the same principle which now sanctions a public provision for the destitute poor should be extended to providing a sound system of National Credit, through which any man might, under certain conditions, procure an advance from the national funds arising out of the proceeds of public property, and thereby be enabled to rent and cultivate land on his own account, instead of being subjected, as now, to the injustice and tyranny of wages-slavery (through which capitalists and profitmongers are enabled to defraud him of his fair recompense), or being induced to become a hired slaughterer of his fellow-creatures at the bidding of godless diplomatists, enabling them to foment and prosecute international wars, and trample on popular rights, for the exclusive advantage of aristocratic and ‘vested interests.’ The same privilege of obtaining a share in the national credit to be applicable to the requirements of individuals, companies, and communities in all other branches of useful industry, as well as in agriculture.”
What is it that creates poverty—the mother of slavery, ignorance, and misery—but unjust laws, by which the many are robbed for the benefit of the few? A poverty-stricken people can never be a free, a happy, a religious, or an educated people. No reform that will not give the people the means of acquiring property by honest industry—which will not enable them to be independent of wages-slavery—which will not enable them to live in houses of their own, and allow them free access to the soil of their country, is worth their serious attention.
We defy all the genius and statesmanship in the world to save a population from being the slaves of middle-class vampires so long as land is private property. We defy all the learning and ability in the United Kingdom to show me how we can be extricated from poverty and premature death in this country without a radical reform of our land and money laws. It is assumed that land, mines, rivers, &c., are fit and proper subjects of private property, like bales of cloth, pottery wares, or any other product of man’s skill and industry; and that, accordingly, the works of God’s creation may be bought and sold in the market, the same as if they were the works of human hands. This is a principle so utterly abhorrent to common sense and reason—it is, on the face of it, so gross a perversion of natural justice, that the rights of property cannot possibly be reconciled with it, nor coexist a moment in presence of it. Once allow the soil of a country, which God made for all its inhabitants, and for all generations born upon it, to be bought up, or otherwise monopolized or usurped by any particular section of any one generation (be that section large or small), and that moment your community is divided into tyrants and slaves—into knaves who will work for nobody, and into drudges who will have to work for anybody or everybody but themselves. No subsequent legislation—no possible tinkering or patchwork in the way of remedial measures—can sensibly affect a system based upon so hideous a foundation. You may talk of forms of government, or of reforms of parliament; but we hesitate not to say that no reform of parliament, no reconstruction of the government, can be of the slightest avail towards amelioration whilst that glaring and gigantic injustice constitutes the basis of private property; and for this simple reason, because the rights of labour and the rights of property, which ought to be really one and the same, are utterly irreconcilable under such a system. As long therefore as it shall prevail, so long must the rich be insecure, and the mass miserable, whatever may be the form of government, from monarchy to democracy the most pure and unlimited.
No man, not a fool or a knave, will deny that the raw materials of all wealth belong to all men alike in their natural state: to assert the contrary, would be to assert that God, like a capricious human despot, dispenses His favours regardless of justice or of the wants of His creatures. The only question is this—Can the lands, mines, turbaries, collieries, fisheries, &c., containing all materials of wealth in every country, be restored to its inhabitants without injustice or undue suffering to the present possessors, whoever they may be? If this could not be done, there might be some excuse for the present monstrous system. But no government need have the least difficulty on this point. Our own government, for instance, has only to do, in respect of landed property, for the benefit of the nation, what it does every day to promote the speculative interests of individuals and private companies. Owners of real estate are compellable now, by existing laws, to exchange such property for a money-compensation when the public interest requires such change. Does anybody consider that a wrong is done to the owners of such property so long as the money-compensation to them is sufficient to satisfy the public conscience represented by a sheriff’s jury? Now, if it be right to do this for the sake of a company or a few speculating individuals, how much more justifiable is it to do it for the just benefit of millions, and to produce thereby such a reformation, materially and morally, as no pen nor tongue could adequately describe? Indeed, in order to restore its land gradually to the nation, it would not be necessary to go so far in expropriation or forcible dispossession as existing laws authorise in favour of companies chartered by parliament to make railways, canals, docks, barracks, or any other public works. There would be no need to dispossess any proprietor during his lifetime, nor even his successors, without their own consent; it would be quite sufficient for all useful national ends and purposes to buy up the land as it comes into the market in the ordinary course, either by the voluntary act of the seller or by due legal process, such as a decree of the Court of Chancery, &c., and then make the land so bought with the public money the inalienable property of the nation ever after, as it by right should be.
Unquestionably, land-usurpers and money-changers, taking both terms in their widest sense, must in foro conscientiæ be distinguished from all other sinners. We know of no great social evil in civilized life that is not clearly traceable, directly or indirectly, to these two classes. It is they that govern the world everywhere, and that have always governed it since the first dawn of civilisation; it is they that make all revolutions and counter-revolutions, all false systems of religion and education, all State-Church establishments, all standing armies of soldiers, constables, priests, and lawyers, and that impose on all peoples the burdens requisite for the maintenance of those armies; in a word, it is landlords and profitmongers that have everywhere organised society as we find it, and that uphold this organisation for their own advantage, at the cost of more wrong and wretchedness to mankind than tongue or pen ever did or ever will be able to describe. And amongst the greatest of their crimes against humanity is this, that, in addition to the machinery of brute force they keep in pay to uphold their domination, they have rendered an effectual exposure of their system next to impossible through the legions of venal journalists, mercenary orators, and unprincipled littérateurs they subsidise to corrupt public opinion and to mystify the people on every subject that bears upon their weal or woe, as also to hunt down by calumny, and to destroy by private persecution, any and every man that shall dare to lift the veil that hides from the millions their horrible policy.
We must live somewhere; and we must have the needful things to live on. But landlords and profitmongers claim to own every rood of ground in the kingdom, and every house on the land; and we cannot procure the commonest necessaries of life except through some profitmonger. We must therefore either go without homes and without meat and drink altogether, or we must have them from the landlord and profitmonger on their own arbitrary terms. To have them on any terms, too many persons are often obliged, in times of difficulty and danger, to connive at and even laud what they abhor. Again, the wrongs done by ordinary criminals are in general superficial and ephemeral in their effects. The man who steals my watch, or robs my house, does me only as much wrong as I may repair at the cost of earning the price of another watch or of the goods stolen from my house. But they who rob a people of their territory rob them of a priceless possession, for which all the labour and labour’s worth in the world would be no adequate compensation. It is not only a robbery of the existing generation, but a robbery of all generations to come; for it is depriving the whole posterity of the disinherited of their fair legitimate share of the raw materials of wealth, which God made equally for the use of all, in order that the descendants of the wrong-doers, so far as human laws can determine it, may be able to grow richer and richer in every succeeding age, by letting out for rents that raw material which is by natural right the inheritance of all.
Perhaps the most extortionate system of legal robbery, in connection with private property in the soil, is found in what are called ground rentals. By virtue of this system, a man like the Duke of Westminster is enabled to realise an income greater than the queen gets for her services (and she does something for her money, but the duke does absolutely nothing for his), merely because the land on which certain houses are built is said, by a fiction in law, to belong to him; and, after a certain number of years, the houses themselves become his property, and he forthwith proceeds to grant fresh leases of them at increased rents.
As to the right of occupation of the land, we should make it the same for all, giving the tenancy to those who would pay most rent to the State, only taking care that no man held more than one farm, or a larger one than he could cultivate himself whilst there were others in want of small ones. As a matter of course, we should guard against too great a subdivision as well.
Another false principle at the root of our politico-commercial system is, that Credit should exist only for the rich, and not at all for the poor. This is a most atrocious principle, both in theory and practice. As between citizen and citizen, or between subject and subject, the principle might be defensible enough on prudential grounds; but as between the citizen and his country it is wholly unjustifiable, and calculated to keep subordinates subordinate, and to fatten tyrants and usurers with the sweat and blood of slaves. If the rents of the country were public property, as they ought to be, no honest, industrious man should be refused a temporary advance or loan from them for productive purposes; and it is not in the power of man to conceive a better security for the repayment of the same than the skilled labour of an industrious, sober freeman protected by laws made with his own consent. There is no other security now for the repayment of loans, public or private, than the known capacity of working men to produce a surplus over and above their own consumption. If they could not, or did not, do this, there would be no interest for fundholders, mortgagees, or money-lenders of any sort. Indeed, there is no other source than the said surplus for the payment of rents, taxes, dividends, premiums on insurance policies, and the interest of upwards of two thousand millions of private debts. Out of the same source, and no other, comes also the enormous income annually received by capitalists and traders under the name of Profits. Upstarts, who have made fortunes in trade, invariably make the worst landlords—the least social and hospitable, the most grinding and exacting. This is exemplified in every country in Europe, where rents are continually becoming heavier, and small farms more difficult of attainment by the poor, in proportion as the mercantile body and master-manufacturers increase in numbers and in wealth. In all such countries, national or public debts, provincial debts, and corporation debts are never-failing concomitants of increased commerce and manufactures, as are also banking and other joint-stock companies, which absorb so much of the produce of the soil for profits, discounts, dividends, and interest of money, that there would be nothing left for the landlords and cultivators, if it were not that the working-classes are dispossessed altogether both of their proprietary and their occupancy rights in the soil, and turned into mere drudges or wages-slaves to the landlords and tenant-farmers, who work them harder, and feed them worse, than their cattle. The difference between what the labourers and mechanics actually produce in value and the miserable pittance allowed to them is the plunder-fund out of which are kept in comparative ease and luxury the worthless classes that enslave and prey upon them. Yes, the whole and sole security for all is the labourer’s capability to produce a surplus over and above what he consumes during the period of production. It were strange, then—passing strange, indeed—if that surplus, which is now sufficient security for everybody else, should not be as good a security for himself, when the very object of the advance or loan is neither more nor less than to furnish him with the means of repayment, by at once enabling him to produce, and by making him the master of his own products. Yet, in the teeth of this well-known capability on his part, the man whose surplus productions enable others to get loans, and repay both capital and interest, is the only man who can get no loan for himself, because, by our atrocious system, the Credit as well as the Land of the country is hermetically sealed against him. To support the system of the landlords and the profitmongers, it is absolutely necessary to place millions of the population in positions and situations wherein they cannot possibly earn their bread without breaking one or other of the Ten Commandments and running counter to the injunctions of the Gospel.
Partington tells us, in his Encyclopædia, that the history of every country in Europe goes back to the time when its land was public property. Did that state of things obtain now, all the mines, as well as all the land that covers them, would be the property of the public, agreeably to the old law maxim, “Cujus est solum, ejusdem sunt omnia quæ infra sunt, ad imam terram, et omnia quæ supra sunt, usque ad cœlum,”—“Whoever owns the soil, to the same belongs all that is beneath the soil, down to the bottom of the earth, and all that is overhead, even up to the sky.” If this maxim prevailed now-a-days, the rents of mines would go to public uses only. After due examination and survey by public authority, they would be let out to companies of actual workers by public tender, and all they realised above the rent to the State would go only to those who risked their lives in working them. There would be few accidents, we suspect, under such arrangement; and if there were any, the workers alone would be to blame for their greed in not sinking more shafts and taking the other necessary precautions for their safe working.
In the manufacturing districts of England it has been ascertained that half the children born to the artisans die before they complete their fifth year, and that the average duration of human life amongst the working classes is only some 17 or 18 years, while it averages 38 years amongst the “better classes,” i.e., amongst the landlords and profitmongers who reap the best fruits of their toil. This is an arbitrary confiscation or squandering of human life not to be found, even in time of war, in any other country not manufacturing, mining, and commercial. The men composing the master-class in these callings are, with hardly an exception, open and even avowed enemies of the political and social rights of the working classes. They have literally expelled the people from every institution in the State. They and their accomplices, the landlords and tenant-farmers, have usurped and absorbed all the prerogatives of the Crown and all the rights of the people. They have turned the producers out of parliament, out of the corporations, out of the vestries, out of the juries, out of the magistracy, out of the church, out of the public press, out of all the public boards—in a word, out of every department of the State, and left them without a single legislator, magistrate, administrator, common-councilman, vestryman, or public organ of any kind to represent or protect their interests. But it is not simply of what are called their organic or political rights that these tyrants have despoiled the working classes; they have also robbed them of all proprietary and occupancy rights in the soil, combining for that purpose with the landlords and the tenant-farmers, to whom the sight of an agricultural labourer putting a spade or a plough into the land on his own account, or in any other capacity than that of a wages-slave to some bull-frog farmer, is the horror of horrors. Just as farmers in the rural districts will take vacant farms they do not want, and at rents by which they know they must be losers, merely to keep out labourers or exclude from occupancy the men they want for slaves, so will these mining and manufacturing tyrants rent on long leases, or actually buy up outright, lands in the neighbourhood of the towns where their factories are, to prevent their toiling slaves from having the chance of renting them, or any portion of them, however small, lest they might be able to escape the slavery of the mill through comparative independence.
We doubt if there be a single recorded instance in the whole history of civilized society of any king, ruler, statesman, legislator, prophet, philosopher, orator, or other public man, seeking honestly, and with probabilities of success, the reign of justice, humanity, and fraternity for his fellow-countrymen, that was not overwhelmed with calumny, overpowered by faction, and ultimately either put to death or forced to fly for his life and bury himself in poverty and obscurity to escape the malice of the oppressors of his country. But who were those oppressors? The same everywhere—the same now as ever—the idle rich, who prey on their industrious fellow-creatures through the inventions of rents, profits, interest of money, dividends, taxes, and so forth—all arising out of usurpations of the soil, and making money grow money. The ancient prophets and apostles suffered for causes not essentially different from those which destroyed the Gracchi at Rome and Agis and Cleomenes of Sparta. Romulus and Julius Cæsar were victims of the same spirit that beheaded Paul and sawed Isaiah asunder. Heraclides and Hippo of Sicily perished through landlordism and profitmongering, in no other sense than did John the Baptist under Herod; St. Stephen, by the Jewish rabble, let loose upon him by the middle-class Pharisees; and Socrates, by the hypocritical “property” classes of Athens; nay, the Saviour himself, whose crucifixion was perpetrated by like influences on behalf of like interests. All honest reformers, spiritual or temporal, must necessarily be foes to landlordism and usury, though not to the persons of landlords and usurers. The latter, however, have ever considered attacks upon their system to be attacks upon themselves: and, accordingly, they have crushed or murdered every honest reformer whose influence has hitherto threatened to supplant their own with the millions. And so it ever will be—until the millions shall become wise enough, and moral enough, to be able to dispose summarily of landlordism and usury without further preaching or teaching. Any one who will take the trouble to read over a list of the laws proposed by Julius Cæsar, in any book of Roman antiquities (say Adams’s “Antiquities”), will see by their titles that they were all essentially popular, and designed to protect the citizens from the cupidity of land-monopolists, usurers, and dilapidators of the public revenue. In this we have the true secret of his murder by the patrician conspirators, headed by Brutus, who, with all the stoic virtues attributed to him, was a rank aristocrat in grain, and a usurer to boot; for, according to the testimony of his friend Cicero, he used to charge interest for his money at the rate of 48 per cent., and gather it in, too, with the sabre’s edge when necessary.
In a well-ordered state of society there would be neither land-usurpers nor money-changers; that is, no persons living by letting out land as private property (since all land would be public property solely, the rents going to the public for public uses only), and no persons living upon what Lord Bacon called “the bastard use of money,” that is, upon profits, usury, dividends, &c. In other words, the whole people would be sole landlord, every individual of the people having the same proprietary and the same occupancy rights as every other individual; and with respect to money, it would be a mere representative of wealth or value, which would disappear altogether when the wealth or value it represented disappeared; money would not grow money, as it does now. In a just and rational state of society, all the money in the world could not purchase an acre of land, nor would it enable the owner to add one pound more to his heap, unless he earned it by producing a pound’s worth of wealth, or doing a pound’s worth of service for society, such as society would recognise. To speak downright, plain English, landlords and money-changers have no right to be in the world at all. Instead of governing society absolutely, as they do now, they have no right to form a recognised part of society at all, no more than wolves and crocodiles have to invite themselves to our Christmas parties that they may devour our children, or than wens, tumours, ulcers, cancers, running sores, or deformities of any sort have to constitute themselves parts of our natural bodies, and to claim to invade, overrun, and subject our whole systems to their pestilential domination. All the talent and all the sophistry in the world could not show any legitimate use for landlords or profitmongers as such, or anything they do for society that could not be better done without them than with them, and at less than a hundredth part of their cost.