CHAPTER V THE LANDLORD'S RIGHTS AND THE PEOPLE'S RIGHTS
Socialists are often accused of being advocates of violence and plunder. You will be told, no doubt, that Socialists wish to take the land from its present owners, by force, and "share it out" amongst the landless.
Socialists have no more idea of taking the land from its present holders and "sharing it out" amongst the poor than they have of taking the railways from the railway companies and sharing the carriages and engines amongst the passengers.
When the London County Council municipalised the tram service they did not rob the companies, nor did they share out the cars amongst the people.
Socialism does not mean the "sharing out" of property; on the contrary, it means the collective ownership of property.
"Britain for the British" does not mean one acre and half a cow for each subject; it means that Britain shall be owned intact by the whole people, and shall be governed and worked by the whole people, for the benefit of the whole people.
Just as the Glasgow tram service, the Manchester gas service, and the general postal service are owned, managed, and used by the citizens of Manchester and Glasgow, or by the people of Britain, for the general advantage.
You will be told that the present holders of the land have as much right to the land as you have to your hat or your boots.
Now, as a matter of law and of right, the present holders of the land have no fixed title to the land. But moderation, it has been well said, is the common sense of politics, and if we all got bare justice, "who," as Shakespeare asks, "would 'scape whipping?"
Socialists propose, then, to act moderately and to temper justice with amity. They do not suggest the "confiscation" of the land. They do suggest that the land should be taken over by the nation, at a fair price.
But what is a fair price? The landlord, standing upon his alleged rights, may demand a price out of all reason and beyond all possibility.
Therefore I propose here to examine the nature of those alleged rights, and to compare the claims of the landholders with the practice of law as it is applied to holders of property in brains; that is to say, as it is applied to authors and to inventors.
Private ownership of land rests always on one of three pleas—
1. The right of conquest: the land has been stolen or "won" by the owner or his ancestors.
2. The right of gift: the land has been received as a gift, bequest, or grant.
3. The right of purchase: the land has been bought and paid for.
Let us deal first with the rights of gift and purchase. It is manifest that no man can have a moral right to anything given or sold to him by another person who had no right to the thing given or sold.
He who buys a watch, a horse, a house, or any other article from one who has no right to the horse, or house, or watch, must render up the article to the rightful owner, and lose the price or recover it from the seller.
If a man has no moral right to own land, he can have no moral right to sell or give land.
If a man has no moral right to sell or to give land, then another man can have no moral right to keep land bought or received in gift from him.
So that to test the right of a man to land bought by or given to him, we must trace the land back to its original title.
Now, the original titles of most land rest upon conquest or theft. Either the land was won from the Saxons by William the Conqueror, and by him given in fief to his barons, or it has been stolen from the common right and "enclosed" by some lord of the manor or other brigand.
I am sorry to use the word brigand, but what would you call a man who stole your horse or watch; and it is a far greater crime to steal land.
Now, stolen land carries no title, except one devised by landlords. That is, there is no moral title.
So we come to the land "won" from the Saxons. The title of this land is the title of conquest, and only by that title can it be held, and only with that title can it be sold. What the sword has won the sword must hold. He who has taken land by force has a title to it only so long as he can hold it by force.
This point is neatly expressed in a story told by Henry George—
A nobleman stops a tramp, who is crossing his park, and orders him off his land. The tramp asks him how came the land to be his? The noble replies that he inherited it from his father. "How did he get it?" asks the tramp. "From his father," is the reply; and so the lord is driven back to the proud days of his origin—the Conquest. "And how did your great, great, great, etc., grandfather get it?" asks the tramp. The nobleman draws himself up, and replies, "He fought for it and won it." "Then," says the unabashed vagrant, beginning to remove his coat, "I will fight you for it."
The tramp was quite logical. Land won by the sword may be rewon by the sword, and the right of conquest implies the right of any party strong enough for the task to take the conquered land from its original conqueror.
And yet the very men who claim the land as theirs by right of ancient conquest would be the first to deny the right of conquest to others. They claim the land as theirs because eight hundred years ago their fathers took it from the English people, but they deny the right of the English people to take it back from them. A duke holds lands taken by the Normans under William. He holds them by right of the fact that his ancestor stole them, or, as the duke would say, "won" them. But let a party of revolutionaries propose to-day to win these lands back from him in the same manner, and the duke would cry out, "Thief! thief! thief!" and call for the protection of the law.
It would be "immoral" and "illegal," the duke would say, for the British people to seize his estates.
Should such a proposal be made, the modern duke would not defend himself, as his ancestors did, by force of arms, but would appeal to the law. Who made the law? The law was made by the same gentlemen who appropriated and held the land. As the Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain said in his speech at Denbigh in 1884—
The House of Lords, that club of Tory landlords, in its gilded chamber, has disposed of the welfare of the people with almost exclusive regard to the interests of a class.
Or, as the same statesman said at Hull in 1885—
The rights of property have been so much extended that the rights of the community have almost altogether disappeared, and it is hardly too much to say that the prosperity and the comfort and the liberties of a great proportion of the population have been laid at the feet of a small number of proprietors, who neither toil nor spin.
Well, then, the duke may defend his right by duke-made law. We do not object to that, for it justifies us in attacking him by Parliament-made law: by new law, made by a Parliament of the people.
Is there any law of equity which says it is unjust to take by force from a robber what the robber took by force from another robber? Or is there any law of equity which says it is unjust that a law made by a Parliament of landlords should not be reversed by another law made by a Parliament of the people?
The landlords will call this an "immoral" proposal. It is based upon the claim that the land is wanted for the use and advantage of the nation. Their lordships may ask for precedent. I will provide them with one.
A landlord does not make the land; he holds it.
But if a man invent a new machine or a new process, or if he write a poem or a book, he may claim to have made the invention or the book, and may justly claim payment for the use of them by other men.
An inventor or an author has, therefore, a better claim to payment for his work than a landlord has to payment for the use of the land he calls his. Now, how does the law act towards these men?
The landlord may call the land his all the days of his life, and at his death may bequeath it to his heirs. For a thousand years the owners of an estate may charge rent for it, and at the end of the thousand years the estate will still be theirs, and the rent will still be running on and growing ever larger and larger. And at any suggestion that the estate should lapse from the possession of the owners and become the property of the people, the said owners will lustily raise the cry of "Confiscation."
The patentee of an invention may call the invention his own, and may charge royalties upon its use for a space of fourteen years. At the end of that time his patent lapses and becomes public property, without any talk of compensation or any cry of confiscation. Thus the law holds that an inventor is well paid by fourteen years' rent for a thing he made himself, while the landlord is never paid for the land he did not make.
The author of a book holds the copyright of the book for a period of forty-four years, or for his own life and seven years after, whichever period be the longer. At the expiration of that time the book becomes public property. Thus the law holds that an author is well paid by forty-four years' rent for a book which he has made, but that the landlord is never paid for the land which he did not make.
If the same law that applies to the land applied to books and to inventions, the inheritors of the rights of Caxton and Shakespeare would still be able to charge, the one a royalty on every printing press in use, and the other a royalty on every copy of Shakespeare's poems sold. Then there would be royalties on all the looms, engines, and other machines, and upon all the books, music, engravings, and what not; so that the cost of education, recreation, travel, clothing, and nearly everything else we use would be enhanced enormously. But, thanks to a very wise and fair arrangement an author or an inventor has a good chance to be well paid, and after that the people have a chance to enjoy the benefits of his genius.
Now, if it is right and expedient thus to deprive the inventor or the author of his own production after a time, and to give the use thereof to the public, what sense or justice is there in allowing a landowner to hold land and to draw an ever-swelling rent to the exclusion, inconvenience, and expense of the people for ever? And by what process of reasoning can a landlord charge me, an author, with immorality or confiscation for suggesting that the same law should apply to the land he did not make, that I myself cheerfully allow to be applied to the books I do make?
For the landlord to speak of confiscation in the face of the laws of patent and of copyright seems to me the coolest impudence.
But there is something else to be said of the landlord's title to the land. He claims the right to hold the land, and to exact rent for the land, on the ground that the land is lawfully his.
The land is not his.
There is no such thing, and there never was any such thing, in English law as private ownership of land. In English law the land belongs to the Crown, and can only be held in trust by any subject.
Allow me to give legal warranty for this statement. The great lawyer, Sir William Blackstone, says—
Accurately and strictly speaking, there is no foundation in nature or in natural law why a set of words on parchment should convey the dominion of land. Allodial (absolute) property no subject in England now has; it being a received and now undeniable principle in law, that all lands in England are holden mediately or immediately of the King.
Sir Edward Coke says—
All lands or tenements in England in the hands of subjects, are holden mediately or immediately of the King. For, in the law of England, we have not any subject's land that is not holden.
And Sir Frederick Pollock, in English Land Lords, says—
No absolute ownership of land is recognised by our law books, except in the Crown. All lands are supposed to be held immediately or mediately of the Crown, though no rent or service may be payable and no grant from the Crown on record.
I explained at first that I do not suggest confiscation. Really the land is the King's, and by him can be claimed; but we will let that pass. Here we will speak only of what is reasonable and fair. Let me give a more definite idea of the hardships imposed upon the nation by the landlords.
We all know how the landlord takes a part of the wealth produced by labour and calls it "rent." But that is only simple rent. There is a worse kind of rent, which I will call "compound rent." It is known to economists as "unearned increment."
I need hardly remind you that rents are higher in large towns than in small villages. Why? Because land is more "valuable." Why is it more valuable? Because there is more trade done.
Thus a plot of land in the city of London will bring in a hundredfold more rent than a plot of the same size in some Scottish valley. For people must have lodgings, and shops, and offices, and works in the places where their business lies. Cases have been known in which land bought for a few shillings an acre has increased within a man's lifetime to a value of many guineas a yard.
This increase in value is not due to any exertion, genius, or enterprise on the part of the landowner. It is entirely due to the energy and intelligence of those who made the trade and industry of the town.
The landowner sits idle while the Edisons, the Stephensons, the Jacquards, Mawdsleys, Bessemers, and the thousands of skilled workers expand a sleepy village into a thriving town; but when the town is built, and the trade is flourishing, he steps in to reap the harvest. He raises the rent.
He raises the rent, and evermore raises the rent, so that the harder the townsfolk work, and the more the town prospers, the greater is the price he charges for the use of his land. This extortionate rent is really a fine inflicted by idleness on industry. It is simple plunder, and is known by the technical name of unearned increment.
It is unearned increment which condemns so many of the workers in our British towns to live in narrow streets, in back-to-back cottages, in hideous tenements. It is unearned increment which forces up the death-rate and fosters all manner of disease and vice. It is unearned increment which keeps vast areas of London, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, and all our large towns ugly, squalid, unhealthy, and vile. And unearned increment is an inevitable outcome and an invariable characteristic of the private ownership of land.
On this subject Professor Thorold Rogers said—
Every permanent improvement of the soil, every railway and road, every bettering of the general condition of society, every facility given for production, every stimulus applied to consumption, raises rent. The landowner sleeps, but thrives.
The volume of this unearned increment is tremendous. Mr. H. B. Haldane, M.P., speaking at Stepney in 1894, declared that the land upon which London stands would be worth, apart from its population and special industries, "at the outside not more than £16,000 a year." Instead of which "the people pay in rent for the land alone £16,000,000, and, with the buildings, £40,000,000 a year." Those £16,000,000 constitute a fine levied upon the workers of London by landlords.
A similar state of affairs exists in the country, where the farms are let chiefly on short leases. Here the tenant having improved his land has often lost his improvements, or, for fear of losing the improvements, has not improved his land nor even farmed it properly. In either case the landlord has been enriched while the tenant or the public has suffered.
A landlord has an estate which no farmer can make pay. A number of labourers take small plots at £5 an acre, and go in for flower culture. They work so hard, and become so skilful, that they get £50 an acre for their produce. And the landlord raises the rent to £40 an acre.
That is "unearned increment," or "compound rent." The landlord could not make the estate pay, the farmer could not make it pay. The labourer, by his own skill and industry, does make it pay, and the landlord takes the proceeds.
And these are the men who talk about confiscation and robbery!
Do I blame the landlord? Not very much. But I blame the people for allowing him to deprive their wives and children of the necessaries, the decencies, and the joys of life.
But if you wish to know more about the treatment of tenants by landlords in England, Scotland, and Ireland, get a book called Land Nationalisation, by Dr. Alfred Russell Wallace, published by Swan Sonnenschein, at 1s.
That private landowners should be allowed to take millions out of the pockets of the workers is neither just nor reasonable. There is no argument in favour of landlordism that would not hold good in the case of a private claim to the sea and the air.
Imagine a King or Parliament granting to an individual the exclusive ownership of the Bristol Channel or the air of Cornwall! Such a grant would rouse the ridicule of the whole nation. The attempt to enforce such a grant would cause a revolution.
But in what way is such a grant more iniquitous or absurd than is the claim of a private citizen to the possession of Monsall Dale, or Sherwood Forest, or Covent Garden Market, or the corn lands of Essex, or the iron ore of Cumberland?
The Bristol Channel, the river Thames, all our high roads, and most of our bridges are public property, free for the use of all. No power in the kingdom could wrest a yard of the highway nor an acre of green sea from the possession of the nation. It is right that the road and the river, the sea and the air should be the property of the people; it is expedient that they should be the property of the people. Then by what right or by what reason can it be held that the land—Britain herself—should belong to any man, or by any man be withheld from the people—who are the British nation?
But it may be thought, because I am a Socialist, and neither rich nor influential, that my opinion should be regarded with suspicion. Allow me to offer the authority of more eminent men.
The late Lord Chief-Justice Coleridge said, in 1887—
These (our land laws) might be for the general advantage, and if they could be shown to be so, by all means they should be maintained; but if not, does any man, with what he is pleased to call his mind, deny that a state of law under which such mischief could exist, under which the country itself would exist, not for its people, but for a mere handful of them, ought to be instantly and absolutely set aside?
Two years later, in 1889, the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone said—
Those persons who possess large portions of the earth's space are not altogether in the same position as possessors of mere personality. Personality does not impose limitations on the action and industry of man and the well-being of the community as possession of land does, and therefore I freely own that compulsory expropriation is a thing which is admissible, and even sound in principle.
Speaking at Hull, in August 1885, the Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain said—
The soil of every country originally belonged to its inhabitants, and if it has been thought expedient to create private ownership in place of common rights, at least that private ownership must be considered as a trust, and subject to the conditions of a trust.
And again, at Inverness, in September 1885, Mr. Chamberlain said—
When an exorbitant rent is demanded, which takes from a tenant the savings of his life, and turns him out at the end of his lease stripped of all his earnings, when a man is taxed for his own improvements, that is confiscation, and it is none the less reprehensible because it is sanctioned by the law.
These views of the land question are not merely the views of ignorant demagogues, but are fully indorsed by great lawyers, great statesmen, great authors, great divines, and great economists.
What is the principle which these eminent men teach? It is the principle enforced in the patent law, in the income tax, and in the law of copyright, that the privileges and claims, even the rights of the few, must give way to the needs of the many and the welfare of the whole.
What, then, do we propose to do? I think there are very few Socialists who wish to confiscate the land without any kind of compensation. But all Socialists demand that the land shall return to the possession of the people. Britain for the British! What could be more just?
How are the people to get the land? There are many suggestions. Perhaps the fairest would be to allow the landowner the same latitude that is allowed to the inventor, who, as Mr. Mallock claims, is really the creator of two-thirds of our wealth.
We allow the inventor to draw rent on his patent for fourteen years. Why not limit the private possession of land to the same term? Pay the present owners of land the full rent for fourteen or, say, twenty years, or, in a case where land has been bought in good faith, within the past fifty years, allow the owner the full rent for thirty years. This would be more than we grant our inventors, though they add to the national wealth, whereas the landlord simply takes wealth away from the national store.
The method I here advise would require a "Compulsory Purchase Act" to compel landowners to sell their land at a fair price to the nation when and wherever the public convenience required it.
This view is expressed clearly in a speech made by the Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain at Trowbridge in 1885—
We propose that local authorities shall have power in every case to take land by compulsion at a fair price for every public purpose, and that they should be able to let the land again, with absolute security of tenure, for allotments and for small holdings.
Others, again, recommend a land tax, and with perfect justice. If the City Council improves a street, at the cost of the ratepayer, the landlord raises his rent. What does that mean? It means that the ratepayer has increased the value of the landlord's property at the cost of the rates. It would only be just, then, that the whole increase should be taken back from the landlord by the city.
Therefore, it would be quite just to tax the landlords to the full extent of their "unearned increment."
In Progress and Poverty, and in the book on Land Nationalisation by Dr. Alfred Russell Wallace, you will find these subjects of the taxation and the purchase of land fully and clearly treated.
My object is to show that it is to the interest of the nation that the private ownership of land should cease.
Books to Read on the Land:—
Progress and Poverty. By Henry George, 1s. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, & Co.
Land Nationalisation. By Alfred Russell Wallace, 1s. Swan Sonnenschein.
Five Precursors of Henry George. By J. Morrison Davidson. London, Labour Leader Office, 1s.