Things move fast in these days: but few people expect that any change will take place in his time. He will continue in the position of social eminence, and of political power, he now occupies. He will go on hoping to leave after him a line of descendants occupying the same, or even a greater, position. This will be the dominant motive in his mind. If any land is to be bought in his neighbourhood, there will still be a likelihood that he will become the purchaser of it. It has always been so, since the estate became the predominant one in those parts. And that it should be so is now regarded almost as a law of nature; as something quite inevitable; so that no one need enquire whether it is beneficent in its action, or otherwise. If he have not cash in hand to pay for the new purchase, he will mortgage his property to the amount of the price. In this era of capital the value of land goes on increasing, and so the mortgage will in time be paid off by the estate itself. In this way, in these times, every large estate has within itself, even without Austrian marriages,[[1]] a progress-generated power of absorption and growth. Without lessening the area of the estate, he will provide for those who are dependent on him by charging it with the payment of whatever he may please to leave them: so that while no very apparent injustice will be done to them, the position of the single representative of the family will not be affected, for he will still appear before the world as the owner of the whole estate. He will also hope that, from time to time, the representatives of the family will, by making purchases in the way in which he has, and by the introduction of great heiresses into the family, increase the extent of the estate.
[1]. Bella gerant alii. Tu felix Austria nube: Nam, quæ Mars aliis, dat tibi regna Venus.
At times, when he hears how demagogues are raving about the nationalisation of the land, and the tyranny of capital; and when he visits the valley, and sees the condition of many, indeed of all the people on the estate, he may feel that he is in a somewhat invidious position. But he will feel also that no one is to blame: his progenitors could not well have acted otherwise than as they did; nor could he well act otherwise than as he is acting, and will act. And those who are discussing the matter, sometimes with the tone of men who are suffering a wrong, would, we may be sure, not act otherwise, under the circumstances, themselves.
Suppose, however, that for the restricted and artificial action of capital, which has brought this state of things about, its natural action has been substituted: what will be the effect on the hopes, and on the family, of the proprietor of our valley? We may venture to predict that the natural order of things will give him a securer chance of realising his hopes in their best sense. His family will start, in the race of life, in possession of the whole of the land of the valley. For them this will be no bad start. The land of the valley will bear division for several generations without reducing the members of the family to a bad position, even if none of them should do anything at all to improve their position. But this, judging by the ordinary principles of human nature, we may be sure, speaking generally, will not be the case. Two centuries hence, it will be their own fault, if, instead of the family being really only one man, they have not become a clan in the valley: a clan possessed of more social importance, and of more political influence, than could attach to a family represented by a single member. Some will have become invigorated by the inducements to exertion that will have come home to them, and by the wholesome consciousness in each that he is somewhat dependent on himself for maintaining and improving his position. Whatever efforts to advance themselves they may come to make, will not be made under unfavourable circumstances. None of them will have occasion to feel, as perhaps some of their ancestors at times had, that they are in an invidious position; and none will regard them with feelings that, if not ‘somewhat leavened with a sense of injustice,’ do yet arise from a suspicion that things are not quite as they ought to be, through there having been some kind of interference with their natural course. Is not this a nobler, a more patriotic, a more human, and in every way a better prospect than that which is now feeding the somewhat misdirected paternal ambition of the present proprietor? Would it not be a better anticipation of the fortunes of his family, to think of them as a numerous body of proprietors, occupying a good position, through the natural action of the circumstances and conditions of the times, than to look forward to the uncertain character and uncertain position of a single member of his family, who will be maintained, if maintained, by conditions, on the permanency of which no dependence can be placed, because they are at discord with the needs and circumstances of the times?
Land now no longer rules. Capital is king. Capital it is that does everything now; that even, but under abnormal and artificial conditions, aggregates our large estates. Under this dynasty the advantages the land is capable of conferring on man are not withdrawn, but much increased both in degree and in variety; and everything desirable, the land not excepted, becomes, in a manner and degree inconceivable in all foregone times, the reward of personal exertion and worth. This is what distinguishes this dynasty from those that have preceded it. If it be the true king, it will prove its legitimacy, by removing all artificial barriers to the development and exercise of its beneficent powers. If it cannot do this, it is a bastard dynasty, and will be dethroned.
V. But I have not yet exhausted all the possible forms in which land may be held. Their name is legion. Every country, and every condition of society, has had, has now, and will have, its own. I say nothing of the serf-system: that among civilised nations has gone for ever. So has the system of village communities. The co-operative system, however, has believers, and, it appears possible, may have a trial. But I, for one, because I believe in capital, and in the individual, have no belief in this kind of co-operation, as a general system, either in manufactures and commerce, or, and that least of all, in agriculture: and, with respect to the latter, whether the co-operators be renters, or owners. Ownership would make no difference at all beyond the power owners would possess of mortgaging their land; and this, as it is a resource that would very soon be exhausted, need not be considered here. The only practical difference would be, that co-operative renters would require a larger extent of land to live from than co-operative owners, whose land was unmortgaged. If the system of co-operation were general, competition, and the increase of population that would have to be provided for, and which would lead either to subdivision, or to an increase of co-operators upon each farm, would inevitably bring the style of living down to a point at which it would be no better than it is now in the Visp Valley. And this is so low a condition of life, both materially and intellectually, that most people are of opinion that it is not worth while to go in for its maintenance, or even, perhaps, to regret its disappearance.
A population of co-operators sunk to this depth, and they could not but sink to it, would, like the old Irish potatovors, or the French petty proprietors, be in a state of chronic wretchedness and degradation: this, in bad seasons, amounts to a state of starvation. If the individual Irish potatovor could not, and the individual French petty proprietor, in whom the parsimonious disposition of his race is exaggerated, rarely can, save, because bad seasons oblige him to mortgage his little plot of land, from which he can hardly extract a living in good seasons, we may be sure that neither would, nor could, such co-operators. I am disposed to prefer the present condition of our agricultural labourers, the most feeble class amongst us. At all events, they have more than one buffer between themselves and bad seasons. First there is the reservoir of capital possessed by the farmer. This is, to the extent of wages, generally, sufficient. In consequence of its existence bad seasons make little or no difference to hired labourers. But under the co-operative system there would be no farmers, but only co-operators, just able to get along in ordinary seasons. Our labourers have, also, a second buffer, which is often of some use to them, in their wealthy neighbours. But under the co-operative system there would probably be no wealthy neighbours. They possess, too, a third buffer in the State, which comes in, in the last resort, to rescue them from the extreme consequences of every kind of calamity. But under a system of peasant co-operators there could hardly be anything resembling our poor-law; for the rationale of that is, that the people who cultivate the soil of the country, are themselves devoid of all property. These three buffers, then, would all have disappeared; and nothing, as far as we can see, would arise, or could be created, to take their place. Such co-operators would be only co-operative peasant-proprietors: which is an absurdity.
Another sufficient objection to this system is, that this is the era of capital, and that such a system would most effectually prohibit the outflow of capital to the land. Capital could no more be invested in the ownings of a wretched population of co-operators, than it could be in the plots of Irish potatovors, or of French petty proprietors.