“I desired to sell my crops, and I found no one who would give me a high enough price for them. I wished then to let my land, and encountered the same difficulty. I resolved to sell it, but still experienced the same disappointment. My exactions have always been met by their telling me, that there is more land in the neighbourhood; so that, horrible to say, my services are estimated by the community like the services of other people, at what they are worth, in spite of the flattering promises of theorists. They will give me nothing, absolutely nothing, for those productive and indestructible powers of the soil, for those natural agents, for the solar and lunar rays, for the rain, the wind, the dew, the frost, which I was led to believe were mine, but of which I turn out to be only the nominal proprietor. Is it not an iniquitous thing that I am remunerated only for my services, and at a rate, too, reduced by competition? You are all suffering under the same oppression, you are all alike the victims of anarchical competition. It would be no longer so, you may easily perceive, if we organized landed property, if we laid our heads together to prevent anyone henceforward from clearing a yard of American soil. In that case, population pressing, by its increase, on a nearly fixed amount of subsistence, we should be able to make our own prices and attain immense wealth, which would be a great boon for all other classes; for being rich, we should provide them with work.”
If, in consequence of this discourse, the combined proprietors [p267] seized the reins of government, and passed an act interdicting all new clearances, the consequence undoubtedly would be a temporary increase of their profits. I say temporary, for the natural laws of society would be wanting in harmony if the punishment of such a crime did not spring naturally from the crime itself. Speaking with scientific exactitude, I should not say that the new law we have supposed would impart value to the powers of the soil, or to natural agents (were this the case, the law would do harm to no one);—but I should say, that the equilibrium of services had been violently upset; that one class robbed all other classes, and that slavery had been introduced into that country.
Take another hypothesis, which indeed represents the actual state of things among the civilized nations of Europe—and suppose all the land to have passed into the domain of private property.
We are to inquire whether in that case the mass of consumers, or the community, would continue to be the gratuitous usufructuary of the productive powers of the soil, and of natural agents; whether the proprietors of land would be owners of anything else than of its value, that is to say, of their services fairly estimated according to the laws of competition; and whether, when they are recompensed for those services, they are not forced like everyone else to give the gifts of God into the bargain.
Suppose, then, the entire territory of Arkansas alienated by the government, parcelled into private domains, and subjected to culture. When Jonathan brings his grain or his land to market, can he not now take advantage of the productive power of the soil, and make it an element of value? He could no longer be met, as in the preceding case, with the overwhelming answer. “There is more uncultivated land adjacent to yours.”
This new state of things presupposes an increase of population, which may be divided into two classes: 1st, That which furnishes to the community agricultural services; 2dly, That which furnishes manufacturing, intellectual, or other services.
Now this appears to me quite evident. Labourers (other than owners of land) who wished to procure supplies of grain, being perfectly free to apply either to Jonathan or to his neighbours, or to the proprietors of adjoining states, being in circumstances even to proceed to clear lands beyond the territory of Arkansas, it would be absolutely impossible for Jonathan to impose an unjust law upon them. The very fact that lands which have no value exist elsewhere would oppose to monopoly an invincible obstacle, and we should be landed again in the preceding hypothesis. Agricultural services are subject to the law of Universal Competition, [p268] and it is quite impossible to make them pass for more than they are worth. I add, that they are worth no more (cæteris paribus) than services of any other description. As the manufacturer, after charging for his time, his anxiety, his trouble, his risk, his advances, his skill (all which things constitute human service, and are represented by value), can demand no recompense for the law of gravitation, the expansibility of steam, the assistance of which he has availed himself of,—so in the same way, Jonathan can include in the value of his grain only the sum total of the personal services, anterior or recent, and not the assistance he has derived from the laws of vegetable physiology. The equilibrium of services is not impaired so long as they are freely exchanged, the one for the other, at an agreed price; and the gifts of God, of which these services are the vehicle, given on both sides into the bargain, remain in the domain of community.
It may be said, no doubt, that in point of fact the value of the soil is constantly increasing; and this is true. In proportion as population becomes more dense and the people more wealthy, and the means of communication more easy, the landed proprietor derives more advantage from his services. Is this law peculiar to him? Does the same thing not hold of all other producers? With equal labour, does not a physician, a lawyer, a singer, a painter, a day labourer, procure a greater amount of enjoyments in the nineteenth than he could in the fourth century? in Paris than in Brittany? in France than in Morocco? But is this increased enjoyment obtained at the expense of any other body? That is the point. For the rest, we shall investigate still farther this law of value (using the word metonymically) of the soil, in a subsequent part of the work, when we come to consider the theory of Ricardo.
At present it is sufficient to show that Jonathan, in the case we have put, can exercise no oppression over the industrial classes, provided the exchange of services is free, and that labour can, without any legal impediment, be distributed, either in Arkansas or elsewhere, among different kinds of production. This liberty renders it impossible for the proprietors to intercept, for their own profit, the gratuitous benefits of nature.
It would no longer be the same thing if Jonathan and his brethren, availing themselves of their legislative powers, were to proscribe or shackle the liberty of trade,—were they to decree, for example, that not a grain of foreign corn should be allowed to enter the territory of Arkansas. In that case the value of services exchanged between proprietors and non-proprietors would no longer be regulated by justice. The one party could no longer control the [p269] pretensions of the other. Such a legislative measure would be as iniquitous as the one to which we have just alluded. The effect would be quite the same as if Jonathan, having carried to market a sack of corn, which in other circumstances would have sold for fifteen francs, should present a pistol at the purchaser’s head, and say, Give me three francs more, or I will blow out your brains.