(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.”