[43] Systems of Land Tenure, published by the Cobden Club.
[44] To say nothing of superior want of conscience, which is often the determining quality which makes a millionaire out of one who otherwise might have been a poor man.
[45] Franklin, in his inimitable way, relates how Keimer finally broke his resolution and ordering a roast pig invited two lady friends to dine with him, but the pig being brought in before the company arrived, Keimer could not resist the temptation and ate it all himself.
[46] In saying that private property in land can, in the ultimate analysis, be justified only on the theory that some men have a better right to existence than others, I am stating only what the advocates of the existing system have themselves perceived. What gave to Malthus his popularity among the ruling classes—what caused his illogical book to be received as a new revelation, induced sovereigns to send him decorations, and the meanest rich man in England to propose to give him a living, was the fact that he furnished a plausible reason for the assumption that some have a better right to existence than others—an assumption which is necessary for the justification of private property in land, and which Malthus clearly states in the declaration that the tendency of population is constantly to bring into the world human beings for whom nature refuses to provide, and who consequently “have not the slightest right to any share in the existing store of the necessaries of life;” whom she tells as interlopers to begone, “and does not hesitate to extort by force obedience to her mandates,” employing for that purpose “hunger and pestilence, war and crime, mortality and neglect of infantine life, prostitution and syphilis.” And to-day this Malthusian doctrine is the ultimate defense upon which those who justify private property in land fall back. In no other way can it be logically defended.
[47] This natural and inalienable right to the equal use and enjoyment of land is so apparent that it has been recognized by men wherever force or habit has not blunted first perceptions. To give but one instance: The white settlers of New Zealand found themselves unable to get from the Maoris what the latter considered a complete title to land, because, although a whole tribe might have consented to a sale, they would still claim with every new child born among them an additional payment on the ground that they had parted with only their own rights, and could not sell those of the unborn. The government was obliged to step in and settle the matter by buying land for a tribal annuity, in which every child that is born acquires a share.
[48] One of the anti-slavery agitators (Col. J. A. Collins) on a visit to England addressed a large audience in a Scotch manufacturing town, and wound up as he had been used to in the United States, by giving the ration which in the slave codes of some of the States fixed the minimum of maintenance for a slave. He quickly discovered that to many of his hearers it was an anti-climax.
[49] Principles of Political Economy, Book I, Chap. 3, Sec. 6.
[50] Social Statics, page 142. [It may be well to say in the new reprint of this book (1897) that this and all other references to Herbert Spencer’s “Social Statics” are from the edition of that book published by D. Appleton & Co., New York, with his consent, from 1864 to 1892. At that time “Social Statics” was repudiated, and a new edition under the name of “Social Statics, abridged and revised,” has taken its place. From this, all that the first Social Statics had said in denial of property in land has been eliminated, and it of course contains nothing here referred to. Mr. Spencer has also been driven by the persistent heckling of the English single tax men, who insisted on asking him the questions suggested in the first Social Statics, to bring out a small volume, entitled “Mr. Herbert Spencer on the Land Question,” in which are reprinted in parallel columns Chapter IX of Social Statics, with what he considers valid answers to himself as given in “Justice,” 1891. This has also been reprinted by D. Appleton & Co., and constitutes, I think, the very funniest answer to himself ever made by a man who claimed to be a philosopher.]
[51] The influence of the lawyers has been very marked in Europe, both on the continent and in Great Britain, in destroying all vestiges of the ancient tenure, and substituting the idea of the Roman law, exclusive ownership.
[52] Latifundia perdidere Italiam.—Pliny.