On the other hand, there would be certain and serious disadvantages. A considerable number of land users might permit their holdings to deteriorate through careless cultivation. To be sure, they would not find this a profitable course if they intended to remain on the land permanently; but they might prefer to exhaust the best qualities of a farm in a few years, and then retire, or go into some other business, or repeat the wearing-out process on other lands. Thus the community would suffer through the lowered productiveness of its land, and because of the lower rent that it would receive from all subsequent users of the deteriorated tracts. In the second place, the administrative machinery required to levy and collect the rent, and to apportion the different holdings among competitive bidders, would inevitably involve a vast amount of error, inequality, favouritism, and corruption. For the land tax to be levied and collected would not be, as now, a fraction of the rental value, but the full amount of the annual rent. In the third place, cultivators would not have the inducement to make improvements which arises from the hope of selling both the improvements and the land at a profit, owing to the increased demand for the land. Perhaps the greatest disadvantage of the system would be the instability of tenure, with regard to both productive and residential lands. Owing to misfortunes of various kinds, for example, one or two bad crops, many cultivators would be temporarily unable to pay the full amount of the land tax or rent. It is scarcely conceivable that the State would remit the deficiency, or refuse to turn the land over to other persons on terms more advantageous to itself. Inasmuch as the value and rent of land would be continuously adjusted by competition, the more efficient and more wealthy would frequently supplant the less efficient and the less wealthy, even though the latter had occupied their holdings or their dwellings for a great number of years. Legal security of tenure, though theoretically the same as that enjoyed by the private owner to-day, would be much less effective practically. In this respect land users would be in almost as bad a case as renters are at present.[33]
Our conclusion, then, is that private landownership is certainly better than extreme Socialism, or any form of Socialism which does not concede to the land user all the control that he would have under the Single Tax system, and that it is very probably superior to the latter. In making this comparison and drawing this conclusion, we have in mind private ownership, not at its worst nor as it exists or has existed in any particular country, but private ownership in its essential elements, and with its capacity for modification and improvement. If we were to examine carefully the results of private ownership as it obtained in Ireland for several centuries before the enactment of the recent Land Purchase Act, we should probably be tempted to declare that the most extreme form of agrarian Socialism could scarcely have been productive of more individual and social injury. Certain other countries present almost equally unfavourable conditions of comparison. Failure to note this distinction between the historical and the potential aspects of private landownership has vitiated many otherwise excellent defences of the institution. It has provoked the retort that almost any plausible change would be an improvement upon private ownership as it has existed in this or that country. But these are not the real alternatives. The practical choice is between private ownership as shown by experience and reason to be capable of improvement, and some untried system which is subject to grave defects, and which at its best would be probably inferior to modified private ownership. An attempt to describe some of these modifications and improvements will be made in a subsequent chapter. In the meantime we content ourselves with the statement that private land ownership is capable of becoming better than Socialism certainly, and probably better than the Single Tax system. Consequently it is justified not merely so long as neither of these schemes is introduced, but as an institution which the State would do well to maintain, protect, and improve.
CHAPTER V
PRIVATE LANDOWNERSHIP A NATURAL RIGHT
The conclusions of the preceding chapter include the statement that individuals are morally justified in becoming and remaining landowners. May we take a further step, and assert that private landownership is a natural right of the individual? If it is, the abolition of it by the State, even with compensation to the owners, would be an act of injustice. The doctrine of natural rights is so prominent in the arguments of both the advocates and the opponents of private landownership that it deserves specific treatment. Moreover, the claim that private landownership is a natural right rests upon precisely the same basis as the similar claim with regard to the individual ownership of capital; and the conclusions pertinent to the former will be equally applicable to the latter.
A natural right is a right derived from the nature of the individual, and existing for his welfare. Hence it differs from a civil right, which is derived from society or the State, and is intended for a social or civil purpose. Such, for example, is the right to vote, or the right to hold a public office. Since a natural right neither proceeds from nor is primarily designed for a civil end, it cannot be annulled, and it may not be ignored, by the State. For example: the right to life and the right to liberty are so sacred to the individual, so necessary to his welfare, that the State cannot rightfully kill an innocent man, nor punish him by a term in prison.
Three Principal Kinds of Natural Rights
Although natural rights are all equally valid, they differ in regard to their basis, and their urgency or importance. From this point of view, we may profitably distinguish three principal types.