CHAPTER X.
TENURE OF LAND.
64. We have sufficiently considered the difficulties which exist regarding Labour and Capital, two of the requisites of production, and we will now turn to another part of political economy, and inquire into the way in which Land, the third requisite, is supplied.
In different countries land is held in very different ways. It is a matter of custom, and in the course of time customs slowly change. The way in which farms are owned and managed in England at the present time is no indication of the way land is held in France, or Norway, or Russia, or even the United States; nor is it the same as the way in which farms were owned in England some centuries ago. What is fitting to one place and state of society will not necessarily be fitting in other circumstances. We have to consider the various ways in which the requisites of production, land, labour, and capital, are brought together; sometimes they are all furnished by the same person; sometimes by separate persons.
In the condition of slavery, for instance, as it existed in the Southern States of North America, the owner of an estate owned the land, labour, and capital, all at once. Strictly speaking a slave is not a labourer, because he cannot sell his labour at his own price, and work or not as he likes. He is more in the position of the horse which drags the plough, a mere beast of burden. Just as a farmer owns his horses, and cows, and pigs, as part of his capital, so a slave-owner treats his slaves as part of his capital. Slave-labour being given unwillingly, and without hope of reward, is usually badly given, and is wasteful; but there is hardly any need to consider whether slavery is good or bad in an economical point of view, because it is altogether condemned from a moral point of view. We may show the way the requisites of production are furnished in slavery by the following diagram—
In a very large part of the world, again, the government takes the place of land-owners, and collects the rent by means of tax-gatherers. The farming is done by poor peasants, who find the capital, so far as there is any, and also do the work. Thus, we have the arrangement—
This system is called Ryot Tenure, and it exists at the present day in Turkey, Egypt, Persia, and many eastern countries; also in a somewhat altered form in British India. After slavery, it is the worst of all systems, because the Government can fix the rent at what it likes, and it is difficult to distinguish between rent and taxes. When their crops fail the ryot peasants are unable to pay the tax-gatherers, and they get into debt and become quite helpless.
65. Peasant Proprietorship. One of the best modes of holding land, when it can exist, is that known as peasant proprietorship, because the owner of the land is the peasant himself, who labours with his own arms, and finds the capital also. In this system, as in slavery, all the requisites of production are in the same hands; thus—