UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 ANDREW 
 
 SMITH 
 
 HALLIDIE: 
 
 1868 Sifel 19O1 
 
THE 
 
 EIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 OF 
 
 PROPERTY. 
 
THE 
 
 RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 
 PROPERTY; 
 
 WITH 
 
 A PLAN FOR PAYING OFF THE 
 NATIONAL DEBT. 
 
 BY JOHN SANGSTEK. 
 
 LONDON: 
 WHITTAKER AND Co., AVE-MARIA LANE. 
 
 MDCCCLI. 
 
E. JUSTINS & SON, 
 
 PRINTERS, 
 -59, FENCHURCH STREET. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 SOCIETY has ever been in a transitory state ; sometimes 
 it presents itself on the page of history as having been 
 advancing towards civilization, again to have been retro- 
 grading into barbarity ; and in all the variously modified 
 forms which have been impressed upon it, in the orbit 
 of its perpetual destiny, the predominance of one, or the 
 other, of these tendencies is perspicuously delineated, 
 in exact proportion to the degree of knowledge or of 
 ignorance which may have preponderated in the minds of 
 men at those epochs. 
 
 Through the general diffusion of knowledge at the 
 present day, and the unprecedentedly advanced position 
 of the science of political economy, society seems to be 
 far better prepared, than ever it has yet been, to sustain 
 permanently a social reformation ; and already it has 
 entered upon a period of no ordinary advancement in 
 the career of social civilization. If any doubt this phasis 
 of the social body, let them, in order to be convinced of 
 its reality, carefully look at, and duly estimate the effects 
 which have been produced in Europe within these last 
 few years ; during which, by the influence of political 
 knowledge, and the power of the advancing tide of society, 
 monarchs have been hurled from their thrones, dynasties 
 obliterated, and property itself brought to the very verge 
 
 107305 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 of destruction, only to be spared amidst the banishments 
 of kings and the crush of empires, through the magnani- 
 mity and the forbearance of an intelligent people. 
 
 The aspect of this transitive and belligerent state of 
 society, resolutely and strenuously maintained by the la- 
 bourers on the one side, demanding the restitution of the 
 rights of labour and of social justice, and as detenninately 
 and dogmatically prolonged by proprietors on the other 
 part, asserting their ancient prerogatives and their present 
 irresponsibility, would naturally lead us to the conclusion, 
 that a momentous social collision must inevitably take 
 place at no remote time between those two classes of 
 society, and such a collision will not be without serious 
 results ! The refusal of necessary reformation has often 
 led to revolution ; and experience has proved, that, jus- 
 tice suddenly executed on delinquents, ( often degene- 
 rates into cruelty, and even injustice. 
 
 The object of this Treatise, is, to avert such a consum- 
 mation. We wish for the reformation of abuses, rather 
 than for the punishment of those implicated in their 
 maintenance, and to impress upon society that there 
 can be no rights apart from responsibilities, no property 
 without its duties. We wish to aid the inquiring, to 
 awaken the unthinking, and to warn the reckless. 
 
 In pursuing these objects through an almost untrodden 
 path, we shall expose this truth, that the rights and du- 
 ties of property are the foundations of social organiza- 
 tion, and that their consistent developments are the 
 superstructures of all just, social, and political govern- 
 ments ; and in elucidating these truths, we shall protect 
 the real interests of proprietors, and maintain inviolate 
 the just rights of all classes of the community. 
 
PREFACE. Vll 
 
 Had the subject of the rights and duties of property 
 been, in our opinion, amply and philosophically treated 
 by political economists, we should have considered it 
 superfluous, if not to say impertinent, to have offered 
 our opinion ; but as they have mostly left this momen- 
 tous and all-important question in abeyance, we take 
 upon ourselves the grave and sacred responsibility of 
 grappling with the Achilles, who has apparently intimi- 
 dated the most intrepid of the English school of econo- 
 mists. Should we succeed in slaying the dragon which 
 now guards the golden apples in the garden of property, 
 we shall have the satisfaction of seeing the industrious 
 classes rewarded, in future, with a fair and full share of 
 the results produced by their labour. 
 
 The differences which have been created in society 
 between the interests of labour and those of capital, 
 have been conducive of forming two distinct classes of 
 men, one which lives by its own industry, and another 
 which exists upon the industry of other men. These 
 two classes have become, of late years, so marked by an- 
 tagonism, and the chasm which now separates them has 
 grown so wide, that, unless an amicable reconcilement 
 of their pretensions is effected, social peace cannot long 
 be preserved, but civil war must be the priest who will 
 offer, upon the altar of social justice, the sacrifice of class 
 interests. 
 
 In the present work, we shall endeavour to shew that 
 the interests of labour and capital are not naturally re- 
 pugnant to each other, when under the control of social 
 laws ; that an amicable and advantageous reconcilement 
 might be effected between their champions, who now 
 threaten to subvert constitutional order, and to plunge 
 society into chaotic disorganization. 
 
vih PREFACE. 
 
 But the evils which necessarily arise in society from 
 labour having been divorced from its rights, and property 
 exonerated from its duties, have been further aggravated 
 by the National Debt a debt fraudulently contracted, 
 and more fraudulently attempted to be perpetuated 
 through a drawling discharge of the capital, and an igno- 
 minious payment of interest. Notwithstanding all the 
 hereditary perversions in our funding system, we are 
 disposed to manifest more benevolence towards the fund- 
 holders than strict justice would warrant, considering 
 many of them, as well as the people, the ignorant victims 
 of a vicious system ; and therefore, we shall propose the 
 means whereby their claims may be fairly and justly 
 dealt with, and a repayment of the debt made to them, 
 consistently with the rights and duties of property, and 
 in accordance with the beneficial interests of industry. 
 
 We conclude, by expressing an earnest ^vish, that, cur 
 endeavours to promote the welfare of our fellow-men, 
 may meet with a fair and candid interpretation, on the 
 rest of our readers ; and if we succeed in eradicating 
 even a few errors, or prejudices, from the minds of in- 
 quirers after truth, our labour will not have been in vain> 
 and the luxury of having done good will be our ample 
 reward. 
 
 London, November, 1851. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 PAGE 
 Political Economy. Origin of the term; the science, its 
 
 scope and objects defined by the term itself: the great 
 antiquity of the science : but imperfectly understood for 
 
 many ages 1 
 
 Dr. Adam Smith, first scientifically embodies the principles 
 on which the science reposes, and is entitled to be 
 called the father of the science of wealth . . 3 
 
 Duties of the political economist 5 
 
 Criticism on Dr. Smith . 6 
 
 The present work strictly confined within the limits over 
 
 which the political economist has a right to travel . 7 
 Labour, now partially, but one day solely the means by 
 which man may earn his bread. The world created by 
 labour, and man himself reared by labour. . . 8 
 Nature, not parsimonious of her gifts to man, but irregular 
 
 in her distribution of them 9 
 
 Man has received the world as his inheritance, and must 
 perfect his title by completing the work which nature 
 
 commenced 10 
 
 Personal property, not constituted by natural right. . 11 
 How property may be lawfully acquired . .12 
 
 Definition of property, and its advantages and position . 13 " 
 The titles and rights of property continually reorganized. 14- * 
 Property pressed on by labour, and why? . . 15 
 
 Individuals cannot alienate property from posterity . 15 "* 
 
 Blackstone on titles to property 16 
 
 The earth not a property, but a free gift to man . . 17 
 Mr. McCulloch on the rights of property . . . 18 
 
 misunderstands the nature of property, capital, 
 
 and labour 19 
 
 Why the management of property is assigned to individuals ? 20 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE- 
 
 Why property was established and tolerated? . . .21 
 How the earth and its products came into the hands of its 
 
 present occupants under the form of exclusive property 22 
 Criticism on Mr. McCulloch's opinions thereon, and their 
 
 weakness exposed . . . . . . . 2& 
 
 Practices of the ancients in respect to property, and argu- 
 ments thereon 28 
 
 The law of the land the only title to property . . 37 
 Mr. McCulloch's opinion that property is the author of all 
 
 civilization, and arguments thereon . . . .38 
 The egotism of property opposed to the Christian religion 41 
 The rights of universal man to the earth and its produc- 
 tions, not barred by the occupancy of those who 
 
 claim them as property 43 
 
 The law of society in harmony with Christianity, and on 
 this ground proprietors appealed to and reasoned with 
 
 on their egotistic pretensions 45 
 
 Labour, the source of all wealth . . . . .48 
 
 On the relations actually existing, or which ought to exist 
 
 between labour and property 49 
 
 Usages of labourers in England and Scotland ... 50 
 Usurpation of the rights of the Scottish clans by their 
 
 chiefs and lairds . 52 
 
 Accumulation of property in a few hands, a great evil . 57. 
 The abuses of the rights of proprietors through evictions 
 
 and compulsory emigration 58 
 
 The duty of those who govern Ireland .... 59 
 
 The attention of English labourers to their duties ad- 
 mitted, and yet their distress generally alluded to, in 
 speeches from the throne ...... 60 
 
 The law of supply and demand, abundance, cheapness, 
 
 and low wages . . - 61 
 
 Exception to the rule c 62 
 
 Monarchs seldom meditate upon the causes of distress 
 
 which afflict their subjects G4 
 
CONTENTS. x i 
 
 FAffii 
 
 The more the people toil, the greater their poverty ; and 
 
 daily becoming more and more the subjects and slaves 
 
 of capital (35 
 
 Mr. McCulloch's opinion on the effects of machinery, his 
 assertion that the introduction of machinery which 
 will do a man's work at half price, would have the 
 same effect on labour as if the labourer became him- 
 self capable of producing a double quantity, disproved 66 
 
 The theories of Mons. Cabet thereon .... 71 
 
 Criticisms on the opinions of Fourier, Sismondi, and 
 Proudhon, and fallacies on the subject of over-pro- 
 duetion exposed 74 
 
 The supposed advantages of cheapness demonstrated to 
 
 be a fallacy 92 
 
 Legislation without a knowledge of the rights of property 
 
 like writing in the sand 90 
 
 The inquiry into the rights and duties of property divided 
 
 into three branches 9# 
 
 Society, the creator of property 9G 
 
 Without society there could be no proprietors, only pos- 
 sessors of wealth ... ... 97 
 
 Property owes a debt to society, for the establishment of 
 
 its rights and its defence 100 
 
 The debt that property owes not being paid, property 
 
 reverts to society 101 
 
 Property, instead of the crowning reward, has become the 
 
 bane and curse of labour . . . . , .102 
 
 The evidence of the repudiation by proprietors of their 
 
 duties to society 102 
 
 Funded property a false representation in the shape of 
 credit 103 
 
 What is the nature of property? 107 
 
 Abuses of the rights of property in the laws of primo- . 
 
 geniture and entail 109 
 
 How and why society created property? . . . .117 
 
 Labour in full fruition of its natural rights antecedent to 
 
 the existence of society 120 
 
 Society constituted by necessity for protection . . 124 
 
Xii CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Equal eligibilities to possession in a primitive state . . 126 
 Laws formed by society based on primitively equal rights 127 
 Labour assigned its rights to its delegate society . . 128 
 Effects of the Norman conquest on property in its rela- 
 tions to society 129 
 
 Ancient history silent as to the primitive formation of 
 
 society ......... 134 
 
 The intimate relations of labour, society, and property . 136 
 
 An equipoise between labour and property, to be maintained 137 
 
 The rights of labour, and the oppressions it endures . 138 
 
 National debt cannot be liquidated by the present mode . 145 
 
 The danger of the fundholders 147 
 
 P A K T II. 
 
 The effect which the National Debt has upon society . 148 
 The vulgar fallacies respecting it exposed . . .149 
 The principle on which the National Debt was originated 158 
 
 Classification of the fundholders 165 
 
 Sir Charles Wood's erroneous ideas in regard to the 
 
 funding system exposed 171 
 
 The funding system adverse to the rights of humanity . 180 
 National Debt incompatible with perfect free trade . .181 
 The principles of free trade in harmony with nature . 181 
 Free trade cannot be maintained unless taxation be reduced 182 
 Position of British labourers in consequence of the Na- 
 tional Debt 183 
 
 National bankruptcy a delusion 184 
 
 History and mystery of the National Debt . . .185 
 Plan for the liquidation of the National Debt . . .214 
 The rights and duties of property closely linked together 236 
 Another method of raising the public revenue proposed . 238 
 Property accounted sacred, monopoly condemned . . 240 
 M. Thiers on the rights and uses of property . . . 243 
 The French revolution in 1789, a rebellion against monopoly 248 
 M. Y. Considerant in contravention of the opinions and 
 
 practice of M. Thiers 249 
 
 Summing up in conclusion 25 
 
T1IE 
 
 RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF PROPERTY. 
 
 POLITICAL Economy is a science that derives its name 
 from the Greek; the etymology of which shews it to be 
 a compound derivative, in which three roots of that lan- 
 guage are combined. 
 
 1 Political' is a derivation from woXiriKs, the science of 
 government, and TnA/rys-, a citizen, which have their 
 roots in Polis^ a city; and signifies the practice, customs, 
 and government of a city. 'Economy/ springs from 
 o/kov/K,/a, which comes from Oikos^ a house, and Nornos, 
 a law ; and means the management of a house, a family, 
 also of a state or nation ; or the law by which a family, 
 state, or nation is ruled and governed. 
 
 Taking, therefore, into consideration the original mean- 
 ing and separate imports of these words, and comparing 
 them with their present amalgamated and scientific signi- 
 fication, we are enabled to judge with more certitude 
 than otherwise could be attained, what must logically 
 and scientifically be circumscribed as the boundary 
 within which the political economist ought to confine 
 his survey, and what the nature of the subjects are to 
 which he may direct his investigation, with a reasonable 
 prospect of benefiting society, without vitiating in the 
 smallest degree the principles of the science by inter- 
 
 A 
 
THE BIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 mixing with it other subjects, which do not directly fall 
 within the province of his investigation. 
 
 Now as society is the compact family of mankind, 
 naturally and socially organized into different races and 
 kingdoms, the science of c political economy' may be said 
 to embrace a full knowledge of the laws and customs 
 by which families, cities, states, and nations are governed 
 and united for a common good under the general name of 
 society. 
 
 It is very obvious, that as soon as the first family had 
 been formed, there must have been prescribed rules for 
 its due government; and whatever those precepts or 
 rules may have been, or however few the number of the 
 family under mutual obligations and interests to obey 
 them, they must have been in principle as binding on a 
 small number of individuals as they would-'jiave been on 
 any larger number. Domestic economy therefore must 
 necessarily be as old as man himself; and next in progres- 
 sion would be that of the patriarchal families or tribes. 
 The government of cities inevitably had its origin at a 
 much later period of man's existence, and could not have 
 been till subsequent to the time when men with the ob- 
 ject of developing a more perfect sphere of mutual pro- 
 tection, began to form themselves into larger and more 
 compact bodies, under the name of citizens, enjoying 
 equal benefits individually, and corporal and civil rights 
 as citizens living together in towns or cities, each 
 member being individually bound to fulfil reciprocal 
 obligations for the mutual benefit of the particular 
 society or social corporation of which he had become a 
 citizen. 
 
 In consequence of the natural construction and combi- 
 
OF PROPERTY. 3 
 
 nation of our language, we place the word political before 
 economy. The French, however, designate the science of 
 political economy, " Economic Politique." And if we may 
 conclude from the original precedency of economy, or 
 household management in the practice of the science, this 
 arrangement of the terms by the French would seem to 
 be the more natural, and perfectly in accordance with 
 the opinion previously expressed, that economy must 
 have been fully practised long before politics could have 
 had any existence at all, and certainly very long anterior 
 to these two words becoming conjoined under the desig- 
 nation of political economy. 
 
 Though economy, the first evolution of social science, 
 must, from the very nature of the conditions imposed on 
 man, when he entered into a state of society, have been 
 partly understood, and to a certain degree practically 
 carried out; and though political economy, the synthetic 
 form of social government, in its long incubation through 
 the ancient and modern ages, was faintly but imper- 
 fectly comprehended, yet, till towards the end of 
 the last century no analysis of its elements had been 
 successfully attempted, or any systematic composition 
 of its principles into one comprehensive system been 
 promulgated, by which the economist might regulate his 
 course of investigation in tracing the movements of so- 
 ciety, and in searching out the causes of the misgovern - 
 ment through which societies, nations, and empires had 
 been corrupted, and finally ruined and destroyed. 
 
 During the eighteenth century, however, our illus- 
 trious countryman, Dr. Adam Smith, arose; and, in 
 the full effulgence of that luminary, was dissolved the 
 obscurity which till then had enveloped the science, and 
 
4 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 which had impeded through previous ages the progress 
 of the students of political economy, and concealed 
 from their view the true and fundamental principles, 
 on which now clearly rest one of the most important 
 sciences which man has yet discovered, and on the 
 right understanding and application of which the greater 
 part of his comfort and happiness depend. It is to him 
 that the world is indebted for embodying in a scientific 
 and comprehensive form the principles on which the 
 science reposes. Before he published his immortal work, 
 the " Wealth of Nations," society was constituted on 
 unknown and unascertained principles, and was groping 
 its way by hazard, unconscious and ignorant of the ac- 
 tions of the laws which produced its every impulse, 
 and despotically governed its every movement. Many 
 philosophers of great eminence had written before him 
 on the subject of political economy, and not a few among 
 them had treated the subject with great perspicuity of 
 intellect : still, lucid as many of them appear on differ- 
 ent parts of the science, there is a want of combination 
 in each of their various systems, which clearly demon- 
 strates that the subject was beyond their full comprehen- 
 sion, and too vast for them definitely to fathom, and that 
 they were unable even to lay a systematical foundation 
 for future investigation. 
 
 Such was the position of the writers on political 
 economy when the great architect of the science ap- 
 peared to mould the rude blocks which had bid defiance 
 to the chisel of his predecessors, and to substantially lay 
 that foundation which they had previously failed in ac- 
 complishing, and on which most subsequent writers have 
 mainly rested for support in rearing the superstructure. 
 
OF PROPERTY. 5 
 
 which was to render the science practically beneficial to 
 society. We may, therefore, call Adam Smith the father 
 of the science of wealth ; because it was he who first 
 organized and gave a systematic concatenation to the 
 principles which now justly entitle it to be called a 
 science, and even to rank first in the order of sciences on 
 account of its paramount importance; and also on account 
 of its being that science which has for its object the true 
 and perfect understanding of the social body in its various 
 ramifications and developments, as well as an exact 
 comprehension of the multifarious tendencies of the laws 
 by which it is influenced : and because, if at any time 
 through misgovernment any individual part of that body 
 be affected, or become diseased, it is the duty of the poli- 
 tical economist to be able with promptitude to point out 
 the origin and cause of the evil, and to rectify any unna- 
 tural disorganization of the social system. 
 
 The political economist has also another most impor- 
 tant and essential duty to fulfil, namely, that of perfectly 
 keeping the public accounts. It is to him that society 
 looks for a perfect system of national book-keeping, so as 
 that he at any time may be able clearly to state what the as- 
 sets and liabilities of the nation are when those assets may 
 be realized and how they can be most economically col- 
 lected, whether or not a saving could be effected in the 
 expense of collecting the taxes, and of paying the liabilities; 
 and also, if the debts due by the nation could be liquidated 
 by some more economical and Christian -like system, than 
 that now in practice of making the poor pay more in pro- 
 portion than the rich, thus unjustly abstracting taxes from 
 the producers of wealth to hand over to the producers of 
 misery. He also ought to be able to say, who are the 
 
G THE EIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 best and most profitable customers for the nation to deal 
 with what are their various resources the different 
 commodities they require, and to what extent they can 
 consume advantageously ; and he ought to know, at what 
 price other nations can produce the same commodities of 
 which the nation to which he is accountant is a producer. 
 If he be ignorant of these things, the society to which 
 he belongs will be exposed to inevitable losses, by often 
 sending its products to those who cannot pay for them, 
 or to overstocked markets, or to those markets where 
 these products will come into competition with cheaper 
 produced commodities. 
 
 On the principles inculcated by Dr. Smith, most of 
 the economists who have since written, in any degree 
 understanding their subject, have adopted the leading 
 principles laid down by him. To say, However, that 
 he is always right, would be doing an injustice to the 
 science, and assigning to him a mind superior in cha- 
 racter to that assigned to the human race. However, 
 taking into consideration the novel difficulties he had 
 to contend with at every stage of his researches in the 
 untrodden path by which he arrived at the great truths 
 discovered and demonstrated by him, no one will deny 
 him the honour of having advanced the science more than 
 any previous writer on political economy. Even where he 
 has been shewn to have fallen into error, in grappling 
 with and illustrating some few of his principles, it will gene- 
 rally be allowed, that his sole aim seems to have been to 
 find out the truth, and to state it fearlessly, without 
 prevarication or favour to party views, or class interests ; 
 and sometimes, when he may seem to be doubtful of the 
 way by which truth was to be arrived at, no sooner in 
 
OF PROPERTY. 7 
 
 those few instances does the least reflected ray from 
 reason light on his obscure path, than he is instantly 
 attracted to it, and eagerly pursues it with a steady eye, 
 eager to find out the truth, in order to demonstrate it to 
 others, as clearly as language could. This is so conspi- 
 cuous in his Wealth of Nations, and he writes with such 
 good effect, even on some points which occur in his work, 
 where he does not seem exactly to have seen the primary 
 cause of the result he delineates, that at those times he 
 appears more as if he were revealing the truth than as if 
 he had found it out himself. This, no doubt, arose from 
 his paramount desire to abide as closely by what his 
 reflective mind suggested to him as the most approximate 
 to the truth ; and in case he should be misunderstood in 
 any of his novel expositions, he almost invariably illus- 
 trates his propositions by examples, which generally are 
 made simple and lucid, so as to be easily comprehended 
 by those for whom he wrote. 
 
 We have limited the domain over which the political 
 economist has a right to travel, as comprising the govern- 
 ment of man living in separate families, or societies, 
 and that of his social rights as a citizen of the world. To 
 these two subjects analytically and synthetically in their 
 various relations, dependence and cooperation with each 
 other, we shall endeavour to confine ourselves. In order, 
 therefore, that we may seize on, and put ourselves in 
 possession of what we consider to be our province, 
 namely, the domain with its contents originally given to 
 man, we shall premise by avering that labour was the 
 original producer of every thing possessing value this 
 was the primitive constituted law : and as nature is per- 
 petuated by revolutionary and reactionary laws, it must 
 
8 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 naturally follow, that labour will one day be, as it bat 
 partially is now, the only means by which man shall earn 
 his bread. Nature itself is now kept alive by toil; and 
 the world itself was at first created by labour ; for during 
 the six periods that the great Creator took to complete 
 his work, he must have laboured with a steady and 
 unceasing purpose in order to accomplish the mighty 
 design. This world, therefore, was produced by labour ; 
 and, as labour and the production of new wealth can 
 only be carried on by the consumption of that which is 
 already in existence, and as all products valuable in 
 exchange ought to compensate the amount of consump- 
 tion in making them the amount of labour, or consump- 
 tion necessary to change the matter out of which the 
 world was formed, could only be estimated by the value 
 of the world when made; but as it is the^ facility with 
 which commodities can be exchanged which gives them 
 value, the world has no upset price, and only became va- 
 luable when man by labour appropriated it, and divided it 
 into small lots. Any attempt to arrive at even a conjec- 
 ture on a subject so far beyond the reach of human 
 comprehension, as that of the value of natural products, 
 would only shew how circumscribed and limited our 
 minds are ; and our finite and futile attempts to compre- 
 hend the labour of the great infinite Creator would only 
 prove the insignificancy and inadequacy of our powers ; 
 and besides, would lead us into a subject widely irrelevant 
 to political economy, which has only to deal with man the 
 day it finds him on the earth, emanated from the Creator's 
 hands, and constituted a family. Though man at first 
 was reared by labour, and was a part of the capital of the 
 world, afterwards given to him as a donative by its great 
 
OP PROPERTY. 9 
 
 Creator, still it is beyond the province of political economy 
 to investigate whether the world or man was created by 
 labour ; and man cannot properly be appropriated by the 
 political economist, till the time that the obligations under 
 which man was to have sovereign possession, and to hold 
 dominion over the earth, were promulgated " Be fruitful 
 and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it." Had 
 Adam reflected on the import of the introduction, to the 
 indenture by which he received his dominion, and by 
 means of which his happiness in the world was to be 
 guaranteed, he might have seen the decree of his own 
 dissolution and decomposition " Replenish the earth ;" 
 clearly demonstrating that as the world had been made, 
 so the purposely created void was to be filled up by 
 labour ; and that, by the law of nature which had been 
 established in the universe, all the produce of labour 
 was doomed to decay and to decompose ; so even man 
 himself was not destined to be an exception to that 
 law. In order, ho\vever, to secure his happiness, nature 
 had provided him with every thing necessary towards 
 his comfort ; she had not been parsimonious of her gifts : 
 but partial in their distribution, had disseminated them in 
 different regions of the world, so that mankind might be 
 mutually dependent on each other for their realization. 
 To obviate the wants occasioned by the irregular distribu- 
 tion of her products, and that the produce of one clime 
 should be freely exchanged for that of another ; that the 
 sugars of one country might be bartered for the husban- 
 dry tools of another; and the silk manufactures of one 
 nation exchanged for those of the cotton or any other pro- 
 duce of the country requiring silks the exchange of com- 
 modities through means of labour must have been a part 
 A 2 
 
10 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 of the design of nature. Nature thus designed that man 
 should continue and perpetuate the work which she had 
 begun ; and on condition of his doing so, seed-time and 
 harvest were guaranteed to him. With this promise man 
 finds himself placed on the earth to carry on the labour 
 commenced by nature on his behalf to act in harmony 
 with the laws of natural production to aid and assist na- 
 ture to the extent of his bodily strength ; and by the force 
 of his intellect, to direct his labour so as to operate in 
 unison with her's, that the greatest possible benefit may 
 thereby accrue from their harmonious and combined 
 operations. Man is not therefore placed in the world, as 
 some have supposed, to carry on by compulsion a declared 
 war against the parsimony of nature, but only to co- 
 operate with her, and to apply his knowledge of her laws 
 and mode of operation so as to modify and control them, 
 that they may thereby produce the greatest amount of 
 happiness to himself, and to his fellow men. 
 
 The indenture by which mankind received the world for 
 an inheritance, constituted each unit of the family equally 
 entitled to its possession ; and though the physical and 
 mental development of individuals may differ a little, yet, 
 taking mankind as a whole, it is impossible to say the exact 
 point where one power differs from another, -to shew where 
 one begins and another leaves off, or to draw a line of 
 demarcation between different capacities. One thing, 
 however, is certain, that whatever apparent difference 
 there may seem to be, still men are all possessed of the 
 same faculties, though modified in degree; influenced by 
 the same feelings and passions; subject to the same 
 natural results when acted upon by the same causes. 
 They are all equally helpless when first ushered into the 
 
OP PROPERTY. 11 
 
 world; and though, during the development of their facul- 
 ties, some may indicate more aptitude to learn, or to seize 
 on anything presented to them, by the peculiar quality or 
 temperament of their minds, still in the apprehensive 
 faculty of their minds, the judgment, they will be found 
 to be all undistinguishably the same as to quantity and 
 force, when their education has been similar. These 
 inequalities in physical development and mental force are 
 the natural symbols and harbingers of perfect equality, 
 and are only given by nature to render men mutually 
 dependent on each other. Supposing, however, that in 
 a natural state some of these forces might rise superior 
 to, and subjugate the weaker developments then to 
 obviate this domination, and to protect the weak against 
 the strong, society itself was instituted ; thus destroying 
 the inequality, if any exist, in nature, and thereby esta- 
 blishing society on the principle of equality. Then if 
 society were instituted to correct the inequality existing in 
 nature, how has it been brought about that it has become 
 infidel to its principle, in bolstering up the irresponsible 
 rights of the holders of property, merely as such, irrespec- 
 tive of the equilateral claims of the great body of its in- 
 dustrious members thus disinherited of any share in the 
 rights of all. 
 
 Since nature has given the earth and its products 
 equally to all, any natural right to personal property is 
 destroyed ; for where unlimited equality of possession 
 exists, there can be no personal property. As it is the 
 right of one individual, or corporate body, to enjoy 
 certain privileges to the total exclusion of every one 
 else that legally constitutes property; and as there 
 
12 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 can be no natural right to personal property, it neces- 
 sarily follows that property must be of social creation, 
 having its foundation on social rights, and those rights 
 cannot be otherwise based than on conventional recipro- 
 city. By legal appropriation, therefore, personal property 
 y does not exist but by social right only. In order, there- 
 fore, that property may be tolerated by society, it must 
 fulfil and discharge through the medium of its posses- 
 sors, the conventional conditions implied by the social 
 compact. If it fail to do this through any of its holders, 
 it has broken the compact, and must revert to the sove- 
 reign head of the society, that he may put his executive 
 prerogative in force, and compel the recusant party to 
 fulfil its obligations to that society whose property it ori- 
 ginally was, and who only parted with it on certain re- 
 cognized conditions and considerations. If any of the 
 parties, who tacitly undertook by their act of taking 
 possession to fulfil those conditions, should refuse or 
 wilfully neglect to perform them, then have they forfeited 
 the right to the property which they hold ; and the 
 property equitably reverts to the original granters ; that 
 is, to society in the aggregate. The very act of the 
 possessors of property invariably appealing to society for 
 its protection when at any time it is assailed, proves that 
 they themselves really feel and understand from whom 
 they received it in trust, and for the benefit of whom 
 they are indulged in holding possession. If they hold 
 it not from and for the benefit of society, why appeal to 
 society to arise and protect it? for if it were not held by 
 them for the benefit of society, this call to arms by the 
 possessors of property would be tantamount to sum- 
 
OF PROPERTY. 13 
 
 moning society that had been expropriated and plundered 
 of its rights to put on its buckler, and unsheath its sword 
 in order to enslave and annihilate itself. 
 
 Property is the social share guaranteed Iby the laws of 
 property to each individual proprietor, in exact propor- 
 tion to his perseverance and dexterity in prosecuting the 
 unsocial struggle between capital and labour. Property 
 was created by society, and is now perpetuated and 
 augmented by it from the surplus revenue of the labour 
 of the industrious classes; or rather, itmight be described 
 as proceeding from the savings effected by society on its 
 gross revenue by the people not living up to their income; 
 in other words, by the producers of wealth abstaining 
 from spending the full amount of their production, and 
 thus denying themselves the present enjoyment of the 
 whole of the fruits of their labour for the future grati- 
 fication of becoming proprietors, and thereby recompen- 
 sing themselves for their present self-denial by the inter- 
 est and compound interest which property bestows on its 
 possessors. This interest, compound interest, and rent, 
 which property holds out to its votaries, and actually puts 
 them in possession of, through means of its laws, exclusive 
 of society, are the source of the evils which at present 
 render society a turmoil and a warfare of capital against 
 labour; f6r by these laws the proprietor obtains a com- 
 manding position, from which he finds it easy to subjugate 
 the labourers; and the higher he ascends the hill of pro- 
 perty, he is able with greater effect to hurl the weight 
 of capital on the labourers in the valley ; so that they are 
 obliged to labour not only for their simple existence, but 
 also to produce wealth for him, which he at his pleasure 
 (not being responsible) may forge into future chains to 
 
14 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 bind them still faster, or to annihilate them by its weight. 
 Property, with its concomitant good and evil, has had 
 a very remote origin ; and as history gives no positive 
 information whatever as to the date of its first constitution, 
 or with respect to the actual circumstances from which 
 the motives sprang which induced man to organize and 
 constitute it, all therefore that we can now possibly 
 ascertain as to what those circumstances may have been, 
 must be, not only through the medium of any faint 
 glimpses of information which we may derive from ancient 
 history, as to what were considered at different times to 
 be the rights by which man held possession of any par- 
 ticular commodity or local situation ; but more especially 
 through the medium of our senses, by bringing common 
 sense and reason to bear on, and by scrupulously investi- 
 gating the natural condition and successive development of 
 the wants of man. By common sense men are enabled to 
 judge with certainty the immediate effect of the external 
 circumstances by which in a natural state they are in- 
 fluenced ; and having, through the faculty of perception 
 inherent in this sense, acquired an accurate knowledge as 
 to their immediate situation, and finding that position 
 often exposed to attacks by aggressive force, they 
 would naturally analyse their actual condition by the 
 aid of experience acquired during the past ; and from the 
 result of this analysis, they would be enabled to constitute 
 society on principles derived alike from reason and ex- 
 perience, forming an harmonious whole, congruous and 
 homogenous, and productive only of happiness to man. 
 It would be superfluous to follow property through its 
 historical changes and progressions, as these are so very 
 numerous that many of them must be familiar to every 
 
OF PROPERTY. 15 
 
 one. And as these changes and reorganizations of the ti- 
 tles and rights of property are taking place daily by every 
 successive change of the law, they are therefore infallible 
 proofs, that even in its present state property is defective 
 and susceptible of many beneficial changes; and that, 
 notwithstanding all that has been done by the laws of 
 England to constitute, determine, and settle its rights, 
 many of them have only tended to widen the breach 
 between its present possessors and the representatives 
 of labour, its original owners. So continually and clearly 
 is this the fact, that at present property is placed over a 
 volcano, which threatens to burst forth and inundate its 
 present possessors by an overwhelming current of labour- 
 ers demanding their original rights. 
 
 The cause of this pressure on property by labour is 
 on account of the greater part of the labouring classes, 
 who are the creators of property, having been deprived 
 of all right or possession in it whatever; and besides 
 their having been excommunicated from any just parti- 
 cipation in its rights, it is made in the hands of its 
 possessors an engine and a means of estranging them still 
 further from every reasonable prospect of ever enjoying 
 its privileges, or tasting its sweets. 
 
 Man being, as we have shewn, in primitive possession 
 of the earth, and its products, he could have had no 
 right of himself, even had he been so disposed, to alien- 
 ate his share of it for ever from his posterity, without he 
 had secured to them reciprocal conditions by which they 
 should be guaranteed the right of sharing in its products: 
 and if the holders of property be in possession by any 
 other agreement or conditions whatever than that of 
 reciprocal advantages, their titles are totally defective, 
 
10 THE BIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 and the sooner they conform to the conditions of the 
 social compact by which alone their possession can be- 
 come sociable property, so much the better will it be for 
 themselves and society. 
 
 'There is nothing,' says Sir William Blackstone, one 
 of our best authors on English law, and the constitution 
 of the rights of property, ' which so generally strikes 
 the imagination, and engages the affections of mankind, 
 as the right of property, or that sole and despotic dominion 
 which one man claims and exercises over the external 
 things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of 
 any other individual in the universe. And yet, there 
 are very few that will give themselves the trouble to 
 consider the original and foundation of this right. Pleased 
 as we are with possession, we seem afraid to look back 
 to the means by which it was acquired, as if fearful 
 of some defect in our title ; or, at least we rest 
 satisfied with the decision of the laws in our favour, 
 without examining the reason or authority upon 
 which those laws have been built. We think it 
 enough that our title is derived by the grant of the former 
 proprietor by descent from our ancestors, or by the last 
 will and testament of the dying owner ; not caring to 
 reflect, that accurately and strictly speaking, there is no 
 foundation in nature, or in natumi law^ why a set of 
 words upon parchment should convey the dominion of 
 land why the son should have a right to exclude his 
 fellow-creatures from a determinate spot of ground 
 because his father had done so before or why the occu- 
 pier of a particular field, or of a jewel, when laying on his 
 death-bed, and no longer able to maintain possession, 
 should be entitled to tell the rest of the world which of 
 
OF PROPERTY. 17 
 
 them should enjoy it after him. These enquiries, it must 
 be owned, would be useless and even troublesome in 
 common life. It is well if the mass of mankind will 
 obey the laws when made, without scrutinizing too nicely 
 into the reasons of making them. The earth, and all 
 things therein, are the general property of all mankind, 
 exclusive of other beings, from the immediate gift of the 
 Creator; and while the earth remained bare of inhabi- 
 tants, it is reasonable to suppose, that all was in common 
 among them, and that every one took from the public 
 stock to his own use such things as his immediate neces- 
 sities required.' 
 
 The earth, bequeathed as it was by its Creator, cannot 
 be considered strictly speaking as property, but only as a 
 general free gift to man ; and, as it was given alike to all 
 equally, without any effort of labour en their part, it 
 cannot therefore be appropriated by any individual, or 
 class of individuals, by any act of their's which can de- 
 bar others at any time from claiming their patrimonial 
 rights, namely, a fair share in the benefit of that which 
 the labour of nature gave them gratuitously. It was freely 
 given to all as the air which they breathe, and as uncon- 
 ditionally as the light of day, which defy exclusive appro- 
 priation. Such being undeniable facts, how has it been 
 brought about that the will of the great and bountiful 
 Testator has been so grossly violated, and a large portion 
 of his legitimate children disinherited, and that portion 
 too who labour most, and who ought therefore to be 
 in possession, if any preference were to be shewn, as 
 labour is the source of all wealth? And if the world was 
 formed by labour, and given to man in order that he 
 might advantageously continue that labour, certainly it is 
 
18 THE EIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 reasonable to suppose, that nature must consider those 
 most worthy to be in possession who follow out and per- 
 Vpetuate that labour which she carried on before man was 
 called into existence, and which she still continues to 
 hold in that natural course which was given to matter by 
 the powerful impetus of the great Original, that nature was 
 to live and reorganize its decomposed parts by means of 
 labour. As society, however, is at present constituted, 
 its natural course is superseded, and the rights of labour 
 totally reversed by those being in possession who do not 
 work at all, but who craftily take advantage of the abused 
 powers of property to live on the labour of others, and 
 to withhold from them their rightful dues. Social and 
 individual property in the soil was at first invented, and 
 ever since has been guaranteed, only because the original 
 design was for the advantage of all, anA therefore practi- 
 cally to carry out the primitive purpose is the reason of 
 its present toleration. This origin ought not to be lost 
 sight of, because property is only legitimate in so far as it 
 is administered conformably to the end for which it was 
 instituted. 
 
 'But/ says Mr. J. R. M c Culloch, ' The property of the 
 landlord is violated when he is compelled to adopt any 
 system of cultivation, even though it were really preferable 
 to that which he was previously following; the property of 
 a capitalist is violated when he is obliged to accept a par- 
 ticular rate of interest for his stock ; and the property 
 of a labourer is violated when he is obliged to employ 
 himself in any particular occupation, or for a fixed rate 
 of wages. The finest soil, the finest climate, the finest 
 intellectual powers, can prevent no people from becoming 
 barbarous, poor, and miserable, if they have the misfor- 
 
OF PROPERTY. 10 
 
 tune to be subjected to a government vvbich does not 
 respect and maintain tbe rigbt of property/ 
 
 In order to render tbe proprietor absolute lord and 
 master of his property, and not responsible to the govern- 
 ment for its use, Mr. M c Cullocb, in his mistaken zeal to 
 save the proprietor, has unknowingly laboured with all 
 his might to destroy the rights of property by degrading 
 the proprietor to the condition of a monopolist by ren- 
 dering him irresponsible to the state and his property 
 not only unsocial, in being in his possession, but also 
 unsocial in its production. For, says he, the proprietor 
 is robbed of his rights if he be forced to adopt a beneficial 
 and social system of production; clearly establishing, 
 that if the proprietor be not responsible to the state, he 
 must be a monopolist. We would, however, ask Mr. 
 M c Culloch, if the consumer be not robbed if the pro- 
 prietor, by his egotistic right keep back from the consu- 
 mer what the land if fully cultivated would produce for 
 the market of consumable commodities and if the pro- 
 perty of the capitalist be not violated, when he is obliged 
 to accept a lower rate of interest for his stock? Mr. 
 M c Culloch is inconsistent to invoke government to main- 
 tain and to cause to be respected the right of property 
 which lately reduced the interest of funded property, and 
 thus robbed the fundholders by conversion without in- 
 demnification. The proprietor's last resource is to plead 
 for aid from such an enemy. 
 
 Oh ! poor property, save thyself from thy friends; 
 for their hands, like the Philistines, be upon thee. 
 
 After having established the right of property in ego- 
 tism, and the right of the capitalist in concord with sel- 
 fishness, Mr. M c Culloch, to prove that he did not tho- 
 
20 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 roughly comprehend the inherent nature either of pro- 
 perty, capital, or lahour, endeavours to organize labour in 
 the kingdom of interested capital and irresponsible pro- 
 perty, infatuatively forgetting that monopolies in property 
 and capital are both hostile to labour; and that credit, 
 in place of benefiting the labourer, has deprived him of 
 the rights of labour, by the capitalist, through means of 
 interest, stealthily drawing the fruits of his labour from him. 
 But if proprietors, according to Mr. M c Culloch, are not re- 
 sponsible to society for their acts, what becomes of the con- 
 vention by which property was at first conceded to them, 
 and now legally guaranteed ? Because, if it be legally 
 and justly given over to their care and control, this legal 
 concession is nullified by the proprietors refusing to fulfil 
 their part of the compact ; for an agreement, which does 
 not stipulate conditions to both parties, is invalid in law, 
 and in no respect obligatory on either party. Such 
 being the case, the proprietor, who claims the right of 
 property unconditionally, has mistaken his true position, 
 and has sunk to the state of an individual or monopolist, 
 whose right may be contested by society, or by any 
 individual more powerful than himself, who may coerce 
 him, and take his property from him. 
 
 Territorial and other property were given up to the 
 management of particular individuals, in order that they 
 might thereby increase production, and augment the social 
 revenue. The proprietor, then, does an unjust, unso- 
 cial, and illegitimate act if he abuse the privilege thus 
 granted to him by restricting production, or by making it 
 the means of amassing for himself a revenue, not from his 
 share of the bounties of the earth, but by that which 
 he abstracts from the share of other men. Territorial 
 
OP PttOPERTY. 21 
 
 property has been guaranteed to him, in order that 
 by his having a perpetual right in it, he might always 
 administer it with a view towards the future benefit of 
 society. He makes an unjust and illegal use of his property 
 if he abandon it to those who have only a fugitive and 
 temporary interest in it, either by short leases or other- 
 wise ; and if he thus deprives society of the full advan- 
 tages of that social right, which was only ceded to 
 him because he guaranteed in return a constant pro- 
 gression of agricultural riches, society has the right 
 to annul the compact. 
 
 Thus, we hope, are clearly established what must have 
 been the original principles on which property are founded, 
 namely, that it was created, is tolerated, and guaran- 
 teed by society for the mutual benefit of mankind. Ad- 
 mitting, therefore, that the appropriation by particular 
 individuals was necessary to fulfil more perfectly and be- 
 neficially the object of society, by enabling each indi- 
 vidual to follow out his particular vocation with better 
 success after the division of labour had been established, 
 still, the act of appropriation, either of the soil, or of 
 any other natural product, was equally necessary to all ; 
 hence the right of possession ought to be equal, and 
 so far as practicable the divisibility of property, and the 
 benefits derivable from it, guaranteed to every one ; 
 whereas, by the present existing law of entail, the persons 
 actually in possession have not even the power to divide 
 any portion of their property, or to share with others its 
 benefits. 
 
 Thus far we have traced the right by which the 
 present possessors of the soil, and the possessor of all 
 other sorts of property, are in possession; and having 
 
22 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 recognized the principle, that the earth and all its products 
 belong by right of inheritance equally to all mankind, let 
 us now endeavour to find out the means by which it came 
 into the hands of its present occupants under the form of 
 exclusive property ; and it will also be our duty, as 
 defenders of social property, to investigate what its 
 present real constitution is. 
 
 Property is the foundation and corner-stone of the 
 social edifice into which all have an equal right to enter : 
 if any be excluded, or prevented from entering, by difficul- 
 ties being thrown in their way, then property is no longer 
 property absolutely, as it has ceased to be held by legiti- 
 mate and social rights, and can thenceforth be held only 
 by the power of usurpation ; and as it may then be said 
 to have lost its surest guarantee, namely, the good will 
 and respect grounded in the hearts of the -people, its only 
 security, after having forfeited that respect, is the iron 
 hand of the law supported at the point of the bayonet. 
 If the majority of the people is dissatisfied with the way 
 in which property is distributed and appropriated, though 
 the government, as a faction, may support and maintain 
 that distribution, it is nevertheless unsocial, tending to 
 create discord in society, as those two parties will be 
 brought into continual collision, and a struggle for the 
 mastery will inevitably be the result. Therefore, the re- 
 cognizance of the rights of property is essentially neces- 
 sary by the people, in order to consolidate and confirm 
 the rights in the hands of its possessors ; and that recog- 
 nizance must not be a passive adhesion, but a heartfelt 
 satisfaction and content. If a perfect contentment of 
 this sort towards property be not impressed on the 
 public mind by the just and equitable conduct of the 
 
OF PROPERTY. 23 
 
 possessors of property, ebullitions of dissatisfaction will 
 from time to time be manifested, so that proprietors will 
 never under such circumstances be able to rest fully at 
 their ease. 
 
 4 The right of property/ says Mr. J. R. M c Culloch, 
 'is perfected only by degrees/ This is an admission by 
 a supporter of property in its present form, that its 
 rights are only being perfected by gradual change; and 
 therefore, we may warrantably conclude, in judging from 
 what he says, that the rights by which property are at 
 present held are yet far from being perfect, and that 
 great injustice is perpetrated by proprietors, towards 
 labourers who have no property, in their having entirely 
 excluded them from their just share of social rights, and V 
 only permitting those rights to be by slow degrees re- 
 stored to labour, exactly in proportion to the impressive 
 demands made by those who have hitherto been excluded 
 from all participation in social rights. 
 
 In the same paragraph he seems to halt between 
 two opinions ; if, however, we can gather anything out 
 of the ambiguity of the language used, as to which 
 opinion he has the greater leaning, we should rather 
 conclude that he is of opinion that there is a principle 
 implanted in the nature of man which urges him on, 
 and dictates to his natural powers, so that they at 
 once prompt him to respect the rights of property. 
 He says, ' We shall not undertake to decide whether 
 there be, or be not, a principle inherent in man that 
 at once suggests to every individual not to interfere v 
 with what has been produced or appropriated by the 
 labour of others; it is sufficient to know, that the 
 
24 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 briefest experience would point out to every one the 
 necessity of respecting this principle/ 
 
 If there be a principle in man's nature suggesting 
 and prompting him not to interfere with what has been 
 appropriated by others, and if the briefest experience 
 would besides inculcate this principle of non-interference, 
 how comes it to pass that so long time has been wasted 
 in establishing the rights of property, and which are 
 allowed to be yet imperfect, and only being perfected 
 by slow degrees ? 
 
 To suppose such a principle inherent in man, and at 
 the same time to say that the rights of property, which 
 must be emanations from that principle, are being per- 
 fected only by slow degrees, is to say, that this principle 
 was formed in man with such impuissance, that the 
 effects which were designed to be prodiiced by its agency 
 have not yet arrived at their climax, though it has been 
 in full operation for nearly the last six thousand years. 
 But, in not further insisting on the power of this inherent 
 principle, the existence of which he does not positively 
 affirm, he then comes to what he does know sufficiently 
 to be positive upon, and that is, that the briefest experi- 
 ence would teach the necessity of respecting this principle. 
 
 If the respect paid to property is based upon a neces- 
 sity to do it homage, then as soon as the individuals 
 coerced can repulse the aggressor, they are acquitted 
 by the inherent principle of conscience, because necessity 
 is not a law which binds conscience. Necessity is, how- 
 ever, the mother of invention ; and therefore to create 
 what nature never implanted in the breast of man, 
 namely, respect for property, proprietors have invented 
 
OP PROPERTY. 25 
 
 all sorts of coercive laws to teach others by experience 
 not to interfere with property. These pedagogues of 
 exclusive rights have long heen inculcating to mankind 
 the monopolist principle of non-interference, yet huma- 
 nity appears at this moment a professor of infidelity, 
 having acquired a more accurate and humane knowledge 
 of social rights, and established its school on the prin- 
 ciple of universal justice. 
 
 Mr. MCulloch attempts to account for the origin of 
 the rights of property, by stating, that c If a number of 
 individuals be set down together on the shore of an un- 
 occupied and unappropriated island, each will have quite 
 as good a right as another to take the game or the fruit. 
 But those who do so, or who have through their skill 
 and industry appropriated a portion of the common stock, 
 will obviously be entitled to the exclusive use of such 
 portion/ 
 
 This promiscuous horde of individuals, Des enfante 
 trouves, par la nature, are supposed to be abandoned in 
 order to free them from any obligations towards those who 
 left them : and as it does not appear that there was any 
 agreement among them about social government, each 
 individual would have a perfect right to act for himself 
 unencumbered by social restraints, and therefore at li- 
 berty to use his physical dexterity and mental skill in 
 any way that suited his particular purposes. ' But,' says 
 Mr. M c Culloch, 'under such circumstances it will be 
 obvious that if any of those selfish and unrestrained 
 individuals think fit to appropriate any portion of the 
 common stock, they would be entitled to retain such 
 portion.' Certainly under circumstances of selfish legis- 
 lation and physical force government, each would be 
 B 
 
26 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 entitled to take and hold as much of the common stock 
 as he was able to defend, but he could not exclude any 
 more powerful than himself from retaking it. This could 
 be done only by society, that is the social tomb of egotis- 
 tically maintained rights ; nevertheless, Mr. M c Culloch 
 before he forms his abandoned horde of humanity into 
 /a society, attempts to establish the rights of property, 
 thereby reversing the order of cause and effect, because 
 in the progression of mankind society is the cause of the 
 rights of property being established, and property is the 
 effect of that cause created by society subservient to it, 
 and to be always administered for its advantage. 
 
 Mr. M c Culloch having perceived that there was no 
 sure guarantee for property out of the pale of society, 
 tndeavours to shew the reason which induced man to 
 form society, and to establish the rights of property. 
 ' If,' says he, ' A. climbs a tree, and brings down fruit, 
 which as soon as he comes to the ground is taken from 
 him by others, he will not again engage in any similar 
 undertaking till he be well assured that he shall be per- 
 mitted exclusively to profit by what has been obtained 
 through his sole exertions, nor will others engage in any 
 such undertaking without a similar assurance/ No doubt, 
 therefore, the right of property has had a very remote 
 origin! The necessity for its establishment is so very 
 obvious and urgent, that it must have been all but coeval 
 with the formation of society. 
 
 We have previously shewn that Mr. M c Culloch endea- 
 vours to substantiate a right to property anterior to the 
 time when men formed themselves into society, and we 
 hope have satisfactorily proved that this was inconsistent 
 and impossible. In the portion of the same paragraph 
 
OF PROPERTY. 2? 
 
 now under our consideration, that writer has adopted 
 more natural and far more logical propositions in advancing 
 that property, and society are so very closely linked toge- 
 ther, that the rights of property must have heen all but 
 coeval with the formation of society. The chain of rea- 
 soning hy which he arrives at this longevity of the rights 
 of property is very clear and sound ; hut in his eagerness 
 to establish the right of A. who may have stript the tree, 
 and monopolised the fruit, he forgets that others did not, 
 nor could guarantee A. in unmolested possession, but 
 upon conditions which he has omitted throughout his 
 special pleading. Society, in giving to A., and others, 
 possession of the common stock under a guarantee of 
 supporting them in undisturbed possession, made A. and 
 others its debtors, because society is constituted on the 
 principle of parting with none of the common rights, 
 without a sufficient quid pro quo, or exact equivalent for 
 the thing ceded. And in individuals asking to be gua- 
 ranteed by society, before they engaged in any undertaking, 
 it is shewn that they are its suppliants, that they consent 
 to do it homage, and become its obedient servants. This 
 conditional right of possession has been accorded to them 
 bv their legitimate sovereign, upon whom they have 
 imposed, by construing their conditional right into a 
 monopoly ; and on that hypothesis, they have again 
 duped society by asserting that they were irresponsible 
 to society for what belonged individually to themselves, 
 and thus they have constituted proprietors, princes of 
 their own possessions and domains, by reducing society 
 their sovereign into subjection. 
 
 Property is, as has been previously stated, the conco- 
 mitant of toddy ; and as society arose out of the various 
 
28 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 circumstances under which man has been placed, it is 
 quite evident, that as mankind multiplied their wants 
 would increase, and society would extend the principle 
 of mutual protection, and by its development the rights 
 of property would necessarily be expanded. In all that 
 can be gathered from history, it appears, that as society 
 y' advances, new forms of property spring up, and old ones 
 disappear. As men progressively formed themselves 
 into societies in the primitive ages, slavery, the vilest of 
 all species of property, appeared, and almost universally 
 extended its power. However, in modern times the re- 
 verse tendency has prevailed, till it has now become a 
 policy to extirpate it by paying money to one class of 
 slaveholders to liberate their slaves, and compelling 
 another section by force of arms to leave over the dis- 
 graceful and inhuman trade. Ancient slavery has been 
 abrogated; but, in its stead a new species of it has 
 recently manifested its gigantic power, under the form of 
 the centralization of capital, combined with monopolies; 
 so that, though the labourer be freed from the lash, he is 
 actually punished more severely, by long hours of toil 
 and low wages, which destroy both his mental and bodily 
 frame. The old Hydra was obliged to see that its victims 
 were at least well fed ; the modern Cerberus squeezes as 
 much work out of the labourers as it can, and when they 
 are wrought up and useless, it turns them over to society 
 to be maintained. 
 
 It is quite evident, that moveable commodities would 
 in the first ages of society be of paramount importance 
 to man, and consequently they would for a time be ap- 
 propriated, before appropriation of land was resorted to. 
 We find, however, that partial possession of land under 
 
OF PROPERTY. 29 
 
 certain circumstances was recognised so early as the time 
 of Abraham, who bought of the family of Heth the cave 
 of Machpelah as a burying-place, for " four hundred she- 
 kels of silver, current money of the merchant." There 
 are certain striking impressions left on the mind by the 
 narration of this agreement, which would engender the 
 idea that an exchange of land had been generally prac- 
 tised among those eastern tribes, either by bartering one 
 field for another, or by indirect barter through the me- 
 dium of money. This is obvious from the tenure of this 
 contract ; for, if land had not a marketable value, natu- 
 rally there would have been some doubt as to the upset 
 price. No such uncertainty, however, appears to have 
 at all existed. Ephron speaks of the absolute value of 
 the cave, with its avenues, trees, and fences, in a most 
 unhesitating and positive way, as a merchant prince 
 who was well accustomed to sell land. He at once 
 states the price at which he would sell his right of 
 possession ; and Abraham, unlike his race, does not 
 higgle about the price, but at once concludes a bargain, 
 and weighs the money, " current money of the merchant." 
 That permanent property in land was not universally 
 recognised in the East, in the time of Abraham, is quite 
 evident from what took place between him and Lot 
 when their servants quarrelled. He willingly gave his 
 nephew the first choice of the district he preferred. " Is 
 not the whole land before thee ? separate thyself from 
 me ; if thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to 
 the right." Blackstone says, that this plainly implied an 
 acknowledged right in either to occupy whatever ground 
 he pleased that was not pre-occupied by other tribes. 
 
30 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 This practice is still retained among the wild and uncul- 
 tivated nations that have never been formed into civil 
 states, as the Tartars, and others in the East, where the 
 climate itself, and the boundless extent of their terri- 
 tory, conspire to retain them in the same savage state of 
 vagrant liberty, which was universal in the earliest ages ; 
 and which, Tacitus informs us, continued among the 
 Germans till the decline of the Roman empire." 
 
 Mr. M c Culloch, who seems to make no distinction 
 between possession of land as recognised in a simple 
 state of society, and that of property in land completely 
 organised in the present age, confounds their distinct 
 imports, and falling into the erroneous idea that they are 
 identical, he states, that property in land was guaranteed 
 by the laws of the most primitive nations of which 
 history has furnished us with any account of their usages. 
 ' The author of the book of Job,' says he, in quoting from 
 Goguet, ' placed those who removed their neighbours' 
 landmarks at the head of his list of wicked men ; and 
 the early Greek and Roman legislators placed these marks 
 under the special protection of the God Terminus, and 
 made their removal a capital offence.' He follows up, 
 and confirms this effort to canonize property, and render 
 it sacred, by abandoning the law as its foundation. ' It 
 is obvious/ says he, c from what has now been stated, 
 that the law of the land is not, as Dr. Paley has affirmed, 
 the real foundation of the right of property/ We shall 
 not enter into any investigation as to the sacred rights 
 of property, considering, as we do, that the political 
 economist has no right whatever to use the sacred 
 records for any other purpose than to quote it as matter 
 
OF PROPERTY. 31 
 
 of authentic history ; and if. at any time in the discharge 
 of our duty, we may be obliged to make any refer- 
 ence to it, we shall only do so in that sense. 
 
 Very few will at all question the authority of the phi- 
 losopher who lived in Uz., upon the rights of possession as 
 practised in his age and country ; but the doubtful way 
 he has been introduced by Mr. M c Culloch as a witness, 
 and the illogical inference attempted to be derived from 
 his evidence, leads us to scrutinize it, and also to examine 
 the import of its corroboration by Moses, when he says, 
 " Cursed be he thatremoveth his neighbour's landmark." 
 The former, though the most perfect among the learned 
 Chaldeans, and the latter learned in all the wisdom of the 
 Egyptians, and besides especially tuitioned on Mount 
 Sinai by Him who taught Solomon legislation, yet neither 
 could use the term ' property,' as it was not in their lan- 
 guages, nor even in any of their writings do they appear 
 to have ever heard of it, except it were under its abusive 
 synonyme oppression, against which Job deliberately ful- 
 minates invectives; and the consummate Hebrew legis- 
 lator unmistakably ratifies his profound knowledge of the 
 evils produced through unlimited credit and territorial 
 centralization by his decree, that a free release from debts 
 should take place every seven years and by the jubilee 
 edict, or restitutional act, he effectually prevented the 
 stealthy aggression of appropriators on the social patrimo- 
 ny, and securely established the primitive and equal right 
 of each and all to a share in the common domain. And the 
 rich man of the East, though despoiled of all his wealth by 
 the hordes of banditti that like locusts fell upon him, and 
 took his oxen from the ploughs, and his camels from 
 his fields, yet in all preserved his judicious patience; 
 
32 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 therefore we would ask those who affirm that he placed 
 landmark removers at the head of his list of wicked men. 
 Hast thou considered Job as a perfect and an upright man? 
 who has not, as stated, placed landmark removers at the 
 head, but who has assigned them their position near the 
 end of his list of bad men ? Long previously to Job 
 enumerating those that removed landmarks, he has most 
 pathetically described, and philosophically classified as 
 being more prominently unjustifiable the actions of those 
 who oppressed the poor. c What the oppressor of the 
 poor has laboured for shall he restore, and shall not. 
 swallow it down ; according to his substance shall the 
 restitution be/ This denunciation against the oppressors 
 of the poor might be said to be applicable to the present 
 age, and demonstrable in the conflict between poverty 
 and riches ; that is practically going oir^and now being 
 consummated through the effect of the eternal law of na- 
 tural reaction, in our being forced lately to vomit up eight 
 millions of our accumulated and bilious capital, as restitu- 
 tion to Ireland. On account of the poverty to which the 
 people of that country is reduced, a reactionary movement 
 is progressing in that unhappy portion of the United 
 Kingdom, in which, with a most fertile soil, and a fine cli- 
 mate, its proprietors are absolutely pressed for money to 
 pay the interest on mortgages. The Encumbered Estates 
 Ireland Bill and the Poor Law Bill, lately passed for Ire- 
 land, are part of the portion which by nature's law must 
 inevitably fall to the lot of wicked men, whose forefathers 
 have for ages oppressed and destroyed labour, dsinherited 
 the labourers of every right in the soil which their pre- 
 decessors have tilled from time immemorial, and upon 
 which they were born, and who are not yet satisfied with 
 
OF PROPERTY. 33 
 
 the havoc and desolation which they and their progeni- 
 tors have produced ; but at present are exhausting their 
 ingenuity in devising plans whereby they may farther 
 victimize those they have impoverished and ruined, by 
 driving them like slaves from their native homes, and 
 who are regardlessly shipping them pennyless to foreign 
 lands in crowded and crazy vessels to seek for that pro- 
 tection and happiness which has been ruthlessly taken 
 from them by their countrymen on their own native 
 plains. " Oh ! man's inhumanity to man, makes countless 
 thousands mourn." 
 
 With regard to the respect paid to property by the early 
 Greeks, who were the descendants of marauders and pira- 
 tical hordes, who came out of Egypt, Phenecia, and Asia 
 Minor, and took forcible possession of the soil of Greece 
 under the name of the Pelasgi, who were at first governed 
 by chiefs, then by kings, and afterwards by republics, all 
 of whom defended the rights of slavery, the most inhuman 
 and despicable species of property. The few aristocratic 
 families by whom property was held, fought with and 
 destroyed each other about it. War was the delight of 
 nobles, and piracy was an honourable profession ; they 
 despised trade, and with them labour was menial, and 
 only proper for slaves ; therefore they could procure 
 property by no other means than by fraud, robbery, 
 and plunder. However, though the rich in Greece had 
 acquired their wealth by plundering others, and by com- 
 pelling the slaves of Athens, and the helots in Sparta, to 
 produce wealth for them, which gradually effeminated the 
 free citizens, and paved the way for the fall of Greece, 
 still, in looking at the errors, and the political faults of the 
 Grecians, let us not forget some of their virtuous actions. 
 
 B2 
 
34 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 Minos, the lawgiver of Crete, who lived before the 
 Trojan war, decreed the community of property; Lycurgus, 
 the Spartan lawgiver, obtained from the rich citizens a 
 surrender of their property, and made an equal division 
 of the land into 39,000 lots (855 years B. C.), and as- 
 signed to each citizen his portion, which was constituted 
 henceforth inalienable. Luxury was suppressed, and 
 credit abolished. Solon, one of the seven sages of Greece, 
 and the Athenian lawgiver, (600 years B. C.) divided 
 his legislation into two main branches ; the first was, to 
 abolish debt; and the second, to prevent its reorganization. 
 He cancelled the national debt of Athens, lowered the 
 rate of interest, and reduced the standard of the silver 
 coinage ; he then repealed the cruel laws of Draco, and 
 gave the Athenians a new constitution, founded on the 
 principle that the people were the supreme source of all 
 legislative power. Themistocles (582 years B. C.) and 
 the year after the ostracism of Aristides, obtained from 
 the Athenians the revenues of the silver mines of Laurion 
 for the use of the state, and with which he built ships 
 of war, which two years after proved the safety of Greece 
 at the battle of Salamis. 
 
 From Greece, let us follow Mr. M c C.ulloch into Rome, 
 and to the side of the shepherd Faustulus, and the she- 
 wolf respectively the dry and wet nurse of Romulus and 
 Remus, on the banks of the Tiber, and what do we find ? 
 At first, an equal division of property ; but afterwards, 
 a gradual appropriation by the aristocracy of the property 
 of others, and Rome ultimately merged into two classes 
 rich and poor, debtor and creditor. Its armies became 
 the general plunderers of mankind, the ravagers of in- 
 offensive nations, and the appropriators of the fruits reared 
 
OF PROPERTY. 35 
 
 by the labour of other states and kingdoms. The diplo- 
 macy of Rome was to subjugate and oppress ; its principle 
 of civilization was to organize servitude in every country 
 into which its tyrannical and blood-thirsty armies could 
 carry the principle of spoliation. Such were the repro- 
 bate actions of those who placed land-marks under the 
 guardianship of their God Terminus. Had they acted 
 consistently by uniting in harmony their principles with 
 their practice, they would have placed land-marks under 
 the especial care of Mercury. 
 
 It is quite clear from what has now been stated, that 
 it is erroneous to assert that Job placed the removers of 
 land-marks at the head of wicked men ; and it is a proof 
 positive, that the defence of the present social condition of 
 property is desperate and hopeless, when its defenders are 
 driven to the necessity of associating it with the barbarous 
 usages of proprietors, who in ancient Greece and Rome 
 acquired it by slavery and plunder, and where they 
 nursed it by a vigorous monopoly and a despotic legis- 
 lation executed against those who offended the deity 
 Terminus. 
 
 The law of the land made by proprietors for the protec- 
 tion of their property, is the only real foundation of its 
 rights, on which alone the present constitution of property 
 must depend for its strength, as all other subterfuge sup- 
 ports will only translate the weakness of its actual position, 
 and tend to dismember its legions. If the rights of property 
 are not founded on and guaranteed by the laws, then it is 
 no longer property ; because if it be without the pale of 
 the law, it is thereby outlawed, and doomed to become 
 promiscuous possession. Dr. Paley has, therefore, most 
 philosophically stated his opinion, ' That the law of the 
 
36 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 land is the real foundation of the rights of property/ Mr. 
 M c Culloch seems, however, of a different opinion, when 
 he says, 4 That the right of property is based on an older 
 and better foundation than that of the law, namely, that 
 it grows out of the circumstances under which man is 
 placed ;' yet, though he here wished to differ with Dr. 
 Paley, he unknowingly to himself agrees with him, c that 
 the law is the foundation of the right of property, because 
 it is the circumstances under which man is placed which 
 engender and produce the laws/ It was the circumstances 
 in which William, the bastard Norman, and his accom- 
 plices, found themselves after they had robbed the old 
 Saxon proprietors, which laid the foundation of the present 
 evolution of property ; and the circumstances in which 
 the plunderers and the plundered were placed, forced 
 them to adopt the necessity of assembling aty Old Sarum 
 to league themselves together, and to devise means for 
 their common protection against another foreign brigand, 
 that by a Dutch invasion threatened to take the property 
 which they had so recently by force taken from the 
 Saxons. The barons at this council bound themselves 
 by oath to bear scot and lot for the defence of property.* 
 Had the descendants of those barons, and the inheritors 
 of the property represented at the council of Old Sarum, 
 fulfilled the obligations which devolved on them by the 
 tenure of this oath, we should have had no irresponsible 
 proprietors in England, and most certainly the people 
 would have had no imposition laid on them under the 
 name of a national debt. 
 
 The a priori defenders of property are radically wrong 
 when they imagine that they can either canonize property, 
 
 * See Blackstone, vol. ii. p. 49. 
 
OF PROPERTY. 37 
 
 or make its social defence perfect, through any other 
 means than that of the law ; because the practice of 
 society proves that the law is its only guarantee. If the 
 rights of property rest on a more solid basis than that 
 of the law, why always search in the law for pre- 
 cedents to support and defend it ? Why not go directly 
 to that more solid foundation, and on it establish, vindi- 
 cate, and defend its rights. 
 
 The law of the land is the present foundation of the 
 rights of property ; and the reason why property does 
 not repose more quietly and solidly on its basis, but is 
 continually exposed and harassed as if it were in a state 
 of siege, is, that the laws by which it is supported are 
 neither in accordance with primitive usages and natural 
 obligations, nor formed in unison with the interests of 
 the great body of society which they pretend to protect, 
 and purport to govern. If the people found the laws 
 equitable by which property was governed and guaran- 
 teed, property could not have a better basis than the 
 respect entertained for it by the people, by making the 
 surety of every one's property dependent on the indivi- 
 dual assistance rendered by each to protect the interests 
 of all. This was the opinion of Solon, who replied, 
 when asked by what means injustice could be banished 
 a commonwealth ? ' By making all partakers in the 
 injustice done to each/ 
 
 The law is the collection of the confirmed customs and 
 usages of bygone ages, and the experience of the present, 
 modified and rendered applicable to carry out the opinion 
 of society in regard to the best means of social govern- 
 ment. The rights of property in being founded on the 
 law has, therefore, not only its support and guarantee 
 
38 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 as it now is constituted, bat ought at the same time to 
 derive strength from, and to participate in all the good 
 that is to be found in the laws of antiquity. If such 
 were actually the position of property, then its rights 
 could not be placed on a better, a more remote, or on a 
 more solid foundation than on that law which embraced 
 the experience of the past and present ages. 
 
 ' The establishment of property is', says Mr. M c Cul- 
 loch, ' to borrow the statement of one of the ornaments 
 of the English Church, the source from which all the 
 arts of civilization proceed.' If this were true, civiliza- 
 tion, according to Mr. M c Culloch, proceeds from a most 
 disreputable origin ; for, says he, * It would be east/ to 
 produce a thousand instances of individuals who have 
 been enriched by monopolies, as they are sometimes by 
 robber $ and plunder < though it would be not; a little rash 
 thence to conclude without further enquiry that the 
 community may be enriched by such means/ If mono- 
 polies, robbery, and plunder can be instanced by thou- 
 sands, as being productive of riches and property, then 
 they undoubtedly must be among the arts that constitute 
 property, which, when once constituted, this ornament 
 of the church thus describes its effects on civilization : 
 4 From this period he,' that is the proprietor, ; is conti- 
 nually impelled by his desires from the pursuit of one 
 object to another, and his activity is called forth in the 
 prosecution of the several arts which render his situation 
 more easy and agreeable/ In the present bent of pro- 
 perty, these arts which render the proprietor's position 
 more easy and pleasant, are the quintessence of the 
 mental faculties of man, developed on the plan of get- 
 ting as much value for as little as possible in exchange. 
 
OF PROPERTY. 30 
 
 In other words, selling in the dearest, and buying in the 
 cheapest market, regardless of who may be the suffer- 
 provided the proprietor finds such a system easy and 
 agreeable. Mons. Michelet, the professor of Political 
 Economy, in the College of France, disagreed with Mons. 
 Proud hon, for promulgating the maxim, "Lapropriele c'est 
 le vol." We have, however, a more substantial reason for 
 dissenting from the political doctrine taught by this orna- 
 mental divine, whose divinity teaches, c< Thou shalt not 
 covet thy neighbour's house, nor anything that is his, 
 but whose political religion is, that the desires of man 
 in the pursuit of wealth, are to have free and uncon- 
 trolled exercise in the prosecution of the several schemes 
 which may conduce to render his position in society 
 more easv and agreeable, irrespective of the claims of 
 his fellow men, whom he may trample down by the 
 continual impulse of his passion in the pursuit of pro- 
 perty. The practical essence of this political divinity 
 is, to acquire property by becoming a cosmopolite in the 
 objects through means of which it is to be made ; to 
 stimulate the desires by all means in their activity to 
 realize property, without which it will be impossible for 
 individuals to rise superior to their fellow men, to enter 
 the sacred precincts, nor to taste the milk and honey 
 which flow through the region of property. Besides, 
 Mr. M c Culloch assures us, that property is often ac- 
 quired by such unsocial and unchristian! ike means as 
 robbery and plunder; and therefore, cannot be the means 
 of spreading civilization. 
 
 The less the defenders of property, under its present 
 constitution and development, resort to the Christian reli- 
 gion or its ministers for proofs or examples, to establish 
 
40 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 either the divine, or the human rights of property, the 
 greater will be their chance of success. The political 
 economist who endeavours to establish property in its 
 existing form on the Christian religion, will only tarnish 
 that religion, do a serious damage to the recognized 
 rights of property, and instead of giving stability to them, 
 will most certainly weaken his cause. However elo- 
 quent the language, and ingenious the reasoning of a mi- 
 nister of the English Church might be in defence of the 
 existing constitution of property, we should consider him 
 out of his sphere ; and, instead of his being an ornament 
 to it, we should rather say, that a divergent speck had 
 marred its creed. What official or proper right had he to 
 say, that property was the source of civilization, whose 
 Master's command was, that each and all his ministers 
 should devote their life to go and teach the principles of 
 civilization to all nations, and to every class of individuals, 
 instructing them to observe the principles of religion 
 and morality as the means to civilize the world; and 
 who, in prosecuting their mission, as property would 
 be a hindrance, were ordered to free themselves from 
 its ligaments by carrying neither purse nor scrip, and 
 having each one coat who Himself refused to become a 
 territorial proprietor when offered a kingdom, though so 
 poor that he had no habitation or spot that he could call 
 his property; and who, in order to prevent the ornaments 
 of the Christian religion from leaguing themselves with 
 the religion of property, told them emphatically and 
 imperatively, that his " kingdom was not of this world," 
 and therefore could not be conjoined with property for 
 which mankind fought. As a proof of this, he gave his 
 opinion, that property was guaranteed by the sword ; 
 
OF PROPERTY. 4) 
 
 that if his kingdom was established on the principle of 
 property, then his followers would fight in order to de- 
 fend him as its head thereby clearly proving that the 
 law, or the sword, is the best and surest guarantee for 
 property under an imperfect and unequal administration 
 of social justice. 
 
 Those who endeavour to establish an union of principle 
 between property and the Christian religion, with the 
 purpose of strengthening the existing rights of property, 
 are awkwardly labouring to destroy the present rights of 
 property, and to expose both to ridicule, by bringing 
 together two antagonistic principles that are quite contra- 
 dictory, and whose constant tendency must be to annihi- 
 late each other. The generous principle of the one is, 
 that all mankind are brothers, entitled to share equally 
 its benefits. The egotistic principle of the religion of 
 property is exclusion and non-fraternity. They who are in 
 possession of property, are naturally jealous of those who 
 have been excluded, because, if the whole public body 
 were to become proprietors, they would lose the distin- 
 guished position they now occupy, and with that the power 
 of controlling and governing others, and of feeding on the 
 sweat and sinews of their copartners in society. Thus, 
 the principle of property is not to unite mankind as 
 brothers, but to separate them by creating broad distinc- 
 tions, and by establishing different castes and sections of 
 men in what ought to be one undivided society, co-opera- 
 ting to fulfil one mutual patriotic and social design. The 
 whole purport and spirit of the Christian religion, in regard 
 to property, is embodied in the inscription which the na- 
 tion has selected and engraved over the portals of the 
 Royal Exchange, the temple dedicated to property, "The 
 
42 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof." This motto, 
 over our temple of wealth, is the condemnation and con- 
 fiscation of property as it now exists, and the worship- 
 pers of property were infatuated, when they hypocriti- 
 cally wrote it up. Had any of the tribe been half so 
 wise in their generation as the sapient jews were eighteen 
 hundred years ago, they would have protested and ex- 
 claimed, write not, " that the earth is the Lord's, and 
 the fulness thereof;" but write, that the earth belongs 
 to the lords) and the fulness thereof. Both of these 
 aphorisms are literally correct when exhibited from a 
 different point of view. However, we shall accept the 
 inscription on the temple of Mammon as it actually 
 stands, a testimony of the sins of proprietors engraven 
 with an iron pen ; and, as the defender^ of the existing 
 forms of property have nailed their colours to the mast, 
 we perfectly agree with them in vindicating the truth of 
 this sublime inscription, and we call on them for a proof 
 of their faith and sympathy for humanity by sacrificing 
 egotism and submitting to justice, whilst we write this im- 
 mortal truth under their sacred maxim " The earth is 
 the Lord's, and the fulness thereof," and the people are his 
 heirs. If proprietors be not heartily disposed to say amen 
 to the people's version, then they are void of faith, and 
 hypocrites in Christian love and brotherhood, being rooted 
 and grounded in the rituals of the selfish religion of pro- 
 perty, whose condemnation they have written on its temple, 
 and they are like the Athenian philosophers that Paul says 
 had an inscription on their altar, which he understood, but 
 which they ignorantly worshipped. If the earth and its 
 fulness, were by the free donation of nature given equally 
 alike to all men, in order that they might live in brother- 
 
OF PROPERTY. 43 
 
 hood, hovv can the advocates of the present rights of 
 property explain satisfactorily, consistently, and in accord- 
 ance with the principles of the Christian religion, and the 
 impartial distribution and dispensation of providence, 
 the apparent anomaly of cotemporary riches and misery 
 existing in society; that in exact ratio as wealth increases, 
 so in the same proportion does misery inversely progress? 
 
 The defenders of the present organization of property 
 can only justify the enormously great differences which 
 exist in society by setting aside the natural rights of man, 
 and by denying that centripetal tendency towards syn- 
 thetic equality is the regenerative law of nature; because, 
 were they to admit either, or both of these principles, then 
 they must abandon the present constitution of property ; 
 and, if they totally repudiate both, the only course left 
 for them is to become, a priori reasoners, by seizing 
 on, and vindicating the rights of property as they exist 
 without asking any questions as to how those rights 
 were obtained ; what the circumstances and causes were 
 from which they originated, or by what means they have 
 been perpetuated and conveyed to those who never la- 
 boured for them, but who are only the progeny of those 
 who were the first usurpers, and who despoiled society 
 of its rights by appropriating them to their own special 
 use. 
 
 We deny, however, that any contemptible syllogistic 
 defence, made either by the possessors of property, or by 
 the advocates of its rights as now constituted, can bar in 
 the smallest degree the claims of those who have no pro- 
 perty, or prevent the disinherited from appealing against 
 existing wrongs, as recognized and perpetuated by pro- 
 prietors, toman's primitive and common patrimonial right 
 
44 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 to prove their just claim, to share in the benefit of that 
 property which is protected by society. 
 
 There was a natural law of inviolable and inalienable 
 liberty existing by which man was enabled to regulate 
 his conduct and operations, before his social rights and 
 liberties were created and established by society ; and 
 however imperfect that natural law may appear to us to 
 have been, or however erroneous our notions of its im- 
 perfectibility may still be, that law had for its principle 
 centripetal organization or centralization towards equal- 
 ity. Liberty, therefore, based on equality, is the primitive 
 state of mankind, and all deviations from equality are 
 violations of liberty, and inroads on the inherent rights of 
 man. The present law of society, by which we are being 
 forced along, is the centrifugal anomaly of society, namely, 
 a movement which is progressively dispersing society 
 further and further from its innate centre towards an 
 immeasurable and unbounded inequality, so that the 
 farther it is thrown from this centre, capital increases in 
 hypothetical power, and the rights of property become 
 more rarified and sublimated, till at last they are only 
 sustained by a baseless fabric of chaotic fiction and de- 
 lusion. Such is exactly our position in respect to funded 
 property, which was surreptitiously imposed on the 
 people, and only exists through their complacency in 
 paying the interest. As complacency, however, is an 
 abstract idea, which has nothing certain or substantial, 
 and as real credit must of necessity be based on realities, 
 our false system of national credit may suddenly, if care 
 be not taken, vanish from the grasp of its possessors, 
 ' like the baseless fabric of a vision leaving no wrack 
 behind/ but only a nation benefitted by the scales having 
 
OP PROPERTY. 45 
 
 fallen from its eyes, and the fund holders taught a lesson 
 of philosophy, that credit requires a real, and not an 
 imaginary guarantee. The law of nature has for its 
 principle, equilibrium ; and its practice is equality, or 
 relative distribution among its antagonistic powers. It 
 is the strict influence of nature over all its constituent 
 forces, by restraining an over increase of any to the de- 
 triment or destruction of another, which establishes that 
 beautifully systematic development of power, and which 
 causes them to work together in regularly organized har- 
 mony ; thus, by unequal tendencies, establishing equal 
 laws, and securing the return of day and night, summer 
 and winter, seed-time and harvest. 
 
 The law of society, in so far as it is founded on that 
 of nature, ought to have love for its principle ; thus it 
 was taught by Moses, when he copied nature in the desert, 
 and established his merciful system of release. Solon, 
 Lycurgus, and Plato taught the same doctrine ; it was thus 
 that it was ratified by Christianity, and now understood 
 by those who have the good and happiness of mankind 
 sincerely at heart. " Love thy neighbour as thyself," 
 and society would be perfect. " Love thy neighbour as 
 thyself," and the rights of property would endure like the 
 sun, and spread its fertile and benign influence over the 
 whole face of society. Is this principle acted on by the 
 disinheritors of man, and by the appropriators of his na- 
 turally patrimonial possessions ? 
 
 Possessors of property, who made you proprietors ? 
 Who are you ? Where do you spring from ; and, what is 
 your creed and practice ? What is the reason, that 
 when you are summoned before the tribunal of equity 
 and justice to state what your prerogatives are, that you 
 
46 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 invariably reply by faltering and babbling ' I am, I am, 
 a proprietor, and am not responsible to society, because 
 I exist in myself by rigbt of exclusive possession, gua- 
 ranteed by tbe law which gives me the sole rioht of using 
 and of abusing my property, in fact of using it in any way 
 I choose, as every person has a right to do with their 
 own as they please, provided they do not break the laws/' 
 Proprietors ! Is this the illogical prattle which you are 
 necessitated to proffer in your defence, and an answer to 
 the grave questions so often and so justly put to you ? 
 Do you expect to stifle further enquiry by syllogistically 
 and circuitously answering, ' I am a proprietor; and be- 
 cause I am a proprietor, I am, therefore, entitled to an 
 exclusive proprietorship/ It is these, and similar asser- 
 tions made by yourselves, which awaken our curiosity 
 to ascertain fundamentally what you are? who created 
 you irresponsible possessors ? where did you come from ? 
 with what mission, what and where is your destination ? 
 If your rights be founded on exclusive right of pos- 
 session, as you assert, then jou are the negation of so- 
 ciety, and the enemy of social rights ; and by the deve- 
 lopment of your functions, you aspire to confound society 
 and to abrogate the social compact ; in fact, you are 
 truly the fiend of social order, and to society your utinie 
 is death. If, however, your rights are not founded on 
 exclusive possession, but rest on the due performance of 
 reciprocal duties, such as that which the father of a 
 family has to perform towards his children ; then, \\\\ 
 that we wish to know is, whether you faithfully discharge 
 those obligations, in supporting the weak, feeding the 
 hungry, clothing the naked, instructing the ignorant! 
 In short, are you what your name as proprietor would 
 
OF PROPERTY. 47 
 
 lead us to anticipate ? namely, an affectionate husband 
 of your property, and a tender father towards those that 
 were born your inheritors, and brought up as your chil- 
 dren, and which were dedicated to you and placed under 
 your care and protection by society, when the marriage 
 compact was made between you and society ; that con- 
 tract, by which alone you are made secure in your pos- 
 session, and on the faithful keeping of which on your 
 part, and a rigid discharge of all your obligations as pro- 
 prietor, you can alone call on society to fulfil its duties 
 towards you in maintaining and protecting you in your 
 rights ? The proprietors of unconditionally vested, 
 exclusive, and perpetual rights in property, have self- 
 elected themselves vicegerents and chancellors of the 
 earth and its exchequer; and when the original function- 
 aries call in question the titles of these usurpers, they 
 naturally feel uneasy in their possessions, as if conscious 
 of a defect in their tenures, and their whole influence is 
 spontaneously enlisted against the appellants, and the 
 vulgar cry instantly excited, that they are Socialists, 
 Communists, and Revolutionaries, who are agitating 
 society in order to serve their own selfish and Utopian 
 designs ; whereas, the vindicators of man's equal right to 
 possess and to inherit a -fair participation in the fruits 
 spontaneously produced by the earth and by labour, are 
 only philanthropists, who, in order to relieve the present 
 proprietors from the constant and prolonged dispute so 
 fiercely carried on between them and labour, are making 
 search among the records and rights of property, with 
 a view to establish an undisputed title, and thereby bring 
 about a reconciliation between society and property which 
 
48 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 are at present belligerents, and whose respective armies 
 have recently shaken Europe to its very foundation. 
 
 The object of all enquiry is to arrive at truth ; and if 
 it is found, on full investigation, that numberless abuses 
 are perpetrated by proprietors on the rights of labour, 
 certainly it is within the province of the political econo- 
 mist to expose and condemn those encroachments and 
 invasions on the free development of labour, and to 
 endeavour by every constitutional means to have them 
 redressed as soon as possible, and in the most effectual 
 way. 
 
 ' The right of property/ says Mr. M c Culloch, ' gives 
 no advantage to one over another. It deals out justice 
 impartially to all. It does not say, labour and I shall 
 reward you ; but it says, labour and I shall take care 
 that none be permitted to rob you of the produce of your 
 exertions/ 
 
 Labour is the source of all wealth : this fact being 
 established, then those who labour ought naturally to be 
 the possessors of wealth ; however, the practice of soci- 
 ety proves the inversion of the rule, and that under the 
 present constitution, and predominant rights of property, 
 the proprietor has got the law and capital so much in his 
 favour, that the labourer, the producer of wealth, is dis- 
 placed, and the object of his toil subverted, so that he 
 is scarcely able to earn a bare existence for himself and 
 his family. Such being undeniably the fact, it is, there- 
 fore, mockery to say that the labourer shall not be robbed 
 of the produce of his labour, which actually yields no 
 surplus revenue over his consumption that he might be 
 plundered of. If the law of property dealt justly and 
 
OF PROPERTY. 49 
 
 impartially to all, it ought to affix to its rubrics this just 
 encouragement to the labourer and incentive to the pro- 
 duction of weafth : ' Labour, and you shall be amply 
 rewarded ; nay, I promise you, that if you will but 
 exert yourself in producing, I will take special care that 
 you shall be guaranteed a fair and equitable share in the 
 produce of your exertions.' 
 
 By the constituted rights of property, the labourer does 
 not labour for himself; in a majority of circumstances, 
 he is only used as a machine to produce wealth for others, 
 as the allotted share of his productions is simply as much 
 as will enable him to accomplish his task most advanta- 
 geously for the benefit of those who profit by his labour. 
 Every machine, besides its original cost, requires an 
 amount of expenditure to keep it in working order ; thus, 
 the labourer must be kept in efficiently working condition, 
 so as to produce the most profitable amount of work. 
 When he is able to labour, he is sustained in motion for 
 tbe advantage of the wealthy, who do not at all take into 
 consideration, in paying him his wages, that they have al- 
 lowed him nothing on his original cost, which they did 
 not pay, as they were obliged to do when they purchased 
 their machines, and which they must repair and renew 
 at their own expense; neither do they count on allowing 
 him a recompense over and above what is necessary for 
 his actual consumption, so that he may provide a fund to 
 support himself in his old age. Such being the case, the 
 labourer when exhausted and unfit to perform any longer 
 the work assigned to him, is sent to the hospital to be re- 
 paired, or to the workhouse to break up by the course of 
 nature at the public expense, thereby rendering the last 
 asylum of the labourer one of the authors of his misery, 
 
50 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 in the victims who are being driven on towards the same 
 altar, being obliged ultimately, (as labour only is produc- 
 tive) to bear the expense of keeping up workhouses, and 
 all other charitable institutions. 
 
 This baneful system is in full practice under the 
 shield of society, and has not escaped the notice of many 
 of the ablest writers on political economy, especially of 
 Sismondi, who, when investigating the justice of the ex- 
 pulsion-system carried on by proprietors against the pea- 
 santry, says, "As the territory of a nation is circumscribed 
 by its neighbours, the quantity of ground which it can 
 put under cultivation is always the same ; thus, every 
 saving which is effected on the quantity of agricultural 
 labour necessarily displaces a relatively proportionate 
 number of labourers; they migrate from the country into 
 towns when there is room for them ; tmt if the towns are 
 unable to furnish them with work, it becomes necessary 
 that the nation which has declared their existence useless 
 should expel them far from her bosom. England, of all 
 the countries in the world, is that where the saving of agri- 
 cultural labour has been carried to the greatest extreme. 
 Its whole arable land is not only put under cultivation, but 
 it is enriched by every improvement in scientific manure, 
 and it produces considerable returns. The whole of this 
 work is accomplished by about one- fourth of the English 
 nation, whilst the cultivation of the soil forms three- 
 fourths or four-fifths of the labour of the other nations 
 of Europe. In England, there is calculated to be 
 34,250,000 acres of land under cultivation, and 1 ,055,982 
 day-labourers employed on land, which shews a little 
 more than three labourers per hundred acres, or 21 dny 
 labourers per square mile. In Tuscany, the cultivation 
 
OP PROPERTY. 51 
 
 of a thousand acres occupies from 300 to 700' individual?. 
 How is it that no one has ever asked what hecomes of 
 oil those cultivators that England has driven from its 
 fields? Whilst the school crematisqve of capitaliza- 
 tion would economize men, in order to increase riches, 
 we do not in the least hesitate to say, that it is prefer- 
 able to sacrifice riches in order to have men. If they di- 
 minish the numher of happy, intellectual, and moral in- 
 dividuals, which are produced on a given space, it is an 
 evil ; and it is in this point of view that we have always 
 opposed this system of industry, which has reduced 
 the life of man to a discount ; and therefore, we cannot 
 allow this occasion to pass without demonstrating once 
 more that the system is false, even in admitting the bar- 
 barous supposition that we ought only to calculate the 
 profit or the loss of nations, not the lives and happiness of 
 their inhabitants. Our opponents will agree with us, that 
 production cannot be continued if consumption does not 
 closely follow as a counterpoise to it that riches cease 
 to be riches when the markets are overstocked with pro- 
 ducts that the consumers are not less necessary to pro- 
 duction than the producers themselves. However, every 
 effort that those evictors make, tends either to limit the 
 number or the power of the consumers. Whether they 
 drive them from their homes, or reduce them to a state 
 of slavery ; or whether they are compelled to content 
 themselves with the smallest possible portion of enjoy- 
 ment and sustenance on which it is possible for man to 
 exist, we arrive always at the same result either in di- 
 minishing or stopping the consumption, the equilibrium 
 upon which the social organization is founded is deranged, 
 a drag is put upon one of the wheels of the social car, 
 
52 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 which is no sooner stopped than the whole social mecha- 
 nism is stopped at the same moment. 
 
 Some of our readers will, perhaps, be unwilling to 
 believe that ever any one proposed, as an expedient for 
 the amelioration of agricultural distress, to dispense with 
 the peasantry that made the land valuable, by obliging 
 them to migrate to other countries. However, this 
 operation is effected in various ways, and in different 
 localities, in Great Britain and Ireland. Goldsmith's 
 affecting poem of the " Deserted Village," has for a long 
 time faithfully painted the scene to the imagination. At 
 the present time, the newspapers are often filled with the 
 particulars of the half-military proceedings, designated, 
 " The Clearing of an Estate!' 
 
 The expulsion of the Scotch Highlanders from their 
 ancient homes is considered legal; but will any one dare 
 to say that it is just ? Is there not a striking resemblance, 
 as well as a strange contrast, between the Slave Trade and 
 the expulsion of the Whites ? and ought not the crime of 
 those who export the unhappy Africans to South America, 
 there to till foreign soils, be compared to that of those 
 men who transport far from the coasts of Europe the 
 unhappy Scotch that ancient nation of Celts, or Gauls, 
 which was mistress not only of the British Isles, but 
 also of Gaul, and a part of Spain and Italy whom they 
 will not allow to till their own soil. Shall it be ex- 
 pelled in the name of the law, even from those bilk 
 where it never was conquered; from those mountains 
 where it maintained that independence which every other 
 nation besides had lost? The offspring of the most ancient 
 masters of Europe, ought they to be banished to foreign 
 soils? It is by a cruel abuse of legal forms; it is by un- 
 
OF PROPERTY. 53 
 
 precedented usurpation, that the Scotch Tacksmen are 
 considered as having no right to the ground they have 
 occupied for centuries, and that their leaders are autho- 
 rized to violate the contract which had united the culti- 
 vator with his lord for so many generations. 
 
 The English legislators have constantly assimilated all 
 political rights to property ; and on that ground they have 
 taken up its defence. They have wished to recognize a 
 political property in aristocracy, as they have pretended 
 to discern one in the exclusive right of certain citizens 
 to elect members of parliament, or municipal magistrates. 
 They have also pretended to see a property in the right 
 of the church to its dignities and revenues, forgetting 
 that when public offices are instituted for the advantage 
 of the people, it is to the people that the funds belong 
 out of which they are paid. The English legislators 
 would scarcely admit that society as it advances has the 
 right to abolish useless and expensive offices ; at least, 
 they wish that in doing away with appointments, the 
 emoluments attached to them may be retained. 
 
 It must not be forgotten that, in fact, the Highlands 
 of Scotland, the Gaelic Mountains, have never borne the 
 yoke of foreign invasion ; that the feudal system has never 
 become the law of the country, though the national customs 
 which were there observed from time immemorial may 
 have been assimilated to those observed in neighbouring 
 countries. The word klaan, means, in Gaelic, children ; 
 all their customs and reciprocal intercourse, their whole 
 affections, are founded on the tradition that leads them to 
 believe that they are the children of the same family : in 
 reality, all their rights were those of children of the same 
 dither, entitled to one common patrimony. They were 
 
54 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 not subjected to an^y other subordination than that which 
 their common defence rendered necessary. The instability 
 of the division of the land did not weaken the right of 
 property of the seignorial family ; it was to it that ap- 
 pertained the district where it was established. Such was 
 the public right of the Celts, as likewise of the Germans ; 
 and among the latter, who were organized much more 
 for war than for agriculture, for fear lest families should 
 attach themselves too much to the ground which they 
 tilled, they were obliged frequently, or even annually to 
 change lots. In Scotland, all had a right to all ; but the 
 ground of each might pass to his neighbour, whether it 
 were assigned by lot, or whether he extended or dimi- 
 nished his glebe, in proportion to the power of his family 
 to cultivate it ; or whether some portions of it were as- 
 signed as a recompense for public services. There is not, 
 however, any country in Europe where so recent traces 
 are to be found of the temporary and variable division 
 of the common domain. In Scotland, the desire was, 
 that the division and subdivision of land might shew and 
 maintain the subordination between the soldiers and their 
 chief. The leader of each clan exercised, perhaps he even 
 usurped, from the people the right of individually making 
 these distributions; he gave and retook the different tacks of 
 his land to his officers, according as they displayed greater 
 or less prowess for war. The favoured individuals were 
 different ; but the obligation of service was always equal. 
 The tenure of land was always the same. Their contri- 
 bution for the public defence ; their rent to the chief wha 
 led them to the combat, and who maintained domestic 
 order, was never augmented. 
 
 When civilization began to progress, the landlords also 
 
OP PROPERTY. 55 
 
 commenced with the language to adopt the usages and 
 manners of the English. They understood no longer, or 
 they did not care any longer to understand, the national 
 Celtic contract ; and, in order to impress it with the form 
 used by civilized nations, they remodelled it by writing, at 
 the same time they gave to their vassals their tacks or por- 
 tions of land for a determinate time. They thus appeared 
 to concede a great privilege to them ; for previously, they 
 could turn them out at pleasure. This was, however, 
 the contrary, being an usurpation upon the people; since 
 aforetime, in turning them out, they were always obliged 
 to replace them by others on absolutely the same condi- 
 tions. Whereas, from the time they commenced to let 
 the ground to farm, they insinuated into the contract that 
 at each renewal of the lease they could make new con- 
 ditions, or increase the rents of their tenants. By this 
 rigorous usurpation, the Gaelic landlords, who actually 
 had only a right to an invariable rent on the property of 
 their clan, changed it for the illimited property in the do- 
 main, for the occupation of which this rent had been paid. 
 Nevertheless, they were far from foreseeing, or their 
 vassals were far from fearing, that one day or the other, 
 at the epoch of the renewal of their leases, they would 
 take advantage of it, not to increase the rent of the la- 
 bourers, but to evict them. The Scotch farmer has never 
 been conquered ; he does not hold his land by the liberty 
 of his lord ; but originally, he was co-proprietor with 
 his captain, or much more so, with his clan. Notwith- 
 standing, this captain which he accompanied in war, and 
 which he obeyed for their common advantage, looked on 
 him, at first as his friend and relation, then as his soldier, 
 afterwards as his vassal, still latter as his tenant, and in 
 
56 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 the end as a paid labourer, -which he chose to suffer 
 for his own advantage, to remain on the soil of the com- 
 
 O ' 
 
 mon country ; but that as soon as he had no more in- 
 terest to retain him, being his master, he might drive 
 him away. Before landlords could have arrived at 
 such a barbarous resolution, they must absolutely have 
 ceased to entertain the opinions and the sentiments, and 
 to be influenced by the inflexible honour of their pro- 
 genitors ; they must not only have ceased to consider 
 themselves their fathers and their brothers, but even 
 Scotchmen ; it must have been a base desire that had 
 extinguished in them that sentiment of consanguinity 
 upon which their common ancestors reckoned, when they 
 had confided to their good faith the destiny of their people. 
 Whenever a similar change takes place in the opinions, 
 the interests, and the respective positions of the divers 
 members of society, the legislature ought to interfere, in 
 order that the entire nation might not be delivered up ta 
 the mercy of a small number of covetous and impru- 
 dent men. To solicit the pity of the landlords, is not our 
 object ; but to establish the rights of the Gaelic people, 
 that in time to come the landlords should not conclude, 
 according to the principles of the centralization school, 
 (lecole chrematistique) that there may be too many men 
 in human society ; that there could be economy, progress > 
 and prosperity in diminishing the inhabitants of their 
 country. If the Marquis of Stafford has had the right to- 
 replace the people of a whole province by twenty-nine 
 strange families, and some hundreds of thousands of 
 sheep, it is necessary to hasten to abolish a right so odious 
 for it and for all others. 
 
 To have allowed the accumulation of landed property 
 
OF PROPERTY". 57 
 
 in so few a number of hands is of itself a great evil for 
 a state. When one man only possesses the territory 
 which ought to suffice for several hundreds of families, 
 his luxury replaces their easy circumstances, and the in- 
 comes, which would have nourished their virtues, are dis- 
 sipated by his follies. But what will become of the state, 
 if the proprietor of a county imagines that his interest is 
 in opposition to that of its inhabitants, and that it is for 
 his advantage to replace men by sheep or oxen ? It is 
 not with this intent that territorial property has been es- 
 tablished, or that it is guaranteed by the laws. The people 
 accepted it, under the persuasion that it would be useful 
 to those who had nothing, as well as to those who had 
 something ; but society is shaken, when the rights of 
 property are put in opposition to national rights. A duke 
 has no more right to drive away from their own fire- 
 sides the inhabitants of a county, than a king to expel 
 from his country the inhabitants of his kingdom. The 
 most despotic of monarchs, were he to make the attempt 
 at the present day, would very soon learn the cost of 
 having overstepped the boundary of his authority. Let 
 the great lords of England take care ; the fewer they are, 
 the greater will be their danger in putting themselves in 
 opposition to the nation, and in preferring themselves 
 to it. Let them not say, when it is a question of their 
 interest, as the agent of the Marquis of Stafford said, 
 " Wherefore (in this case of expulsion) should a diffe- 
 rent rule be adopted to that which has been followed in 
 every other? Wherefore ought the absolute authority of 
 proprietors over their property to be abandoned and sacri- 
 ficed for the public interest, and for objects \\hich only 
 concern the public ?" If tliey should arrive at this 
 
 D2 
 
58 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 day, to believe that they have no use for the people, the 
 people in turn may believe that they have no use for them. 
 If they estimate, that three-hundred-and-forty thousand 
 brave Highlanders of the Gaelic race could with profit to 
 them be replaced by four millions of sheep, these High- 
 landers might, with yet greater facility, find useful substi- 
 tutes for thirty or forty, perhaps for three hundred lords, 
 who have ceased to be their compatriots." 
 
 The system of ' clearing estates/ by spoliating the ori- 
 ginal possessors of all right whatever in their native soil, 
 and turning them out on the world by an armed force, 
 
 O J 
 
 whether by soldiers with horse-hair caps, or by lawyers 
 with grey mare's-tail wigs under the semblance of justice, 
 is the most demoniacal and unjust that was ever practised 
 by man, and is a perversion of the rights of humanity; be- 
 cause there is a natural connection which exists, or which 
 ought to exist, between the landlord and tenant ; that is, 
 between the employer of labour, and the labourer who 
 tills the soil. That this natural bond of union has been 
 broken, there can be no doubt, as through its dissolution 
 evident marks of social desolation and wide-spread misery 
 manifestly present themselves in England; but more espe- 
 cially at the present time in Ireland, where the natural 
 connection between the landlord and tenant is all but 
 destroyed, and the remuneration of -labour is at par 
 with misery. Therefore, until such time as the tenant far- 
 mer and the labourer have their lost rights restored, the 
 breach that has been opened, and which has led to so much 
 insecurity both of life and property, will never be closed, 
 unless either of the contending forces were to annihilate 
 the other ; which, being a natural impossibility, the strug- 
 gle must be an interminable one, except an adjustment of 
 
OF PROPEKTY. 59 
 
 the differences can be effected through the instrumentality 
 of government, whose duty it is to facilitate, and forward 
 by every possible means, the restoration of justice to la- 
 bour, and of social protection to life and property. The 
 paramount duty, therefore, of those who govern Ireland, is, 
 to restore that natural connection of interests which ought 
 to exist between the labourer and the employer of labour ; 
 to prevent the fruitless employment of labour on those 
 lands and works which do not yield a remunerative re- 
 turn for the labour spent on them ; and to direct labour 
 into useful channels, especially that of the cultivation of 
 the soil, which was the original employment of man, 
 and his general occupation at the time when the basis 
 of society were laid, when he had only a very limited 
 capital, and was therefore obliged to cultivate the ground, 
 as being the cheapest and most profitable raw material 
 that he could get to work upon. If, then, a regeneration 
 of social peace and order can be effected in Ireland, it 
 must not be attempted through any new-fangled schemes 
 of propagating the happiness of the labourer, but by fol- 
 lowing as closely as possible the old example of society, 
 when, on account of its original poverty, it studied agri- 
 culture as its only progressive alternative, when as yet 
 the terms, middle-men, clearing an estate, evictions, 
 emigration, and poor laws, &c., were wanting in its 
 vocabulary. However black the records of parliament 
 may be, with foul and unjust acts towards the people 
 of Ireland, a period has at length dawned, when we 
 can trace in the legislature the lineaments of a better, 
 
 o 
 
 wiser, and more just line of policy towards Ireland. 
 Whether it were the irresistible force of circumstances, 
 which urged on the government to adopt a different 
 
60 THE BIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 line of policy to that hitherto pursued ; or the con- 
 viction and recognition of the principle, that the land 
 is for the benefit of the people, and ought to maintain 
 them ; that if the landlord cannot produce sufficient to 
 sustain the population, he is bound to relinquish his 
 right to labour, and to allow the labourers to produce for 
 themselves that he can have no absolutely justifiable 
 right to the soil whilst the labourers are starving and large 
 tracts of land lying waste which might be cultivated, 
 or, if not altogether uncultivated, yet tilled in a com- 
 paratively unproductive manner to what it might be if 
 labour were properly applied on it ; from whichever 
 cause the motive sprung which induced government to- 
 change its diplomacy towards Ireland, it is evident from 
 recent legislation, that the principle is now recognized, 
 that the proprietors are responsible to the people through 
 means of the legislature. 
 
 It will readily be admitted, that the labourers of England 
 excel every other nation in the world in their constant, 
 unceasing, and laborious attention to their clitFerentoccu- 
 
 o~ 
 
 pations; yet, scarcely a speech emanates from the Throne 
 in which allusion is not made to some existing distress 
 among the labourers in the manufacturing or in the agri- 
 cultujal districts. In the Speech with which Her Majesty 
 Victoria opened the Session of Parliament for 1850, she 
 says, " It is with regret that her Majesty has observed the 
 complaints which in many parts of the kingdom have pro- 
 ceeded from the occupiers of land." It is seldom, or ever, 
 that regret touches the feelings of monarchs ; and if we 
 may judge, from the construction of this paragraph in the 
 royal speech, we should imagine that grief did not press 
 heavily on the Queen's heart ; for, if it be true, that " out 
 
OP PKOPEUTY. 61 
 
 of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh," why 
 should not the sense of her Majesty's words be clearer? 
 As they appear to have been uttered, they may mean, 
 either that her Majesty regrets that complaints have pro- 
 ceeded from the occupiers of land, when, at the same time 
 she had observed that there was no just cause for their 
 being made; or, they may mean, what we suppose they 
 were intended to convey, namely, that it was with regret 
 that her Majesty had observed the just complaints which 
 were made by the occupiers of land. This, no doubt, is 
 the import of what was intended to be conveyed to the 
 minds of the agricultural classes. Notwithstanding, the 
 very next sentence, in the Speech from the throne, proves, 
 that the regret which her Majesty felt was only of the pro- 
 fundity of her lips a sorrow, through which the beams 
 of delight were shining, resembling a royal speech dis- 
 solving view : for, changing the scene from the grumbling 
 landlords and farmers, to that of the great body of the 
 people who live upon the produce of the land, she says, 
 " But it is a source of sincere gratification to her Ma- 
 jesty to witness the increased enjoyment of the neces- 
 saries and comforts of life which cheapness and plenty 
 have bestowed upon the great body of the people." By 
 the modern school of diplomatists, who seem to consider 
 vacillation and deception in politics as an essential virtue, 
 this paragraph in the royal speech might be regarded 
 as a perfect model of a two-faced political commise- 
 ration proceeding from the Throne, which being the 
 fountain of social government, the stream proceeding 
 therefrom cannot be expected to be pure. Her Ma- 
 jesty, however, must have been misinformed when she 
 was led to believe that increased comforts were rea- 
 
62 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 lized by the labouring population, and that cheapness 
 and plenty were the cause. Her Majesty's Ministers 
 ought to have known that cheapness is correlative to low 
 wages and want of employment, consequently, want of 
 means to buy the cheap commodities, which ought to be 
 given for nothing, if they were reduced to a par with the 
 means of the labourer who is out of work. Plenty is 
 the precursor of cheapness, which ultimately leads to low 
 wages. This being the inevitable law of supply and de- 
 mand, which regulates the wages of the producer, and 
 the value of the commodities brought into the market 
 for consumption, which are constantly fluctuating as to 
 quantity and value, yet still kept in the equilibrium be- 
 tween their electric poles, supply and demand ; which 
 constantly keep them gravitating, like the squirrel in its 
 cage, towards the centre of value ; \where both forces 
 meet upon the pivot of price, and each having deposited 
 its weight in the scale of exchange, a bargain is con- 
 cluded upon the principle that equal justice has been done 
 both to the buyer and to the seller ; therefore, if either 
 party exact more value from the individual with whom 
 he exchanges than what he delivers, he has commer- 
 cially duped him, and committed a fraud against society. 
 To this law of supply and demand, there is only one 
 exception, and that is, of those who do neither labour nor 
 produce commodities, but who contrive to live on the 
 labour and products of others : in their case, the prin- 
 ciple of the law of supply and demand is to act inversely. 
 Plenty with them being equivalent to dearth with the 
 producer, or, in other words, his being obliged to give a 
 great deal of his labour for very little enjoyment. Cheap- 
 ness with the non-producers being synonymous to high 
 
OF PROPERTY. 63 
 
 wages and abundance in the hands of the industrious 
 classes. We have plenty of national debt ; and were 
 government to take up its ledger, and debit the nation 
 twice the present amount, it would have increased the 
 superfluity of the fundholders, and added twofold to 
 their means of enjoyment, at the same time that it would 
 have thrown upon the market double the present amount 
 of funded capital, and extended the limit of the specu- 
 lators and gamblers on the exchange; but, by thus dupli- 
 cating the public funds, artificially producing plenty for 
 those it chose to favour, and increasing the facility of 
 gambling for those who look for their fortunes, not from 
 commerce or trade, but from a throw of the dice at the 
 national gambling shop, would thereby be increased the 
 means of enjoyment for the great body of the people ? 
 Would not rather, in so far as was increased the power 
 of the fundholders to purchase enjoyments, that of 
 the people be diminished, they having to pay the new 
 stakes or dividends out of their hard earnings to those 
 newly created non-producers, who could have nothing to 
 give in exchange which was subjected like commodities 
 to the social law of supply and demand? Cheapness in 
 the fundholders' vocabulary, means, reduction of interest. 
 And when the Queen would endeavour to fascinate the 
 labourers, by recounting the wonderful effects of cheapness 
 on the condition of the people, we would ask them, 
 Are her Ministers consistently carrying out this doctrine 
 of universal cheapness? Do they give us cheap govern- 
 ment? Have they reduced the interest on the national 
 debt commensurately with the general fall in the price of 
 commodities? Fundholders! you who have been given 
 to understand that the national faith was to be kept with 
 
64 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 you, are you prepared, without vociferating, C 0h, perfidy! 
 Oh, robbery!' to placidly submit to have your property 
 and enjoyments diminished, or perfidiously sacrificed, on 
 the altar of cheapness ; in order, that through a breach of 
 contract, and at your expense, others may live cheaply ? 
 Let it not be misunderstood, that, in regard to the non- 
 producers of commodities, and those who live on the 
 interest of stocks, the social law of supply and demand 
 acts inversely ; and may therefore be denominated the 
 inverse or unsocial law of supply and demand, as its 
 principle is antagonistic to production, and its results 
 are, to devour society through vested rights and monopo- 
 lies supported by class legislation. Oh property ! what 
 foul deeds are done in thy name, and what a multitude 
 of contradictions and antagonistic principles have to be 
 judiciously solved, before you can enter the social haven 
 of repose, and be henceforth looked upon in your virgin 
 purity, as the true reward of labour and the friend of 
 humanity ! 
 
 It is seldom that Monarchs meditate upon the causes 
 of distress which from time to time afflict certain classes 
 of their subjects ; and when they have time for reflection, 
 their minds are so often previously impregnated by poli- 
 tical sycophants who, were it possible, would seduce 
 even truth itself, that it is still more rarely that they 
 can discover the full extent of the privation and suffering 
 endured by the people, so as to enlist their sympathies, 
 and make them so really pungent that they are thereby 
 led to examine thoroughly into the extent of the evil. 
 They are surrounded by the rich and affluent who live 
 at ease, too far removed from the most distant chance 
 of ever falling into want themselves to have any fellow- 
 
OP PROPEilTY. 65 
 
 eling or pity for those who are crushed by the force 
 of suffering and distress; therefore, when any infor- 
 mation reaches the Throne that distress and suffering are 
 felt by the industrious population, they, who ought to be 
 the vehicle of communication between the Sovereign 
 and the people, are generally not the parties to afford it ; 
 rather, they frequently use every means in their power 
 to make it appear for a time that no real cause of com- 
 plaint exists, till the sound of distress becomes so loud 
 that it is usually wafted to the Throne by the impetuous 
 voice of a suffering people, whose enjoyments, notwith- 
 standing that the intensity of their labour has been gene- 
 rally increased, have been commensurately diminished ; 
 and who, the harder they toil, the deeper and deeper they 
 sink into poverty and wretchedness, and are daily becom- 
 ing more and more the slaves of capital and the subjects 
 of those who are their copartners in society. Vested 
 rights and capital having taken all from the labourers, 
 proprietors are criminally culpable in insulting them 
 by quoting the opinion so plausibly put forward by Mr. 
 M c Culloch : " I, (that is, property) shall take care that 
 none be permitted to rob you of the fruits of your exer- 
 tions." Quelle deraison! helas depuis longtemps pro- 
 priete vos bons services et votre charite envers les ouv- 
 riers ont fait fausse route. 
 
 Long previously to Dr. Adam Smith so admirably illus- 
 trating the beneficial results to be obtained by society from 
 a division of labour, the industrious classes were practically 
 divided into separate vocations, in order to carry out for the 
 benefit of one and all what they had discovered through long 
 experience was for their mutual good ; namely, that judi- 
 cious practical division of their labour which was necessary 
 
G6 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 to carry forward and promote the interests of the social 
 body. However, in opposition to the old school that 
 advocated the division of labour, a new one has arisen, 
 adopting the principle of dispensing with manual la- 
 bour as much as possible through means of machinery, 
 which is the antagonist of the division of lahour ; being, 
 in reality, the very concentration or reunion of labour, by 
 making one machine serve the same purpose and accom- 
 plish the various operations which used formerly to be 
 done by the manual labour of five, ten, or twenty men. 
 But some parties will certainly say, * there can he nothing 
 wrong in this, when we have such authorit} 7 as Mr. M c 
 Culloch inculcating the principle, that there is no differ- 
 ence between manual labour and that done by machinery ; 
 that the improvement of the science, skill, and industry 
 of the labourer is synonymous witt that of a piece of 
 iron or machinery.' In speaking scientifically, that there 
 can be no economical difference between a man and a 
 spinning jenny, arretons-nous. Let the apostle of unli- 
 mited machinery speak for himself. 
 
 "Various bad consequences," says Mr. M c Cuiloch, 
 " have been supposed to result from the continued exten- 
 sion and improvements of machinery. But a presumption 
 arises at the outset that they must be in a great degree 
 fallacious, inasmuch as they would equally follow from 
 the continued improvement of the skill and industry of 
 the labourer. If the construction of a machine, that 
 would manufacture two pairs of stockings for the same 
 expense that was previously required to manufacture one 
 pair, be in any respect injurious, the injury would obvi- 
 ously be equal were the same thing accomplished by 
 increased dexterity and skill on the part of the knitters : 
 
OF PROPERTY. 67 
 
 were the females, for example, who were in the habit of 
 knitting two or three pairs in the week, able in future to 
 knit four or six pairs. There is really no difference in 
 the cases. And Sismondi could not consistently, with the 
 principles he has advanced, hesitate about condemning 
 such an improvement as a very great evil, as a means of 
 throwing half the people engaged in the stocking manu- 
 facture out of employment. The question respecting 
 the improvement of machinery, is therefore, at bottom, the 
 same with the question respecting the improvement of the 
 science, skill, and industry of the labourer. The princi- 
 ples which regulate our decision in the one case, must 
 also regulate it in the other." 
 
 To refute the principle laid down by Sismondi, that 
 machinery in its too extended, or unlimited develop- 
 ment, is injurious to society, Mr. M c Culloch, in his 
 usually safe way, commences the combat in presumption 
 and doubt, placing himself without the pale of reason ; 
 so that, should he be foiled in proving his premises, he 
 may have a safe retreat by agreeing with those who hold 
 different opinions to those of his advocacy. He does 
 not positively say that the views entertained by those 
 who differ from him are totally fallacious ; but admits 
 that there may be some degree of truth in them, by 
 saying, that they must be in a great degree fallacious. Mr. 
 M c Culloch seems to have forgotten that he was investi- 
 gating a subject into which the relative powers of two 
 antagonistic principles enter, that must be harmoniously 
 blended, if happiness to mankind be the desideratum ; 
 he, however, presumes, that, in discussing the principles, 
 and shewing the effects of the development of the one, 
 the other is naturally demonstrated and explicitly dis- 
 
68 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 posed of; consequently, he endeavours to explain the 
 happy effects on society of production, whilst he forgets 
 that, that only comprises half the happiness of society ; 
 he does not at all take into consideration the happy 
 results that society would experience, were it beneficially 
 able to consume, and economically to use, all that could 
 be produced. Reason forbids us to agree with his pro- 
 position, that to increase production through means of 
 machinery, is synonymous to that of increasing it by means 
 of a division of manual labour ; because, it is obvious, that 
 the labourer by increasing his production is thereby ena- 
 bled to make additional purchases from other tradesmen, 
 who may require his extra productions: but a machine, 
 through its having been made more perfect, and thereby 
 capable of producing more commodities than it previously 
 was adapted for ; or, if a newly invented machine, by its 
 superior mechanism, may for a time, till it is superseded, 
 confer a benefit on the inventor, and give an increased 
 vivacity to that particular section of commerce, to which 
 it had been made more applicable ; notwithstanding that 
 science has made a visible stride, and productions have 
 been multiplied, yet the machine, which has caused this 
 superfluity, does not require to buy for its consumption, 
 the production of tradesmen in other branches of com- 
 merce, the same as the labourer would have required had 
 he executed the labour done by the machine. Therefore, 
 tLe object of machinery is to increase production, heed- 
 less of the economical law of consumption, to which the 
 elemental law of nature has eternally decreed it to be an 
 alien ; so that it is a natural impossibility for machinery 
 ever to take part in consumption, as the labourers do, 
 whose very object in producing is to enable them to 
 
OP PROPERTY, 69 
 
 exchange mutually their various products. It cannot, 
 therefore, reasonably be contended, that there is really 
 no difference between the labourer and a machine pro- 
 ducing commodities ; because, it is consumption which 
 determines the natural value of all commodities : and of 
 the two determinators of value, supply and demand, 
 which adjudicate upon the relative proportions of the 
 value in use, and value in exchange, contained in every 
 commodity brought into the market, that of demand is 
 the chief, and is the main spring of every commercial 
 transaction : as it is the desire to possess things of utility 
 which causes value in exchange to be, as it were, reflected 
 from useful commodities, in exact form to the intenseness 
 of the demand, which is sometimes artificially fostered ; 
 so that society becomes feverish, fearing that an adequate 
 supply of the desired commodity will not be procured : 
 this leads to a competition among the producers, who 
 often rush furiously into the market like a fire insurance 
 brigade driving towards a fire, more with the impulse of 
 reaching it first, or in time to be placed, in commercial 
 phraseology, to catch the market, in order to gain their 
 fire money, than with a design of benefiting society by a 
 steady and speedy supply of the needful commodity. 
 
 As consumption is the chief element in constituting 
 value, it is to be lamented, that those old machines which 
 have been rendered almost useless by the invention of 
 new, and those which the improved mechanism of other* 
 have partly driven out of use, cannot buy the superabun- 
 dant productions of their new competitors ; yet it is still 
 more deeply to be deplored, that all those superior ma- 
 chines in different trades, which are the first in their vari- 
 ous orders and in relative position to maintain a fair ba- 
 
70 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 lance of exchange among themselves, cannot buy from 
 each other and exchange their various products. Besides, 
 when any of these machines, at a time, produces more 
 than the market required, what an economical pity it is, 
 that its competitors and associates cannot buy up and con- 
 sume the over production, and thus create the antidote ; 
 namely, the perpetual facility of being able to produce 
 an adequately increased consumption ! For, as the 
 division of labour is the source of that stream, which, 
 like the waters of the Nile, spreads itself over social 
 institutions, and fertilizes production; so the increased 
 division of the resources of consumption, by means of 
 reciprocal exchange, is the only adequate absorbent for 
 relieving the social system, when in a state of plethora, 
 through the division of labour, with an exuberant produc- 
 tion. Therefore, to increase the power of consumption, 
 is to evoke the industry of the producer In other words, 
 to extend the means, and augment the various ways of 
 consumption, are the most effectual means of develop- 
 ing the energies of an industrious and enterprising 
 nation. 
 
 Could the Utopia be reached, of making machinery 
 equally beneficial to society, by its power of consuming 
 being rendered co-equal to that of man, then we should 
 have a spinning-jenny walking in of a morning to a silk 
 mercer's shop, and after being bowed to, and a chair set 
 for it by a steam engine, requesting to be served with a 
 silk dress, or perhaps, if it were a protectionist, to a 
 cotton one of its own filature. Machinists ! you who 
 support the theory, that there can be essentivlly no differ- 
 ence between mechanical and manual production, the 
 realization of this hypothetical irony (on our part) would 
 
OF PROPERTY. 71 
 
 assuredly be to you the completion of social happiness, 
 as then all our commerce and exchange could be effected 
 by metal machines, and man could then repose under 
 the vine and fig-tree : and the condition imposed upon 
 him in Eden, of perpetuating his existence by sweat 
 furrowing his brow, would, to all intents and purposes, 
 be abrogated; and he, the noblest mechanism in nature, 
 would be rendered nominally superfluous for labour and 
 production. Oh ! deprivation of man, and exaltation of 
 machinery! We ought rather in ec>tacy to exclaim, ' Oh ! 
 exaltation of man to his primitive state before the con- 
 dition of labour was imposed upon him for committing 
 evil, when he was partly idle through being gratui- 
 tously supplied by nature, and was not therefore com- 
 pelled, as at present, to labour for his livelihood. Hence- 
 forth the millennium of labour is begun, in which, the la- 
 bourer will not be dependent upon manual exertion for his 
 daily bread ! Corn will be sown and reaped ; bread will 
 be baked and buttered for him, by machinery ! Tailors' 
 bills will no longer be the annoyance of the dandy, who 
 will be regularly furnished with elegant suits a la mode 
 sans V argent et sans prix ! Society may then fold its 
 hands in sloth ; it will not have the trouble even of con- 
 sideration ; it will only have to wish, and all its desires 
 will be amply gratified by machinery !' 
 
 In this state of contemplative plenty and happiness, 
 secured to man by machinery, the professor of Nantes, 
 le bon fear Mons. Cabet, the father of Icarie, and founder 
 of Icara, might confess himself surpassed. Because, in 
 his Icarie, all the Icarians were educated ; so that, each 
 was equally well disposed to cheerfully execute his por- 
 tion of work for the commo:i good : whereas, in Mr. 
 
72 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 M c Culloch's Metallurgy, man will have his toil super- 
 seded by machinery ; and the happy Metallurgians, who 
 will inhabit his mechanical country, will be far superior 
 to the Icarians whom Mons. Cabet thus describes: * Icarie 
 is a country hitherto unknown, and which has very re- 
 cently been discovered. It is a sortof new world ; a country 
 of marvels and prodigies. Its roads, rivers, and canals 
 are magnificent ; admirable fields, beautiful gardens ; ele- 
 gant residences, charming villages, and magnificent towns 
 with monuments ; which remind us of Rome and Athens, 
 of Egypt and Babylon, of India and China. In fact, its 
 industry surpasses that of England, and its arts are su- 
 perior to that of France. No where does one see so many 
 immense machines: their people travel by balloons; 
 and the aerial pleasure fairs which are there held, eclipse 
 the most brilliant magnificence of terrestrial holidays. 
 Trees, fruit, flowers, and all sort of animals are admirable. 
 The children are charming ; men, vigorous and beautiful ; 
 women, fascinating and divine. There, all social and poli- 
 tical institutions are marked in the corner with reason, 
 justice, and wisdom. Crimes are unknown ; every one 
 lives in peece, pleasure, joy, and happiness. In a word, 
 Icarie is really a second Promised Land, an Eden, an 
 Elysium, a new earthly Paradise." Consequently, there 
 would be no taxes to be paid. Mons. Cabet, in his 
 voyage to Icarie, informs us, " That after a violent tem- 
 pest, during which the steward of the vessel warded off 
 the fears of the passengers by telling them that his 
 government was a thousand times more interested about 
 individuals than goods ; that the safety of the passen- 
 gers was the principal object of its solicitude ; that it set 
 apart its best ships for the transport of the people ; and 
 
OF PROPERTY. 73 
 
 that with such class of vessels, shipwrecks were almost 
 impossible; and that, during six years, though violent tem- 
 pests had frequently happened,no disaster had taken place. 
 " Observing," says le Ion pcre cTIcarie, Mons. Cabet, 
 "several large vessels which appeared to watch us, I asked 
 the captain if they were revenue -cutters ? ' Revenue 
 cutters !' replied he, with an air of astonishment ' It is 
 fifty years ago since the custom-house was abolished ; 
 le bon Tear has destroyed that den of robbers, who were 
 more unmerciful than pirates and tempests. These 
 vessels that you observe, are safety ships, which put to 
 sea during storms, to pilot, or assist vessels which may be 
 in danger. As the storm is beginning to subside, you 
 see they are steering away from us." 
 
 The communism of M. Cabet, as promulgated in his 
 travels in Icarie, is to instruct and rear up mankind on 
 the principle of fraternity, so as, that by an efficient di- 
 vision of labour, each member of the social body could, 
 by applying his intellectual faculties, aid and assist his 
 physical powers, in perfectly accomplishing that share of 
 labour which had devolved upon him as a member of 
 society, and may therefore be defined as the communism 
 of the division of labour, because in Icarie we find no 
 idlers. Pas de paresseux en Icarie. 
 
 The communism of Mr. M c Culloch is to organize a 
 perfect monopoly of machinery, and the principles of that 
 organization are to constitute, increase, and improve ma- 
 chinery, so as to be able. to dispense with manual labour ; 
 and thus to elevate the labourers to a state of equality 
 with the non-productive classes, who are at present in that 
 blessed state of idleness. And because that the labour- 
 ers now complain of excessive toil, on account of their 
 
 E 
 
74? THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 productions having been put into competition with those 
 of machinery, they are to be emancipated through means 
 of machinery which is destined to do the work for them, 
 and thereby to put an end to the war between capital 
 and labour, by uniting them as brothers ; henceforth 
 enabling mankind to eat their bread, not by the sweat 
 of manual exertion, but by the force of machinery; 
 which, with little or no consumption, will produce enough 
 for all ; and the consequent effect will be, that produc- 
 tions will have little or no value. And if stamped with 
 any exchangeable worth, they will still be beyond the 
 purchasing power of the unoccupied labourers. 
 
 This system of producing by machinery, irrespective 
 of the claims of manual labour, is not only entirely op- 
 posed to Mons. Cabet's organization of industry; qui 
 soumettait tous les Icariens a la communaute de travail, 
 de devoirs et de charges ; but by its development the prin- 
 ciples also of the respective schools of Saint Simon and 
 Fourier are rendered absurd and untenable; and the words 
 in which these principles are embodied void of sense. 
 
 A chacun selon sa capacite, a chaque capacite selon ses 
 ceuvres. 
 
 A chacun selon son capital, son travail, et son talent. 
 To every one according to his capacity ; to each ca- 
 pacity in proportion to his works. 
 
 To every one according to his capital, his labour, and 
 his talent. 
 
 The Saint Simonians hold, " that the ancient state of 
 society was constituted by, and for war; that the new 
 organization ought to be constituted by labour and for 
 labour/' 
 
 The Phalansterians,orFourierists, affirm, that society as 
 
OF PROPERTY. 75 
 
 it actually exists is an organized system of oppression for 
 the labourers, and that the remedy consists in organizing 
 the labourers into small societies, called commons ; pre- 
 serving to each as his wages, a proportional share of his 
 labour, thereby rendering him proprietor and capitalist; 
 thus securing his co-operation to sustain inviolate the 
 civil establishment, and to promote unity of religion and 
 universal suffrage ; a chacun selon^ sa capacite, fyc. 
 
 " To every one according to his capacity," would be 
 impracticable and unjust in the metalurgian system, be- 
 cause, we assert, that there is a wide difference between 
 manual and machine labour. " To each capacity accord- 
 ing to its work," is barbarously inhuman, if manual la- 
 bour is to be arrayed against machinery; " to each accord- 
 ing to his capital," means, that he who has the most 
 capital can have the greatest quantity of machinery, and 
 consequently, will get the lion's share in the production. 
 " To each in proportion to his labour," is only applicable 
 to a state of society in which machinery does not come 
 into competition with the labourers ; because machinery 
 cannot strictly be said to labour, which implies an ex- 
 haustion of physical force. Machinery is only an inex- 
 haustible instrument of production ; consomme qui peut. 
 " To every one in proportion to his talent/' With those 
 who are accredited, through popular vulgarity, to advance 
 and advocate such unphilosophical and absurd doctrines, 
 as that there is no essential difference to the community 
 between labour executed by machinery, and that done 
 by the hand, we might be permitted to be a little ironi- 
 cal, and to ask whether the talent of man and machinery, 
 which is directed by man, are identically comparable. 
 Where is the point of comparative analogy ? Where 
 
70 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 are your Homers, Platos, Luthers, Foxes, and Chatharas, 
 &c. of machinery ? Vous navez pas etudie^ scientifique- 
 ment, les questions, dcconomie politique. What is it 
 to produce by capital, by machinery ? Neither have you 
 proved your thesis, when you say, " Suppose that the 
 productive powers of industry are doubled; nay, suppose 
 they are increased in any greater proportion, and that 
 they (machinery,) are exerted to the utmost, it would 
 not occasion any lasting glut of the market. Double or 
 treble the quantity of one commodity would be given 
 for double or treble the quantity of another commo- 
 dity. There would be a general augmentation of the 
 wealth of the society ; but there would be no excess of 
 commodities in the market, the increased equivalents on 
 the one side being balanced by a corresponding increase 
 on the other. But if, while one class , of producers were 
 industrious, another chose to be idle, there would be a 
 temporary excess. It is clear, however, that this excess 
 would be occasioned by the deficient production of the 
 idle class. It would not be a consequence of production 
 being too much, but of its being too little increased" 
 
 The whole question of over-production is here ad- 
 mitted ; and the blame is attached, not to the productive 
 powers either of manual or machine labour baving been 
 exerted to the utmost, but to that of its being too little 
 increased ; in other words, the evil is attributed to that 
 of the power of consumption not having been increased 
 proportionately with the power of production. If, while 
 machines were producing, and throwing the labourers out 
 of employment, so that they were deprived of acquiring 
 the means of consumption, any excess in the commodi- 
 ties produced must be occasioned, through machines not 
 
OP PROPERTY. 77 
 
 taking an efficiently active part in the demand, commen- 
 surate to their contributions towards the supply, which 
 they had heaped upon the market ; and instead of there 
 being a general augmentation of the wealth of the society, 
 there inevitably would be a diminution of riches ; and 
 the manufacturer who should be the most active in thus 
 increasing his productions, and who had spent most capital 
 in producing, would be hastening the fastest towards his 
 ruin. 
 
 But, it is asserted, " that were the manufacturer to 
 increase his powers of production, and exert them to the 
 utmost, it would not occasion any lasting glut of the 
 market." How very imperfect. is yet the dialect of the 
 science of political economy, when we have one of its 
 promulgators in treating the subject of gluts, using 
 such indefinite expressions as fc lasting glut of the market.' 
 Every one must perceive, that as society in its eternal 
 march never stops on account of any of those perturba- 
 tions called ' gluts,' which disturb the commercial and 
 political worlds ; and as labour, the companion of society, 
 never stops in the exercise of its functions over all kinds 
 of commodities possessing value, but is constantly changing 
 them, and re-establishing any equipoise which may have 
 been lost through overtrading or underselling ; therefore, 
 it is the productive powers of labour, or the purchase 
 power of labour, to consume, which regulates the econo- 
 mical system of commerce, annihilates gluts, and teaches 
 the heedless producer and speculator, that, in unduly 
 estimating the labourer's power to consume, they reckoned 
 without their host ; inundated society with extravagant 
 produce, filled the workhouses with paupers, and en- 
 tailed ruin on themselves. 
 
78 THE BIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 It is not the invention of machinery, and the progres- 
 sive augmentation in the powers of production with 
 which we find fault ; these are the offspring of genius, 
 talent, and industry, which will continue to fructify, pro- 
 pagate, and increase, as the age of reason advances, and 
 as the mind of man through the force of intelligence 
 subjugates nature to his will, by gradually establishing 
 his dominion over its yet undiscovered powers. What we 
 complain of, is, that machinery, in place of aiding the 
 workmen to produce commodities for their own advantage, 
 is turned against them ; thereby transposing its original use 
 and design, which were to enfranchise labour, and to esta- 
 blish the rights and liberties of mankind, and converting it 
 into an engine of oppression, and a forge to produce 
 chains, to reduce the labourers into a state of subjuga- 
 tion and slavery. ^ 
 
 It is rarely that even the inventors of machines reap 
 the advantage of their inventions : often after years of 
 laborious mental toil, during which they may have neg- 
 lected the trades or professions by which they gained 
 their livelihood; and too often it is to be lamented, 
 brought themselves into pecuniary embarassments, they 
 are obliged to sell their discoveries, for a small pecuniary 
 trifle, to capitalists, who are thus enabled to gather in 
 the harvest of those mighty minds, who sowed in men- 
 tal struggle over the midnight oil, tracing, like Archime- 
 dians, in their laboratorial imaginations, the lineaments 
 of these new machines, and there nicely adjusting every 
 pinion, and placing every screw, before they were made, 
 These inventive geniuses are the pioneers of science, 
 who, with a beneficent design towards society, are deve- 
 loping their innate powers of intellectual force, which 
 
OF PROPERTY. 79 
 
 must be emanations from that eternal fountain of har- 
 monic combination and spiritual energy, which harmoni- 
 ously systematised the chaotic elements; and, with a 
 benediction for the use of man, planted every tre^ before 
 it grew. These forerunners of social progression, toil 
 in order to put into the hands of labour those natural 
 instruments which ought to conduce towards the eman- 
 cipation of the labourers, from the present circumscribed 
 limits of production; and which, if justly organised, 
 would confer on them an additional amount of enjoyment. 
 The inventors of machinery, generally labour with a 
 good design, and the workmen, who practically use these 
 machines in producing, are actuated by praiseworthy mo- 
 tives ; yet all of them that are destitute of capital, which 
 is the golden calf of commerce, and the idol of machi- 
 nery, only labour in vain : they plant vineyards, and make 
 the wine ; but the capitalists drink the nectar. The in- 
 ventors of machines are by imagination and contemplation 
 betrothed to their inventions ; but the capitalists, who are 
 by profession polygamists in the objects of their affections, 
 marry them, and from that connubial union by which the 
 inventions of genius are prostituted to capital, is born the 
 omniverous race of monopolists and proprietors. After 
 these giants are born into society, to whatever side the 
 labourers turn for protection, nothing is presented to them 
 but bayonets of capital, supported on the right, and on the 
 left, by the flaming sword of the law. Therefore, machi- 
 nery, which should have been a blessing to them, and 
 productive only of abundance, is, through the aberrations 
 of society turned into their curse, and only productive to 
 them of misery. Machinery, "like Eden's dread proba- 
 tionary tree, slavery and freedom spring from thee." 
 
80 THE RIGHTS -AND DUTIES 
 
 The principles which Mons. Sismondi has advanced 
 in regard to excessive production through means of ma- 
 chinery, are not that an increase of production is bad in 
 itself, if judiciously balanced by a corresponding con- 
 sumption ; but that an over increase, in the production 
 of those commodities which are not wanted, and for 
 which therefore there can be no market, is the evil 
 which occasions so many perturbations, and convulsions 
 in commerce, and which often leads to the ruin of the 
 producers themselves, through their being obliged to 
 force on an overstocked market the unrequired quantity 
 of goods manufactured, in the anticipation of a demand, 
 either at home or abroad. But some parties will say, 
 that it is impossible for the manufacturers to do other- 
 wise than employ his workmen to make goods during 
 the dull seasons, so as to have a mass of goods in their 
 warehouses to be ready to sell when the demand arises. 
 As business in this country is too much conducted on the 
 go-a-head principle, it is very difficult for any manufac- 
 turer who will not do as others do to maintain his trade, 
 and preserve the reputation of his firm. Besides, the 
 manufacturers have pushed trade to such an extent in 
 opposition to each other, that, in order to suit the de- 
 mands of the wholesale merchants who buy of them, 
 they manufacture goods on chance ; arid when the sea- 
 son arrives for their sale, if a purchaser cannot be in- 
 duced to buy them at a remunerating profit, they must 
 be sold at a loss, made a job lot of, which means, 
 that the buyer may almost have them at his own price 
 by merely making an offer for them. To such an ex- 
 tent is this sort of trade carried on, that some wholesale 
 houses purchase a great part of their goods as job lots, and 
 
OF PROPERTY. SI 
 
 often the manufacturers are driven to the expedient of call- 
 ing their regular and perfect goods, as job goods; other- 
 wise, the merchant would not even look at his patterns. 
 This peculiar job-lot trade is indigenous to England. In 
 France, a different line of commerce is pursued by the 
 manufacturers, who solicit orders by patterns from the 
 wholesale merchants, and then make the goods in time 
 for the season in which they are required. Thus, 
 some of the largest manufacturers will scarcely have 
 a single piece of goods on hand at the end of the 
 season. 
 
 As the principles of Mons. Sismondi have been called 
 in question on the manufacturing system, let us see what 
 the patriarchal economist has to say for himself in his 
 own peculiarly pastoral style. 
 
 " It is not," says Mons. Sismondi, "industry; it is not 
 manufacturing improvements which directly causes all 
 these calamities; it is the two operations -which at pre- 
 sent characterize the whole mercantile spirit in England, 
 and which have no other names than their English ones 
 to overtrade and to undersell (sur commercer). That is, 
 pushing business to excess, to produce, or import, dispro- 
 portionately to the wants of the consumers, to overstock 
 the market. To undersell (sous vendrc) is done in 
 order to obtain trade ; to effect a clearance of the goods; 
 to part with them at a lower price than any other pro- 
 ducer ; to ruin him, and drive him out of the markets by 
 means of being pleased to work on a less profit, or even 
 at a loss. We have already shewn, that we do not par- 
 take of that zeal for manufacturing industry which seems 
 so universal. 
 
 " In estimating that which forms the riches and hap- 
 2 
 
82 THE BIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 piness of a nation, we have placed very low its manufac- 
 tures, which are considered at the present day as the 
 most beautiful development of human genius ; that 
 commerce which has been celebrated as the universal 
 agent of civilization ; that supplying of foreigners ; that 
 exportation which has been proclaimed as so many vic- 
 tories gained over our rivals. We have not, however, 
 the intention of depreciating any of the efforts made by 
 man, or his successes ; above all, we would blush had 
 we, on so grave a subject, so intimately bound up with 
 general happiness, any disposition to maintain paradoxical 
 opinions, any desire to astonish by their novelty. 
 
 " We know that manufactures in their actual develop- 
 ment presents to us a succession of victories which man 
 by his intelligence has gained over matter; we admit 
 that commerce has spread over the entire world a new 
 moral influence, that it has remotely extended familiar in- 
 tercourse, that.it has drawn together the cords of frater- 
 nity between different races of men. But we must not 
 allow a blind admiration for one of the developments of 
 human power to hinder us from submitting to a just 
 appreciation, the diverse social circumstances that accom- 
 pany it, to point out the relation of one with another, 
 and to bring back the attention to the great end of human 
 association ; this in fact was not organized to discover 
 how men could accomplish things, but how things could 
 serve men. We wish to guard ourselves against that 
 common disposition of men, and which often deceives 
 them ; they feel so sensibly their weakness and incapacity 
 that they cannot endure to see effects produced dispropor- 
 tionate to that weakness, without abandoning themselves 
 to enthusiasm. All that bears a character of greatness and 
 
OF PROPERTY. 83 
 
 power is sure to gain their admiration, notwithstanding 
 that such grandeur is sometimes developed at the expense 
 of those who admire. The throne of the tyrants of Asia, 
 perhaps only owed its stability to that admiration which 
 their subjects felt for a human will which nothing re- 
 sisted. The works produced by that will excite, perhaps, 
 more admiration still ; because there is only to be seen 
 the impress of their grandeur, and not the sufferings of 
 those who executed them. The pyramids of Egypt, during 
 four thousand years, have drawn the admiration of every 
 successive generation, though they possess neither beauty 
 nor utility, solely because they are a monument, which 
 seems eternal of the triumph of one of the most feeble 
 among beings over the immense force of nature." 
 
 A Scotch economist, who loves to clothe his reasoning 
 with severe and abstract forms, has said, 6< Exchanges ne- 
 cessarily increase with the accumulation of riches; thus, 
 the field A, the first year has produced a hundred sacks of 
 corn, and the manufacturer B, the same year has produced 
 a hundred yards of cloth ; accordingly, the hundred sacks 
 are exchanged at par against the yards. The next year 
 the same field has produced a thousand sacks of corn, and 
 the same loom has produced a thousand yards of cloth. 
 Wherefore is the exchange not equally made, if it be a 
 matter of ten thousand, or of a hundred thousand ? 
 According to his custom, the Scotch philosopher, in his 
 reasoning, has forgotten man. If he had recollected 
 that it was not a field and a manufactory, but two men ; 
 the one a farmer, and the other a manufacturer, who were 
 obliged to exchange the produce which they did not re- 
 quire for their own use, he himself would have perceived 
 that he was stating an absurdity. One of these two men 
 
84 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 after having bought the corn that he required for food, 
 would have satisfied his wants, and would have no more 
 of it, whatever the quantity produced by the field of his 
 neighbour might be ; the other, after having bought cloth 
 with which to clothe himself, would be protected from the 
 cold, and would not take more, whatever might be the 
 activity of the manufacturer." 
 
 It is quite evident, that the principle embodied in the 
 reasoning of Mons. Sismondi is not to prohibit the use 
 of, or to destroy machinery, but to prevent its being 
 made the means of increasing productions disproportion- 
 ately to the wants of society, thereby choking the eco- 
 nomical channels of commerce, by subverting the use of 
 manual labour, destroying the rights of the labourer, and 
 depriving him of the power to consume. Machinery in 
 its present development and progressive tendency is 
 supplanting manual labour, spreading misery among the 
 labourers in its advance, and leaving society in its wake 
 like an uprooted forest, or a desolated waste, where the 
 giant towers of capital and credit appear with more conspi- 
 cuous elevation amidst that low servile.degraclation to which 
 the bulwarks of society, the people, have been reduced. 
 
 "With machines/' says Mons. Proudhon, "commences 
 the distinction of masters and salaried servants, of capi- 
 talists and workmen. The labourer that ought to have 
 been extricated from the brutishness into which the 
 identity of labour had reduced him, is thereby engulphed 
 more and more ; he loses, with the character of man, 
 liberty ; and falls into the condition of a tool. The easy 
 circmmstances of the chief augment the misery of the 
 subalterns : the distinction of castes commences, and a 
 monstrous tendency is created, that which consists, in 
 
OF PROPERTY. 85 
 
 multiplying mankind would fain do without him. Thus, 
 the universal distress is aggravated ; already begun by 
 the classified division of labour ; misery enters officially 
 into the world, from that very moment it becomes the 
 soul and nerve of society. 
 
 " Then, humanity, in re-clothing its vagabond bar- 
 barity with civilized forms, has only changed the misery 
 of its inactivity for the misery of its combinations; 
 man perishes by the division of labour, which increases 
 his force tenfold, and by machines which increases his 
 powers a hundred-fold ; as he perished, in days of yore, 
 by sleep and idleness. The first cause of his misfor- 
 tune is always in himself; then it is this cause that he 
 must overcome, before declaiming against destiny. If, 
 then, misery is the peculiar fault of labour, it is neither 
 nature nor providence that is to blame ; it is economical 
 practice, which wants equilibrium; it is it alone that must 
 be accused. Political economy itself, is aware of it ; and 
 it is on that account, that it has been so anxious to call 
 to its aid a new organ, machines." 
 
 In order to get rid of the evils which a too extended 
 division had entailed upon the labourers, machinery has 
 been resorted to ; and political economy, that is itself a 
 conservative, with the design of saving the manufactu- 
 rers from ruin, when they had produced a superabundance 
 of articles, organized a system of foreign trade, and some- 
 times even now pays bounties on exportations, which is 
 equivalent to ordering the people to buy the goods of the 
 manufacturer, or commanding them to pay so much to 
 him ; so that he may be able to sell his goods cheaper 
 to foreigners than he would do to themselves. As foreign 
 trade is the only means by which the surplus productions 
 
86 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 of machinery can be absorbed, on account of the labourers 
 having heen incapacitated from purchasing them ; it has 
 attracted the attention, and obtained the support not only 
 of manufacturers, but also of some political economists ; 
 these, without duly considering its influence on ourselves, 
 and also on foreign nations, are loud in praise of its un- 
 limited extension : those have been drawn into lauding 
 it through ignorance, selfishness, or necessity. 
 
 Mr. M c Culloch in treating this question of foreign ex- 
 portation, has forgotten not only man but society, and the 
 rights of nations, by supposing that any one nation has 
 a right, should it be able, of imposing either by hook or 
 by crook its cheap productions on another, which may be 
 its rival in these productions, for the purpose of giving 
 vent to that increased and cheapened produce which has 
 been thrown on the home market through the extended 
 power of machinery, and the reduction of wages ; and, 
 in stating his opinion on this subject, he has given 
 publicity to a principle which we should have much rather 
 preferred had its birth been announced by any but an 
 Englishman, and had been recorded in any language but 
 English. Proudhon, whose principles are yet but very 
 imperfectly understood in England, and even not fully 
 comprehended by many of his countrymen, but ivho 
 has, notwithstanding, been execrated, as the French 
 Casca of property, by proprietors, both in his own and 
 in other countries, has not, amongst all his Casca-like 
 thrusts at property, said anything which is calculated to 
 injure it so much as the ungrateful, the unkindliest cut 
 of all inflicted on it by the English Brutus, when he thus 
 stabs it " Those who subsist by their labour," says Mr. 
 M c Cullocb, " and whose command over necessaries and 
 
OF PROPERTY. 87 
 
 luxuries, is always comparatively limited, form an immense 
 majority of the population of every country ; and any 
 considerable reduction in the price of a commodity in 
 general use, has uniformly almost been found to extend 
 the demand for it in a much greater proportion. This 
 has been eminently the case in the Cotton manufacture. 
 It is impossible, perhaps, to name another branch of in- 
 dustry in which the powers of production have been so 
 much increased ; and yet it is certain, that the extension 
 of the market consequent on every new invention for 
 saving labour and expense, has always occasioned the 
 employment of an additional number of hands. Such a 
 reduction of price as has been supposed would give a 
 prodigious stimulus to the manufacture. Our cottons 
 would obtain a still more incontestible superiority in every 
 market than they now enjoy, and would be brought within 
 the command of an immensely increased number of con- 
 sumers. Foreign governments would in vain attempt to 
 prohibit their introduction. Cheap goods never fail of 
 making their way through every barrier, per medios ire 
 satellites amant. In the words of Sir Josiah Child, 
 " They that can give the best price for a commodity, shall 
 never fail to have it by one means or the other, notwith- 
 standing the opposition of any laws, or interposition of 
 any power by sea or land ; of such force, subtilty and 
 violence is the general course of trade." 
 
 Had an inveterate smuggler been advocating the legality 
 and justice of smuggling, or the slave merchant, the 
 rights and humanity of the slave trade, they could not 
 have advanced more favorable arguments : the smuggler 
 is the personification of selfishness, being a law to 
 himself; he, therefore, makes his way through all op- 
 
88 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 posing barriers, sneers at and holds in contempt the 
 Custom-house, and all the revenue laws of social govern- 
 ment. He is the Robin Hood of import duties, who in 
 carrying out in practice his principles of universal free- 
 dom in trade, sits on the opposition benches when the 
 Custom's return is being made out, and bids defiance to 
 the barons of her Majesty's Exchequer. The slave 
 dealer is not particular as to the race of animals he deals 
 in, though he has a peculiar fancy for dark shades on 
 account of the price ; he prosecutes his traffic in the 
 commodity of human flesh, contemptuously disregarding 
 every law, human and divine. With these two classes 
 who consider themselves all honorable men^ Mr. M c Cul- 
 loch identifies the manufacturer, when he says, "that 
 every new invention saves labour and expense, and yet 
 increases the number of hands." TJiis is equivalent to 
 stating, that the labour and expense saved by the capital- 
 ist in producing commodities, is so much more capital 
 to the manufacturer to employ, and keep in pay a greater 
 number of individuals, or smugglers, to introduce, by 
 subtility and violence our productions into other countries 
 in spite of their laws, and regardless of driving out of 
 employment their native labourers. 
 
 " It may be said by those who advocate an extension 
 of foreign trade, regardless of the principles by which it 
 is to be carried on, that the limit of the foreign market 
 is nothing short of the boundary of the known world ; 
 wherefore then does not a nation try to introduce its 
 manufactures as far as the means of its commerce will 
 extend ? Wherefore should it not take advantage of the 
 progress which it has attained in the arts and sciences, to 
 prosecute against foreigners, a ruinous war in their own 
 
OF PROPERTY. 89 
 
 markets, to undersell their manufacturers, their artisans, 
 their women, to force them to shut their workshops, and to 
 content themselves with that which it offers them ? Where- 
 fore ? Because that our duties towards human society 
 are analogous to our duties towards our own countrymen ; 
 because that we ought no more to speculate upon the ruin 
 of the Turk, or of the Indian, than on that of the French 
 and the English. Finally, hecause that which is unjust is 
 never fundamentally profitable, and that if we ruin the 
 industry and the artisans of other nations, we ruin with 
 them our own consumers. 
 
 An over-production is the inverse to an under-consump- 
 tion ; and if, regardless of the powers of the labourers 
 to consume and to pay the producer for his products, 
 the manufacturer goes on producing, calculating all the 
 time on being able to effect sales of his goods, either in 
 the home or in the foreign market ; at the same time 
 that his tactics are to dispense with manual labour, he is 
 hurrying on to an impassable barrier, hastening towards 
 his ruin, and paving the way for the dissolution of society. 
 Supposing that he produces goods sufficient for a hundred 
 consumers during a year, whilst there are only fifty that 
 are provided with work, and the means of paying for 
 his productions, he must suspend his operations for the 
 year, till such time as his fifty customers can take his 
 over-production off his hands ; at the same time he oc- 
 casions an overstock of commodities in the hands of other 
 producers by his labourers being thrown idle, and thereby 
 disabled from buying the manufactures of the other 
 branches of trade, Thus, by a vicious system of mo- 
 nopoly, he victimizes himself, and becomes the means 
 of ruining others with him. The labourers of Ireland 
 
90 THE BIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 being without sufficient employment, have been obliged 
 to confine their wants to what is barely necessary to 
 sustain animal existence, and like savages to be satisfied 
 with the least possible means of sustaining life. Instruct- 
 ed by the fatal example of their parents, the present race 
 of labourers in Ireland, has through necessity grown up 
 in idleness; and that praiseworthy emulation which in- 
 duces the labourers in other countries to properly furnish 
 their houses, and to gather around them things necessary 
 for their comfort and happiness, has been through disap- 
 pointment almost extinguished among them. 
 
 c< I have never read,'* says Mons. Proudhon, "anything 
 more sad and stupid than the heart-breaking spectacle 
 of the effects of monopoly, to see the unhappy labour- 
 ers reciprocally accusing one another of their misery, 
 and imagining that by creating strikes, and forming 
 unions to support each other, they can prevent a re- 
 duction of wages. And what would you have those 
 labourers to do ? The Irish are arrived at such a state ; 
 must they be massacred ? Their wages have been re- 
 duced. Must they refuse them, and die ? Necessity 
 commands, you yourself say it. Then are developed the 
 interminable scenes, disease, deformity, degradation, brute- 
 faction, and all the signs of industrial slavery. All these 
 calamities are born of monopoly and of its melancholy 
 antecedents, opposition in trade, machinery, and the divi- 
 sion of labour : and you accuse the Irish. The extermina- 
 tions en masse by monopoly have not yet found poets. 
 Our rhymers, strangers to this world's affairs, without 
 feelings in their bosoms for the workman, continue to 
 breathe forth to the moon their melancholic rhapsodies. 
 What a subject for meditations, however, would be the 
 
OF PROPERTY. 91 
 
 miseries engendered by monopoly. It is Walter Scott 
 v/ho speaks, et quest, ce quit dit ? 
 
 " Formerly, it is now many years ago, each villager 
 had his cow and a pig, with a small piece of ground 
 around his house. There where now only one farmer la- 
 bours, formerly thirty small farmers lived ; so that, for 
 an individual richer in himself, it is true, than the thirty 
 farmers of former times, there are now twenty-nine miser- 
 able day-labourers, without employment for their intelli- 
 gence and their arms, and of whom the half is more than 
 enough. The only useful function which they fill, is to 
 pay sixty shillings a year for the huts which they inhabit. 
 A modern ballad, cited by E. Burritt, sings the solitude 
 of monopoly 
 
 " Le rouet est silencieux dans la vallee ; 
 
 C'en est fait des sentiments de famille, 
 
 Sur un peu de fumee le vieil aieul 
 
 Etend ses mains pales; et le foyer vide 
 
 Est aussi desole que son coeur." 
 
 The reports produced by parliament rival those of the 
 romancer and poet! They clearly demonstrate what 
 monopoly has produced in effacing from the suface of the 
 soil that gallant yeomanry of England that Sir Walter 
 Scott said was u known in no other land." Each boasts 
 his hearth and field as free as the best lord his barony, 
 owing subjection to no human vassalage, save to their 
 king and laws. 
 
 How wonderfully have the times changed since this 
 happy period of merry England's history. Times have 
 changed, and we must change with them ; but, unfor- 
 tunately for the peasantry, they must have changed very 
 much for the worse ; therefore, in direful doxology to the 
 song of monopoly they may vocalize their desolated 
 
92 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 fields, and sing the effects of unremunerated exertions, 
 with a new version of the hopeful and lullaby song. 
 " There's a bad time coming, boys :" nay, actually has 
 come. 
 
 c< Cheap goods never fail of making their way through 
 every barrier." This motto, on the standard of a smug- 
 gler, would be fully as appropriately placed, as that of 
 " England expects that every man will do his duty, 1 ' was 
 judiciously signalled by the hero of Trafalgar. However, 
 the philosophical economist will easily perceive, that in 
 forcing our productions on other nations, we are thereby 
 increasing their public inactivity, and adding to their 
 misery : and at the same time, that monopolists are in- 
 creasing their individual riches, we are augmenting our 
 public burdens by pursuing a system of forced, unnatural, 
 and illegitimate trading, which requires an additional 
 force of sailors, soldiers, and police to facilitate, or to 
 force the sale of our goods in foreign markets, and to 
 put in force the laws against the intruders on the rights 
 of monopoly at home. It may be very true, that the 
 producer of a certain article may be able to undersell all 
 other producers of that kind of commodity in every 
 market of the world. Who then has the advantage of 
 his monopoly ? Certainly not those to whom he sells; 
 for he will just take as much from them as they can 
 afford to give ; and, in many instances more. It is at 
 their expense, therefore, that he enriches himself. Even 
 supposing that the foreign consumer should reap a small 
 share of the benefit of the exchange, yet in the aggregate, 
 for the nation which buys, there will be a loss, if it be 
 not in a condition to protect its citizens from being re- 
 duced to indigence through foreigners underselling them, 
 
OF PROPERTY. 93 
 
 and expelling them from their own markets : thus re- 
 ducing them to the condition of having no other commo- 
 dity than gold to give in exchange, thereby actually 
 selling the nation, not for gold, but with gold. 
 
 A nation which buys goods of foreigners, and pays 
 for them in gold, parts with that commodity which con- 
 trols all others, and surrenders that which renders its 
 possessor king of the market ; because, it is the prince of 
 commodities that subjugates them, and like Aaron's rod 
 swallows them all up : it is this princely dignity in com- 
 modities, which has produced aristocracy in humanity. 
 Gold may be said to be the only really definitively con- 
 stituted riches ; constituted, set apart, and shielded by 
 society, as far as possible from the effects of that cruci- 
 ble in which all other commodities are compounded, 
 namely, the crucible of disputation ; that is, the offer 
 and the demand. The principle of every bargain being 
 a dispute in which a rigorous analysis of the value in use 
 and the value in exchange, is made by the buyer and 
 seller, the peace of that war being the reconciliation of 
 both combatants at the altar of money, the cherubim 
 of commerce, and the idol of society, by which they both 
 swore in commencing the bargain that each of their 
 respective commodities had the nearest affinity. 
 
 The concrete of that analysis is the creation of a new 
 synthesis in which the respective proportion of value in 
 use, and value in exchange, are harmoniously blended 
 under the form of real value, or market price, which 
 common phrase means, the value fully debated and ad- 
 justed for the time being, by the free offer and demand. 
 Every new transaction, therefore, is distinctly a new dis- 
 pute, or the preliminaries of a bargain disputable, on the 
 
94 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 same principles as all previous bargains have been, but 
 totally unfettered by any previous price or value what- 
 soever; and is a positive refutation of the notion enter- 
 tained by some economists, that there is such a thing as 
 a fixed standard of value. Gold, the god of commerce, 
 is not even itself unchangeable in value; how then can 
 other commodities which do it homage be fixed ? Gold 
 has no more influence over the establishment of value, 
 than the thermometer has over heat and cold. La- 
 bour is the only fountain of real value ; and gold, the 
 cream of that fertile spring, if nature were not reversed, 
 could not be superior to its source. Gold can create 
 nothing; therefore, Aristotle was perfectly philosophic 
 on this question of political economy, when he said, 
 " Half crowns do not beget half crowns." 
 
 As to our forcing commodities at; low price upon fo- 
 reign nations, let us ask ourselves, how the manufacturers 
 of this country would be likely to feel, if they were as- 
 sailed in the same way by foreigners? If the time shall 
 arrive when they will be undersold in the English market, 
 is it likely that they would be satisfied by being told that 
 it was in vain to attempt to prohibit their introduction? 
 Would they not be perfectly warranted, in responding to 
 such an impuissant government, c lf we are not to be pro- 
 tected, then it will be in vain for you to attempt to collect 
 taxes, since you have allowed us to be deprived of the 
 benefit which the payment of these taxes led us to expect 
 at your hands? The people submitted at first to taxation, 
 because it was imposed for the purpose of protection; 
 they are now obliged to bear the burden, after protection 
 has been withdrawn. No protection without taxation, 
 was the burden of the song which deluged Europe with 
 
OF PROPERTY. 95 
 
 blood, steeped England in debt, and damnified the labour- 
 ers ; no taxation without protection, must now be the vi- 
 gil-hymn of resuscitation, as the day is breaking, and 
 the shadows of impositions are fast being dispelled be- 
 fore the rising sun of intelligence, when retribution will 
 be awarded to proprietors, for having shrunk at first from 
 their duty of bearing the expenses of those wars into 
 which they so unjustly plunged the nation, and by levy- 
 ing taxes from those who were not equally protected to 
 themselves, or who had nothing in the shape of property 
 to protect; and now, through laws made to perpetuate the 
 wrong, and to serve their own interests, they force the 
 generations of those men to pay taxes for that debt from 
 which neither their forefathers nor themselves ever de- 
 rived any benefit, and also to pay the larger proportion of 
 the necessary daily expense of defending property and 
 preserving social order. 
 
 As we have previously considered property in regard 
 to its forms and relations, we shall now give our atten- 
 tion to the more complicated and difficult parts of the 
 subject, trusting that we may have that indulgent and 
 good feeling accorded to us which the beneficial considera- 
 tion of so vast and intricate a subject requires : as this 
 section of political economy is that which demands the 
 greatest consideration of the reader, if it be thoroughly 
 studied, and requires a patient attention and forbearance 
 towards the individual who may treat it. With the full 
 assurance, therefore, that we are favored with this good- 
 will to enter, without prejudice, on an enquiry into the 
 origin and rights of property, we shall endeavour to trace 
 the principles on which its original constitution was 
 founded, and also that on which it now rests ; and if 
 
96 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES^ 
 
 in that investigation, we may be led into an expression of 
 any opinions which may be considered unorthodox, by 
 the present school of economists, we shall endeavour, in 
 every instance, to be as explicit, as the language of the 
 science will permit, leaving the verification of our 
 opinions to the trying scrutiny of time ; and, if we may 
 be found in error, we shall only say, that had we consi- 
 dered ourselves infallible, we should not have craved for 
 indulgence ; and that, from our errors, let others learn to 
 avoid the faults in which we have fallen, in surveying the 
 sinuous path by which the political economists must 
 travel, if he desire to arrive at truth. 
 
 Without a knowledge of the origin and rights of pro- 
 perty, all political opinions as to the justice and sound 
 policy of existing laws can only be based on vague and 
 uncertain notions, and all legislation entered into in ignor- 
 ance of these rights, will only be like writing in the sand ; 
 the first advancing wave of society will scarcely leave its 
 trace visible. In order, however, to facilitate the re- 
 placing of this theoretical legislation by a system of 
 practical and just laws of more permanent duration, we 
 shall endeavour to ascertain what this property really is, 
 which devours society by its operations, and that is 
 crushed in its turn by the progressive and eternal march 
 of society ; and in prosecuting our enquiry, we shall 
 divide it into three branches. 
 
 What is the origin of property ? 
 
 What is the nature of property ? 
 
 What are the rights and duties of property ? 
 
 The creator of property is society ; labour being as we 
 have already shewn the origin of all wealth, therefore, 
 the well-being and happiness of man, with all the riches 
 
OP PROPERTY. 97 
 
 of the world, is the offspring of labour. Yet, though 
 labour produced the commodities from which wealth and 
 property are formed, it was powerless in itself either to 
 create or to organize property ; that could alone be done 
 by the labourers in the aggregate united in society. Be- 
 fore society existed, the produce of labour was wealth to 
 the individual producers, so long as they were able to use 
 it by retaining possession ; still this use was in common 
 possession, none being as yet excluded by society from 
 indiscriminate participation in the fruits produced by na- 
 ture, or in that of those which were produced by manual 
 exertion ; therefore, whichsoever of these two powers pro- 
 duced the commodities which then constituted the well- 
 being, or wealth of man, is immaterial, as neither of them 
 could engender property, which is the child of society, 
 that absolutely bears on its ensign the post date of soci- 
 ety; and has for its mark and title guaranteed exclusion, 
 because society became bound for property; whereas 
 wealth, when unsocialized, depended on the power of 
 the possessors to protect it. As society, therefore, could 
 only create property, it alone could establish its rights ; 
 and but for society, property must relapse into simple 
 possession. What now constitutes the wealth, only for- 
 merly held through individual possession, property, is 
 that it has been appropriated by society for a common 
 use ; therefore, every individual member of society has 
 an equal right to that property ; and in guarding and 
 protecting each individual portion of the common stock, 
 he is protecting his own individual interest; because pro- 
 perty, being the common stock of society, every isolated, 
 or united portion of property implies an original com- 
 monality of right; through the consolidation of which it 
 
98 THE RIGHTS .AND DUTIES 
 
 became property ; and if it have degenerated, and made a 
 recantation of common obligations, then it has ceased to 
 be property, unsocialized itself, and receded to simple 
 possession. If society was pleased, or if it were urged 
 on through necessity to establish the rights of pro- 
 perty by guaranteeing to all its members a share in 
 those rights, or by assigning to any limited number of 
 them an exclusive right of possession, to any portion of 
 that which had been appropriated by it, and considered as 
 belonging by common right to the whole body, it could 
 have made this concession only on the conditions of those 
 particular individuals fulfilling certain obligations for the 
 common good of the social union. Had society not had 
 these considerations, both expressed and understood in 
 the implied contract with those particular individuals to 
 whom it thus accorded possession, then the object of the 
 common original right of possession^ on which alone 
 society itself was modelled and founded, would be there- 
 by lost sight of; and society would have nullified the 
 natural convention of its constitution, and destroyed itself 
 by the very act of relinquishing all its power and control 
 over that portion of the common property which had un- 
 qualifiedly fallen into the hands of those individuals. 
 And were it even possible for that portion of wealth to 
 remain as property after its secession 'from the pale and 
 recognition of society, then it must exist in itself as ex- 
 social property, which is an impossibility, because out of 
 society is to be found the absolute negation of all pro- 
 perty. Besides, if society could have parted with, or 
 had actually parted with any of its rights to particular 
 individuals, tinder no conditions whatever, for the purpose 
 of their exclusive use, in either case, the right in the pro- 
 
OF PROPERTY. 99 
 
 perty,/tfs in re, would yet be vested in society ; because 
 a contract, which does not impose obligations on all 
 parties to it, is not obligatory on either party to respect, 
 and the right to possession, Jus ad rem, reverts to its 
 original possessor. And if society has conceded to pro- 
 prietors their property under certain obligations, which 
 they have neglected, or refused to fulfil, then society as 
 one of the parties to the social compact, and the guardian 
 of the rights of property, would have just grounds to 
 pronounce that property anti-social, barred from the pro- 
 tection of society, and excluded from social rights, con- 
 sequently leaving it to be defended by its possessors, or 
 promiscuously appropriated by those who could, either by 
 previous right of possession, or by force, establish them- 
 selves in it, as possessed of the best title, In any case 
 of dereliction of social obligations by proprietors, society 
 would necessarily through its primitive possession of all 
 property, have the best and most preferable right: pro- 
 perty must, therefore, naturally revert to it. Hence, society 
 is the absolute sovereign and administrator of the rights of 
 property ; because, deprived of its protection, as has been 
 previously shewn, it could only be simple possession ; and 
 having ceased to be property, that possession could only be 
 maintained and guaranteed by the power of each indivi- 
 dual to keep at bay all claimants, who might covet it, 
 and attack the possessor. Under such a state of possession, 
 so long as the possessor, like the strong man armed, was 
 able to defend the thing possessed, and to exclusively hold 
 it for himself, it \\ould owe him the debt of its defence, 
 which would be fully discharged through the defender en- 
 joying exclusive possession ; and, in accordance to the 
 value which he attached to its possession, so in exact 
 
100 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 proportion would he sacrifice the enjoyment of other 
 things in order to retain it. 
 
 Property, being defended, and its rights guaranteed by 
 society, owes a debt to society for this defence ; and so 
 far exactly, and no farther, ought society to defend it, 
 than the public find it advantageous, and for its benefit, 
 to sacrifice other considerations and duties, in order to 
 maintain it. Whenever any kind of property requires at 
 the hands of society a greater price to be paid for its re- 
 tention than it is advantageous to pay, then has it become 
 a burden on society, and ought no longer to be recognized 
 as property, because property is only really so, as long as 
 it is a social benefit; if deprived of that benefit, society 
 still persists in upholding it, it is wilfully doing an injus- 
 tice to a portion of its members, and thereby hastening 
 humanity and itself on the road to ruin. 
 
 Society is, and ought to be, the guardian of real pro- 
 perty, and of the rights of proprietors, as well as of the 
 rights of all those in society for the benefit of whom pro- 
 perty was instituted. This portion of the bases of our 
 social compact is even admitted by proprietors, who in- 
 variably appeal, whenever property is in danger, to society 
 for aid and protection, through the medium of the state, 
 which society has delegated its representative, and the 
 protector of its rights. Whenever proprietors call on 
 the government to stand forward, and to put the law in 
 force for the protection of their property, they thereby 
 manifest their belief, that the law is the best and surest 
 title they have to the exclusive possession of property. 
 As the state can only be regarded, in its official capacity, 
 as the representative of society, it is, therefore, bound to 
 demand that the interests of the great body of the people 
 
 
OF PROPERTY. 101 
 
 are protected ; and when the possessors of the inheritance 
 of that body claim the special interference of the law for 
 their exclusive protection, in conditionally vested rights, 
 it is the duty of the government, previously to their plaint 
 being retained, to examine minutely whether or not they 
 have fulfilled the conditions of the compact on which they 
 rest their claim for protection ; and if, upon examination, 
 it should be found, that they have not discharged their 
 duties towards society, then, in justice to the injured 
 party, and as umpire between the discordant copartners, 
 it ought to decide, that as the conditional possession has 
 not been fulfilled, the possessors have forfeited all equit- 
 able claim to protection ; because they, having been en- 
 trusted with it by society, as trustees to use it only for 
 the purpose of promoting the greatest amount of mutual 
 advantage, have by lapse of time so identified themselves 
 with the particular property conceded to them, on reci- 
 procal conditions, that they have now set up an arrogant 
 and monopolising pretension to claim it as property, ex- 
 clusively existing in and solely dependent on themselves : 
 thus endeavouring to disinherit society, and to establish 
 without it what can only exist through a perfect fulfilment 
 of the social compact. 
 
 We can form no conception whatever of property being 
 able to exist apart from society ; property must be an 
 institution of society, and has been established by it as 
 its most perfect effort towards harmonizing mankind into 
 
 a state of social organization. Societv did not fail in its 
 
 . 
 
 design ; for there can be no dispute whatever, that were 
 property administered in harmony with its original import, 
 for the general good of society, and as it must yet again 
 be governed, or cease to exist as property, then would it 
 be a blessing to mankind, by its natural tendency to dif- 
 
102 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 fuse happiness and plenty throughout the remotest rami- 
 fications of society ; and neither abject misery, crime, 
 nor a plethora of riches and debauchery would be, at all, 
 traceable in a society where wealth merited the worthy 
 appellation of property. 
 
 But property has fallen from its primitive state, be- 
 come degenerated, and instead of its being the crowning 
 reward of labour, it has been made the enemy and the 
 bane of the labouring classes. Society says, e there can 
 be no legitimate property beyond the limits of my juris- 
 diction ; I created property, and established it on the only 
 principles that it were possible to maintain it upon, 
 namely, common rights, and equal justice : property had 
 its duties to perform towards me its guardian, the least 
 of which was, that it should defray the expense of its 
 own protection. Has it ever fulfilled this one duty, 
 leaving all others in abeyance ? Nearly eight hundred 
 millions of pounds sterling of a National Debt repudi- 
 ates the fulfilment, by proprietors, of the duties of pro- 
 perty ; and, en rougissant asks, When will I, The Mys- 
 tery of Credit^ The Curse of Industry^ and The Mother 
 of Fundholders, be justly liquidated, and cease to be an 
 abomination to labour, and a reproach to England among 
 the nations of the earth ? Am I to be an eternally living 
 monument of the consummate baseness of those prin- 
 ciples which gave me birth, and an everlasting millstone 
 about the neck of posterity, to subjugate industry to 
 privation, toil, and slavery ; because proprietors dastardly 
 shrunk from performing their duty, under the pretext, 
 that generations then unborn, that never created me, nor 
 could have had any connection whatever with my forma- 
 tion, would consent to pay for their delinquencies and 
 follies? 
 
OP PROPERTY. 103 
 
 ft is now a notorious fact, that it is intended by pro- 
 prietors never to "pay off the National Debt ; but as a 
 palliation for injustice, and a cloke to conceal the wrong 
 perpetrated on industry, proprietors have changed the 
 debt, not into a substantial deity, like property, but, in 
 the plenitude of their power, into an image of property, 
 and passed off their Dagon under the name of Funded 
 Property. The golden mantle being gone, they put on 
 the debt this incomprehensible cloak of credit, that they 
 might thereby be the better able to impose on society the 
 surreptitious right of one portion of the human family to 
 plunder another by means of this mythological credit. 
 
 That all property supposes a common reciprocal inte- 
 rest, will neither readily nor easily be called in question 
 by political philosophers; neither will it be disputed by 
 them, that credit requires, and must have a real, and not 
 an imaginary basis. As Funded Property is entirely 
 founded on the imaginary supposition of the people's 
 complacency and ability to pay, it therefore must be a 
 false system of credit, the operation of which cannot be 
 reciprocally advantageous to the community at large, and 
 society has been imposed upon by a false shadow, in the 
 disguise of credit, having been palmed upon it, under the 
 deceptive title of Funded Property ; as if property itself 
 had no foundation^ but that the thing more serial than 
 the shadow, the subterfuge, Funded Property, had a 
 substantial foundation. 
 
 As there can be no property but that which society 
 recognizes ; and as society, the guardian of equal rights, 
 ought to tolerate no kind of propert}' which is not bene- 
 ficial towards the general prosperity of its members, does 
 it consider, that they all have an advantage derivable 
 
104 THE BIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 from Funded Property ? Does it think it social, and for 
 the good and benefit of all classes, when only one indi- 
 vidual in every hundred of the population participates in 
 its spoils? Does it believe it to be a humane institution, 
 when ninety-nine per cent of its members are allowed, 
 through a strange aberration of duty on its part, to be 
 legally, but immorally, plundered for the benefit of the 
 other one per cent ? 
 
 We affirm, that it is above the power of any govern- 
 ment of itself, or of society, with the consent of all its 
 members, to constitute the public funds as property ; 
 and when government, through its power, abstracts taxes 
 from the people to pay over to the fundholders, it is only 
 conniving at and abetting the evil perpetrated upon an in- 
 dustrious, but deluded people, who are bruised under the 
 ponderous wheels of the four quarterly dividends upon 
 which ride the deities of the funding system ; and, like 
 the worshippers of Juggernaut, whilst they see their 
 fellow- creatures by their devotion immolated one after 
 another, they often fold their hands in admiration of the 
 genius of a system, which, on account of its sublimated 
 construction, is beyond their comprehension ; and some- 
 times they may be heard to vociferate with infatuated 
 fervor the fundholders' fallacious maxim, ignis fatuus 
 that the National Debt is the cause of our national 
 wealth. 
 
 Society has, under various forms, constituted the pro- 
 ducts of labour, and bestowed on them the appellation 
 of property, investing them with certain rights, and ex- 
 acting from their holders peculiar duties; because it con- 
 sidered, that when regulated under its control by social 
 laws, they would produce a greater amount of happiness 
 
OF PROPERTY. 105 
 
 and prosperity than when isolated and unprotected. So- 
 ciety, however, could not, nor ever will be able to con- 
 stitute credit, or the public funds, as property, because 
 property does in substance exist, and is a reality; but 
 credit, though it may really exist in the mind by antici- 
 pation, as "the substance of things hoped for, and the 
 evidence of things not seen," yet, in whatever assumed 
 shape or imaginative form it may present itself to the 
 mind, it is nevertheless untangible, uncertain, and there- 
 fore can only be an imaginary property which society 
 cannot organize, parce que sa constitution est dehors le 
 pouvoir cfe la societe. As to public credit, it is the poli- 
 tical superstition of the age, the mysteries of which be- 
 wilder its victims, and confound the priests of political 
 economy. It is the Gordian knot in the harness of the 
 fundholders* chariots, by which the people are so intri- 
 cately attached, that though the collar presses them se- 
 verely, the traces are so imperceptible and complicated, 
 that, like Alexander, they cannot disentangle them. 
 However, as " there is nothing new under the sun," let 
 the Pheatons of the people beware, lest some day or 
 other, the horses, through their being overdriven, do not 
 prove too headstrong for their ignorant and arrogant dri- 
 vers, and assume the part of Jupiter, by plunging them 
 headlong into their own bottomless funds; or, like Alex- 
 ander in his impetuosity, they do not shew their power 
 by cutting the harness to pieces. 
 
 Were government, a thousand times every year, to 
 substitute public credit for property, and decree that it 
 should be called Funded Property, still that credit would 
 only be founded on the guarantee, or hope, of the cre- 
 ditor participating in the fruit of labour yet to be done ; 
 F 2 
 
106 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 whereas property is the fruits of work already perfected, 
 and therefore something certain and definite for society 
 to take cognizance of. 
 
 Funded Property, otherwise credit, in its most rari- 
 fied and vague form if indeed funded property can be 
 said to have any real existence is nothing else than a 
 hope, the value of which depends, not only on the strength 
 of the faith entertained by the creditor, of realizing a 
 participation in the products of future labour ; but also 
 on the strength of the incredulity of the labourer in be- 
 lieving, that the debt was contracted on his account and 
 for his benefit; and moreover, in his complacency, should 
 he discover that he has been imposed upon, in still con- 
 tinuing to part with a portion of his earnings to those 
 who have deceived and defrauded him, by taking advan- 
 tage of his weakness. It is the degree of this faith on 
 the part of the public creditor, and the^weakness of scep- 
 ticism on that of the public debtor, which give funded 
 property its exchangeable value. Devoid of that faith, 
 and of this scepticism, funded property would stand un- 
 veiled, as the Ass that had once been covered with the 
 Lion's Skin. 
 
 It is not, however, the nature of a chimerical phan- 
 tom such as funded property, which is an exotic defini- 
 tion of property, totally unintelligible in the language of 
 the science of political economy, that we consider our- 
 selves pledged to investigate. Though we do not shrink 
 from an investigation of this imaginary creation, which 
 nevertheless produces great changes on society, yet this 
 may be more appropriately entered upon when we come 
 to investigate the subject of the National Debt : our 
 object now being to ascertain the real constitution and 
 
OF PROPERTY. 107 
 
 nature of property ; and, as we have previously demon- 
 strated that the principle upon which it was alone pos- 
 sible for society to constitute it, was that of man's equal 
 and natural rights of possession, we shall proceed to 
 examine it in its natural development under the protec- 
 tion of society, which brings us in presence of the great 
 social question 
 
 What is the Nature of Property ? 
 The nature of property is essentially changeable. As 
 society, on account of its progressive nature, must neces- 
 sarily be changeable in its movements; so property, being 
 based on society, of which it is a principal institution, 
 must unquestionably partake of its nature, and vacillate 
 with it. When society progresses under sage and just 
 laws, property will spread its roots and flourish ; but 
 when the social administration is conducted on foolish 
 and unjust principles, society must retrograde, and pro- 
 perty will participate in the social debasement, in exact 
 proportion to the contempt and disrespect entertained by 
 the people towards a weak and unjust administration. 
 
 As nothing which is mutable can exist in itself, so 
 neither can property endure through itself, but must be 
 dependent on society, which also being fluctuating, and 
 in the change of its laws must ever revert on its crea- 
 tors, common sense, reason, and experience, for support 
 and resuscitation, when its governing power has been 
 impaired through unwise government and unsocial legis- 
 lation. Neither property, therefore, nor society on which 
 it is based, is perfectly stable in itself, but must fall back 
 successively when its foes assail it, in order to be reor- 
 ganized and renovated under the guidance of common 
 sense and experience, united under the control of reason. 
 
108 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 These primitive constituents and directors of all with 
 which man has been associated retain property in chains, 
 though its tendency is to overstep the limits which they 
 have assigned it. On account of this disposition in pro- 
 perty to overreach society, and to render labour subser- 
 vient, it has been in constant struggle with reason, which 
 has ceaselessly condemned it, since its deprivation, because 
 of its depredatory tendency to devour society, and to 
 spoliate labour of its adequate reward. Besides, property 
 in its corrupt state has ever pretended to exist by itself, 
 and not to be accountable to society, reason therefore, 
 the vigilant protector of social rights, has as perseveringly 
 condemned and exposed this egoism and non-accounta- 
 bility on the part of proprietors, as they have insidiously 
 encroached on the human domain, and amassed together 
 its wealth. , 
 
 The cause why property has failed in the object of its 
 mission, which was, to produce order and happiness in 
 society, has been the pride and arrogance of proprietors, 
 who have looked upon society as unconditionally made 
 and existing solely for their behoof, instead of regarding 
 property as constituted by and made for the benefit of 
 society. Viewing the matter thus, they have set aside 
 the claims and the interests of the majority of mankind, 
 and regardless of the reclaimants, the disinherited la- 
 bourers, they have made appropriations after aggressions, 
 till labour has been reduced to a parallel with slavery ; 
 and the earth, in place of being enjoyed by man, is inter- 
 dicted by brick walls and fences ; even the common and 
 abbey lands of England have not been held sacred ; nei- 
 ther by government, that had no right to either give or 
 to sell them, in permanence, nor by the appropriating 
 
 
OF PROPERTY. 109 
 
 instincts of proprietors, whose profession is to worship 
 property, and their first mandate, Appropriate every- 
 thing, and hold fast that which has been amassed. 
 
 The nature of the common law of entail is, to render 
 property unchangeable, by establishing and fixing it as 
 the perpetual lineal right of certain individuals and 
 families, to enjoy eternally. However, this very law, 
 which has for its constituent principle the immutability 
 of property, is one of the most sublime proofs of its 
 transitive nature, and of the unreasonable pretensions of 
 proprietors to invest themselves with a cloak of immor- 
 tality. Entailed property, in its multifarious forms, is 
 the apex of property, on attaining which its decadence 
 and dissolution is inevitable : this is deducible simply 
 from the fact, that the tendency of entailed property is 
 to devour society, by whom it can alone be supported 
 and guaranteed in the hand of its possessors ; and through 
 its having established an isolated and self-existent family 
 property, it thereby endeavours to abstract so much pro- 
 perty from society, which can secure the rights of pro- 
 perty, only so far, and so long, as that property remains 
 social ; when it becomes unsocial, society by its consti- 
 tution can no longer recognize it as property, and it must 
 be considered as excommunicated from participating in 
 social rights. Et d'ailleurs regarde comme une bete fa- 
 rouche dont la gueule est bdillant pour englouter touts 
 les bienfonds des autres. 
 
 The very acts of individuals entailing their property 
 are unsocial and unconstitutional attempts to deprive so- 
 ciety of any future power or control over the entailed 
 property. Moreover, they are acts of injustice towards 
 the individuals in whose favour they are made, because 
 
J 10 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 the property is thereby rendered unsocial, and thus sub- 
 jected to the law of primitive possession, which had for 
 its support physical force, lex talionis. As no property 
 whatever can of possibility exist without the full juris- 
 diction of society, entailed property, which is vulgarly 
 called property, and believed to be such, is really nothing 
 more substantial than family possession, and the incum- 
 bent is only tenant during the courtesy of society. 
 
 Entailed property must be considered by every one 
 who knows thoroughly what society is, as anti-social. It 
 has been set apart by selfish men for the sole benefit of 
 their favorite heirs, in order that they might be through 
 its instrumentality enabled to live anti-socially, and to be 
 exempt from the usual operation of the laws which take 
 cognizance of other individuals when they contract debts. 
 The possessor of an entailed estate^ who receives the 
 rent, and squanders it, may besides take advantage of the 
 lugubrious deception, consequent on possessing an estate 
 which he has no power to dispose of, in order to facili- 
 tate the contraction of debts with industrious tradesmen, 
 who may thereby the more easily be induced to give him 
 credit, on the simple hope of rents, which he may never 
 live to realize ; therefore, as the substance that they 
 looked to, as the only source from which value could be 
 produced to pay their just claims, must necessarily fall 
 into the possession of another individual, they can have 
 no legal claim against that possession, beyond the Jordan 
 of the law, given for ever to the promised seed of him 
 who entailed the land. The only equitable alternative 
 for the creditors of the holder of an entailed estate is, to 
 take their possession of him whilst he is alive, by making 
 him pay a hazardous premium for his accommodation. 
 
OF PROPERTY. Ill 
 
 This alternate evil, consequent upon the practice of en- 
 tail, renders the last worse than the first, and establishes 
 the fact, that it is prolific of demoralization. 
 
 The holder of an entailed estate has not inherited the 
 fee simple, feodum simplex. He is only in possession, 
 not by purchase, but by gift of the individual who effected 
 the entail, and the reversion in fee simple is in the donor; 
 for, if the possessor in general tail die without issue, the 
 individual who entailed the estate, or his heirs, can claim 
 the estate as in their reversion. The tenant of an en- 
 tailed estate, feodum talliatum^ is simply entitled to the 
 produce of the estate for the time being. He is no more 
 the proprietor, than the traveller, who lodges in an inn, 
 and partakes of the best fare and accommodation that the 
 house will afford, is the landlord. The incumbent of an 
 entailed estate is invested with the privilege of using the 
 produce without having ever paid any consideration : he 
 reaps from another's sowing: he does not pay for his 
 enjoyment, but is a receiver of what has been wrested 
 from society. 
 
 The practice of entail is a futile attempt to create a 
 private property apart from society, and a selfish inven- 
 tion of man to render his memory immortal, by his en- 
 deavour to induce his posterity to revere and gratefully 
 to remember him who abstracted the property from the 
 control of society, and devised it to the special use of 
 his progeny. However, through the various operations 
 of these customs, it not unfrequently happens, that the 
 apple of discord is thrown into the family, and the elder 
 brother is rendered the curse of the younger brothers and 
 sisters, for in him they often see portrayed their doom of 
 exclusion from any participation in the family property 
 
112 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 Whilst their father was alive they were gathered around 
 the paternal hearth, and united, as brothers and sisters 
 should be, and in him they found the centre of their love 
 and affections ; but, in their father dead, they recognize 
 each other as enemies, and, like Hannibal, who was made 
 by his father to swear on the altars of Carthage an eternal 
 hatred to Rome, so they, the children of the same parent, 
 are often led, through their father's instrumentality, to 
 immolate on his grave the bond of fraternity, and to 
 swear an implacable hatred and disaffection towards their 
 elder brother. The younger sons and daughters are 
 sometimes obliged quietly to submit to their degradation ; 
 for, if they were to be recusants, magistrates and the 
 whole legal fraternity are primed, not only with powder 
 in their wigs, but with cartridges enveloped in statutes 
 in their briefs, and the judge sits, prepared with the 
 flaming sword of the law, eagerly panting to be let loose 
 on the offending brothers or sisters, to drive them from 
 their once happy home. 
 
 If entailed property be founded on justice, then, when 
 justice shall have rendered to all their rights, it will have 
 perished by justice. But, as force is the chosen field 
 upon which entailed property has taken its stand, unfold- 
 ed its banners, and reared its fortifications, it is on this 
 ground where justice, the subduer of physical force, must 
 raise its ramparts ; and, by the force of justice, disarm 
 its enemy, burying it in contumely below the ruins of that 
 immense mass of abject misery, which it has piled over 
 the human race. 
 
 That physical force is the principle upon which the 
 common law of entail is founded, cannot be denied; this 
 is even admitted by its warm supporter, Mr. M c Culloch, 
 
OF PROPERTY. 113 
 
 who, when writing on the nature of entail, endeavours to 
 palliate the evils of this bad custom, by stating, that 
 u It has long been customary in this as well as in many 
 other countries, when estates consist of land, to leave 
 them either wholly, or principally, to the eldest son, and 
 to give the younger sons and daughters, smaller portions 
 in money. Many objections have been made to this cus- 
 tom, but mostly as it would appear without due consi- 
 deration. That it has its inconveniences, is no doubt 
 true ; but they seem to be trifling, compared with the 
 advantages which it exclusively possesses. It forces the 
 younger sons to quit the home of their father, and makes 
 them depend for success in life on the fair exercise of 
 their talents ; it helps to prevent the splitting of landed 
 property into too small portions, and stimulates the hol- 
 ders of estates to endeavour to save a monied fortune 
 adequate for the outfit of the younger children, without 
 rendering them a burden on their senior. Its influence, 
 in these and other respects, is equally powerful and salu- 
 tary. The sense of inferiority, as compared with others, 
 is, next to the pressure of want, one of the most powerful 
 motives to exertion. The younger sons of our great 
 landed proprietors are particularly sensible to this sti- 
 mulus. Their inferiority in point of wealth, and their 
 desire to escape from this lower station, and to attain to 
 the same level with their elder brothers, inspires them 
 with an energy and vigor they could not otherwise feel. 
 But the advantage of preventing large estates from being 
 frittered down by a scheme of equal division is not li- 
 mited to its influence over the younger children of their 
 owners. It raises universally the standard of competence, 
 and gives new force to the springs which set industry in 
 
114 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 motion. The manner of living amongst the great land- 
 lords is that in which every one is ambitious of being 
 able to indulge; and their habits of expense, though 
 sometimes injurious to themselves, act as powerful in- 
 centives to the ingenuity and enterprise of the other 
 classes, who never think their fortunes sufficiently ample, 
 unless they will enable them to emulate the splendour of 
 the richest landlords ; so that the custom of primogeni- 
 ture seems to render all classes more industrious, and to 
 augment at the same time the mass of wealth, and the 
 scale of enjoyment. The business of those who inherit . 
 considerable fortunes is rather to spend than accumulate; 
 and while, on the one hand, the desire to attain to an 
 equality of riches with them, is a powerful spur to in- 
 dustry : the manner of living which they render fashion- 
 able, prevents, on the other, the groJwth of those sordid 
 and miserly habits that are subversive of every generous 
 impulse." 
 
 Custom at last becomes law ; that is to say, if it has 
 lasted time out of mind. Such is the common law of 
 entail, which, though it may not be statute law, is still 
 as injurious to society. However, in order to palliate the 
 nature of the common law of entail, Mr. M c Culloch 
 enumerates what he considered to be its most prominent 
 merits, without having perceived even in the smallest 
 degree that what he was erroneously supposing to be its 
 virtues were, strangely to say, its inherent vices. He 
 instances force as being one of its executive merits, by 
 which the younger brothers are forced to quit the home 
 of paternity ; besides that it stimulates the holders of 
 estates to save a monied fortune. The first operation of 
 this custom is an action of force, an ejectment by the 
 
OF PROPERTY. 115 
 
 elder brother, turning the younger branches of the family 
 out of doors, to seek their fortune in society. The se- 
 cond result, after having turned the younger sons of the 
 aristocracy adrift on society, is, that of creating a miserly 
 incentive on the part of the holders of entailed estates, 
 so as to abstain from spending money, or as little as pos- 
 sible on its improvement, and by this means conduce to 
 throw the labourers out of employment. 
 
 These are the two first dividends paid to society for 
 the property monopolized by entailed estate holders. 
 The first, that of turning out of their father's home, 
 and quartering upon the nation the younger sons of 
 the aristocracy, is to the dishonor and burden of society 
 too frequently realized. The second instalment, that of 
 the proprietors of entailed estates saving a monied for- 
 tune, is a mere hypothetical delusion; and Mr. M c Culloch, 
 when he says, that " the custom of entail stimulated the 
 holders of estates to endeavour to save a monied for- 
 tune," is not very consistent, for he thereby refutes at the 
 bottom of the page what he affirmed at the top; for ex- 
 ample, he states subsequently, that " the business of those 
 who inherit considerable fortune is rather to spend than 
 accumulate/' He furthermore, after having enumerated 
 the beneficial effects on society of the law of entail, ex- 
 presses a doubt as to its efficacy to produce any good at 
 all. " But to whatever cause" says he, u it may be 
 owing, we may safely affirm, that an interest in the wel- 
 fare of others has never been more strongly manifested 
 in any age or country than in our own." 
 
 We are most willing to bear our testimony to the be- 
 nevolent spirit of Englishmen, and also to give to the 
 charitable institutions of this country all the culogium 
 
116 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 which they merit ; but, at the same time, we dissent 
 from the attempt made by Mr. M c Culloch, to elevate 
 them at the expense of the character of other nations 
 which have no workhouses, nor poor laws like ourselves. 
 Besides, it is a question whether or not our numerously 
 charitable institutions be not an index, which clearly de- 
 monstrates the baseness of a system which has called 
 into existonce so many workhouses and bridewells, and 
 which has placed on the statute-book such severe and 
 stringent poor laws. Give the people justice, and labour 
 its just rights, and we would have no need of workhouses, 
 nor poor laws. The people do not want charity ; they 
 demand only justice : they deny your charity; and be- 
 lieve it to be only hypocrisy, through the profession of 
 which you preserve your own monopolies by paying a 
 small premium towards the maintenance of those charit- 
 able institutions, which prevent thei poor disinherited 
 labourers from laying rough hands on you. Between the 
 rich and the poor, charity is simply a matter of account, 
 which is balanced with the most scrupulous exactness, 
 of how much the rich owe to the poor, and how little 
 the obligation can be paid with. If the great landlords 
 were so very benevolent, as Mr. M c Culloch would have 
 us believe, then the people themselves must be irre- 
 claimably depraved; for we find, that in 1842 the popu- 
 lation of France was thirty-four millions. The number 
 of persons committted for trial during that year was 6353. 
 In 1842 the population of England and Wales was sixteen 
 millions. Committed for trial 31,309 persons ; or, in pro- 
 portion to the population, eleven times as much crime in 
 England as in France. If crime were as prevalent in 
 France, as it is in England, the number of persons that 
 
OF PROPERTY. 117 
 
 would be committed for trial every year in France, would 
 be 68,406 In Ireland, from 1835 to 1849, crime has 
 been, in proportion to the population, twice as much as 
 in England, or twenty-two times greater than it is in 
 France. In the United Kingdom, every twelfth Scotch- 
 man, every ninth Englishman, and every sixth Irishman 
 is a pauper ; and yet Mr. M c Culloch boasts of the unpa- 
 ralleled and unprecedented interest which the aristocracy 
 of this country take in the welfare of others. 
 
 The allowance of the practice of entail is a disgrace to 
 our legislation, as its tendency is to spoliate society by 
 abstracting its property, and bestowing its utility upon 
 isolated individuals. This gift is nothing else than the 
 usurpation, through a pretension of constitutional law, 
 of the rights of society, and is an arrant imposture 
 under the garb of a territorial proprietor. 
 
 We have shewn that property could only have origi- 
 nated in society ; and that, if it were used in accordance 
 with its primitive intent, it would be a blessing to the 
 human race. But, were we to trace the origin and deve- 
 lopment of the law of entail, we should find its founda- 
 tion firmly based on ambition and selfishness; producing, 
 as its fruits, hatred between children of the same father, 
 a curse to society, and the apex or consummation of mis- 
 applied property. Entailed estates, being the first kind 
 of misguided property, that, in the decadence of the 
 dominant right of property, over labour, will suffer on 
 account of its exotic and over- advanced position, which 
 stretches far beyond the power or right of society to pro- 
 tect; it having been made by its original constitution 
 anti-social, and the antagonist of social rights. 
 
 Society only could organize, constitute, and establish 
 
118 THE EIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 property, by subjecting it to certain prescribed laws. 
 Property, therefore, of every sort, must recognize soci- 
 ety as its parent and guardian, and submit to its laws, 
 otherwise it has forfeited all claim for protection, by re- 
 fusing to conform to the laws which constitute it pro- 
 perty, and as they were understood in principle, when 
 man at first merged his common or personal right to a 
 participation in the produce of the earth, into that of a 
 common right to self-preservation, out of which property 
 has arisen, and on the fulfilment of which it only can 
 claim its right to be at present tolerated by society ; as 
 all denominations of property, howsoever plausible and 
 imposing their appearances may be, which have not a 
 common right afforded and guaranteed to each member 
 of society to share in its benefits, are not really property, 
 but so many various means and systems of organised 
 spoliation, established not for the ostensible good of so- 
 ciety but for occult and selfish purposes. 
 
 We have previously said, and here we again repeat it, 
 were it only for the edification of proprietors, on whose 
 obdurate minds it cannot be too often impressed, that 
 property cannot exist in itself, or then it would be 
 omnipotent. It cannot exist in them, for then it would 
 only be simple possession, and not property. It is of 
 social organization, and exists solely through the instru- 
 mentality of society. If it have not its foundation and 
 existence in society, then it does not exist at all as pro- 
 perty, but has been transmuted into a different form. 
 Even when property remains social, and is guarded and 
 protected by society, a true understanding of its nature 
 is very difficult on account of its changeableness, which 
 each successive opinion of society modulates into confer- 
 
OP PROPERTY. 119 
 
 mity with itself. Need it then be wondered at, that 
 property, in its present constitution and development, 
 which is quite at variance with its original principle, 
 should present to the political economist such a multitude 
 of contradictory forms, which defy the reconciliation of 
 customs with principles. 
 
 The design of society, in establishing the rights of 
 property, could have proceeded from no other motive 
 than to facilitate the progress of man, by rendering him 
 more certain of enjoying the fruits of his labour, than 
 when unprotected by social laws. The origin of pro- 
 perty, therefore, is founded on a principle of benevolence 
 and justice ; and to facilitate the dissemination of this 
 good and generous principle amongst mankind, is a duty 
 which devolves upon society. Were it not for the cry 
 of distress which vibrates from the oppressed labourers, 
 in accusation of society, we should have rested satisfied, 
 that all had been done to complete the happiness of man 
 that could be devised, or executed, in order to carry out 
 to the fullest extent the benevolent purpose of the 
 institution of property ; and that the duties of society 
 in effecting that purpose had been fulfilled with a success 
 beyond even what might have been anticipated, when we 
 take into account the various difficulties it had to struggle 
 against, before learning was at all diffused among the 
 great body of its members, had we not found upon minute 
 examination into the developments of property, that 
 many of its present laws were subversive of social happi- 
 ness. On detecting this renegade tendency, in the laws 
 by which property is administered, we are induced, for 
 the sake of property and labour, to institute further en- 
 quiries into the nature of that wealth which society has 
 
 
120 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 called into existence under the social appellation of 
 property ; and which for a length of time has adopted 
 the principle of oppressing labour, and is even now de- 
 Touring in vast numbers the children of the social family 
 from whom it originated, and which stood sponsor for it at 
 its initiation into society, that it should keep the laws of 
 society, resisting the temptations of exclusive property, 
 with all its pomps and vanities ; and by whose permission 
 and indulgence it is still permitted to retain its primitive 
 title property. 
 
 Labour was in full fruition of natural rights; and 
 wealth, the product of labour, existed to a certain degree 
 before society was formed, and they could yet exist in 
 that state independently of society ; however, that could 
 only be to a very limited extent, and their influence could 
 embrace only a circumscribed circle of individuals ; for 
 without the aid of society, to secure to man the peace- 
 able and certain enjoyment of the fruits of his labour, 
 and to foster and facilitate through its protection the 
 peaceable extension of a reciprocal exchange of products 
 between the various members of society, man could have 
 little or no inducement to produce more than what his 
 more immediate wants demanded ; in fact, without this 
 protection, the more the labourers produced over and 
 above what their daily wants required ; so, in proportion, 
 would they be exposed to the inroads of the indolent, or 
 non-producing classes, who would find a sufficient over- 
 plus in production, to enable them to live without labour- 
 ing themselves. 
 
 Labour has been constituted by nature king of the 
 world, and man, the chief of nature's works, has been 
 brought into existence, and reared up to manhood by 
 
OF PROPERTY. 121 
 
 means of labour : even before be has been born, be has 
 a certain degree of labour expended on him in various 
 ways; us, for instance, bis mother requiring during ber 
 pregnancy care and attention to be paid to ber, which 
 may have necessitated die engagement of an additional 
 number of servants to assist ber in the discharge of ber 
 domestic duties, when she was incapacitated from per- 
 forming them herself. Man himself, therefore, is the 
 personification of labour; and the reason why he through 
 its instrumentality becomes master of creation is solely 
 m account of the origin of all wealth being inherently 
 biaed in him, by immediate gift from the Creator, in 
 a much greater propoition than in any other creature. 
 Many of the animals have far superior corporeal strength 
 than man ; but he, by that intellectual mind which God 
 has bestowed only on him, has thereby the facility of 
 turning his inferior bodily strength to an infinitely supe- 
 rior advantage than any of the instinctive animals. 
 "Subdue the earth, and have dominion over it," uas 
 the first precept imposed on man. In other words, 
 labour, and you shall be rewarded for that toil, by your 
 corning into possession of the world, through the very 
 act of appropriation which requires a certain amount of 
 labour on the part of the appropriates Society recog- 
 nizes the right of appropriation as being equal in all, 
 and respects the industry of those who appropriate, by 
 the free exercise of labour, the unappropriated gifts of 
 nature, by pledging itself to support and guarantee the 
 right of each individual to possess unmolested whatever 
 be may have acquired through his exertions that is not 
 prejudicial to the rights of others. "It is to labour," 
 says Mr. MCulloch, *' and to it only, that man owes 
 
 
122 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 every thing possessed of value. Labour is the talisman 
 that has raised him from the condition of the savage, 
 that has changed the desert arid the forest into cultivated 
 fields, that has covered the earth with cities, and the 
 ocean with ships, that has given us plenty, comfort, 
 and elegance, instead of want, misery, and barbarism. 
 
 Here we are in accord in principle with Mr. M c Cul- 
 loch as to the powerful effect of labour in changing the 
 face of nature, and in influencing the destiny of social 
 happiness ; our only difference being a slight shade of 
 opinion as to the natural influence of labour over matter. 
 He has compared it to a talisman, whose influence and 
 operation may be often very uncertain and irregular: we 
 have assigned it a loftier prerogative, and designated it, 
 the Sovereign of the world, that has made all things of 
 utility not provided for man by nature, and that has 
 stamped its ensign upon all that the globe contains of 
 exchangeable value, comparing and adjusting with the 
 nicest scrupulosity the relative proportions of exchange- 
 able value which each product of labour respectively 
 contains. 
 
 With labour as the sovereign of every thing possessing 
 value in use and value in exchange, the kingdom of 
 pioperty, as at present existing, is shaken to its very 
 foundation : its princes sink into insignificance ; their 
 thrones topple, and the crowns on their heads become 
 dim before the rays of the sun of labour advancing to 
 take possession of his inheritance. If labour be sove- 
 reign of our social vineyard, what is the value of the 
 prerogative of those husbandmen who do not labour at 
 all ; but who, nevertheless, claim a right to wield the 
 sceptre of power, and to possess it irrespectively of the 
 
 
OF PROPERTY. 1?3 
 
 rights of die lieirs at la\v, tlie labourers? As labour is 
 the producer of every thing which is valuable, either in 
 use or in exchange, lio\v has it been brought about that 
 the labourers have been shorn of ail which is considered 
 as possessing intrinsic value in exchange; and that, in 
 proportion as their labour increases in intenseness, so 
 in an inverse proportion does their wages generally 
 decline? 
 
 It is quite evident that labour was carried on by man 
 for the perpetuation of his existence long previously to 
 the formation of society ; so that, independently of so- 
 ciety, he must then have been in possession of the fruits 
 of his industrj^, and every individual must have been 
 wealthy in proportion to the extent of die produce of 
 his labour over and above what he consumed in pro- 
 ducing, and in so far as he was able to hold self-posses- 
 sion, and to defend the appropriated commodities. 
 
 Had it been practicably beneficial for man to have 
 remained in primitive relations with his fellow man, the 
 formation of society would not have taken place, but 
 \vould have been repulsed by mankind as an unnecessary 
 invasion of primitive rights, however, a primitive state 
 of possession was not possible to be preserved, along 
 with the increase of population, and the perpetuation of 
 that principle of domination and acquisitiveness which 
 we find so naturally dominant in man, even when he 
 is controlled through living in society. This principle 
 would more and more develop its latent power as men 
 began to multiply in the world, and to migrate towards 
 the poles. They would find the difficulty greater of 
 being able to satisfy all their various wants by individual 
 labour, the more they were pressed by ci.cu 
 
J2-4 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 towards rude and inclement climes: and thus finding 
 themselves located in peculiar positions, under unfavor- 
 able auspices, on account of their isolated exertions, 
 and the difficulties of producing as abundantly as those 
 who might have taken up a more favorable position, 
 they would naturally resort to all sorts of wiles and 
 frauds in order to supply themselves either by stealth, or 
 by open violence, with what they required to satiate 
 their real, or supposed wants. Man finding himself in 
 want of, or deprived of those necessaries which nature 
 required that he should have a share of, in order to 
 render him happy, and observing them in the custody of 
 others, whilst he was excluded from any benefit in them, 
 would naturally be urged on, through want, to prosecute 
 aggressions on others to make up his deficiency : other 
 individuals similarly circumstanced would make the same 
 sort of reprisals, and through course of time these would 
 become fashionable, and even be considered as an ho- 
 norable profession, till at last bad-intentioned individuals 
 ivould, solely for the love of plunder, infest the honest 
 labourer and spoliate his wealth ; thus leaving him desti- 
 tute, whilst those depredators would enjoy the fruits of his 
 exertions, by robbing him to save themselves the trouble 
 of earning their bread by the sweat of their brows. 
 
 Iso doubt society arose not from any spontaneous act 
 of mankind, but \vas naturally and gradually formed, 
 through the necessity of affording individual protection 
 to life and property? as the increase of population ad- 
 vanced, and as men found themselves by reason thereof 
 unfavorably circumstanced on account of the new comers 
 and the idlers venting their selfish propensities upon 
 them, who had honorably and laboriously toiled in 
 
IU 
 
 ' 
 
 OF PROPERTY. 12.3 
 
 barinir the burden and expense of producing useful and 
 beneficial commodities for the existence and the comfort 
 of mankind. These strangers to wealth, that mankind 
 for their pleasure had called into existence, as naked of 
 property as Job, not feeling disposed patiently to submit 
 to their privation, and in adoration of those who had 
 occasioned their fate to placidly quit the scene as equal 
 in misery as they were ushered into life, would to a 
 certain extent make common lot with the idlers in spo- 
 liating the wealth produced by the labour of others, and 
 in committing aggressions and depredations upon the 
 
 lividual liberties of man. To counteract the evil 
 tendency of these attacks on industry, and with a view 
 towards establishing an adequate protection to life, 
 liberty, and property, men found themselves gradually 
 compelled to organize themselves into associations or 
 societies for the purpose of mutual protection against 
 their common enemy, and to promulgate social laws by 
 which their objects should be accomplished. During 
 this formation of society, which may be denominated 
 the period of property, we find the vestiges of wealth 
 in the various social strata, under multifarious forms, 
 decomposed by the advancing tide of society as it gra- 
 dually swept over them towards the present progressive 
 era of property. 
 
 The laws which society successively adopted for the 
 purpose of social government, were no doubt modelled 
 on the previously existing customs that men l)ad indivi- 
 dually put in force for self-preservation,, and which had 
 gradually sprung up as the earth was progressively popu- 
 lated, and as the various wants of that population mani- 
 fested themselves ; whether it WQVQ. frpui natural causes^ 
 
]2 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 or through artificially created wants, on account of 
 iv bat each individual necessarily required a share of, 
 having been monopolized by a class. The progress of 
 population, therefore, and the fear of want, are the 
 parents of society ; and to prevent mankind from being 
 exposed to want, or reduced to a common condition of 
 misery, society has been instituted on the principle, that 
 there was abundance on the earth for all, and that it 
 was responsibly bound to justly administer the wealth of 
 the world for the benefit of those deservedly entitled to 
 possess it, and for whose use it was primordially be- 
 queathed. Should it be contended for, that society has 
 been instituted to protect property, for the sole benefit of 
 its possessors, then the consistent obligation of those who 
 Lave no property to conform to the laws, which are made 
 for the protection of property, mny be successfully dis- 
 puted, in antagonism to this absurd theory of the exclu- 
 sive and unconditional right of property. 
 
 In the primitive state in which men must have existed 
 previously to the formation of society, common rights were 
 no doubt recognized, and equal eligibilities to possession 
 manifestly and practically carried out, by which every fa- 
 mily would have a right to its fair proportion of the sur- 
 face of the globe, in ratio to the number of families, and 
 to the respective force of each family, to beneficially cul- 
 tivate the soil, and to retain possession. Without this, 
 there could have been no commonality of interest; and 
 any one who had appropriated more than his fair share 
 \vould have usurped that possession, as it could only have 
 been acquired through aggressive appropriation : from 
 which possession the approprintor might have been dis- 
 lodged by any whose acquisitive powers were predominant. 
 
OF PROPERTY. 127 
 
 The objects men must Lave Lad in view in instituting 
 society, and in consenting to be governed by its laws, no 
 doubt were to facilitate the division of labour, to gua- 
 rantee the common rights of the labourers, and after 
 that the division of labour had been fully carried out by 
 the labourers devoting their attention to different occu- 
 pations, to appoint a government as arbitrator between 
 contending interests that might be rightly or wrongly in 
 possession of any portion of the social stock. 
 
 Labour, though naturallv constituted sovereign of the 
 world, would often, as men increased, find its kingdom 
 desolated by individual oppression and party feuds, 
 through the desire of certain individuals to acquire pos- 
 session of that which, by the rights of labour, belonged 
 to those who had produced it. Society having descried 
 the immense advantage which would be derivable to all 
 its members, by protecting industry from those conflicts 
 which from time to time threatened to destroy its effi- 
 cacy and to annihilate its power, was naturally induced 
 by common sense, and prompted by reason, to institute 
 laws for the adequate protection of life and property, 
 and to enforce the due observance of primitively recog- 
 nized and equal rights, by securing to each and to all its 
 members an equal protection to the produce of their 
 industry, and the right to enjoy the benefits which might 
 be derived from its free and unfettered development. 
 
 By observation and experience, men would discover, 
 that, for the effectual protection of labour and its pro- 
 ducts, they required a more powerful and energetic body, 
 to enforce obedience and to repeal aggression, than the 
 isolated and individual power of each labourer to defend 
 his possession ; and giving credence to the supposition 
 
128 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 that they would find in a society constituted bv them- 
 selves, for the protection of each, the surest and hest 
 means of carrying out their purpose of happiness, they 
 parted with their primitive rights and powers, vesting 
 them in society, under the conditions,that it should govern 
 for the common good ; and that it should do no act what- 
 ever whereb}' the commonality of the rights of labour 
 might be in any way compromised. As the commonality 
 of labourers thus thought properto merge into society, and 
 to delegate to it their sovereign prerogative, society could 
 have undertaken that responsibility under no other con- 
 sideration, than that of exerting its united power to render 
 primitive possessions more equal in their tenure, and more 
 certain in their duration, by conferring on the possessors a 
 conditionally vested property in them ; and as all pro- 
 perty necessarily implies a common primitive possession, 
 the consent of the primitive possessors, he labourers, and 
 of society, either expressed or implied, was absolutely 
 necessary to form and to consolidate the social union ; 
 which, through its natural development, has created pro- 
 perty. Without the pledge of society to guarantee the 
 rights of property, all acquisitions of wealth must have 
 remained in the same exposed condition they were in 
 previously to social organization ; which was, simply 
 individual possession secured only so long as that indi- 
 vidual's strength was adequate to defend his possession 
 against the aggressor. 
 
 In labour assigning its rights of possession to its de- 
 legate, society, in order to be constituted property, it 
 acted on the very same principle, and with the same 
 design and precaution, which animated the An^lo-Saxon 
 and Norman barons, at the council of the landholders of 
 
: 
 
 OP PROPERTY* 1 20 
 
 England, hold at Old Sarnm, in the autumn of 1080; 
 
 hen the territorial survey, designated Doomsday Book, 
 was. completed. The property assigned as the share of 
 each landlord was hy this compilation clearly defined, 
 as far as was practicahle and necessary, at the time this 
 social compact was made with William the Bas.*ard, Dtike 
 of Normandy. The barons were the then actual lords 
 of the soil ; Guillome le bdtard. William the Bastard, 
 bv his conquest, having been only in provisional po-st'S- 
 
 on ; as he could not miike the land his vested property, 
 ,'ithout the consent of the possessors, and the old Saxon 
 
 rons. However, many of the old barons had fallen 
 at the battle of Hastings ; some had fled, and not a few 
 Lad been deprived of their estates through their futile 
 insurrections to throw off the yoke ; so that, the ancient 
 possessors of the soil were, at this time, reduced to a 
 small number, which enabled the Conqueror, as Black- 
 stone has said> * c to reward his Norman followers with 
 very large and extensive possessions, which gave a handle 
 to the monkish historians, and such as have implicitly 
 followed them, to represent him as having, by the right of 
 the sword, seized on all the lands of England, and dealt 
 them out again to his own favorites. A supposition 
 grounded upon a mistaken sense of the sword conquest, 
 which, in its feodal acceptation, signifies no more than 
 acquisition^ and this has led many hasty writers into a 
 strange historical mistake, nixl one which upon the slightest 
 examination will be found to be most untijne." 
 
 That he had nominally made himself master of the 
 property of the country, is quite clear; for at this coun- 
 cil, most of the landlords tendered their possessions to 
 him, so that they might receive them back in fee simple; 
 
330 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 nml he, in returning their possessions and rights, reesta- 
 blished them in those respective privileges, without any 
 pecuniary consideration, at the time of transfer, hut 
 simplv, on a promise or covenant, that he was to he re- 
 cognized hv them as sovereign of the state, and as head 
 of die civil government; and that lie, on his part, recog- 
 nised them as the representatives of the wealth of the 
 notion, and the protectors of the rights of the people. 
 He agreed to guard and defend them in the peaceable 
 enjoyment of their rights and possessions, and to distri- 
 hnte justice equally among them, by making each respect 
 his neighbour's rights and property, as the only equiva- 
 lent to his own being protected. And they assented, on 
 their part, to do their utmost, in order to support him, 
 in carrying on the government for the mutual benefit of 
 the whole nation ; and, in case of civil or foreign wars, 
 or invasions, each was to contribute his fair share towards 
 the common defence. This is the nature of the foedal 
 tenure, on which property in England is based. The 
 foedal compact positively defined, that, protection to pro- 
 perty was to be maintained at the expense of property; 
 and paid for by the owners of property, at the very time 
 that, that protection was required. Protecting property, 
 by rnciins of its proprietors obtaining credit, is no part 
 of the foedal system, whose principle is the immediate 
 and imperative fulfilment by proprietors, of obligations 
 and duties, when demanded by the state. The modern 
 idea of shifting the duties of property, and the obligations 
 of proprietors upon the industrious labourers, owes its 
 origin to n much more recent date than the time of 
 William the Norman. Even, in those rude times, had 
 any of the barons assembled at Old arum, hinted at, or 
 
1 1 
 
 ;: 
 
 OF PROPERTY. 131 
 
 su<ested, such an ungenerous and dishonourable shuffle, 
 as that of shifting their obligations, by credit, on poste- 
 ity, it would have been reprobated ; and its projector 
 ould have been looked upon as the enemy of mankind 
 and the assassin of social justice and of equal rights. 
 
 All property is supposed to have been originally de- 
 rived from the sovereign; the fact, however, is, that this 
 only a conventional admission for the -convenience of 
 ocial government; the original right of possession bem<$ 
 vested in the people, and through them conceded to the 
 
 trons. Those, therefore, who think that the land of 
 jgland primitively belonged either to the sovereign or 
 to the barons, may as consistently suppose, that society 
 could have existed previously to labour. Nations were 
 established by the people : and kings and all other exe- 
 cutive magistrates were created in them, to fulfil their 
 wishes. In kingdoms, the executive power has been 
 confided to one individual, whom they chose to call their 
 king. The first instance on record of the people desir- 
 ing to abrogate republicanism, and to establish a king- 
 dom in its stead, arose through the bad rule of the 
 judges of the Jewish Republic in the time of Samuel. 
 So depraved had the judges of that republic become, that 
 they bought and sold justice ; this so incensed the people 
 that they desired Samuel to dismiss even his own sons, 
 and to elect a king to govern them. Samuel protested 
 against this, not from any paternal sympathy for his 
 sons, but because that those kings would appropriate 
 their sons and daughters,, and subjugate them to- the most 
 debasing of occupations. 
 
 The primitive labourers had been naturally compelled 
 through the oppressive aggression of monopoly, and the- 
 
132 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 venal love for lucre manifested by mercenaries wlio 
 disregarded individual rights, to adopt the organization of 
 society, as the best means to escape from oppression, 
 expecting that in the bosom of society they would find 
 their true protector and constant friend. However, they 
 have been deceived, like the Jews, who were met by the 
 slavery of kings in escaping from the wicked rule of 
 their judges Society has subverted its principles, and at 
 present considers the labourer as having been made for it, 
 and that it has been constituted more for the purpose 
 of protecting property, than for defending the rights of 
 labour. 
 
 The producers of wealth, the labourers, gave up their 
 original acquisitions and their unstable possessions to 
 society, for reasons analagous to those which induced the 
 Anglo-Saxon and Norman barons to concentrate theirs 
 under the protection of William the Norman ; and when 
 the industrious classes call on the government, the dele- 
 gated representative of society, to piotect them in their 
 rights, and to shield them from aggression, they only 
 follow the equitable and just precedent established 
 bv the independent spirit of the barons of Hunni- 
 mede, who remonstrated with king John and successfully 
 taught him, that, though they had vested the executive 
 in the crown, they were still through the strength of 
 labour the lords of their possessions nnd rights, which 
 were not to be wrested from them by any innovation on 
 his part ; though backed up and supported by the sub- 
 tilty and power of the Romish Clergy. The lawyers on 
 the other hand being always of knightly descent, stood 
 by the constitution, in its Saxon spirit. 
 
 It was the voluntary gift, by the barons, of the soil of 
 
OF PROPERTY. 133 
 
 England to William the Bastard, which constituted him 
 proprietor of the land. As the barons were in posses- 
 sion of the whole of the soil, the Conqueror could not 
 have become possessed of the right of granting it to them 
 in fee simple, had they not conceded their previous title 
 to him ; for, if he had conquered it by the sword, then 
 any individual more potent than himself would have had 
 perfectly as good, if not a better right, than he, a Bas- 
 tard, to expel the heirs of Harold from the kingdom. 
 Were it by right of conquest that the sovereigns of 
 England are invested in the right of the soil, then the 
 rights of the present occupiers may be disputed, and set 
 aside by the same physical force on which they are sup- 
 po^ed to rest. But this very act of the barons recog- 
 nising William the Conqueror as their sovereign, has 
 legalized their property in the eyes of the law, and made 
 it sociable, so far as that bargain bears the impress of 
 being in conformity with social rinhts, and is acted upon 
 with a view to benefit society. And those who accuse 
 the barons of Kunnimede of revolt against their Sove- 
 reign, must do so without having duly taken into con^i- 
 deration the unwarrantable encroachments that the King 
 was making on those rights of the subject, which he had 
 sworn to preserve unimpaired. Besides, the barons were 
 not his menials, though they had covenanted that for 
 their mutual and social protection they would recognize 
 Lim as their legitimate sovereign, or military chief and 
 governor, in the event of any of their rights being as- 
 sailed in any way whatever by foreign or domestic foes. 
 In having checked the progress of despotism so effec- 
 tually as they did, they manifested in a high degree that 
 honorable, high minded, and patriotic spirit for which 
 
134- THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 our ancestors were so remarkably distinguished, and to 
 which we are indebted for the laying of that foundation 
 of liberty upon which our constitution so nobly stands. 
 By Magna Charta, despotism was arrested on its march 
 to enslave the people of England ; and on the meadow, 
 culled Kunnirnede, between Staines and Windsor, was 
 planted the tree of British liberty, under whose branches 
 Britain has arisen to her present greatness among the 
 nations of the world. 
 
 As ancient history is almost silent with respect to the 
 primitive formation of society, it is quite impossible, 
 therefore, to fix any absolute time as the epoch when 
 society may be said to have been constituted ; or, to de- 
 fine exactly the various and exact circumstances which 
 may have induced men to form themselves into orga- 
 nized associations for the object of common protection, 
 and the peaceable enjoyment of their equal rights. We 
 are certain, however, that individual families, which may 
 be designated the atoms of the great social family, were 
 established at a very early period, and possessions as- 
 signed them. At the same time, we must remember, 
 that those possessions were not vested property ; but 
 merely a usufruct, or simply a possession for the time 
 being. We find, that the children of Japhcth, from 
 whom the Europeans are descended, were the first 
 people we read of that allotted to each family its pro- 
 portion of the soil of the country which the tribe may 
 have occupied ; so that, even then, a precocious leaning 
 towards territorial possession, and fixed location, seems 
 to have been the characteristic of the European race. 
 Nevertheless, we have no grounds for supposing that 
 this early system of possession was enjoyed by certain 
 
OF PROPERTY. 135 
 
 families, exclusively, so as to debar others from mutually 
 sharing the same privileges, and partaking of equal ad- 
 vantages with the rest of the tribe. 
 
 The descendants of the other two sons of Noah were, 
 generally, from their peculiar position on the globe, less 
 dependent on a fixed location, nature having gratuitously 
 provided them with a larger proportion of the necessaries 
 of life than it hud done in the case of more northern 
 nations; therefore, though we find men living invariably 
 in associations, it is, notwithstanding, on the principle of 
 common riirht to possession ; and at the same time, that, 
 that possession is guaranteed to those who may acquire it 
 through means of labour, yet the right in the article 
 possessed is never ce^ed to any particular individual, 
 with the understanding that it is absolute propertv, 
 namely, jus utendi e f abutendi re sna, the right of using, 
 nnd the right of abusing, the thins possessed. This was 
 the right of a proprietor according to the old Roman 
 law. which has been sanctified by our modern jurispru- 
 dence. As this right, of using and of abusing, confirmed 
 and sanctified by the law, is the sacred robe by which the 
 tribe of proprietors are consecrated and admitted within 
 the veil of property, and whereby they are set apart to the 
 service of the golden ark of property, which keeps them 
 afloat, whilst the hewers of wood and the drawers of 
 water must go to the bottom, in workhouses and prisons. 
 
 Whilst devastation is being consummated on the 
 labourers hv proprietors, it is a duty we owe to hu- 
 manity, to endeavour by every means in our power 
 to persuade them, that the industrious classes are about 
 laying the last beam of the ark which is destined to float 
 industry towards its legitimate possessions and rights; 
 
136 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 and that, already the doctrine of social regeneration is 
 sounding through the world ; therefore, the old world of 
 proprietors can, uow only, save themselves, by repentance 
 Sand concession. 
 
 Labour could not sufficiently protect itself without the 
 aid of society, so neither can society exist were labour 
 to withdraw from supporting it; both are therefore in- 
 dissolubly dependent upon each other for support ; so 
 that they must to a certain degree stand or fall together. 
 If the protection of society were to be taken from labour, 
 man would retrograde towards a state of primitive bar- 
 barism, where society would become extinct ; not quite 
 so with labour, that,. though it might be reduced to its 
 lowest ebb of production and usefulness, would never- 
 theless survive its degradation, and phenix-like arise 
 out of its very ashes, to reestablish its ancient power 
 and to rescuscitate its former concomitants, society and 
 property, with all their train of dependents. Thus, the 
 eternal round of man's happiness and misery is continu- 
 ously produced through apparent discord ; not politically 
 understood, but which, when comprehended, will be ulti^ 
 matelv turned by political econonw into an universal 
 harmony. However, before this desirable altitude shall 
 have been half attained by society, the labourers will 
 have long and painfully to suffer, in bearing their bur- 
 dens up the hill of transformation ; and hecatombs of 
 victims will have to bleed, on the ultar of selfish 
 monopoly and irresponsible property. All, therefore, 
 that can be practicably done, by political philanthropists, 
 during this disastrous march of society, will be to allevi- 
 ate,as much as possible, by judicious council, the privations 
 and sufferings of the industrious classes, that will have 
 
OP PROPERTY. 137 
 
 to pass through the heavy and well -directed cross fire of 
 monopoly and property, unitedly pointed against them, in 
 their ascent ; and moreover, to endeavour to bring about, 
 as quickly as possible, a reconciliation between capital 
 and labour, with a recognition, by property, of the claims 
 of the labourer to a just participation in its benefits. 
 
 The relation in which labour the parent of society, 
 and property the child of society, stand connected, is so 
 very close, and they are so much dependant upon each 
 other in this relationship, to effect either good or evil, 
 that it is the duty of the state, the guardian of social 
 rights, delegated by society, with full power, to maintain 
 an equipoise of justice between the exorbitant demands 
 sometimes made by labour on the one hand, and that of 
 the haughtily uncompromissorial pretensions, steadily 
 urged by property on the other ; to restrain labour from 
 asking too much concession, and to constrain property to 
 grant what may be considered to be for the general good 
 of society. If any of the landed proprietors, or great 
 capitalists of the country, monopolize those resources, 
 from the beneficial use of which the industrious classes 
 miirht derive a competent living, then it is the duty, as 
 well as the privilege of the government, to afford protec- 
 tion to the oppressed, by demanding of the trespassers 
 to respect social obligations. And, in case of their non- 
 compliance, the state has the power vested in itself, to 
 enforce that obedience which the preservation of social 
 order requires. 
 
 As property is only recognized by society, because it 
 has been considered to be beneficial for the community ; 
 those, therefore, who possess property are regarded by 
 society as its assistants, in the social diffusion of those 
 
138 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 advantages derivable from property, and as tlie guardians 
 of those who may have a less share of the nation's wealth 
 than themselves. 
 
 Men have exchanged, through the medium of society, 
 thoir primitive and precarious possessions, for property ; 
 but in acting so, th.'V considered that they were hence- 
 forth resigning their individual possessions into the hands 
 of society, that it should act towards them as the worthy 
 father of a family would do, were his children to con- 
 fide to him their earnings, with the full understanding 
 that he should guard arid protect it for their mutual 
 benefit. That father, if he worthily performed his duties, 
 so as to retain the affections of his children who had 
 thus resigned to him the guardianship of the fruits of 
 their industry, would endeavour, by careful watchfulness 
 and circumspection, to render their labour a source of 
 useful enjoyment to the whole family. All the actions 
 of hi* children would be directed ana governed by him 
 with a view towards the augmentation of the general 
 stock, that each and all had contributed to accumulate ; 
 and, though they might differ materially in their powers 
 of accumulation, still he would consider it to be his duty 
 to admonish them, that, being all of one family, it was 
 their duty to support the weaker among them, as they 
 were all working together towards one common good. 
 
 Society has seen fit to store up the surplus revenue 
 of the social family, or to speak scientifically, the savings 
 or deprivations of the industrious classes, in storehouses, 
 which are denominated property; and it has constituted 
 certain individuals, custodiers, or store-keepers, under 
 the name of proprietors, who stand in the same relation 
 towards the social familv, as the father of a family does 
 

 OF PROPERTY. 139 
 
 towards his children, when he has confided to him their 
 savings. 
 
 "When society requires from the custodiers of property, 
 either food or clothing for the people, they have no better 
 right to refuse it than the keeper of a government store 
 would have, in refusing to deliver over for the use of her 
 Majesty's troops what provisions or clothing had heen 
 ordered hy the government. If, when society demands 
 of property to fulfil its duties, it neglects or refuses to 
 do so, then has it infringed on the prerogative of society, 
 in the same degree as a government store-keeper, who 
 should lock up the store and refuse to deliver up the 
 keys, whilst he had received an order from government 
 to deliver a certain quantity of victualling and clothing 
 for the army or the navy ; and who should \vrite over 
 the door of the public store' The store-keeper is in pos- 
 session, and from the length of time that he has held 
 possession, he has become a proprietor, and therefore is 
 not responsible to society/ 
 
 From what has previously been stated, it appears quite 
 evident, that the design of society in instituting the rights 
 of property must have been to improve the original con- 
 dition of man, and to elevate him to a higher sphere of 
 enjoyment, than that in which he existed antecedently 
 to the establishment of those rights. But, in the commer- 
 cial struggle now prosecuted by capitalists to amass pro- 
 perty, through the peculiar tendency of the laws to favour 
 exclusive property, the industrious classes are so pressed 
 between capitalists on the one hand, and the owners of 
 isolated property on the other, that it is with the greatest 
 exertion, under which nature is able to hear up, that the 
 labourer can earn sufficient to support himself and family. 
 
140 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 Some of our hard-working labourers find themselves 
 totally unable to gain a livelihood ; and, in times of a 
 depression in trade, or of panics in commerce, brought 
 on, either through misgovernment, gambling speculations 
 among money-mongers, or by badly organized currency 
 laws, they have often no other alternative, than to degrade 
 themselves by sacrificing every independent feeling, and 
 through dire necessity submit to become inmates of 
 workhouses. 
 
 Were justice done to the industrious classes, they would 
 require neither legal, nor voluntary charity ; all that 
 is necessary to enable them to gain an honourable and 
 competent livelihood, is justice. Restore them their 
 rights, and they have too much honour to ask more ; but, 
 if these be not given to them, they have too much 
 knowledge and independence to be longer satisfied with- 
 out them. Give the labourers of England their due, and 
 the workhouses would, in a very short time, be only 
 useful to be sold, and the proceeds applied, if need be, 
 to pay part of a fraudulently contracted national debt. 
 Sismondi says, that pauperism had its origin in England; 
 that it has not yet received any other name in any coun- 
 try than the English word pauperism. " Pauperism," 
 says he, " is a calamity which began to be felt first in 
 England, and which has no other name, as yet, than that 
 which the English give it; though it has begun to make 
 its appearance in other manufacturing countries. Pau- 
 perism is the state that the labourer is reduced to when 
 lie cannot work : it is the condition of men who ought 
 to live by their labour, but who cannot work but just as 
 much as the capitalists are willing to employ them, and 
 who in their leisure ou<iht to be maintained at the ex- 
 
OF PROPERTY. 14-1 
 
 pense of society ; that society which gives all its support 
 to the rich, not permitting the labourers to work at the 
 improvement of the land, if the proprietor, or his tenant, 
 does not employ them; neither permitting them to work 
 at the loom, if the manufacturer, or his agent, does not 
 wish them. Both of them studv to save on human la- 
 hour, to render it as little required as possible. Each of 
 them, in proportion to any new progress that they make, 
 either in agriculture, or in manufacture, discharges a cer- 
 tain number of hands, and consigns them to an idleness 
 which would end in death, did not society assist them. 
 Justice and humanity equally proclaim the necessity of 
 legal charity, or a provision to be made by the state for 
 the poor, whose suffering is no less frightful than pitiable. 
 No society has ever thought of refusing this sort of 
 charity ; but it is only recently, it may be said to be almost 
 at the present day, that experience and calculation have 
 equally shown the impuissance of society to support such 
 a load. Taxes in favour of the poor increase their misery, 
 dependence, and vices ; at the same time, they are not 
 sufficient to save them from poverty, but in as much as 
 they absorb the whole net revenue of the richest na- 
 tion.*' 
 
 We trust, it has now been satisfactorily proven, that 
 labour is the creator of all wealth, for the protection of 
 which society was established ; and that labour has been 
 partly despoiled of its dominion, by those it trusted in 
 for its protection, and that at the present day it derives 
 little or no benefit whatever from its ancient domain, the 
 earth. The labourer has become a total stranger and an 
 alien to the ground he lives upon, which once belonged 
 to him, but that now is trodden by him no longer as its 
 
142 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 master. It has been alienated from those who oii^ht to 
 have been in possession ; and it has become the prey of 
 strangers, who, in passing over the ground which belongs 
 to them, may not even know it to be theirs : to-day they 
 maybe the holders of a mortgage on it, which nominally 
 makes them entitled to possession ; on the morrow, that 
 may have passed into the desk of some other individual 
 who cares no more for it, nor for those who cultivate it, 
 than what it will bring in the market. Hence, by the 
 power of capital, the earth is gradually becoming more 
 and more a stranger to those that live by it ; and all 
 attachments to local associations and birth-places are 
 Leing broken up ; even patriotism, when the interest of 
 the capitalist is placed in opposition to it, seems to have 
 become languid and ineffective, to preserve that dignity, 
 with which the ancient poets have crowned the love of 
 country. 
 
 Society has been organized on the principle of reci- 
 procity, therefore, it has reciprocal dudes to perform 
 towards each of its members, as well as each of those 
 have to fulfil imperative obligations towards it. If either 
 party should fail in fulfilling its obligations, the compact 
 is nullified, antT the transgressor becomes amenable to 
 the other. 
 
 Man, therefore, has duties to perform towards society, 
 solely on the ground of his receiving from society reci- 
 procal advantages ; if these be refused to him, he is no 
 longer bound ; he is absolved from performing his obliga- 
 tions towards society, as it has failed to guarantee him in 
 his rights. He is, in such a state, under no obligations 
 to society, and is free to act as nature dictates. If society, 
 afterwards, force him to respect its laws, he is no longer 
 
OP PROPERTY. 143 
 
 free, having been unjustly treated by society, in its having 
 at first excluded him from social rights, and afterwards 
 placed him under the yoke of its power. Society, there- 
 fore, has most arduous duties to fulfil, not only to its 
 individual memhers, but to every class of men. Has it 
 fulfilled these duties ? Has it deprived any of its members 
 of their rights, and notwithstanding compelled them to 
 obey its commands ? Has it ever forced any one indivi- 
 dual of them to bear the expense of protecting property 
 that never has had any heritage whatever in that pro- 
 perty ? 
 
 On philosophically investigating the present state of the 
 laws which regulate the rights of property, no one can 
 maintain that society has not neglected to enforce obedi- 
 ence to the social compact, and that, in innumerable in- 
 stances, it has not acted unsocially towards a portion of 
 its members. It has sanctioned the grossest injustice that 
 was ever perpetrated on humanity, to be by law, and with 
 the semblance of justice, carried into effect against men, 
 who never had any constitutional share in making, or in 
 consenting to be governed by those laws, in compelling 
 the unenfranchised and industrious classes of the present 
 day to pay the greater proportion of expense of protecting 
 that property, in the benefits of which they participate 
 not in the slightest share, being only forced to labour for 
 the profit of capitalists, and are reduced to be merely far- 
 mers of their own inheritances, for the advantage of a 
 class of men, who make a boast of having broken the 
 social relations of property, in becoming irresponsible 
 proprietors, jus utendi et abutendi re sua^ quatenus juris 
 ratio patitur. 
 
 The labourers of the present day have been mostly 
 
144 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 exsocialized, through society having delinquency failed 
 to uphold them in the possession and exercise of those 
 social rights, that, it undertook to guarantee, for their use 
 and advantage. They are, besides, obliged to pay every 
 year out of the produce of their industry, the expense of 
 government, which, if they had had their rights unim- 
 pairedly handed down to them, and their interests and 
 rights now adequately protected, it would have been 
 their imperative and moral duty to have cheerfully paid ; 
 but, as they have been dispossessed of common rights, 
 they have moral and legal grounds to be dissatisfied with 
 their anomalous position, and an unblemished prerogative 
 to use every constitutional effort to retrieve those rights 
 which have been unsocially and unconstitutionally filched 
 from them. 
 
 When the people shall have been intellectually in- 
 structed in the knowledge of their proper rights, then, 
 will they perspicuously see, the unjust exactions which 
 Lave been made on them, for a series of time, through 
 class legislation, in their having been forced to pay the 
 greater proportion of those taxes which have been en- 
 tailed for the defence of that property, in which they had 
 little or no share. Then will they spontaneously unite, 
 in every constitutional combination, to resist paying the 
 interest of a national debt which was not contracted 
 with a view towards their benefit, but to suppress 
 freedom asd independence. 
 
 The recent statutes which have been made by the 
 legislature, to impose taxes, have had a tendency to draw 
 them from the real source of all legitimate taxation, and 
 clearly demonstrate, that government anticipates, that, at 
 no very distant period, the industrious classes will discover 
 
OF PKOPERTY. 145 
 
 that property had unjustly and sordidly abused them, in 
 compelling them to pay its obligations; and therefore, to 
 prevent any dangerous revolt against the system of tax- 
 ation hitherto pursued, government is gradually reesta- 
 blishing taxation on that principle from which it ought 
 never to have been made to deviate. 
 
 As knowledge is diffused, and increases in power 
 among the people, so likewise, in exact ratio, will the 
 principle of a proportional equalization of taxation aug- 
 ment; and the people, through their increased know- 
 ledge of the rights and duties of property, will socialize 
 it, by imperatively constraining it to perform its social obli- 
 gations in discharging all debts previously contracted by 
 it, and to fulfil all the just demands of society for the 
 future. 
 
 It is not now generally believed, that the amounc 
 of the national debt, originally \vritten down on the 
 government ledger can ever be repaid; and in the 
 way that at present we are proceeding in paying it 
 off, it would be a futile and an unreasonable attempt, 
 to hold out the least hope of its being ever liqui- 
 dated ; because the progress made in liquidation of the 
 debt since the close of the war has been so very slow 
 and trifling when compared with the enormous amouat 
 of the debt, that supposing no additional sum were to 
 be added to the present amount, and that we were to go 
 on periodically paying it off, proportionally to the amount; 
 which has been paid during the period of peace which 
 has prevailed since 1815, nevertheless, it could not be li- 
 quidated in that way before the year 2156. Wars, and 
 various other incidents, will, however, from time to time 
 happen, which may be the means of adding more to the 
 
 H 
 
146 THE BIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 amount of the debt in twelve months, than, at the rate it 
 is now being paid off, we could be able to liquidate in 
 thirty years. 
 
 All hope being gone of our ever being able to pay the 
 debt by the present system of liquidation, the only ques- 
 tions, therefore, which remain to be set at rest with 
 regard to the present position and operation of the na- 
 tional debt, are first, Will the people submissively con- 
 tinue year after year, and age upon age, to pay the inte- 
 rest of this debt ? and secondly, Is the nation now able 
 to pay the debt ? We are of opinion that the people 
 will only, but for a very short time longer, placidly 
 submit to pay interest on a debt which was contracted 
 by and for the defence of property, and which the con- 
 tractors ought to have paid at the time that it was re- 
 quired by government, or which the representatives of 
 property should be made, and ought now cheerfully to 
 pay ; besides, there can be no reasonable hope held out 
 to the suffering and buffeted labourers, that they, or their 
 posterity, will ever be able to get rid of this eternal 
 purgatory, unless by their own efforts they burst their 
 bands asunder, and through the development of intellect 
 enfranchise themselves from the burden by which at 
 present they are subjugated, oppressed, and held in 
 perpetual torment. 
 
 If some means or other be not adopted to pay off the 
 debt, before that the people become thoroughly conscious 
 of their position, and of the gross injustice which has 
 been systematically perpetrated upon them under the 
 semblance of constitutional law and justice, we fear 
 that they will then refuse to pay the interest, and repu- 
 diate the debt itself. 
 
OF PROPERTY. 147 
 
 To warn the fundholders of their impending danger, 
 so as that they may feel disposed to make an honorable 
 compromise in time, and not to expose themselves to 
 lose all by uncompromissing resistance ; and, in order 
 to prevent, if possible, any such unwished-for or revolu- 
 tionary repudiation of the national debt, we feel bound 
 to state to the fundholders, that they would serve their 
 own ultimate interest, and the present advantage of the 
 public, were they at no distant day to make a compro- 
 mise with the people by relinquishing a portion of their 
 disputed claim. If they do not make any arrangement 
 whatever with the industrious classes, for an equitably 
 fair cancellation of the debt, they may rest assured, that 
 so certainly as they perceive the diffusion of knowledge 
 progressing amongst the people, so steadily, assuredly, 
 and certainly, as that information is spread, will the day 
 of reckoning with them draw nigh ; perhaps, if they do 
 not take care in time, it may be turned by their procras- 
 tination into a day of retribution. 
 
 In order, however, to contribute our aid in warding off 
 and preventing any disastrous collision between those, 
 vulgarly termed fundholders, and the people, we will 
 make it the subject of our subsequent investigation, to 
 enquire into the nature and operation of the debt ; and 
 shall impose on ourselves the duty of proving, that, as a 
 nation, we are perfectly able to pay it, without commit- 
 ting either an act of injustice towards the fundholders, 
 or doing any injury whatsoever to the community. 
 
148 THE BIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 PAET II. 
 
 The effect which the National Debt has on every 
 commercial transaction, and the influence which it has 
 over society, ought to he made the study of every indi- 
 vidual in Great Britain, so as to be thoroughly under- 
 stood ; because it has such a powerful influence over the 
 various concerns of all the members of the community, 
 that not an action can they perform collectively, or in- 
 dividually, in their daily avocations, which is not either 
 directly, or indirectly operated upon ( by its potency. 
 That so few should give themselves the trouble to en- 
 quire fundamentally into this subject is not surprising, 
 as inexplicable difficulties rise before the inquisitive mind 
 of the economical student, because of its sublimated na- 
 ture; and by the association of the inappropriate terms 
 vulgarly used when speaking of the debt, with the false 
 ideas that they are naturally calculated to impress upon 
 the mind, the superficial observers are so bewildered, that 
 they are often induced, in order to- save themselves the 
 labour of a philosophical investigation, to adopt the 
 popular notion, that really there is no difference between 
 the national debt and any other debt, but only as to the 
 parties who owe them; and therefore they come to the 
 precipitate conclusion, that the national debt does exist, 
 
OF PROPERTY. 149 
 
 subject to the same economical laws which regulate 
 debts contracted through commercial interchange, and 
 that it was fairly contracted for the benefit of those who 
 pay the interest on it. 
 
 Against this depravation of public opinion, under the 
 name of the science of political economy, we protest. 
 To the slumberers under a false system of political philo- 
 sophy let the warning be given, that the day of the 
 diffusion of knowledge and philosophical investigation 
 has dawned, in which, it will soon be discovered, in spite 
 of the veil which has been so long artificially thrown 
 over the conglomeration surreptitiously named the Na- 
 tional Debt, that the contractors of that debt fraudulently 
 beguiled and deceived the industrious classes, by inducing 
 them to believe, that the debt was such as a debt should 
 be, in its just acceptation; and, as such, that it was being 
 fairly contracted. Whereas, the principle on which the 
 debt was created, was nothing else than an evasive jug- 
 gle, on the part of the wealthy, to shift the burden and 
 expense of defending their property upon the people. 
 
 The word debt comes from debeo, < I owe/ and means, 
 that I have contracted obligations for which I have re- 
 ceived an equivalent. I am therefore indebted to the party 
 with whom I bargained, in the full amount and value of 
 the commodity that he lent or intrusted to me, either to 
 restore it to him, or to pay an adequate value. If it 
 were money, the king of commodities, that I had bor- 
 rowed, I could have been only led to enter into such a 
 contract, from the visible advantage that this money 
 would confer upon me, in some movement or interchange 
 that I desired to effect amongst the subordinate commo- 
 dities ; and the party consenting to grant me the use of 
 
150 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 his money to serve my purpose, could not be expected 
 to do so, without the promise of reaping a royalty, in the 
 form of interest, for the service of this money ; the prince 
 and subjugator of all other commodities. Besides owing 
 the lender the sum borrowed, I would be indebted to 
 him the fair stipulated interest on the capital ; so long, 
 therefore, as the interest was paid, and the capital was 
 considered to be safe, both borrower and lender would 
 derive advantage from the useful investment of the 
 money ; and both would be placed on a footing of social 
 equality. If, however, instead of the lender advancing 
 the money upon a reasonable interest, he was, besides, to 
 be the party who was to derive the greatest benefit from 
 the use which was to be made of the sum lent, then the 
 debt, under such circumstances, would not be fair, just, 
 and equitable ; as he would be acting more unjustly than 
 an usurer by inducing the borrower, to pay the usual 
 rate of interest, for money to be expended more for his 
 advantage, than for the benefit of the party whom he 
 advised to borrow, and even forced to accept the loan; 
 thus forcing him under an unjust burden of obligations 
 when he had not the constitutional right and power of 
 making 'an effectual repulsion. The nation has thereby 
 been forced under a sham debt to the moneyocracy of 
 this country, and its position is very much similar to that 
 of the overawed borrower here alluded to. 
 
 A debt may be contracted on various kinds of secu- 
 rities : such as personal security ; that is, the security of 
 the individual contracting the debt. Personal property 
 security ; that is, the moveable chattels of the individual 
 contracting the debt being put in pawn for its repayment ; 
 and security by mortgage, on houses or lands. To which 
 
OP PROPERTY. 151 
 
 of these categories does the national debt belong ? To 
 none of them it is not founded on corporeal security, 
 it is purely based on credulity, it lays in pledge, the 
 spirit and complacency of those that will be born here- 
 after, as security for payment to the fundholders. 
 
 At the time the national debt was contracted, the 
 aristocracy had invested themselves with the power of 
 enacting any laws they chose ; and as they were deeply 
 and personally interested in the passing events, they 
 advised the government, which only represent them- 
 selves, to borrow money, not with a view that it was to 
 be expended for the benefit of the nation and people, 
 whom they surreptitiously placed in the situation of bor- 
 rowers; but with a view that it should be spent in 
 wars for their advantage, and to prosecute and carry out 
 their own ambitious designs. When the money which 
 they had mostly borrowed of themselves was expended 
 in successfully accomplishing their designs, either in 
 defending their titles and property, or as money lenders, 
 they then imposed upon the industrious classes of the 
 nation which had been thus cajoled into contracting 
 debt, the obligation of paying the interest on money 
 which had been spent in wars, for the purpose of bene- 
 fiting the wealthy classes. In fact, the governments which 
 borrowed the money, and that acted like the unjust stew- 
 ard, when they received fifty pounds of a lender, " sate 
 down quickly," sans remords, and wrote in the public 
 ledger against the people fourscore, were mostly composed 
 of individuals who had lent it, or who were hi some way 
 or other influenced by the lenders ; so that, regarding 
 the circumstances under which the debt was contracted, 
 as a chancery lawyer would look upon any ordinary 
 
152 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 debt contracted under similar circumstances, of both 
 force and fraud, we cannot deny ourselves the luxury of 
 giving that verdict which we believe to be true, and that 
 generations yet unborn will vindicate, That the National 
 Debt was a constitutional swindle, effected upon the peo- 
 ple by those who were the contracting parties. 
 
 We have been so often told, that it has almost become 
 like household words which children repeat in the nursery 
 without any definite, or conscious comprehension as to 
 their real import, that the national debt was contracted for 
 the benefit of the people, as well as for the advantage of the 
 wealthy, and that both have derived an equal share in the 
 benefits secured by the expenditure. Those who adopt 
 this style of justification for the national impost, have 
 quitted the field of common sense, and with them reason 
 is not the question. To say, that wars voluntarily begun 
 and carried on to support, or to reestablish foreign dynas- 
 ties, to maintain the feudal rights of Foreign and British 
 titularies, to impose taxes on America which was unre- 
 presented in the House of Commons, though it was one of 
 the best and most flourishing colonies that Britain has ever 
 had ; to unwarrantably enter upon and dogmatically to 
 prosecute, contrary to the best feelings of the people of 
 this country, an unprovoked war against the will of the 
 French people, for the selfish purpose of reestablishing 
 on the throne of France the dynasty of the expatriated 
 Bourbons, which had through its despotic and presumptive 
 oppression of the people, rendered it detestable to the 
 French nation, and the worthy scorn throughout the 
 world of all who cherished freedom, and who valued 
 the rights and liberties of man : to say, that such wars 
 were for the equal advantages of all classes in this 
 
OF PROPERTY. 153 
 
 country, is a perversion of reason, and an outrage on 
 common sense. 
 
 A more moderate view is, however, taken by some 
 individuals, who say, that, though the benefits deriv- 
 able to the nation from the expense of those wars 
 may not be equally divided among the people, still, as 
 every individual receives from government a certain 
 amount of protection, and enjoys the benefits of an ex- 
 tended commerce, and the advantages of our liberal insti- 
 tutions, these wars have therefore contributed to the 
 advantages of each and all, and no one can have any 
 just cause of complaint. This latter school of imposition, 
 from its plausibility of diction, and moderate semblance 
 to truth, is even more dangerous than the former, which 
 visibly appears, without examination, to be unphiloso- 
 phical. We are told by this sect of the defenders of 
 the principles on which the national debt rests, that the 
 benefits which spring therefrom may not be equally di- 
 vided. Then, in the name of justice, why should it not be 
 so ? or else, let those who reap the benefits pay in pro- 
 portion to their advantages. In all joint stock companies 
 the shareholders are rigorously recognized, to receive 
 dividends, or to pay scot and bear lot, according to their 
 weight in shares ; and why should not the same prin- 
 ciple be adopted in regard to the national debt ? If, on 
 the other hand, our national commerce has been ex- 
 tended through means of those wars, for the prosecution 
 of which the money jobbers lent their money, it is only 
 capitalists who are really now reaping the advantage, as 
 the labourers derive little or no benefit from it. 
 
 However, in the spirit of commerce, we wish to reckon 
 commercially with those who maintain that the money 
 spent by government, which they call a debt, has procured 
 
154 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 real advantages for the people ; and in doing so, in the 
 name of the people, we deny the receipt of the advantages 
 alleged as being possessed hy them, and therefore all who 
 derive no benefit whatever from the funds, on commercial 
 principles, which are rigorously based on a quid proquo^ 
 are bound, by no commercial principle, to pay either 
 interest or capital, for what they have never received. 
 As respects our liberal institutions, talk not to the free- 
 born Briton of his being indebted to those things which 
 belong to him as his birthright, and which would have 
 been his, in greater abundance, had never a shot been 
 fired either at our brethren in America, or at our neigh- 
 bours the French. Perhaps, we may even be told that 
 the dividend offices are models of liberality, as they 
 distribute the means of living; if so, let us take the 
 
 O ' ' 
 
 people of England, who are often cozened by a fallacious 
 sound of liberality, into the Bank of England on any of 
 the quarterly dividend days, and they will find that ninety- 
 nine, in every hundred of them, will be turned out to 
 starve without any dividends, because their names are 
 not written in the national imposition books. No doubt 
 they, the fleeced ninety-nine, did not advance the capital 
 of the debt, neither do they now derive any advantage 
 from its having been contracted. All that free-born 
 Englishmen, who are not fundholders, have to do with 
 the debt, is to pay unhesitatingly the interest, for the 
 benefit of the representatives of a class who imposed on 
 their forefathers. 
 
 There are so many plausible, yet flimsy stories told 
 relative to the national debt, to gull the people, that 
 to undertake to scrutinize a tithe of them, would 
 be a task commensurate with that of reviewing the 
 
OF PROPERTY. 155 
 
 Arabian Night's Entertainments ; however, let us take 
 one which is circulated as current philosophy, and even 
 orthodoxically believed in by many who ought, from 
 their means of obtaining political information, to be 
 heretics to such a despicably false proverb as this, " That 
 the national debt is the cause of our national wealth." 
 
 Those who pamper the appetites of the politically 
 ignorant with such a plausible and false assertion, under- 
 standing themselves what its falsity is, are actuated by the 
 same principle which dominated the mind of the arch- 
 enemy of man, who, when he wished Him to sell his 
 redemption, paraded in their most delusive attitudes, 
 from the most fascinating and conspicuous point of view, 
 " All the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them." 
 Had any of those nations been burdened with eight 
 hundred millions of debt, it is scarcely possible to 
 conceive, that even the prince of fabrications could 
 have dared to insinuate that, that circumstance was a 
 blessing to the nation, and deserving to be reckoned as 
 one of the causes of its glory. 
 
 The credulity of man is strong in proportion to his 
 want of knowledge; and as the people have never 
 yet thoroughly investigated into the causes which 
 make our wealth so conspicuous, whenever any igno- 
 ramus, or designing villain, proffers them such an 
 astounding assertion, either through ignorance of the 
 purport of it, or with a design to deceive and mislead 
 them, they very naturally associate the idea of the great- 
 ness of the national debt with that of the great wealth 
 possessed by a portion of the nation; and not being 
 furnished with sufficient information to enable them to 
 reason judiciously on a subject requiring political erudi- 
 
156 THE BIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 tion, they rashly conclude, that these two potentates must 
 have social affinity to each other, that the national debt 
 has engendered our national wealth ; in their philosophy, 
 that the shadow has begotten the substance. Oh ! 
 national debt, what an arrant knave you are to have con- 
 templated the idea of counterfeiting truth by such sophis- 
 try, in order that you might prolong your depredatory 
 reign over the simple and uneducated sons of industry. 
 You ought long ago to have been put upon your trial to 
 answer for your impositions on society. You that have 
 been going to and fro, and walking up and down in Eng- 
 land, filling its workhouses with your victims, it had 
 been a blessing for industry had you been smothered at 
 your birth ; then millions, ruined by you, had lived and 
 died a comfort to their families, and an ornament to 
 society ; however, you are now cited at the bar of justice, 
 as a freebooter, to answer many grave charges ; not only 
 of making unwarrantable exactions on^the people, but 
 in doing so under false pretences and misrepresentations. 
 The nation is in debt, and it is asserted that this debt 
 is the cause of its great wealth. The nation as a body 
 is in debt. To whom ? To a portion of itself, to which, 
 it has to pay interest on that debt. If, therefore, a part 
 of the increasing wealth and industry of the nation be 
 collectively abstracted every year from its members, and 
 handed over to a portion of them, is the nation in which 
 this transfer has been made any richer as a body than 
 if that wealth had been allowed to remain in the hands 
 of those by whom it was produced ? It is quite evident, 
 that whatever transfer is effected in the productions of 
 a nation, its aggregate wealth can no more be augmented 
 thereby, than that the water in the River Thames would 
 
OF PROPERTY. 157 
 
 be increased were Parliament to order, that, from the 
 parapet of its palace at Westminster, a pailfull of water 
 should be drawn from the river, carried round and 
 poured in again off London Bridge. In so far then, as 
 the national debt occasions every year the transfer of 
 twenty-eight millions value of national productions, the 
 aggregate wealth of the nation is neither increased nor 
 diminished. 
 
 It would be superfluous to attempt to reason upon 
 the subject of a national debt, without the principle 
 having been admitted at the outset, that a nation in debt 
 must be recognized as an individual would be that was 
 similarly situated. Unless this be conceded, no distinct, 
 or definite conclusion can be arrived at ; because the 
 word ' debt* is only applicable to distinct bodies that owe 
 obligations, and that move in antagonism to other distinct 
 bodies, to whom those debts are due. The idea, there- 
 fore, of a nation owing a debt to itself, is an absurdity 
 which owes its origin to the misapplication of words. 
 
 Viewing the nation, as we would do an individual 
 who owed a debt, we consider the assertion absurd, that 
 because the nation is so immensely indebted, that, that 
 is the cause why it is so wealthy. Let us suppose the 
 case of two individuals, the one very deeply indebted to 
 the other, would it be believed, were the debtor auda- 
 ciously to affirm, that as he was immensely indebted to 
 the other in a debt which he could not, nor never in- 
 tended to pay, that he was nevertheless an honestly 
 wealthy man, and that he considered this debt as capital 
 and the cause of this wealth ? Those who believe that 
 our national debt is the cause of our national wealth, 
 and who say, from a blind patriotic feeling, that they 
 
358 THE BIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 should not like to see the debt paid off, as thereby our 
 currency and constitution would be deranged and dis- 
 organized, must be infatuated, either through a misappre- 
 hension of the effects which would result therefrom, or 
 they must imagine, that were the debt to be paid off, the 
 aristocracy and moneyocracy, no longer being bound to 
 the government by any pecuniary or selfish tie, would 
 then hold their loyalty cheap and be regardless whatsoever 
 dynasty might wear the crown. 
 
 The principle on which the national debt was begun 
 seems to have been that of selfishness, for we find, that the 
 counsellors of William the Third held the same opinions, 
 as to the selfish propensities of the money-lenders of 
 their time, which those who assert that our national debt 
 is the cause of our national wealth, would now appear to 
 entertain with respect to the present fundholders. William 
 the Third's counsellors said to him, " Borrow as much as 
 you can ; the more you borrow the more friends you make; 
 interest is a stronger tie than principle." The Parliament, 
 which did not perfectly represent the people, acted on 
 this vile principle, and did not certainly impair the infa- 
 mous advice given to it by the sovereign, but even 
 bettered the villainous instruction promulgated in the 
 royal speech with which William opened his Parliament 
 in 1690. In addressing Parliament, he said, " I have so 
 great a confidence in you, that, if no quicker or more con- 
 venient way can be found for the raising of ready money, 
 without which the service of the war in Ireland cannot 
 be performed, I shall be very well content for the present 
 to have it made such a fund of credit as may be useful 
 to yourselves as well as to me in this conjuncture : not 
 having the apprehension but that you will provide for 
 
OF PROPERTY. 159 
 
 the taking off all such anticipations as it shall happen 
 to fall under." Parliament having heen fascinated by this 
 liberal counsel on the part of the king, passed laws to 
 raise 750,000 for the purpose of carrying on the war 
 in Ireland, and of making it a fund useful to themselves. 
 
 During the reign of William the Third, the nation is 
 debited with 44,000,000, whereas only 34,000,000 
 was actually paid by the lenders ; thus, in the life-time 
 of the founder of our national debt 10,000,000 is be- 
 queathed to the people which was never received by the 
 nation ; sans doute^ it must have been appropriated by 
 the governors of the useful fund his Majesty had pro- 
 posed in his speech from the throne. 
 
 This lucrative business established by William, who well 
 understood the Dutch system of finance, and the effective 
 power of money over the minds of its votaries, was espoused 
 by subsequent governments that carried on this reckless 
 and disadvantageous system of borrowing, up to the close 
 of the war in 1815. Besides, subsequently to the stop- 
 page of payments in specie by the Bank of England, 
 the pound of account, by which the money borrowed by 
 government was computed, was at different periods of 
 the war very considerably depreciated below its conven- 
 tional value ; so that, government accepting of depreci- 
 ated money in loan, and crediting the lenders on its 
 books with the amount of depreciated paper money 
 reckoned in the pound of account, at its conventional 
 value twenty shillings in the pound, it thereby has sub- 
 jected the nation to the disadvantage of having paid a 
 higher price for the gold it borrowed, at those periods, 
 than that which has been put upon it by the Currency 
 Bill of 1819 ; namely, 3 17s lO^d per oz. ; or 123,274 
 
160 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 grains of gold per pound sterling. We find, however, 
 that the price of gold fluctuated between 26th January, 
 1797, and the 2nd July, 1819, from its present price 
 3 17s lO^d to 5 10s per oz. ; so that the money 
 lenders, who lent their gold at the rate of 5 10s per oz., 
 gave government only 87.720 grains of gold for every 
 pound of account with which they were credited ; being 
 35.554 grains of gold, or 5s 9d per pound of account 
 less than its present price as established by law. The 
 fundholders, who lent at the rate of 5 10s per oz., 
 gained 29 per cent, according to the present value of gold. 
 However, this calculation being the maximum price of 
 gold during the time above alluded to, let us take the 
 average price, 4 12s 6d per oz., or 103,891 grains of 
 gold per pound sterling ; which will shew 19.383 grains 
 of gold, or 3s Id, that the fundholders paid less per 
 pound when the money was lent, than what they are now 
 credited for on the dividend books. This average appre- 
 ciation of gold would, therefore, indicate that a large 
 portion of the debt was contracted in a currency 15 per 
 cent, depreciated below its conventional value. 
 
 Looking at these facts, the inequalities of fortunes 
 in Great Britain may partly be accounted for; and our 
 national debt may truly be said to have been productive 
 of wealth to a peculiar class of individuals, when, in the 
 time of William III., moneyed men, and those who were 
 able to purchase stock, gained thirty to forty per cent, on 
 their money ; and that, during the whole time the debt 
 was being contracted, the same principle of raising mo- 
 ney at any price was unswervingly adhered to by different 
 governments. So much so was this system of reckless 
 borrowing acted upon, that of the sum of eight hundred 
 
OP PROPERTY. 1(JI 
 
 millions, for which we are now obliged to pay twenty- 
 eight millions annually of interest, were a rigorously 
 exact account to he made out, it would certainly appear, 
 that the nation never actually received more than ahout 
 six hundred millions. 
 
 Another false idea, by which many have been deceived 
 in respect to the national debt, arises through the appli- 
 cation of the word c Funds/ which is derived from the 
 French, fond, and means the bottom or foundation upon 
 which any superstructure depends ; fonce, a person who 
 is possessed of much money; fonder, a person that 
 has wealth in land. If we adopt the original import of 
 the word c funds,' reason will be defied to establish any 
 relation between it and the practical bearing of our 
 funding system. The money borrowed by government 
 is all spent and gone ; and frequently, the amount was 
 spent before it was borrowed, and now no more exists 
 as a fund, than if the money had been thrown into the 
 sea : it is, therefore, by an inconceivable subversion of 
 primitive ideas, that we have arrived at inducing the 
 vulgar to believe, that the public funds, which in them- 
 selves are totally bottomless, a phantom, a hope, an 
 imposition, having no real foundation whatever, are 
 things of reality. The existence of this public fund is 
 established, confusedly, in the imaginations of superfi- 
 cial thinkers, from the commercial fact, that generally 
 where interest is paid, the individual receiving it has lent 
 funds to the party paying it, and who pays the interest 
 out of the produce of the fund which had been lent; 
 they, therefore, from observing the public creditor regu- 
 larly receiving his dividends, conclude, that, according to 
 the usual course of business, where interest is paid there 
 
162 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 must exist a fund which produces that interest. They 
 never reason so far, as to observe, that the fund, out of 
 which the public creditor is paid, is quite another fund 
 altogether than that which they imagined; and that, 
 when the fundholder pays his money at the Bank in 
 exchange for stock, (public faith) instead of the money 
 being added to the supposed fund, he has only placed 
 himself in the precarious position of the national creditor 
 who sold out and pocketed the money. The only real 
 fund manifest in the transaction. All besides being 
 merely stock of credulity, on the part of the purchaser, 
 In the people's ability and complacency to pay taxes for 
 the benefit of the fundholders, who are enriched thereby 
 in exact proportion as the people are beggared. 
 
 The fundholders. are, fool-hardily, swinging themselves 
 by the rope of public faith over a bottomless abyss of 
 governmental credit, which is the prototype of discredit, 
 as it has nothing of its own to dispose of. A stable 
 government may get credit; it never can, under any just 
 circumstances give it. These facts are sensitively felt by 
 the keenest observers among the fundholders, and by the 
 most sagacious stockbrokers on the exchange, who, whea 
 any flaw appears in the administrations of the various 
 governments of Europe, which may conduce to shake 
 public confidence in their administrations ; or, if any 
 speck is descried in the political firmament which might 
 tend to weaken the fundholder's belief in the continuity 
 of the people's placid credulity, that all public offices are 
 justly administered for their benefit ; in such emergencies 
 those men who devote their lives to study the political 
 thermometer, and make it their business to speculate in 
 public stocks, are, from their often exposed and critical 
 
OP PROPERTY. 163 
 
 position, rendered as ocularly perceptive as eagles, with 
 an auditory organization peculiarly adapted to catch the 
 slightest creaking sound of the rope on which they are 
 being swung. As they are not really public creditors, but 
 public doubters, dreading and suspecting, every hour of 
 the day, even the government that regularly pays them 
 their dividends : and, fearing the national abyss of credit, 
 should the people awake in the spirit of disbelief, in the 
 funding system, and reduce, in their might, the cord of 
 credulity, upon which the fundholders are suspended, 
 to the strength of flax that the fire has burnt. They 
 become what is technically termed 'bears,' (tramplers 
 down), and endeavour, whilst the hurricane of public 
 discredit is approaching, to induce some inexperienced 
 capitalist to become what is called, in the phraseology of 
 the Exchange, a c bull/ (a tosser up), and to'take a swing 
 on the rope of hope, in prolonged credit being vouch- 
 safed, and of future dividends being realized, so as to 
 enable them to retire into harbour whilst the storm of 
 discredit sweeps over the Exchange. 
 
 The successful schemers and jobbers on the Exchange 
 are those dexterous and subtle players in the modern 
 game of public speculation, who are recognized as all 
 honorable men, in their vocation, and as being condu- 
 cive towards the public weal. 
 
 The funding system is one of no ordinary nature, be- 
 cause the lenders have lost the power of demanding 
 restitution of the amount of the original loan, and with 
 that also, the power of retaining the interest to be paid, 
 unchangeably as it was when the contract was entered 
 into. In fact, the fundbolders are now become mere 
 dependants on the will of the government, as recipients 
 
164 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 of the people's bounteous liberality. Were all tbe com- 
 munity fundholders, and equally so, then the greater 
 proportion of those evils arising to the people from the 
 national debt would cease ; because, what would then be 
 drawn from each individual, in the shape of taxes, would 
 be repaid by his share of interest on the impost. The 
 only loss would then be the superfluous expense of col- 
 lecting taxes under such a system of equality. The 
 evils which spring from the present system originate in 
 this, that only a very small number of individuals derive 
 any benefit from the funds, the proportion of fundholders 
 who hold as it were a mortgage on the yearly industry 
 of the people, being only one per cent, of the population. 
 The following tables will shew what class of fundholders 
 is the most numerous, and also will clearly exhibit the 
 category of annuitants that receives the greater share of 
 the dividends. i 
 
H 
 
 o co oo c^ 
 
 I -I 1 
 
 5 3 " 
 
 CO 
 
 00 O CO ^ 
 
 1 
 
 
 It 
 W 
 
 *^ t^ t>- O 
 
 CO CO CM I-H 
 
 
 
 rH 
 
 S3 ^4 co 
 Jz; Jg; - 
 
 s 
 
 
 M 
 
 .2 CD 
 H 
 
 vO ^ ^O *O 
 CO 00 rH 
 
 1 
 
 SB 1 " 
 
 1 1 
 
 
 a O 
 
 g CO (M CO 
 i i OJ 
 
 1 
 
 ss - 2 
 
 
 
 CO 
 
 
 bo 
 X 
 
 H 
 
 rH <M T}< 
 CO CM l> <M 
 
 00 
 
 s w w a 
 
 2 
 
 1-H 
 
 
 at 
 
 si I 
 *fi 
 
 CO O i-H 
 
 ^ 
 
 00 
 rH 
 
 *O TJ^ CO O 
 i 
 
 s 
 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 CO O Ci 
 1 > ~ C5 
 
 CN 5 "^ 
 
 CO 
 
 r^ 03 rH CO 
 CO rH CM Oi 
 
 'O 
 
 CO 
 
 
 Not 
 
 Exceeding 
 100 
 
 C<l r- 1 \O CO 
 t^ (M OO O5 
 CO OO OO i I 
 CO ** 
 
 1 
 
 rH 
 
 O O CO CO 
 <M CO CO i i 
 
 r-l 
 
 i-H 
 
 1 
 
 I-H 
 
 
 CO 
 
 g 
 H 
 
 CO O O CO 
 
 I i I i 
 
 1-H 
 
 r-l Tt< 00 O 
 rtl CO rH CO 
 i-H r-l i 1 r-i 
 
 CO 
 
 I 
 
 
 IJ3 
 
 | | | S 
 
 *o *o c^ 
 
 00 
 
 s 
 
 (M 1^ 00 CO 
 ^O *O C<I C<l 
 
 rH 
 
 OO 
 
 
 a 
 
 -H (M 00 CO 
 OO TH O O 
 <M CO M 
 rH CO 
 
 S 
 
 00 vo CO O 
 i i O C<l OO 
 71 rH 1O 
 
 Oi 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 : I 
 
 i H 
 
 "S"' ' | 
 
 g g 
 
 - t* 
 
 ig 
 
 Ha 
 
 6 
 
 i 
 
 ! l 
 
 1 
 
166 
 
 THE BIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 In the previous table, the fundholders are classified 
 according to the amounts which they held in the various 
 kinds of stocks on the 10th of October, 1850, and on 
 the 5th January, 1851. And, as each of those two 
 classes of fundholders receive half-yearly dividends twice 
 every year, consequently those who are entitled to re- 
 ceive dividends on the 10th October, their next half- 
 yearly dividend is due on the 5th April following; and that 
 class to whom dividends were payable on the 5th Jan* 
 1851, will also be entitled to receive their second half- 
 yearly dividends on the 5th July, J851, thereby creating 
 four quarterly payments per annum of public dividends. 
 The subsequent table illustrates the total number of 
 annuitants who received half-yearly dividends according 
 to their respective classifications, between the years 
 1833 and 1851. 
 Half yearly Dividends 1833 1839 1845 1848 1851 
 
 Not exceeding 
 
 5 
 
 87,176 
 
 85,069 
 
 84,3i84 
 
 96,415 
 
 89,290 
 
 
 10 
 
 44,648 
 
 45,147 
 
 41,006 
 
 44,936 
 
 42,111 
 
 
 50 
 
 98,305 
 
 98,946 
 
 92,755 
 
 . 96,025 
 
 92,337 
 
 
 100 
 
 25,641 
 
 26,205 
 
 24,661 
 
 24,462 
 
 23,775 
 
 
 200 
 
 14,701 
 
 14,816 
 
 13,998 
 
 13,882 
 
 13,571 
 
 
 300 
 
 4,495 
 
 4,523 
 
 4,106 
 
 4,032 
 
 3,901 
 
 
 500 
 
 2,827 
 
 2,759 
 
 2,782 
 
 2,647 
 
 2,581 
 
 
 1000 
 
 1,367 
 
 1,337 
 
 1,245 
 
 1,222 
 
 1,199 
 
 
 2000 
 
 266 
 
 384 
 
 348 
 
 328 
 
 367 
 
 Exceeding 
 
 2000 
 
 
 
 192 
 
 209 
 
 177 
 
 206 
 
 Total number 
 Annuitants 
 
 i 
 
 279,426 
 
 279,378 
 
 265,384 
 
 284,127 
 
 269,338 
 
 It appears from the previous statement, that the number 
 of fundholders, in each of the ten classifications, has very 
 little varied during eighteen years ; and that by far the 
 greater number of persons is that of those who receive 
 half-yearly dividends, varying from fifty pounds and 
 
OP PROPERTY. 167 
 
 under. In order, therefore, to demonstrate the inaccu- 
 racy of the opinion, generally entertained, that the greater 
 portion of the amount of interest on the national debt is 
 paid to the small annuitants, we shall divide the national 
 creditors into three categories, each receiving half-yearly 
 dividends, as follows. First, the small fundholders, who 
 receive fifty pounds and under. Secondly, the larger fund- 
 holders, who receive upwards of fifty to two thousand 
 pounds. And thirdly, the largest annuitants, who receive 
 half-yearly dividends of upwards of two thousand pounds. 
 
 Total Annual Charge of Unredeemed Debt due to the Public 
 Creditor on the 5th Jan. 1850, (exclusive^of 94,925 the 
 
 annual charge of management) '27,501,532 
 
 SMALL FUNDHOLDERS. 
 
 Annts. Hlf Yly Divds. Avrge. Yly Divds. Amount 
 89,290 5 and under 8 ... 714,320 
 
 42,111 10 .. to 5 15... 631,665 
 
 92,337 50 .. ..10 60 ... 5,540,220 
 
 323,738 persons receive the aggregate sum of . . 6,886,205 
 
 Being on an average 30 per annum to each Annuitant. 
 
 20,705,327 
 
 LARGE FUNDHOLDERS. 
 
 A.nnts. Hlf Yly Divds. Avrge. Yly Divds. Amnt. 
 
 23,775 100 and under to 50 150 . 3,566,250 
 
 13,751 200 .. .. 100 300 ... 4,071,350 
 
 3.901 300 .. .. 200 500 ... 1,950,500 
 
 2.581 500 .. .. 300 800 ... 2,064,800 
 
 1.199 1000 .. .. 500 1500 ... 1,798,500 
 
 367 2000 .. ..1000 3000 ... 1,101,000 
 
 45,394 Annuitants receive the aggregate sum of 14,552,3.30 
 
 Average per annum to each Annuitant 320 
 
 6,152,977 
 
 FUNDHOLDERS, or JOINT STOCK ACCOUNTS. 
 
 Annuitants. HfYlyDvds. Avrage Yly Dvds. 
 206 Upwards of 2000 29,869 6,152,977 
 
368 THE BIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 After the two first classes of fundholders have had 
 their average amounts deducted from the gross amount 
 of charges on the debt, it appears, by the previous tables 
 that there remains 6.152.977 to be divided amongst 
 those annuitants, or joint stock companies, who receive 
 half-yearly dividends upwards of 2000, and that each 
 of those 206 annuitants receive annually 29.869 ; by 
 which calculation the sum required to balance the account 
 is found, and the fact established, that it is the few in 
 number of the public creditors who are receiving the 
 larger proportion of the produce of taxation. However, 
 as there seems to be some mystery as to who are really 
 the recipients of the people's money, we shall endeavour 
 to classify those individual fundholders and joint stock 
 annuitants, who receive half-yearly dividends of upwards 
 of 2000. 
 
 Amount of Interest on the National Debt paid to those who 
 receive Half-yearly Dividends, upwar dspf 2000. 61 ,52,977 
 
 Annts. Hlf Yly Dvds. A vge. Yly Dvds. Amt. 
 
 48 ) Persons 2000 &under 3000 5000 240,000 
 
 > Jnt. Acnts. 
 
 37 ) or Pub.Co's. 2000 .. 3000 5000 185,000 
 
 18) Persons 3000 .. 4000 7000 126,000 
 
 > Jnt. Acnts. 
 
 8 ) orPub. Co.'s 3000 .. 4000 7000 203,000 
 
 6 
 13 
 
 Persons 4000 .. 5000 9000 56,000 
 Jnt. Acnts. 
 orPub. Co.'s 4000 .. 5000 9000 117,000 
 
 14) Persons 5000 & exceeding 95,017 1,330,280 
 
 > Jnt. Acnts. 
 41 ) orPub.Co.'s 5000 .. 95,017 3,895,697 
 
 206 Annuitants receive the aggregate sum of . . 6,152,977 
 Average Annuity per annum to each 29,869. 
 
OF PROPERTY. 169 
 
 Whichsoever of these tahles we adopt as a standard 
 to draw deductions from, we shall find, that to five-sixths 
 of the fundholders receive only one-fourth of the amount 
 of interest paid on the national debt ; and that the other 
 one-sixth in number of large fundholders is paid the re- 
 mainin^ three-fourths. That is, 4-5,600 annuitants re- 
 
 O ' 
 
 ceive 20,705,327, whilst the smaller fundholders, 
 though five times as numerous, being 223,738 persons, 
 receive only 6,886,205. And if some of those large 
 annuitants, specified in the last table as being joint 
 accounts, or public companies, receive those dividends 
 for the use of the shareholders, that, instead of palliating 
 the evils of the funding system, is an aggravation of its 
 perpetrations; for all those public establishments and 
 insurance companies' are maintained in the first instance 
 by the industrious classes, and many of them are like 
 lotteries, they always take more than they give. Be- 
 sides, by investing their money in the government funds 
 they make the industrious classes pay the insurance for 
 its protection. Labourers ! whilst property has its va- 
 rious insurance companies, you have got your's in the 
 funding system ; but it is to you, the assurance institu- 
 tion of your misery. Your resignation is the preserva- 
 tion of social order, by which society is enabled to con- 
 tinue its present march in support of your privileges, 
 and the rights of monopoly. Your privations aro nicely 
 balanced in society by the enjoyments of those for whom 
 you labour. Apart from your sufferings, the mysterious 
 glory of the funding system would languish, pine, and 
 die. Console yourselves, therefore, and cheerfully carry 
 your load, for the day of your deliverance may be at no 
 great distance. 
 
170 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 Sir Charles Wood, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
 in promulgating his second and reformed edition of the 
 financial budget for 1851, states, in reference to the 
 national debt, and the effects which it produces upon the 
 community, u I feel most seriously on this point," says 
 he, " because I have within the last six months heard 
 doctrines broached in quarters whence I little expected 
 to hear them not certainly from members of this House, 
 for I believe no member of this House would be likely 
 to entertain them which I consider most dangerous. 
 Those opinions have been expressed in the organs of 
 public opinion, and at public meetings ; and, I think, we 
 are bound to hold different views ; to protest against the 
 very beginning of such a system, lest it should gain too 
 strong a hold upon public opinion. The delusion which 
 has been so general, is, that the non-payment of a public 
 dividend would injure only the rich. The late Lord 
 Ashburton called the attention of the country to a return 
 of the amount of dividends paid upon the public debt, 
 which shewed that the greater number of public creditors 
 were not of the richer class ; and I find, from a recent 
 return, that five-sixths of the persons who are in the 
 receipt of dividends, receive an amount not exceeding 
 fifty pounds per annum, and that a considerable number 
 receive not more than five pounds per annum. It is, 
 then, not the rich only, but the widow and the orphan, 
 the retired shopkeeper, and even the artisan, who have 
 invested their all in the public funds in entire dependence 
 upon the maintenance of public faith: and what would 
 be the effect upon so large a class, if there were any 
 failure in the punctual payments of the dividends, or any 
 prospect of the extinction of their capital ? Do not let 
 
OF PROPERTY. 171 
 
 us think, then, that such an evil would affect only the 
 rich and the wealthy; it would be felt far more exten- 
 sively by those who ought to be among the principal 
 objects of our solicitude and care." 
 
 We certainly could never have expected, that, in the 
 present advanced position of political economy, any mem- 
 ber of the British House of Commons should have de- 
 monstrated, in so few sentences, so much shallowness in 
 relation to the principle of the funding system ; far less 
 could it have been imagined, that the Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, who has every possible means of obtaining 
 accurate information, and who from his position ought to 
 be aware of what is the present state of the fundholders, 
 and also what is likely to be their future prospects, 
 would have authoritatively stated that five-sixths of the 
 fundholders received the greater u amount of dividends 
 paid upon the public debt," and that these " five-sixths of 
 the fundholders receive only fifty pounds per annum." 
 He surely must have known, that five-sixths of the fund- 
 holders receive half-yearly dividends not exceeding fifty 
 pounds, as the previous tables will shew, making the ave- 
 rage yearly annuity paid to each annuitant thirty pounds 
 per annum. Besides, he is the party deluded, if he 
 supposes that the organs of public opinion entertain any 
 such notion, as that ' the non-payment of public dividends 
 would injure only the rich.' They know very well, that 
 there is a certain class of fundholders which are not in- 
 dividually rich, and that, were public dividends not paid 
 to them, they would lose the present means whereby 
 they live. What the organs of public opinion are con- 
 tending for, is, that the rich annuitants, who do not la- 
 bour at all, are receiving the greater portion of what the 
 
172 THE RIGHTS .AND DUTIES 
 
 millions of poor labourers pay every year in taxes ; and 
 that, were the funding system abolished, though some 
 few thousands of small fundholders would lose their 
 dividends, nevertheless millions of poor industrious indi- 
 viduals who are not fundholders would be benefited by 
 the change; and therefore, in the reasoning of these organs 
 of public opinion, it is advocated, that the benefit of the 
 many, and not the self-preservation interest of the insig- 
 nificantly few, ought to be the object of a government's 
 care and solicitude. However, though the House of 
 Commons ought to be the reflex of public opinion, the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer, from the fear lest that 
 opinion should gain the ascendant over what his notions 
 of rectitude are, considers, that it is the bounden duty of 
 that House to hold different sentiments, and to frustrate 
 the march and development of public opinion, which in 
 its eternal progress is advancing towards the truth, and 
 all the futile efforts of conventional legislation will be 
 ineffectual to retard its onward course. 
 
 If the late Lord Ashburton called the attention of 
 the Country to returns made by the Bank of England, to 
 shew, that the greater number of public creditors were 
 not of the richer class, the industrious part of the na- 
 tion has no thanks to render to any who, whilst they sit 
 at the fountain of information, use their influence to per- 
 petuatively promulgate the delusive and fatal idea, that 
 because the small fundholders are five-sixths in number 
 that of the large ones, consequently that they must be 
 receiving the greater proportion of the interest paid on 
 the national debt. Whereas, it has been proved by the 
 previous tables of public annuitants, that quite the reverse 
 is the fact. 
 
OF PROPERTY. 173 
 
 The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in making these 
 statements, appears to have felt that he was beyond his 
 depth, for immediately he quits the field of reason, 
 changing his arguments from figures to figures of speech, 
 and rhetorically asks the House of Commons to define what 
 would become of the widow and the orphan, &c., were the 
 dividends not regularly paid to the public creditor ? It was, 
 however, the duty of the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 before he thus pathetically addressed the feelings of the 
 House, in calling for its decision, to have clearly stated the 
 number of widows and orphans that were fundholders, and 
 to what amount they were annuitants ; and whether or 
 not they were entirely dependant on the public funds for 
 their support. We can feel as sensitively and as tenderly 
 as the House of Commons for the weak, unprotected, 
 and destitute ; but were we, blindfoldedly, to have that 
 pity and sympathy for the fundholders, whoever they 
 may be, whilst they are the means of causing multi- 
 tudes of others much more helpless than themselves to 
 live and die, in misery, degradation, and crime, we 
 should thereby be supporting a system which took the 
 mite of the poor widow from her, and that turned her 
 fatherless children into the streets, to beg, to steal, and 
 to prostitute themselves to all species of crimes. The 
 widows of the just were commanded to put their trust 
 in Providence ; but, in the case of the widow fundholders, 
 the Chancellor of the Exchequer seems to doubt Provi- 
 dence, and points to public faith as the only sure anchor 
 of their independence ; and, as the alpha and omega of 
 his theories, system, and science. Let him, therefore, 
 scientifically, systematically, theoretically, and philoso- 
 phically describe, what is public faith ? Without this 
 
174 THE BIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 credence, he and the fundholders would be like Peter 
 walking on the sea. And assuredly, his belief in the 
 maintenance of public faith with the fundhclders is 
 weak, when it is so seriously shaken by the advocation, 
 as he says, of delusive doctrines for six months, by in- 
 significant individuals. Ayez lafoi et vous serez forts ; 
 la foi transports les rnontagnes. " And what would be 
 the effect on so large a class of fundholders, were any 
 failure jn the punctual payment of the dividends, or any 
 prospect of the extinction of their capital ?" This is 
 philosophically stating the problem; however, instead 
 of grappling with so grave a question in an adequate 
 spirit, he avoids it by pathetically pourtraying the ma- 
 jority of the fundholders as widows and orphans, and 
 therefore deserving of a nation's solicitude and care. 
 If widows and orphans are the peculiar objects of 
 the care of government, and if the Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer has ever demonstrated by ( works his partici- 
 pation in that anxious solicitude by ordering a return to 
 be made of the number of widows and orphans who are 
 fundholders, he must know, that there are only about 
 nine per cent, of the fundholders widows, and twenty per 
 cent, spinsters, making together twenty-nine per cent, 
 or nearly 80,000 annuitants who are widows and spin- 
 sters ; and if we estimate the average annuity paid to 
 each at thirty pounds per annum, we shall demonstrate, 
 that a sum of not more than 2,400,000 is paid out of 
 the interest on the national debt to widows and spinsters. 
 Yet the Chancellor of the Exchequer draws a veil over 
 the mystery of credit, by propagating the delusion, that 
 it is the helpless and poor class of fundholders who are 
 receiving the greater share of the amount paid annually 
 as interest on the national debt. 
 
OF PROPERTY. 175 
 
 The funding system is not an institution of charity, 
 nor never was organized with the intention of being ulti- 
 mately converted into a refuge for the nominally poor 
 capitalists ; and if it were so, we have now proven, that 
 the poor and helpless are not those who reap the great- 
 est benefit. Let us, however, carry this proof a little 
 farther, in order to meet the allegation, that apart from 
 the fundholders there is a very numerous class of public 
 creditors who are depositors in savings' banks, friendly 
 societies, and charitable institutions, and that therefore 
 
 IK 
 
 there is a considerable portion of the interest on the 
 national debt paid to those individuals who have invested 
 their savings in those institutions. This is true to a cer- 
 tain extent, as regards the number of depositors, but 
 very fallacious as to the amount of interest received. 
 
 Mr. G. R. Porter, in his valuable work, " The Progress 
 of the Nation," has shewn that these savings' banks have 
 been a loss to the Exchequer ; and that the amount of inte- 
 rest paid to them during twenty-four years has been com- 
 paratively small. " The amount paid," says he, " by the 
 public for interest on the sums due to the trustees of sav- 
 ings' banks and friendly societies from 6th August, 1817, 
 to 20th November, 1S4J, was 13,086,472 16s 9d; 
 and as the amount of dividends in public securities in- 
 vested by the Commissioners for the reduction of the 
 National Debt, in respect of the same, amounted only 
 to 11,191,323 14s Id, there had resulted a loss at 
 that time to the public from those institutions of 
 1,895,149 2s 8d, by reason of the rate of interest 
 allowed being greater than that yielded by the securities 
 in which the deposits have been invested. The value 
 of these securities, according to a return made to Parlia- 
 
17G THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 ment in May, 1842, was 24,4-71,085. The rate of 
 interest allowed by the public to depositors was lowered 
 from November, 1844, to twopence per cent, per diem, 
 or 3 Os lOd per cent, per annum/' 
 
 The number of depositors in savings' banks and chari- 
 table institutions in the United Kingdom in 1849, was 
 1,087,354 individuals, and the amount of deposits 
 28,537,010, yielding an interest of 1,018,381. The 
 average amount invested by each depositor being 26 5s., 
 and the average annual interest 18s 9d. There were of 
 the above number of depositors 609,800 individuals, 
 whose average amount deposited did not exceed ,6, 
 interest thereon 4s^3d. And 254,600 depositors, the 
 average amount invested not exceeding 30, interest 
 thereon 21s 5d ; so that more than one-half of the depo- 
 sitors in savings banks receive each on an average 4s 3d 
 interest per annum ; and one-fourth of the number 
 receive each 21s 5d interest per annum. 
 
 The fact is, therefore, undeniably proven, that neither 
 the poorer class of fundholders, nor the depositors in savings' 
 banks, are the individuals who receive the greater portion 
 of the public dividends : and, in claiming a victory over 
 the popular delusion, fostered by the Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer, we for the present quit the commercial pounds, 
 shillings, and pence falsifications of the funding system, 
 and assume still loftier grounds of accusation against it, 
 by asserting its immorality; if that immorality is to be 
 judged of by the purest system of morality which has ever 
 yet been inculcated to man, namely, the sacred writings ; 
 for, from the time of Moses down to the days of the exile 
 John, in the island of Patmos, the purport of the writings 
 of all those worthy men, whose instructions have been 
 
OF PROPERTY. ] 77 
 
 conserved, as examples to teach pure morality to mankind, 
 are diametrically at variance with the principle of our fund- 
 ing system; therefore, those fundholders who go to church 
 with sedate faces, and make long prayers, should examine 
 their deeds, and see if their actions are not more reprobate 
 than those of David, when he was " in the horrible pit 
 and in the miry clay." But were we to preach sermons on 
 morality to the inexorable fundholders, we fear, that the 
 same answer might be given to us, which was given to the 
 Priest by Gil Bias, when pistol in hand on the highway, 
 he demanded his purse, or his life. ' Stop your moralizing,' 
 says Gil Bias, ' it is your money and not your sermons 
 that 1 want/ Oh ! que cequedad ! Escuchame, y te hare 
 presents el infeliz eslado en que te hollas. Oh, padre 
 mio ! le interrumpi con precipitation, no se tome miesa 
 reverencia ese trabajo, y dejese de moralizar, que no 
 vengo a los caminos publicos a que me prediquen ; 
 quiero diner o y no sermones. 
 
 The charity of government towards its creditors is 
 established by its actions to be only a selfish solicitude, 
 for it has repeatedly set public faith and charity aside,, 
 in regard to its creditors, and it is studiously on the 
 watch to embrace the first opportunity of again reducing 
 their means of living. The public creditor is in turn 
 distrustful of government, and public faith is thus cruci- 
 fied between them. If, then, public faith is not indige- 
 nous to either of their characters, but nevertheless is* 
 that by which they both exist, the grand problem, what 
 is public faith ? ought to be solved by reason, and not 
 evaded by sympathetical declamation. 
 
 46 What would be the effect upon the fundholders were 
 any extinction of their capital to take place?" To tliis 
 
178 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 question, it is our duty to give an answer; first, as regards 
 the fundholders, and secondly, as to the effects which 
 an extinction of the national debt would have upon the 
 nation. 
 
 Were a repudiation of the debt effected, it is quite 
 evident, that the fundholders would lose the whole amount 
 of their claims, and become so much the poorer, as nei- 
 ther capital nor interest would any longer be paid to them. 
 The nation, however, as a body would lose nothing; for, 
 in exact proportion to the loss which the fundholders 
 would sustain, the rest of the community would become 
 so much richer : and the industrious portion of the na- 
 tion would have added every year to their revenue a sum 
 equal to the interest which they now pay upon the debt, 
 thereby enabling them to increase their production, and 
 thus annually to augment the wealth of the nation which 
 would be freed from its present responsibility. 
 
 The effect upon the fundholders, were any failure to 
 take place in the punctual paymentnof the dividends, 
 would be felt in exact ratio to the extent of that failure; 
 and, if consummated through an act of Parliament, would 
 be exactly similar to that which overtook them in 1844, 
 by the Act 7th Victoria, cap. 4? & 5, by which the three 
 pounds ten shillings per cent, per annum annuities were 
 confiscated, and three and a quarter and three per cent, 
 per annum annuities were granted instead for a pe- 
 riod as per recited act. "Which said annuities shall 
 continue to be paid at the rate of three pounds five shil- 
 lings per cent, per annum until the 10th day of October, 
 1854 ; and from and after that date, the said annuities 
 shall carry interest at the rate of three pounds per cent, 
 per annum, and shall be called c New Three Founds per 
 
OF PROPERTY. 179 
 
 cent. Annuites,' which suid last-mentioned annuities 
 shall not be suhject to reduction until from and after the 
 10th day of October, 1874." 
 
 By this act, the fundholders were subjugated to the 
 alternate losses, either to accept new stock which was 
 to bear a lower rate of interest than that of which they 
 had been deprived ; or, in case of refusing to accept the 
 proposed reduced annuity, they were obliged to accept 
 payment in full of the amount which they held in the 
 stock which had been cancelled by the said act. And 
 certainly, at first sight this appears to have been rigidly 
 equitable ; but, veto, says the annuitant, public faith is 
 infringed, as there can be no equitable right shewn why 
 government, after having kept my money so long, should 
 dictatorially pay me off, at a time when were I to reinvest 
 that money in any sort of security whatever, I must do so 
 to a very great disadvantage, and at a sacrifice of interest. 
 And vet, government delusively descants about its soli- 
 citude and care for its creditors, all the time that it is 
 scheming how it can get rid of its debts, and pay the 
 interest with as little money as possible. 
 
 The real friends of the fundholders are those who 
 warn them of their pending danger, by exposing the 
 hollow sophistry of their pretended friends, who lay in 
 watch to defraud them. Fundholders ! your position is 
 pitiable; government is attentively watching and pressing 
 on your rear to take advantage of your anomalous 
 situation by curtailing the means by which you live ; and 
 the people in your face are boldly advancing and declaring 
 that they have no right to be eternally taxed in order 
 that you may live in luxury. Neither of your antagonists 
 will have any commiseration on you ; you are. therefore, 
 
180 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 unconsciously sleeping over a volcano, if you trust in the 
 philanthropy of government; or, if you believe that an 
 intelligent people will continuously submit to be wronged 
 for your advantage, you are fatally deluding yourselves. 
 
 The funding system is adverse to the rights of humanity, 
 and ultimately must through eternal justice perish ; 
 therefore, the real repudiators of the national debt are 
 those who vindicate the integrity of the present claims 
 of the fundholders, thereby inducing them to postpone 
 making any compromise with the nation till it shall have 
 been too late. But wherefore, some will say, propose 
 any compromise with the fundholders? why not let them 
 continue their system a short time longer ? and they will 
 be, in respect to their dividends, similarly situated to 
 what the landlords were, who would not accept of an 
 eight shillings per quarter protection duty on Corn, but 
 who were shortly afterwards obliged to surrender protec- 
 tion altogether ? So will it be with the fundholders ! The 
 
 o 
 
 cup of their iniquity is well-nigh filled; they have ridden 
 the pale horse long enough, and the fifth seal is about 
 being opened, when the people will discover under the 
 altar of public stocks, the havoc which the funding sys- 
 tem has wrought amongst them. Wait a little longer, 
 labourers ! eternal justice is on its march to your rescue ; 
 and the funding system, with all the false philosophy 
 and unscientific political economy by which it is bastion - 
 ed, will fall and be crushed like grains of sand before the 
 pulverizing wheels of the advancing car of immutable 
 justice. 
 
 The industrious classes have to pay yearly out of 
 their labour the interest on the national debt, which is 
 a grievous clog on the wheels of industry, and must 
 very materially retard its free and unfettered progession; 
 
OF PROPERTY. 181 
 
 and so long as it is allowed to press down labour, so 
 long will Englishmen be placed at a disadvantage in 
 competing with foreigners in a free trade market. Be- 
 fore we can justly have a free trade in the importation 
 of commodities, we must previously establish a free trade 
 amongst the various producers, so that they may be 
 enabled to produce on equal terms, that is to say, En- 
 glishmen, who compete with foreigners in this market, if 
 justice is to be done to them, must be admitted to labour 
 as free from taxation, and under as advantageous means 
 as those foreigners have laboured whose productions 
 come freely into competition with theirs. To allow a 
 partial, or an unlimited free trade, whilst the national 
 debt is fastened on the backs of Englishmen, would be 
 to decree, that they should carry a prodigious weight, 
 and should run over the same ground as the foreigners 
 who carried little or no weight at all. Englishmen may 
 compete, and even may outstrip the foreigner in a free 
 trade market ; but then, this must be accomplished 
 through greater bodily exertion, either in working more 
 fervently, supposing both to work an equal length of 
 time ; or, by labouring twelve hours to maintain himself, 
 and to produce for sale an article equivalent in Gallic 
 to that which the foreigner can produce in eight hours, 
 and maintain himself. 
 
 The principle of free trade is in harmony with nature, 
 and is that by which nations must ultimately expect to 
 be able to extend and propagate the happiness of their 
 people; but, under the present conventional state of 
 society, without the producers of each respective na- 
 tion have equal advantages conferred on them, so as to 
 enable them to exchange their various productions oa 
 
182 THE BIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 reciprocal terms with foreigners, there can be no sem- 
 blance of justice in free trade. Devoid of this right, that 
 those labourers who produce commodities which are to be 
 sold in the same market ought to have equal facilities of 
 producing at the same cost, free trade is only the free 
 organization of injustice, the free reign of capital over 
 labour, and the free league of the monopolists of the 
 world against the labourers, let in through the flood-gates 
 of this unequal free trade, to inundate and monopolize 
 the markets of our heavily. taxed producers with their 
 more cheaply-produced commodities; to undersell our 
 merchants in the home market, through means of re- 
 presentatives, that many of the large foreign capitalists 
 are sending into this country, and as they keep up no 
 establishments here, they therefore avoid paying an ade- 
 quate proportion of the taxation ; they thus throw our 
 labourers out of workj whilst the foreign labourers are 
 fully employed, well fed, living in comfort, and increas- 
 ing their stocks of wealth, so as one day orlother to enable 
 them to become masters themselves. 
 
 We. can never in justice to the producers of this 
 country establish a free trade with foreign nations, un- 
 less *we are first prepared to afford our labourers the 
 facilities of producing commodities at the same value as 
 foreigners. This, therefore, can only be accomplished 
 by reducing the taxation; not only on those articles that 
 the labourer consumes whilst he is producing, but also 
 through means of an unqualified and impartial reduction 
 in taxation, which can only be done with safety to the 
 constitution by paying off the national debt. So long 
 as the interest on the debt has to be paid, the producers 
 must ultimately pay it, let government place on whoso- 
 ever it may the first advancement of the taxes. Indivi- 
 
OF PROPERTY. 183 
 
 duals do not pay taxes in proportion to their consumption ; 
 they only advance the money to the government, after- 
 wards to draw it with interest out of the produce of 
 labour. Production, therefore, is the reservoir out of 
 which the consumer draws the nectar, and, in libations, 
 pours it into the treasury for the use of the Christian 
 deities, the fundholders ! What is erroneously called 
 direct taxation, is, therefore, the most indirect, as it is the 
 round-about and most expensive mode of taxation, for 
 by it the producers are fatally doomed to pay ultimately 
 the gross amount of taxation, with a benefit thereon 
 to the non-producers, who may have advanced the sum 
 in the first instance. 
 
 The actual position of the producers of this country 
 is, that whilst the debt remains unpaid they cannot pro- 
 duce so cheaply as the workmen of less taxed nations. 
 For instance, France has little more than one-third the 
 amount of national debt that we have; and, as it has often 
 contemned the payment of such public demands, it is 
 very likely, that at no far distant period, a repudiation 
 will take place, or some means will be resorted to in 
 order that it may be cancelled. When this shall have 
 been effected, then will her producers be enabled to 
 compete with ours to a still greater advantage than even 
 now. It is utterly impossible for the French Republic 
 to perpetuate its principles of Liberty, Equality, and 
 Fraternity, and simultaneously to preserve faith with the 
 fund holders of that antagonistic dynasty which the 
 Republic destroyed, but lift the hornets riest entire, 
 Egalitc point de tout. The fundholder is the archet} T pe 
 of inequality ; because, what government abstracts from 
 the people in taxes for his sole benefit, is thrown into 
 
184 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 the scale in his favour, by which operation the equality 
 is destroyed in a double ratio. It was a grave error that 
 the provisional government; of France made when the 
 Republic was established, that it did not insist upon 
 some arrangement for the liquidation of the then na- 
 tional debt of France ; and so long as it does not take 
 this subject under its consideration, liberty, equality, 
 and fraternity are words void of sense, and the Republic, 
 so far as equality is concerned, a dead letter. 
 
 National Bankruptcy ! Whenever any efforts are 
 made to expose the pernicious practice, or to condemn 
 the chronic evils of the funding system, this flatulent and 
 delusive assumption of national bankruptcy is advanced 
 by those who support the present system, either through 
 a sinister motive to enlist the patriotic sympathies of 
 the weak-minded in favour of the government, or with 
 a view to mislead the public into the belief, that what 
 is stupidly termed, national bankruptcy, is synonymous 
 with national revolution, or the breaking asunder of all 
 social ties. 
 
 We shall not here enter upon any erudite disquisition 
 to establish the purport of the term bankruptcy, as we 
 consider our duty will be performed if we investigate 
 the nature of the adulterate union of national with bank- 
 ruptcy, which has neither been consummated on the 
 principles of truth, nor in unison with those of political 
 economy. We, therefore, sturdily claim the divorce, in 
 asserting, that it is as political an impossibility for a 
 nation which borrows money of its own subjects ever to 
 become bankrupt, as it is an economical absurdity to 
 suppose that the husband who borrows money of his 
 (naturally married) wife, can or will ever be made a 
 bankrupt by her. 
 
OF PROPERTY. 185 
 
 Were it possible for England ever to become bankrupt, 
 it Lad done so in 3711, when the South Sea Company 
 was feignedly established for the purpose of trading in 
 the South Seas, and with the North West Coast of 
 America : its real object having been to assist the 
 government of Queen Anne in the French war that we 
 had been led into, through our interference in attempting 
 to dictate to France and Spain who was to be King of 
 Spain. This war occasioned such an expense, that, at the 
 formation of the South Sea Company the government 
 had contracted debts to the amount of 9,000,000, for 
 the payment of which no scheme of taxation had been 
 enacted. The Company paid this amount for the Govern- 
 ment on an interest of six per cent.; and an annual sum 
 of 8000 for the management of the scheme : and thus 
 disinterestedly, without further interest in the matter, 
 it saved the government the trouble of paying its debts, 
 or of telling those it had connived with, and had had the 
 money of, that the money was all spent in their service, 
 and that such being the case, the public owed them 
 nothing. A nation that had such able friends to aid it 
 in its hour of need, had no necessity to become a bankrupt. 
 When the debt was only fifty millions in 1736, Sir 
 John Sinclair, in his work on the Public Revenue, draws 
 the following miniature picture of what we at the present 
 time behold in extension, in respect to the national debt. 
 " The vast load of debt under which the nation still groans, 
 is the true source of all those calamities and gloomy 
 prospects of which we have so much reason to complain. 
 To this has been owing that multiplicity of burthensome 
 taxes which have more than doubled the price of the com- 
 mon necessaries of life within a few years past, and 
 
18G THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 thereby distressed the poor labourer and manufacturer, 
 disabled the farmer to pay his rent, and put even gentlemen 
 of plentiful estates under the greatest difficulties to make 
 a tolerable provision for their families." 
 
 The predictions even of political writers coincided in 
 by Mr. S. Hannay, who supposed, in 1756, when the debt 
 was 75,000,000, that the nation might go on borrowing 
 till the debt reached 100,000,000, but that then it 
 must inevitably become bankrupt, were soon after proven 
 to have been erroneously founded. In 1759, the debt 
 passed the Rubicon 100,000,000 strong, yet no fiat 
 in bankruptcy was issued ; rather, we perceive, that 
 government discovered on the other side of the Alps, 
 "that the more it borrowed, the more friends it had;" 
 that, the deeper it advanced into debt, its facility of 
 borrowing was expanded, and its allurements became 
 more fascinating. The philosophy which government had 
 been taught was dexterously reduced to practice, so that 
 it went on borrowing hundreds of millions after hun- 
 dreds of millions, till it has reached a sum which ex- 
 cites the wonder of the other nations of the globe. 
 And if government could procure credulous lenders, it 
 might warrantably continue borrowing till the debt was 
 more than three times its present amount, without any 
 risk of a national bankruptcy. " The more it borrows, 
 the more friends it will have ; interest is a stronger tie 
 than principle." We are sometimes told that the govern- 
 ment borrowed the money of the fundholders, who lent it 
 for the benefit of the nation. But, to borrow money, 
 means however, that it is to be repaid within a given 
 period ; and to lend it, implies, that the money was parted 
 with by the fundholders on condition of its being repaid ; 
 
OF PROPERTY. 187 
 
 and if the money was to be repaid with interest, it was for 
 the benefit of themselves that the fundholders lent the 
 money; besides, it was more to their ad vantage that govern- 
 ment consented to accept ofthemoncv, by way of a friendly 
 loan, than that it should have levied it by direct contributions 
 on property ; which government, had it acted fairly towards 
 future generations, should have caused to have been done. 
 The lender of money reserves to himself a future 
 power of demanding a restoration of it : when he parts 
 with this right, he is not a lender; neither is the party 
 with whom he contracts, a borrower ; they both stand 
 quite differently situated in their relations to that of a 
 borrower, or a lender. The national fundholder has lost 
 his right of demanding a repayment of his money ; and 
 the government, the imaginary borrower, received it 
 under the express agreement that it could not be called 
 upon to refund it ; they, therefore, stand in relation with 
 each other, as buyer and seller, the government as the 
 purchaser, and the fundholder as the disposer of his 
 money. The government, as buyer of the debt, must 
 have had an equivalent to offer in exchange, so as to com- 
 plete the bargain. The fatal mistake, therefore, in this 
 transaction was, that the government, who contrived to get 
 the money, had nothing to pay it with ; it thereby made 
 a purchase beyond its means of paying, and laid itself 
 under obligations which it could not discharge. But, in 
 order to redeem the pledges it gave to the fundholders 
 when it contracted the debt, it sold to them, and to 
 their order for ever, in fee simple, the labour, industry, 
 and sweat of future generations ; and pledged to them 
 the rights of those calling themselves free-born English- 
 man, as a guarantee for deeds done before thcv were born. 
 
188 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 " What are those credits npon the public," asks Mons. 
 Sismondi, " upon individuals which continue to exist after 
 the riches which founded them have been dissipated. One 
 cannot doubt that they have not a positive value, for it is this 
 \vhichforms the riches of all those who are vulgarly called 
 capitalists ; and it is even these riches which are most com- 
 monly employed to establish all useful enterprises. It 
 is a strange phenomenon, that a quantity, which in the 
 general inventory of a nation could not be reckoned but 
 as a negative quantity, appears to have, for stimulating 
 industry, all the effects of a positive quantity. It is not 
 to be wondered at, if this phenomenon has bewildered a 
 great number of economists." 
 
 In order to understand it, we must impress on our 
 minds a clear idea, that credit, or that immaterial value 
 which a creditor receives from his debtor in exchange 
 for his money, is nothing else than an assignation upon 
 the products of future labour. Human labour produces 
 every year an increase of riches, which forms the revenue 
 of the society : the borrower promises to give yearly to 
 the lender a portion of that revenue which is not yet in 
 existence, in exchange for the capital which he receives. 
 However, what is this assignation upon* a revenue 
 which does not yet exist ? Only a hope, which is consi- 
 dered as real riches. A hope, which, if any calamity 
 befall the nation to prevent its labour being executed, 
 would never be realized ; and the capital, which is sup- 
 posed to represent that perpetual assignation upon time 
 to come, is the value for which that hope can be sold. 
 This system is, therefore, nothing else than the alienation, 
 executed by society, of its prospects ; the dissipation, 
 beforehand, of that which the labour of future generations 
 
OF PROPERTY. 189 
 
 to perpetuity will produce. It is, without doubt, a very 
 commodious property for capitalists to possess ; besides, 
 it is a merchandize which is bought and sold to advan- 
 tage; also, the agents, brokers, and all those who make 
 a business of it, consider the public funds as the source 
 of their riches. . But, apart from those private advantages, 
 it is a great national calamity; it is a big injustice com- 
 mitted by the nation which borrows, and that dissipates 
 at the expense of future generations, which will have to 
 pay ; it is a great cause of the deprivation which goes 
 on increasing with the apparent opulence. To the enor- 
 mous mass of debt with which all nations are loaded, we 
 must lay to account the gradual diminution of salaries, 
 of profits, and of the interest of money, the rent of land, 
 and of all revenues whatever; for those revenues have 
 been alienated before being created ; and those who now 
 labour, those who will labour in future, shall be compelled, 
 not only to create their own subsistence, they will then 
 be obliged to pay for the follies and debts of their pre- 
 decessors. 
 
 The real function of credit is solely to transmit to one 
 the disposal of that which belongs to another ; but, in the 
 way that we make use of it, credit transmits to us the 
 disposition of that which belongs to those that are not 
 yet born, of that which in justice could not belong but 
 to them through their labour. Upon this foundation 
 credit has created some colossal fortunes, which adds no- 
 thing to the real prosperity of a nation, which are even 
 frequently for it a great cause of ruin ; but which causes 
 really to swim in abundance those that are possessed 
 of them ; and which, at the same time, puts afloat in 
 commerce double the value of those which exist in 
 reality. 
 
190 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 The fruits of the funding system are nothing else than 
 the share that the borrower has promised to the lender 
 in the productions of his future labour ; and, when it is a 
 question of a public loan that is under consideration, it 
 is the part of the revenue of each contributor that public 
 force will succeed in wresting from him, to hand it over 
 to the lender; nevertheless, all this immaterial riches is 
 hypothetically based upon positive wealth. Let us sup- 
 pose an abolition of debts, the fortune of one would 
 have passed to the other ; but society, in its totality, 
 would neither have lost nor gained. The con tributaries 
 would cease to pay to the lenders a part of their revenue, 
 the land and labour would be free ; and, if an obstinate 
 scrutiny is made what capita! the latter represents, the 
 nation as a body, the nation capable of labouring would 
 really be worth more than before, by a sum equal to that 
 of the immaterial capital which would have vanished, 
 because it. is a portion of its personal liberty which had 
 been perpetually alienated at that price. En abolissant 
 lesfonds publics, la nation ne serait ni plus riche ni plus 
 pauvre. Les emprunts publics sont une grande injustice 
 commise aux depense des generations futures." 
 
 " Borrow what you can ; the more you borrow, the 
 more friends you make ; interest is a stronger tie than 
 principle/' If Napoleon Bonaparte said to Mons. Ouvard, 
 that he had lowered royalty to the level of commerce, 
 through his pecuniary bargains with Charles IV. of 
 Spain, we may well say, that William III. lowered 
 rovaltv to the level of peculation ; and, by his becoming 
 the mouth-piece of utterance to such unsocial principles, 
 he proved himself worthy of being the abettor in this 
 country of a system of constitutional swindling, the ho- 
 
OF PROPERTY. 191 
 
 norable operation of which is manifested by its admirable 
 adaptation to make the people part with their money in 
 conformity with and under the auspice of the laws. 
 
 Many of the kings of this country previous to Wil- 
 liam III. had borrowed money for the purpose of as- 
 sisting them in their wars, which had been repaid through 
 setting aside the revenues of the crown for that purpose, 
 or by taxing the people. However, when this modem 
 and refined mode of taxation of levying taxes from the 
 industrious class was first resorted to ; various insur- 
 rections and rebellions took place, which laid the foun- 
 dation of that untameable spirit, which has ever since 
 characterized the people of this country in support 
 of their privileges and rights. Mr. D. Hume, in his 
 History of England, records, that ' The first instance of 
 a debt contracted upon parliamentary security occurs in 
 the reign of Henry VI. The commencement of this 
 pernicious practice deserves to be noted, a practice the 
 more likely to become pernicious the more a nation ad- 
 vances in opulence and credit. The ruinous effects of it 
 are now become apparent, and threaten the very exist- 
 ence of the nation.' 
 
 The Parliament to whom William III. had given such 
 a liberal commission, very soon after voted 750,000 for 
 the support of the war in Ireland. This money was to 
 have been repaid in three years ; it has not yet, however, 
 been paid, and now forms a part of what is foolishly 
 named c the permanent debt/ The original darkness 
 which mantled the world at its birth was at length dis- 
 
 o 
 
 pelled, since which time nothing has remained perma- 
 nent under the sun; and when political science shall 
 have diffused its rays into the economical darkness which 
 
192 THE BIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 now broods over the minds of the people, reason will 
 say, ' let there be no more an eternal debt ;' and its man- 
 date will be obeyed by a dissolution of the funds and 
 the funding system into their natural state, " without 
 form, and void.*' 
 
 In 1694, the Bank of England lent its capital, 
 1,200,000 at 8 per cent, to government. The bank 
 not having reserved to itself the power of demanding 
 repayment, unless the charter which had been granted 
 by the government was withdrawn, it may therefore be 
 presumed that the bank at that time was intended as 
 an engine of government, to facilitate the prosecution of 
 wars which without its aid must have been relinquished. 
 William seems to have lent his dignity to whatever 
 schemes might be best calculated to raise money to carry 
 on his wars : in fact, the diplomacy of his reign was to 
 raise money irrespective of principle, for under him the 
 abominable principle of bribing a majority in Parliament 
 was successfully introduced, and considerable sums of 
 money were spent with desired effect. The treaty of . 
 Ryswick, in 1697, put an end to the French war, and En- 
 gland once more enjoyed a glimpse of peace, with a national 
 debt accumulated to 21,500,000. In 1698, the East 
 India Company paid government 2,000,000 for their 
 charter. The Company lent the money on very similar 
 terms as the bank had done, and at the same rate of 
 interest. The government, however, reserved to itself 
 the power, after a certain time should have elapsed, of 
 cancelling the charters, both of the Bank of England 
 and of the East India Company, and of repaying the 
 money. 
 
 At the close of the reign of William III. in 1701, 
 
OF PROPERTY. 193 
 
 though the money obtained from the East India Company 
 had been made use of to pay off a part of the debt, and 
 the surplus revenues bad also been applied to tbe same 
 purpose, still it amounted to 16,394,702. 
 
 Tbe next war into which the nation was being 
 plunged at the accession of Queen Anne, was tbat of 
 the Spanish succession. Charles II., of Spain, having 
 no issue, left his kingdom by his will to Philip, Duke de 
 Berry, grandson of Louis XIV. of France. Louis sup- 
 ported the claims of his grandson, who had mounted the 
 throne of Spain in 1700 under the title of Philip V. 
 England engaged in this dispute of dynasty, and was 
 drawn into a war, which led to the contraction of liabi- 
 lities which, to this day, it has not been able to discharge, 
 and which laid the foundation of our funding system. 
 Previously to this time, money had always been bor- 
 rowed by the government, with the apparent intention 
 and prospect of repaying it; but in 171 1, government had 
 borrowed 9,000,000, without the means either of 
 paying it, or the interest thereon. This state of finance 
 paved the way to the establishment of the South Sea 
 Company, which took in the debts of the government 
 to the amount of its capital ; and may therefore be said 
 to have been the commencement of the " funding sys- 
 tem," as the parties who took shares in the Company 
 entered into an agreement, unprecedented in its tenure, 
 namely, that they could not demand repayment of the 
 capital lent. By this artful scheme, government was 
 exonerated from paying its liabilities, and was enabled 
 to prosecute the war at greater expense than it had pre- 
 viously done, so that, at the inglorious treaty of Utrecht, 
 K 
 
194 THE EIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 in 171 3, the national debt had been raised to 54, 145,363. 
 This treaty was anything but honourable to Great Bri- 
 tain, for by the war we had gained very little, and had 
 expended a great deal. During the war, Louis XIV. of 
 France, and Philip V. of Spain, sued for peace ; but the 
 conditions offered by Great Britain were too stringent 
 for the proud Bourbons to accept : war was, therefore, 
 prolonged, and terminated in favour of France, as we were 
 obliged to acknowledge Philip as king of Spain ; and, 
 as a pacific recompence, England had conveyed to the 
 South Sea Company, by the French Assiento Company, 
 the exclusive right during thirty years of supplying 
 one hundred and forty-four thousand negro slaves of 
 both sexes between fifteen and twenty-five years of 
 age for the Spanish West Indies. George I. purchased 
 10,000 stock in this slave-monopoly company, and be- 
 came its governor. Since then, we have abolished pro- 
 perty in slaves by paying twenty millions to the chris- 
 tian dealers in humanity. Thus the nation has been 
 made to pay dearly for the monopoly of slavery, and 
 more so for its abolition, by the emancipation act which 
 abolished property in human flesh. 
 
 A small diminution of the debt was made during the 
 peace which followed the treaty of Utrecht, so that, in 
 iiie year 1717 it had been reduced to 48,500,000. 
 Exchequer bills were first issued in 1G96 for amounts of 
 5 to 10. In 1717 the first funding of those bills 
 was effected by private arrangement with the Bank of 
 Jffingland, which held a large amount of them, and agreed 
 fto fund 2,000,000 of them at five per cent. Exche- 
 quer bills have always since, from time to time, been 
 funded by private arrangement with the parties holding 
 them. 
 
OF PROIT'l-TY, 105 
 
 The South Sea Company had, a little after its forma- 
 tion, increased its capital to 10,000,000. In 1720, it 
 was, however, empowered by act of Parliament to buy 
 in the debts of the nation, and to augment its capital to 
 any required amount. The amount of new capital 
 added to the Company's stock by this license was 
 26,000,000; this additional amount of capital enabled 
 the Company to buy in hirge portions of the government 
 debt. At first all went on as if some new mine of 
 wealth had been discovered, which had such an inebri- 
 ating effect on the public mind that shares were reck- 
 lessly bought at any price, and gigantic frauds were 
 resorted to by the managers of the company, by selling 
 shares at fictitiously high prices to enrich themselves. 
 But in a very short time, the unsoundncss of its trading 
 vspeculations were discovered;, and, similar to the rail- 
 way mania of 1845, shares fell enormously, and thou- 
 sands were ruined. Several members of Parliament 
 were implicated in the deceptions which had been per- 
 petrated upon the public. The Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer was expelled the House of Commons for the 
 part that he had taken in the nefarious plunder of the 
 public. Parliament saw fit to equalize as much as was 
 possible the gains and losses among the innocent parties, 
 and public confidence after a time resumed its usual 
 course. Thus ended the South Sea Bubble, which the 
 secret committee, appointed by the House of Commons 
 to scrutinize its proceedings, reported as being of the 
 deepest of " villany and fraud that hell ever contrived to 
 ruin a nation." 
 
 The Continental wars during the reign of George *. 
 were not so expensive as former campaigns had beeu 
 
196 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 and the amount added to the debt was more than ba- 
 lanced by the expiration of terminable annuities, and by 
 reducing the rate of interest. The yearly burden was also 
 considerably lightened, so that, at the close of this reigu 
 in 1727, the debt was 52,092,238, and the annual 
 interest was less by 1,133,807. During the peace 
 which followed, a small portion of the debt was paid 
 off, so that when war was declared against Spain in 
 1730, it was below 50,000,000. 
 
 The cause of this war was, that a few English mer- 
 chants carried on a smuggling trade with the Spanish 
 West India Colonies ; and the Spaniards, in order to 
 suppress this illegitimate traffic, searched, in accordance 
 with the rights of treaty, the English merchant's ships 
 which they found on those coasts. However, in doing 
 this, they had made some aggressions which caused 
 dissatisfaction in England, and war was therefore de- 
 clared against Spain. This war began favourably for 
 the English arms ; but very soon a series of blunders 
 in its direction ensued, till at length great losses were 
 suffered by our armaments; and the expedition against 
 Carthagena having signally failed, hostilities were sus- 
 pended, and the blame of mismanagement laid on Sir 
 Robert Walpole, who was ineffectually accused by the 
 House of Commons of " Undue influence in elections, 
 granting fraudulent contracts, peculation, and profusion 
 in the expenditure of secret service money." 
 
 The Emperor Charles VI. of Germany, died in 1740, 
 and the male issue of the house of Hapsburg having 
 became extinct, the government of the hereditary Aus- 
 trian dominions descended to his daughter Maria The- 
 resa. France supported the pretensions of the Elector 
 
OF PROPERTY. 19? 
 
 of Bavaria to a part of the late Emperor's dominions, and 
 sent an army to oppose Maria Theresa's claim. From 
 the great success of the French and Bavarian army which 
 took possession of Prague, and crowned the Elector 
 king of Bohemia, George II. considered his possessions 
 in Germany in danger, and in 1743 an English army of 
 forty thousand men was dispatched to the Continent 
 under the command of the Earl of Stair, not to fight 
 the battles of Great Britain, but those of an Austrian 
 dynasty and a few petty Hanoverian successions. The 
 French, provoked at such unwarrantable interference on 
 the part of England, projected an invasion in ^favour 
 of the Pretender, Charles Edward Stuart, which being 
 frustrated, France declared war against England, which 
 was rigorously prosecuted with alternate successes, till 
 the humiliating treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, when both 
 found, that, after losing many men, and expending 
 large sums of money, neither had gained any perceptible 
 advantage : they, therefore, agreed to relinquish what- 
 ever possessions each had taken from the other, and to 
 return to exactly their position previously to the war. 
 The national debt was augmented by this war from 
 .50,092,238 to 78,000,000. By reducing the rate of 
 interest during the peace which succeeded, three millions 
 had been paid off the debt ; so that, at the commence- 
 ment of hostilities in 175G, it had been reduced to 
 seventy-five millions. 
 
 At this time war may scarcely be said to have ceased, 
 for on the coast of Malabar the English and French had 
 never left off fighting ; and France, without having made 
 a declaration of war, was continually annoying our Co- 
 lonies in the West Indies and in North America. We 
 
198 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 were irresistibly compelled to arm for their defence ; 
 and this may, therefore, he said to be the only justifiable 
 war the expense of which forms any portion of our na- 
 tional debt. Active hostilities commenced in 175G, and 
 lasted until the peace of Paris in 1703. By this war, 
 sixty-four mLlions were added to the debt, which then 
 amounted to 138, 865,430, bearing interest 4,852,051. 
 
 By this war, which terminated successfully for Great 
 Britain, its possessions were very considerably enlarged, 
 though very little benefit was afterwards derived from 
 some of them on account of their mismanagement by 
 government ; which proved, that British soldiers were 
 better adapted for their employment than were its states- 
 men fit to govern. 
 
 From 1703 to the commencement of the American 
 war of independence in 1775, there was paid oiF the 
 debt 10,281,795, reducing it to 128,583,035, when 
 hostilities began at Lexington, near Boston, between the 
 American militia and the King's troops. 
 
 The object America had in view in this war was, to 
 assert its independence. In 1704, the British government 
 imposed upon the American colonies a stamp tax, to which 
 they refused to submit; in consequence of which it was 
 repealed next year : but the Americans supposed that this 
 relinquishment only proceeded from fear. A tax of three- 
 pence per Ib. on Tea was afterwards essayed ; this also 
 failed. It was not the amount of the tax the American* 
 looked on with such abhorrence ; what they contended 
 against was, the right of a British Parliament, in which 
 they were not represented, to impose taxes on them who 
 received no benefit from the objects for the maintenance 
 of which those taxes were to be paid. The first cargo, 
 of Tea sent to Boston was seized by the Americans, and 
 
OP PROPERTY. 199 
 
 thrown into tho sea; the excisemen were tarred, fea- 
 thered, and indignantly used. 
 
 The infatuated ministry pushed things from bad to 
 worse, by immediately passing the Boston Port Bill, 
 which was to close it as a shipping port, and thus ruin 
 its trade. When the official announcement, that this 
 Bill had passed, was made known in America, all future 
 hopes of peace being preserved, vanished ; the Americans 
 gathered on their armour, and hurled defiance at the 
 principle of taxation attempted to be fastened on them. 
 War now raged with terrific fury in all parts of America ; 
 the result of which was, that, after seven years of con- 
 stant campaigns, during which Great Britain expended 
 139 millions, and left bleaching in the woods of America 
 the bones of 43,500 Englishmen, the British army 
 under Lord Cornwallis surrendered in 1781 to General 
 Washington, and thus ingloriously ended a war in which 
 we had engaged with the intention of forcing those 
 to pay a part of our taxation who had never derived 
 any advantage from the impost; and, as if eternal justice 
 had stood by to defend the cause of rectitude, we re- 
 ceived from its unerring hand, as a retribution, the loss 
 of men, money, and colonies, with a national debt raised 
 to 249,851,628. Interest on the funded and unfunded 
 debt, 9,451,772. 
 
 During the ten years, which elapsed between the ter- 
 mination of the American excise war in 1783, and the 
 commencement of the French revolutionary anti-despotic 
 war in 1793, only 10,501,380 of the debt was paid 
 off; so that its amount was 239,350,248, and the 
 annual charge '9,437,862, when Great Britain unwar- 
 rantably precipitated itself into a foreign civil war, which 
 
200 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES . 
 
 instead of being checked, or the evils mitigated by our 
 interference, was thereby immensely increased ; the revo- 
 lutionary spirit in France provocatively fanned into a 
 blaze, and the reign of terror established. 
 
 The origin of this war, like the American, sprang 
 from taxation, though assuming a different form in its in- 
 fantile development. The industrious classes in France, 
 or what were called the tiers-etat, and the sans-culottes, 
 were obliged not only to bear the whole burden of tax- 
 ation imposed by the king, which was exacted from them 
 to the last, farthing by the farmers-general, who con- 
 tracted for the taxation, and were therefore detested 
 by the people ; but they were also subjected to feudal 
 exactions by the nobility, who were the First Estate in 
 the council of the States General. The clergy, who 
 were the Second Estate, were free from all contributory 
 burdens except what they pleased to pay. Yet this 
 nominally exonerated clergy, at the birth of the revolu- 
 tion, were possessed of property valuedhat five thousand 
 millions francs, (two hundred millions sterling) which 
 was afterwards sold for the benefit of the state, and 
 mostly applied towards the support of old institutions of 
 charity, and in founding new ones. The Tiers Etat was 
 the Third Estate : in other words, they were the com- 
 monalty, the representatives of the people, or what we 
 call in England the House of Commons. The sans- 
 culottes, the breechless multitude, were the lower orders 
 of the people, who were nothing better than the servile 
 dependents of the nobility and clergy, as they were not 
 at all represented at the States General previously to 
 that of 1789. 
 
 The assemblages of the States General were very rare> 
 
OF PROPERTY. 201 
 
 on account of the monarchs who had the summon in 
 
 o 
 
 of it dreading its power in curbing their despotism ; 
 therefore, when the deplorable financial and social con- 
 dition of France rendered it absolutely necessary in 
 1789 to call together the three orders of the state; 
 namely, the nobility, clergy, and tiers-etat, as such a- 
 council had not been assembled since 1614, it became a 
 problem what its usages were, and how its deliberations 
 were to be conducted. Various writers entered into 
 erudite disquisitions as to its modulation and customs. 
 The Abbe Sieyes put forward two questions which had 
 a wonderful effect on thepublicmind; he asked) 'What is 
 the Tiers-Etat?' His answer was, 'Nothing.' Whatought 
 it to be ? ' Everything.' When the States General met 
 in 1?89, the Tiers-Etat was introduced to Louis XVI. 
 differently to the other two estates ; whilst the barons 
 and clergy were admitted into the king's cabinet, they 
 were only permitted to enter the antechamber, from 
 which they were hurried in file past the throne, amidst 
 the sneers and contemptuous formalities of the courtiers. 
 At the opening of the States General, the Tiers-Etat 
 were kept standing without till the nobility and clergy 
 were seated, and then admitted by a side-door into the 
 hall. And whilst the nobility were arrayed in gold cloth, 
 feathers, and plumes, and the clergy in purple and fine 
 linen, both orders being seated and covered, the Tiers. 
 Ktat was compelled to wear black linsey woolsey cloaks, 
 and to be uncovered. The Marquis de Breze, the master 
 of the ceremonies, beckoned to the Tiers-Etat to be un- 
 covered, but in vain, the prestiges of despotism were ut 
 an end, as the epoch had arrived when the pith of sense 
 :vid the pride of worth were to burst their bands asunder. 
 
202 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 Whilst the nobility and clergy were pusillanimously 
 disputing in separate halls how the States General 
 should proceed in its deliberations in conformity with 
 their ancient seignorial and ecclesiastical privileges, the 
 Tiers-Etat, being composed of men of intelligence, be- 
 came disgusted at the way they had been used, and being 
 wearied out with such trivial formalities when the public 
 peace was in danger, took possession of the hall of the 
 States General, and boldly summoned the other two 
 orders to take their seats in the National Assembly. 
 The order of the clergy voted by a majority that they 
 should join the Tiers-Etat ; the nobility, however, de- 
 clined to do so, and appealed to the sovereign, who sus- 
 pended the sitting of the States General for a few days ; 
 when he re-opened it with a dictatorial speech, and at 
 the conclusion, as he retired, he ordered the whole 
 body to leave the hall and to meet again next day in 
 their respective orders. The Tiers-Etat, however, kept 
 their seats; and when the Marquis d^Breze reiterated 
 the order to retire, Mirabeau rose, and said, ' Go, tell 
 your master that we are here by command of the people, 
 and will not leave unless expelled at the point of the 
 bayonet/ All further resistance by the nobility and the 
 minority of the clergy was at an end ; they, in a few 
 days, reluctantly joined the National Assembly, which im- 
 mediately set about framing a constitution; while the king, 
 and the disaffected nobility, were collecting an army to 
 overawe the Assembly. Civil war was soon kindled, 
 and Louis XVI. suffered on the scaffold the 2 1st Jan., 
 ] 793. England, that had been sympathetically watching 
 the falling cause of dynastic despotism; and which had, 
 with pity, beheld the triumph over lordly oppression, of 
 
OP PROPERTY. 203 
 
 an order of human beings, that had, till then, been con- 
 sidered by a titled aristocracy, as a menial race, fit only 
 to pay taxes, could no longer refrain from espousing the 
 cause of the anciennes noblesses de la France. There- 
 fore, to restore the fallen order of nobility in France, and 
 to reinstate on its throne the exiled descendants of the 
 absolute monarch Louis XIV., who reigned fifty-four 
 years without any prime minister, in exact accordance 
 with his own opinion the state, ( C I am,' said he, 'the 
 state!' U etat) c 1 est moi). Great Britain entered upon 
 a bloody and expensive war, the evil effects of which 
 are sensibly felt to the present day. 
 
 The revolutionary war was carried on with variable 
 success until 1796, when Napoleon, a man hitherto un- 
 heard of, appeared on the stage of European tragedy, to 
 amaze like Garrick all the other actors. So unprece- 
 dentedly successful was he in his campaigns, that Great 
 Britain, in order to crush his rising power, in the year 
 1797, spent in war .55,432,826, whereas, the nett 
 revenue paid into the Exchequer was only 21,454,728; 
 shewing an excess of expenditure over the income of 
 33,978,908, equal to the value of 226^ tons weight of 
 gold. This enormous expenditure had such an effect on 
 public confidence that consols fell to 47f ; a run on the 
 Bank of England took place, which reduced the amount of 
 bullion in the Bank on the 20th February to 1,086,170. 
 The drain of bullion continued up to Saturday 25th, 
 when the directors found, that if the Bank was opened 
 again on Monday morning, they must suspend bullion 
 payments for the bank's notes; accordingly, application 
 was made to government for relief, whereupon an order 
 of Council was issued on Sunday morning, prohibiting 
 
204 THE BIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 the Bank in future to pay its notes in bullion ; and de- 
 claring Bank of England notes a legal tender. 
 
 It was this act which gave government the facility of 
 carrying on the war, and of borrowing in future prodi- 
 gious sums of money ; and which has entailed upon the 
 industrious population a debt, which belongs only to them 
 by moral imputation and legal imposition. The Currency 
 Bill passed in 1819, for which Sir Robert Peel was so 
 much accused, has not produced a tithe of the evils which 
 this Sunday Act of 1?97 has yielded to the labouring 
 portion of this country. 
 
 Napoleon, in 1799, wrote to George III. suing for 
 peace ; but he was answered thus by Lord Granville, the 
 then Foreign Secretary, " that in the unsettled state in 
 which the French government then was, any treaty which 
 might be entered into could not be depended on, that 
 his Majesty was solely desirous to maintain his domi- 
 nions, those of his allies, and the safety of Europe. Un- 
 happily no such security hitherto exists ; no sufficient 
 evidence of the principles by which the new government 
 of France will be directed; no reasonable grounds by 
 which to judge of its stability!" Napoleon clearly saw 
 that England wished to restore the Bourbons. He accord- 
 ingly wrote an answer, in which he vindicated the French 
 government from the imputations brought against it, and 
 asserted the right France had to choose its own rulers 
 without being dictated to by other states ; a right which 
 could not with propriety and justice be gainsayed by En- 
 gland, whose crown was held by no other tenure. 
 
 In consequence of Great Britain refusing to enter upon 
 terms of peace, the war was prolonged till 1802, when 
 
OF PROPERTY. 205 
 
 it was brought to a temporary termination by the peace 
 of Amiens. Between 1793 and 1802 there was added 
 to the capital of the debt -264,200,230, and the annual 
 charge was increased by 10,509,762. The amount of 
 the debt was thereby raised to 503,550,478, and 
 the yearly burden, for interest and management, to 
 19,855,588. 
 
 The peace of Amiens has been wrongly designated so, 
 as it was only feigned by the parties thereto, in order to 
 give them time to breathe and to recruit their strength. 
 They endeavoured, for nearly fourteen months, ineffec- 
 tually to conceal their future intentions, and, under a 
 hollow semblance of wishing to perpetuate a mutual 
 and beneficial friendship, to hide from each other the 
 secret preparations they were making for war. During 
 this fictitious peace France was organizing its conscripts, 
 whilst Great Britain was watching with jealousy its. 
 rival, drawing out the militia, and gathering its volunteers. 
 Simultaneously and secretly was each nation preparing 
 with lively activity for the pending and final contest, 
 which was openly declared by England on the 18th of 
 May, 1803. Hostilities lasted with but little intermission 
 till the battle of Waterloo in 1815, when the war was. 
 finally closed, and permanent peace regained. 
 
 From the breaking of the pretended peace of Amiens, 
 until the termination of the war after the battle of Wa- 
 terloo, there was added to the debt 381,635,486,, 
 making the gross amount of the national debt (inclu- 
 sive of 39 millions the amount of the unfunded debt) 
 885,186,324, equal to the value of 6940 tons weight 
 of gold ; and the annual burden of interest and manage* 
 mcnt 32,938,751. 
 
206 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 The amount of permanent taxation paid into the Ex- 
 chequer in 1793, the year that the French dynastic war 
 of interference broke out, was 19,258,814. This war 
 necessarily led to the imposition of new taxes, so that, 
 during the nine years' war which followed, the permanent 
 taxation was doubled in amount, and in 1803 had reached 
 the sum of 38,609,392. When war was again de- 
 clared after the peace of Amiens, it became imperative 
 to impose additional taxation ; therefore, in 1 803 new 
 taxes were voted to the yearly amount of 12,500,000, 
 being nearly one- third of the gross amount realized by 
 previous taxation. This enormous amount of increase 
 in taxation imposed in one year upon any nation is unpa- 
 ralleled in history ; but though it stands at the apex of 
 rapidity in impost duties, it was nevertheless well- sup- 
 ported by the imposts of the two previous and the three 
 subsequent years, for we find, that during the six years 
 ending in 1806, no less a sum than 26,780,000 of 
 annual new taxation was laid upon th6 people: on an 
 average for each of those six years, the burden of taxation 
 was augmented 4,464,000. 
 
 The population of the United Kingdom at that time 
 may be estimated at 16 millions; it is now upwards of 
 28 millions, being an increase of 75 per cent. The 
 amount of new yearly taxation imposed since 1801 up 
 to 1849 was 44,807,027; and the amount of taxes 
 repealed or expired from 1814 to 1849, was54,889,911, 
 shewing 10,082,884 yearly reduction of taxation in fa- 
 vour of a population which has increased 75 per cent. 
 Yet we find that the ministers of the crown, in 1851, 
 were obliged to resign their offices; not because the 
 revenue was deficient, but on account of its having been 
 2,500,000 more than the expenditure, and they could 
 
OF PROPERTY. 207 
 
 not satisfy the nation as to the mode of expending this 
 surplus revenue. Let philosophers ponder the cause of 
 such an antagonistic change in political government, 
 and we think that they will trace its cause to the effects 
 produced on the minds of the people, who are, through the 
 development of knowledge, beginning clearly to see, the 
 damnifying results of taxation upon their daily avoca- 
 tions and permanent interests. 
 
 There was paid into the Exchequer the produce alono 
 of taxation, between 1803 and 1816, the sum of 
 859,260,4-49. The average annual taxation during 
 those fourteen years being 61,375,746, a sum equal 
 to the value of 481 tons of gold. Part of this absurd 
 expenditure \vas incurred through our profuse loans and 
 subsidies to foreign nations; for, during twelve years 
 ending in 1814, we spent in loans and subsidies 
 30,898,957. Average expenditure for each of those 
 years, in subsidising foreign states, 2,574,913. 
 
 The largest amounts of revenue, the produce of tax- 
 ation paid into the Exchequer, were for the three last 
 years of the war, as follows : 
 
 Total nett revenue paid into the Exchequer in 
 
 1813 68,742,363. 
 
 1814 71,134,503. 
 
 1815 72,210,5)8. 
 
 Sudsidies arid loans paid to foreign nations during 
 
 the years 1813 6,786,022. 
 
 1814 8,442,578. 
 
 1815 1,582,045. 
 
 This last sum of 1,582,045 was spent to purchase nrma 
 and clothing for foreign states. 
 
208 THK RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 The current expenditure for the year 
 ending 5th Jan., 1814 ??,406,919 
 
 Interest on the deht funded and un- 
 funded, 5th Jan., 1814 30,051,305 
 
 Total 107,458, 284 
 Equal to the value of 842 tons of gold. 
 
 In 1814 the sum of 200,000 was advanced to Louis 
 XVI II., to enable him to return to France, and take pos- 
 session of that throne which the French people hurned, 
 sur la place de la Bastile in 1848, triumphantly burying 
 in its ashes, all that, for the maintenance of which 
 Great Britain had squandered millions of her treasures 
 in money, rendered thousands of her children fatherless, 
 made her wives widows, and sacrificed the rights of her 
 posterity. 
 
 We have now, as briefly as was consistent with an in- 
 vestigation of such magnitude, glanced at the causes which, 
 in rapid succession, led to the creation of ^he national debt. 
 We have likewise shown that its formation was begun on 
 base principles, and that it has been used, by monev- 
 mongers and fundholders, during the whole progress of its 
 accumulation and development, as an engine to facilitate 
 their selfish aggrandisement, whilst it has not conferred 
 on the people those advantages that the supporters of 
 the funding system allege. The industrious classes of 
 England have never gained any advantage whatever by 
 its existence ; and they are, through its instrumentality 
 at the present day, subjugated and kept under the grasp 
 of the fundholders, who are thereby legally empowered 
 to force the people to give up a certain portion of their 
 produce every year to them as interest on money lent to 
 
OP PROPERTY. 200 
 
 protect property ; which government, in place of borrow- 
 ing, should have made property pay for itself at the time 
 that, that protection was demanded. 
 
 The majority of the people was against all the wars 
 which have entailed on the nation such an enormous debt; 
 even the French anti-revolutionary war, though at first 
 it was considered just and necessary, and was eulogised 
 by the popular party in Parliament ; still, when the real 
 objects which had caused the French people to throw off 
 their yoke, and instigated our interference in their quar- 
 rels, began to be understood by the people of England, 
 they became turbulently clamorous for peace ; so much 
 so, that in 1795, George III., in proceeding to open par- 
 liament, was pelted with stones, and on his return the 
 same indignities were renewed ; but when he alighted 
 from his carriage, it was attacked, and broken to pieces. 
 Therefore, though this may be said to be the only war 
 into which the people ever entered without great repug- 
 nance, yet, when they found out that it was only liberty, 
 and not anarchy, that Frenchmen were contending for, 
 they became anxiously desirous that Britain should not 
 prolong an unjust war against the liberties of the sub- 
 jects of other states, and which was besides subversive 
 of the freedom of mankind. The people also saw, that, 
 as they were the producers of wealth, the onerous duty 
 of paying for the Avar would be laid on them ; they no 
 doubt, therefore, wished for peace, not only for the sake 
 of humanity, but likewise for their own, as the public 
 expenditure had been increased to j4S,4J4,177, where- 
 as the previous year, 1 794-, it had only been 27,742,1 77. 
 
 The system of exacting interest on money advances 
 for the common good of a state is no newly-fledged do- 
 
210 THE EIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 vice by Christian fundholclers. It owes its origin to that 
 people which ruined the Egyptians by borrowing, and 
 to which Moses taught the science of money so effec- 
 tually, that they became to the world the general in- 
 structors in the financial power of credit, " Thou shalt 
 lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow; and 
 thou shalt reign over them, but they shall not reign over 
 thee." The Jews, however, had imbibed such an ardent 
 desire for gold, by drinking the dust of the golden calf, 
 that they did not keep credit within the prescribed 
 limits of lending to foreign states and foreigners of whom 
 payment might have been exacted : " Of a foreigner 
 thou mayest exact it again ;" for we find, that in the time 
 of Nehemiah the labouring Jews had a national debt 
 imposed on them by the nobles, which in part resembled 
 our own, as the money had r been lent to pay the national 
 tribute and expended for, and on account of the defence 
 of Jerusalem, the native home of the Jews. Nehemiah 
 raised a league against this arch-usury," and encouraged 
 the people to rise en masse, and repudiate its payment, 
 which they effectually did. 4i Pie set a great assembly 
 against them ." Then he charged them in the name of 
 God, not only to leave off exacting any more taxes, but 
 to make a restitution. The Jewish fundholders relin- 
 quished their claims, made restitution, and the people 
 became tranquillized and contented. 
 
 Our national debt, like that which the Jews repudiated, 
 serves only a base purpose ; namely, that of rendering 
 the poor industrious man poorer, and making the rich 
 capitalist richer. To effect the collection of the taxa- 
 tion, the yearly sum of 4,103,959 is paid to revenue 
 officers, being 7:ls:0^d per cent. on. the gross amount 
 
OP PROPERTY. 21 1 
 
 collected. As the charge on the national debt absorbs 
 one-half of the ordinary revenue, consequently, there is 
 2,051,9?!) paid to the servants of the crown to legally 
 exact money from the industrious classes, and to hand it 
 over to the government creditor, alias, government dis- 
 truster, for his share in having abetted a constitutionally 
 recognised system of imposition on the rights of man. 
 
 As it is from produce only that taxes can be paid, the 
 producers therefore, and not the consumer, must discharge 
 the impost ; he must likewise pay the salaries of those 
 who collect it, and sometimes bear their insolence, whilst 
 they execute the depredation. Modern governments 
 have learned scientifically the art of levying taxes, from 
 the ancient practice of savage chiefs, who used to reple- 
 nish their exchequer by issuing from the mountain or the 
 desert, in personal command of their efficient staff of 
 officers, to rudely levy an impost on merchants, or others, 
 whom they might find at certain passes in the mountains, 
 or caught at the fords of rivers. Every one must live 
 by their profession, and those who are idle, or who do 
 not produce themselves, must lay on industry the impost 
 of their existence. 
 
 We arc, however, living in a state of society, and 
 therefore each member of the union has duties to perform 
 towards the state; and if he delegate those duties to 
 certain individuals, he ought to pay that delegation by 
 parting with a portion of his wealth for that purpose; 
 beyond this proportional contribution no one ought to be 
 made to pay. But the people are, by our present sys- 
 tem of taxation, compelled to pay taxes under the pre- 
 tence that they have certain protection and advantages 
 oiForded them. Nevertheless, these pretended benefits 
 
212 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 are only actually conferred on property in its real and 
 assumed forms ; however, tins state of transition cannot 
 last mucli longer as men are now more fully aware of 
 their rights and duties ; and, in proportion as they de- 
 velop their intellectual powers, reforms will he effected 
 in the principle of taxation. 
 
 Fundholders would therefore do well not to oppose any 
 reasonable change in the present funding system ; for, if 
 they foolishly do so, they may ultimately excite that feeling 
 in the people which is ahle to deprive them of that which 
 they now only enjoy hy sufferance. To prevent such a 
 disastrous result for them, as that of expunging the debt, 
 it would be desirable and judicious that some scheme 
 should be adopted, in due time, whereby a fair, equitable, 
 and just liquidation of the national debt might be ef- 
 fected, without either doing an injury to the fundholders 
 by acting harshly and unjustly towards them, or by de- 
 stroying the rights of property. 
 
 To propose a plan whereby the national debt might 
 be practically and speedily liquidated, without in its ope- 
 ration pressing unequally and unjustly on property, or 
 unduly interfering with the rights of any individual, or 
 class of individuals, will be the purport of the subsequent 
 suggestions. Believing, as we do, that great and un- 
 warrantable injustice is done to the people, in compelling 
 them to pay the interest of the debt which they did not 
 contract, nor now derive any benefit from ; still, as that 
 debt was contracted at a period when the rudiments of 
 political economy were imperfectly understood, and at 
 times of great emergency, when the nation was under 
 circumstances of extraordinary excitement ; and besides, 
 as the original holders of stock have mostly sold it to 
 
OF PROPERTY. 213 
 
 others, who bought it on the faith of the nation main- 
 taining inviolate the original conditions of the contract; 
 under these circumstances, we consider, it would neither 
 be politic of the government, nor honourable on the part 
 of the nation, to refuse a just payment of the claims of 
 the landholders. A repudiation of the national debt 
 will, we hope, never be resorted to by the nation, which 
 is well able to pay it off by a just and equitable property 
 tax. This, instead of being dishonourable to the nation, 
 would establish us higher in the estimation of foreign 
 states than we have yet attained by integrity, or by 
 force of arms. 
 
 Whatever means may be used for changing the fund- 
 ing system, or for liquidating the national debt, it must 
 be distinctly visible to every cogent mind, that political 
 events are rapidly following each other in corroboration 
 of the inevitable fact, that at no very distant time, the 
 pressure, under which industry now suffers through the 
 unjust operation of the public funds, must be mitigated, 
 or totally removed. We ought, therefore, now to meet 
 the question of payment in an equitable and patriotic 
 spirit, by each and all contributing their just share to- 
 wards its payment, in proportion to their real means. 
 
 The present effect of taxation upon the industrious 
 classes is unequal and insupportable ; and the excruciat- 
 ing miser) 7 which it disseminates amongst the labourers 
 renders many a family miserable that otherwise would 
 be enjoying plenty, and living in happiness. Let us, 
 then, for the love of justice, and in vindication of the 
 rights of humanity, endeavour to remove this apparent 
 cause of oppression by a liquidation of the national 
 debt through means of an equalized tax on realized 
 
214 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 property, so as to repay the fundholders, and thereby 
 to free industry from the burden of paying the interest 
 on the debt. 
 
 In order that we may arrive at as correct a conclusion 
 as possible on so momentous a subject, it will be indis- 
 pensable that an estimate of the nation's resources be 
 made, so that we may be able to judge of our ability to 
 pay off the debt, without seriously interfering with, or 
 deranging the currency. And as we believe that much 
 of the statistical information in regard to the value of 
 property is far from being correct, we shall, consequently, 
 in making our estimates, and in forming our conclusions, 
 adopt more as our guides reason and observation, than 
 solely to depend on parliamentary returns. Being per- 
 suaded that, in pursuing this course, the result to which 
 we shall thereby be led, will be as near an approximate 
 to truth, as can reasonably be anticipated on so vast and 
 intricate a subject. 
 
 The first estimate which we shall make of property 
 will be that of the value of land in the United King- 
 dom, which we compute at sixty millions of arable acres; 
 the average rent of which we reckon at twenty-five 
 shillings per acre per annum, yielding a yearly rent of 
 seventy-five millions, which, if taken at thirty years' 
 purchase, will produce 2250 millions, as the real value of 
 all the land in the Kingdom. 
 
 We shall divide the landlords into three categories. 
 First, those whose lands have come into their possession 
 either by purchnse, or through inheritance from those 
 who had purchased it subsequently to the peace of 
 Amiens. Secondly ; those who are in possession by 
 purchase or by transmission through inheritance, from 
 
OP PROPERTY. 215 
 
 those who bad purchased it between the commencement 
 of the American war and the peace of Amiens. The 
 third class of the possessors of land we reckon to be 
 the most numerous, as it comprises that portion of landed 
 proprietors who hold their lands by purchase, by gift, 
 or through inheritance from those who were in the pos- 
 session of it antecedently to the American war in 1775. 
 
 The first division of the possessors of the soil we es- 
 timate as holding three-tenths of the land ; and on the 
 value of this portion of the public resources, amounting 
 to 075 millions, we propose to take 6^ per cent., produ- 
 cing a sum of 43,875,000. The second division we 
 compute at two-tenths of the land, value 450 millions, 
 and on those retaining it we propose that 7^ per cent 
 should be levied, producing a tax of 33,750,000. 
 The quantity of the third division, into which we have 
 apportioned the whole of the land in the country, we 
 estimate at one-half of the whole ; and on the value of 
 this category of property, valued at 1125 millions, we 
 propose to lay a tax of at least 8^ per cent., which would 
 raise a sum of 95,625,000. The total amount, there- 
 fore, of taxation derivable from land, to be made appli- 
 cable towards the liquidation of the national debt, would 
 be 173,250,000. 
 
 The next sort of property upon which we propose 
 to raise money towards paying off the national debt, is 
 that of the Mercantile Navy of the United Kingdom, 
 which, on the 31st December, 1850, consisted of 25,131 
 vessels, bearing a tonnage of 3,504,944 ; (exclusive of 
 9,150 vessels, tonnage 728,018, belonging to British 
 plantations, and the Isles of Guernsey, Jersey, and J\!an, 
 which we do not reckon in this computation.) On the 
 
216 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 registered tonnnge of the United Kingdom, and on the 
 value of all fishing and river boats not included in the 
 above estimate of tonnage, we propose that a tax of five 
 per cent, should be imposed, which, on 80,000,000, 
 the computed worth of our mercantile navy and river 
 boats, would yield a sum to the Exchequer of 4,000,000. 
 
 There are about 7,000 miles of Railway opened in 
 the Kingdom, which have cost on an average 33,000 
 per mile; representing a sum of 231,000,000 as having 
 been expended in the construction of those gigantic 
 works of internal communication. But, as the present 
 average value of Railway property has fallen consider- 
 ably below its original cost, we estimate its present worth 
 at 20,000 per mile, which we consider rather above 
 than below its actual value ; therefore, the value of the 
 whole Railway property in the nation would be ninety- 
 one millions below prime cost, and now only represent- 
 ing a capital of 140,000,000. On this kind of pro- 
 perty let 5 per cent be imposed, whicirwill produce the 
 sum of 7,000,000. 
 
 We propose, that an impost of 5 per cent, should be 
 collected from the proprietors of household property, 
 and we calculate that there are five millions of families 
 in the Kingdom ; and that on an average each family is 
 possessed of a house and furniture worth 200 ; there- 
 fore, according to this computation, the household pro- 
 perty and furniture of the nation will represent a capi- 
 tal of 1,000,000,000, producing a property tax of 
 50,000,000. 
 
 Next will devolve on us the duty of grappling with 
 a very difficult, and at the same time most abstruse part 
 of our estimates, in calculating the value of capital 
 
OF PROPERTY. 217 
 
 invested in banks, insurance, and other joint stock com- 
 panies, roads, canals, docks, mines, c. ; also to form an 
 approximately true estimate as to the value of all goods 
 deposited in warehouses and shops ; horses and cattle, 
 with all other tangible property (except the crown lands) 
 which has not already been charged with the proposed 
 property tax. 
 
 We have previously calculated that there are five mil- 
 lions of families in the United Kingdom, and we estimate 
 the average revenue of each family at 75 per annum. 
 But as many of those families derive their revenues 
 solely, and others partly, from property which has pre- 
 viously been included in our estimates, we calculate the 
 national revenue derivable from productive capital not 
 yet included in those estimates at two hundred and fifty 
 millions ; and, that to produce this amount of revenue by 
 a return of five per cent, on the capital, would require an 
 amount of property equal to five thousand millions. On 
 this kind of property a tax of five per cent, would bring 
 into the exchequer two hundred and fifty millions. On 
 this kind of property, as it is daily changing hands, the 
 amount of duty imposed ought to be levied at once, and 
 a discount of five per cent, allowed off the tax paid by 
 each contributor. This would amount to a reduction of 
 12,500,000 upon the gross amount of the tax, conse- 
 quently reducing the net amount to 237,500,000. 
 
 The Crown Lands unquestionably ought to be sold, 
 and the proceeds applied towards paying off a portion of 
 the public debt. These immense domains are so despi- 
 cably managed, that the gross receipts arising from the 
 whole of Her Majesty's Woods, Forests, and Land Re- 
 venues, in the year ending 5th January, 1851, was only 
 L 
 
218 THE SIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 365,809, and the charge of collecting this portion of 
 our public revenue was 47,228, being 12 : 18s : 2|d. 
 per cent, upon the gross amount. The payments made 
 for pensions, &c. out of these revenues in its progress to 
 the Exchequer, other than charge of collection, amounted 
 to 146,130, equal to forty per cent, on the gross reve- 
 nue. Net produce of the Crown Lands 172,451, being 
 less than one-half of the gross revenue* 
 
 The value of the revenues of the Crown Lands from 
 the year 1805 to the year 1815 amounted to 215,541. 
 From 1816 to 1826 they produced the sum of 2,374,321, 
 out of which sum only 8,624 found its way into the 
 Exchequer, being about l-270th part. The woods of 
 Chopwell, for a period of thirty years ending 1832, 
 yielded 11,306, while the expenditure was 17,339. 
 The woods of Gillingham produced 24,765, while the 
 expenditure was 22,961. Meopham woods produced 
 9,505, while the expenditure was 11,133. Bere 
 forest produced 26,425, amount expanded 45,436. 
 Delamere forest has produced 6,136, amount of expen- 
 diture 50,504. 
 
 The average rent per annum of Whittle wood Forest, 
 containing 4010 acres, during twenty- five years ending 
 in 1846, was 4s : 2d per acre. In 1846 the rent of the 
 whole was 1 4s, or one-fourth of a farthing per acre. 
 In 1848 the income was 851, and the ordinary expen- 
 diture 856. Nevertheless, the soil is good, and might 
 be let for at least 1 per acre. The timber on it is va- 
 lued at 360,000. 
 
 The average receipts of Whichwood Forest, which 
 measures 3741 acres, was, for the twelve years ending 
 in 1846, 103 per annum. In seven years of these 
 
OP PROPERTY. 219 
 
 twelve there was an actual loss. The income for 1848 
 was 426, whilst the ordinary expenditure was 303, 
 leaving only 123 as the yearly benefit to the Exche- 
 quer from such an immense tract of land, on which the 
 value of the timber alone is 290,000. 
 
 The New Forest is twenty miles long and fifteen 
 miles wide, containing 66,291 acres, the average receipts 
 per annum for the last forty-six years was ninepence 
 per acre. In 1848 the income was 9228, and the or- 
 dinary expenditure 10,562. The yearly rent and value 
 of timber may be estimated at 57,000, and the fee 
 simple at 1,583,750. 
 
 The other royal Forests and Domains, though gene- 
 rally less extravagantly managed, are nevertheless nomi- 
 nally unproductive to the public. The total net amount 
 paid into the Exchequer for the year ending the 5th 
 January, 1850, was 157,94-9 ; and for the year ending 
 5th January, 1851, it, was 172,451 ; thus giving a fair 
 specimen of how the crown lands are farmed. 
 
 Let us now briefly enquire how these lands came into 
 the possession of the crown; under what obligations they 
 were held; how this property has been abused; and by 
 what means the crown has alienated it. At the original 
 distributions of landed property, the demesne, or crown 
 lands, were either the reservation by the sovereign of a 
 certain extent, or the share which fell to the part of the 
 crown at those allotments; or, such as merged to it 
 afterwards through forfeitures, or other circumstances. 
 Previously to the Normans taking physical-force posses- 
 sion of England, there were 1422 manors, besides other 
 estates, which appertained to the crown. William the 
 Norman became possessed, as portion of his victory over 
 
220 THE EIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 Harold, of 68 forests, 13 chases, and 781 parks, which 
 then produced a revenue of 400,000, equal to the va- 
 lue of 1,170,724 of the present day. William distri- 
 buted part of these lands amongst his participators in 
 the conquest and plunder of a portion of the old Saxon 
 barons; the rest he reserved to himself to defray the 
 current expenditure of the government. And so it was 
 appropriated for centuries afterwards; for we find, in 
 1467, Edward IV., on opening the parliament, say- 
 ing, ' Sirs, ye come to this my court of parliament for the 
 commons of this my realm ; the cause why I have called 
 and summoned this my present parliament is, that I pro- 
 pose to live upon mine own, and not to charge my sub- 
 jects, but in great and urgent causes, concerning more 
 the weal of themselves, and also the defence of them, 
 and of this my realm, rather than my own pleasure/ 
 By the act 43rd Elizabeth, cap. 1., all the grants and 
 conveyances made by her, for which considerations had 
 been given, were confirmed with this proviso, that in 
 case of defalcation of male issue, the inheritance was to 
 revert to the crown. Very likely many of her grants 
 are abrogated by this stipulation. 
 
 When Queen Anne came to the throne in 1701, the 
 revenues of the crown lands were absolutely the property 
 of the crown for the purpose of paying certain charges 
 of government; however, they had been very much re- 
 duced by the extravagant gifts of previous monarchs, so 
 that, parliament in order to save what remained, stepped 
 in, and by the act, 1st Anne I, c. 7, established the 
 charge of the civil list to be henceforth paid out of the 
 Exchequer. And, in consideration of the annual sum 
 of 700,000 being settled upon her majesty for life, she 
 
OF PROPERTY. 221 
 
 relinquished all the proceeds of the crown lands for the 
 benefit of the public exchequer. The above annuity 
 was to defray the household expenses of the queen ; to 
 pay the salaries of her ambassadors and representatives 
 at foreign courts; to pay for the administration of jus- 
 tice at home, and some minor expenses. By this act, it 
 was decreed that no grant should be made of any ma- 
 nors, lands, &c. belonging to the crown unless for thirty- 
 one years, or three lives ; that the ancient rents were to 
 be retained, or instead one-third of the yearly value, 
 the remainder of the yearly value to be paid as a fine. 
 However, this well-intended act did not prevent gross 
 abuses and considerable diminution of the crown lands' 
 revenue, which continued till 1782, when Mr. Burke 
 proposed in parliament to sell the crown lands. This 
 bill was rejected ; however, an enquiry into the manage- 
 ment of these lands was soon afterwards instituted; 
 and in 1793 an act was passed reorganizing it upon the 
 present principle of management. From that time down 
 to the present reign, various acts of parliament have been 
 passed to regulate the administration of the crown lands, 
 and unprecedented appropriations have been made of 
 those domains by royal favorites. 
 
 On the accession to the throne of Queen Victoria in 
 1837, an act was passed, in conformity with the prin- 
 ciples laid down in 1830 on the accession of William IV., 
 which placed on the consolidated fund the expenses of 
 her Majesty's ambassadors and representatives in foreign 
 countries amounting to 172,351, besides 1,094,981 
 for the administration of justice, which had previously 
 to 1830 been discharged out of the revenue of the civil 
 list. 
 
222 THE BWHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 Though the amount of the civil list is not now exor- 
 bitantly large, still it would appear that the nation in a)I 
 its bargains with the crown has ever found that the ex- 
 change was against it ; and if it be now hindered by the 
 crown from selling what belongs to the public by act of 
 parliament; or if it be, under any pretence whatever 
 on the part of the crown, prevented from taking abso- 
 lute and unfettered possession of the public domains, 
 called the crown lands, then has the crown usurped the 
 rights of the people by assuming to claim special rights 
 in a property which has been conveyed by royal assent 
 to the public. 
 
 There are enormous forests, parks, and patches of 
 land all over the country, which if properly farmed would 
 be worth an annual rent of 1,200,000, being more 
 
 777 O 
 
 than three times the amount of revenue which is at pre- 
 sent paid into the exchequer on their account. And if 
 we take their value, if efficiently managed, at thirty 
 years' purchase, the fee simple would be equal to 
 36,000,000. 
 
 The crown has become invested with certain peculiar 
 rights to the titles and revenues of the duchies of Lan- 
 caster and Cornwall which are, subject to legal restraints, 
 the property of the Prince of Wales, and of the reigning 
 monarch. These estates and titles have devolved to the 
 crown through the house of Lancaster, by whom they 
 were distinctly possessed in the reign of Edward III. 
 John Plantagenet, the fourth son of Edward, having 
 married Blanch, the heiress of the Duke of Lancaster, 
 became, on the decease of the duke, possessed, through 
 that alliance, of his immense domains. The county of 
 Lancaster having been constituted into a county palatine, 
 
OF PROPERTY. 223 
 
 conferred on the duke rights over it equal to those pos- 
 sessed by the sovereign in other parts of the kingdom. 
 And as the Duke of Lancaster was one of the regents 
 during the minority of Richard II. he obtained from him 
 the privilege of establishing within the county, a treasury, 
 a court of chancery, and ecclesiastical courts, with an 
 efficient staff of officers. 
 
 On the death of John Plantagenet, duke of Lancaster, 
 styled, after the name of the town where he was born, 
 John of Ghent, his eldest son Henry duke of Hereford, 
 surnamed Bolingbroke, though he had been banished for 
 six years by Richard II, had nevertheless received from 
 that monarch letters patent ensuring him the right to any 
 inheritance which might fall to him during his banish- 
 ment ; consequently, by his father's death he became 
 duke of Lancaster. The king, however, revoked his 
 letters patent, and seized upon the estates of the duke, 
 who soon found means to return from his exile in Ire- 
 land, and in revenge, by physical demonstration, he an- 
 ticipated and intimidated the king, and usurped the 
 crown which his father had contributed his share in 
 weakening, by ten years of a pusillanimous regency. 
 And in heaping indignities on the sovereign, he deposed 
 him, with this accusation, 'My Lord the King, your 
 people say that you have for one-and-twenty years go- 
 verned with rigour and indiscretion ; but, if it please 
 God, I will help you to govern them better for the time 
 to come/ At his coronation, a proclamation was issued, 
 in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, stating 
 in evidence that he was the rightful heir to the crown; 
 and that God of his grace, by and with the help of his 
 friends, had sent him to recover the possession. Accord- 
 
224 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 ingly, by the help of God, supported by an army clad in 
 mail, he ascended the throne, assuming the title of 
 Henry IV. 
 
 To suit the purposes of those who reign 'by the 
 grace of God/ they sometimes find it very conve- 
 nient and influential to espouse the guardianship of such 
 a potent patron ; but, becoming oblivious of the attri- 
 butes of their assistant when shielded by this patronage, 
 par me reges regnant, et potenies decernunt jmticiam, 
 they frequently perpetrate deeds irreconcileable with 
 justice, and utterly repugnant to moral rectitude. 
 
 As Henry well knew that he was not the legal heir 
 to the crown, he therefore kept his regal usurpation 
 distinctly separate from his rightful heirship to the title 
 and revenues of the duchy of Lancaster, and through 
 precaution they were not amalgamated with the rights 
 of the crown till the succession of Edward IV., in whose 
 reign they were annexed by statute; and in the first 
 year of the reign of Henry VII, an act of parliament 
 was passed for a resumption by the crown of all the 
 royal domains, titles, and lands which had been alien- 
 ated during the previous wars; besides, an act of parlia- 
 ment was passed in the reign of Mary I. restoring the 
 duchy to its former magnitude. 
 
 The Duchy of Cornwall previously to the time of Ed- 
 ward III. was an earldom, the extensive domains and 
 rights thereof having been in the possession of Edward's 
 brother, John of Eltham, upon the death of whom the 
 earldom reverted to the king, who changed it into a 
 dukedom in favor of his son Edward, styled, from the 
 colour of his armour, the " Black Prince." This grant 
 was confirmed by parliament on the covenant that every 
 
OF PROPERTY. 225 
 
 eldest son of the reigning monarch should thenceforth 
 be heir to the title and revenues of the duchy, and that 
 during his minority the revenues were to he vested in 
 trustees for his benefit; hut in default of the sovereign's 
 male issue, the revenues were to revert to the crown, 
 again to be relinquished when a male heir should be born. 
 
 The " Black Prince" having died before his father, his 
 son Richard could not, in accordance with the above set- 
 tlement, claim the inheritance; however, to repair this 
 unconcatinated link in the descent, Edward III. created 
 his grandson Duke of Cornwall, who afterwards ascended 
 the throne as Richard II. But Henry Plantagenet, the 
 Duke of Lancaster having subsequently deposed Richard, 
 took possession of the crown under the title of Henry IV., 
 thereby the titles and revenues of the duchies of Lan- 
 caster and Cornwall became united, and have uninter- 
 ruptedly continued so ever since, having been enjoyed 
 by Henry V., Henry VI., Edward the son of Henry VI., 
 Edward V., Edward the son of Richard III., Arthur 
 son of Henry VII., Henry son of James I., Charles II., 
 George II, , Frederick, Prince of Wales, George IV., 
 and Albert Edward, the present Prince of Wales. 
 
 The aggregate revenues per annum of the duchies is 
 about 35,000, of which sum the duchy of Cornwall 
 yields on an average 20,000 ; and, during the minority 
 of the Prince of Wales, the revenues of Cornwall are 
 vested in trustees for the benefit of the heir apparent. 
 
 These royal possessions in the duchies of Lancaster 
 and Cornwall, are not alienable, either by the Prince of 
 Wales, or the crown ; and a statement of their revenues 
 is required annually to be laid before parliament ; conse- 
 quently, they are exceptions to the law of property, that 
 
 L2 
 
226 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 every man has a right to do with his own as he pleases ; 
 besides this surveillance of parliament, the chancellors of 
 the duchies may be impeached in case of maladministra- 
 tion, which is a negation to the formula of property. 
 The right of using it, and the right of abusing it. 
 
 The estates and revenues of the duchies are amongst 
 those royal appendages which cannot be bought and sold ; 
 their revenues are for the use of royalty, and their con- 
 stitution is quite distinct from that of the crown lands, 
 the revenues of the latter being paid into the consoli- 
 dated fund for the benefit of the nation. Therefore, in 
 the sale of the Crown Lands for the liquidation of the 
 national debt, we do not include the property in the 
 duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster, the revenues of 
 which belong by peculiar rights to the royal family as 
 exclusively its property, subject to certain legal restraints. 
 But as we have excluded no share of property from its 
 rights, we shall exempt none from its duties, in bearing 
 a just and equitable proportion of the property tax, by 
 which we propose, for the salvation of the fundholders, 
 and for the peace and happiness of the nation, to pay off 
 the national debt ; therefore, the lands belonging to the 
 crown which are not included in the returns made to 
 parliament of the revenues of her Majesty's Woods and 
 Forests, we have previously included in our estimate of 
 the value of land, under the third division of landed 
 property. 
 
 We have now estimated the value of all the property 
 in the nation, and proposed a proportional tax upon it, 
 for the purpose of freeing industry from the impost of 
 the national debt ; but whilst we tax property for that 
 object, we do not intend to exempt from retribution the 
 
OF PROPERTY. 227 
 
 nationally -forged property which passes current in vul- 
 gar estimation as funded property. To attempt to tax 
 this national delusion, called funded property, would 
 clearly demonstrate our political ignorance of the science 
 of taxation, which is hased upon realities ; the foundation 
 being production, and the edifice reared by the hands of 
 those who impose the taxation, and who levy the exac- 
 tions upon the devoted labourers. Nevertheless, though 
 we cannot scientifically tax funded property, we may 
 philosophically dispute, in the name of industry, the 
 whole, or any part of the claims of the fundholders to a 
 participation in the productions of what the labourers 
 are now producing. And therefore, in offering payment 
 of a disputed claim to the fundholders, the nation pos- 
 sesses the right of demanding in consideration that the 
 fundholders relinquish a small portion of their demands. 
 In case of the capital of the national debt being repaid, 
 we propose that the following deductions should be made 
 from the amounts of the various stocks. 
 
 The total amount of the unredeemed debt on the 5th 
 Jan., 1851, was 769,272,562, interest paid thereon 
 27,528,162. Charge of management 92,287. Total 
 charge 27,620,449. 
 
 The aggregate amount of the public stocks, bearing an 
 interest of 3 per centum per annum for the year ending 
 5th January, 1851, was 518,485,654, being more than 
 two-thirds the whole amount of the unredeemed debt. 
 The average value of this stock for the last thirty years 
 has been 88^ per centum, therefore, in paying the fund- 
 holders they could have no just cause for complaint 
 were 12<| per centum deducted from, every hundred 
 pounds that they held in the 3 per centum stocks, 
 
228 THE BIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 which would be only paying them three quarters per 
 centum less than the average value of their stock during 
 a period of thirty years. This diminution of 12^ per 
 cent, from the gross amount of the 3 per cent, stocks 
 would be 63,810,831. 
 
 The 3^ per cent, annuities (inclusive of 2,630,769 
 debt due to the Bank of Ireland at 3 J per cent.) amounts 
 to 250,353,782. On this class of public stock we 
 deduct ten pounds per cent., thus reducing the amount 
 of this stock by 25,035,378. 
 
 The 5 per cent, per annum annuities amount to 
 433,126, on which we propose a reduction of 8^ per 
 cent, amounting to 36,815. 
 
 The annual charge of the Terminable Annuities for 
 the year ending 5th January, 1851, was 3,808,862, 
 which we value at six years' purchase, representing a 
 sum of 22,853,172, on which we deduct 7^ per cent, 
 producing 1,713,987 in favour of the liquidation of 
 the national debt. 
 
 Upon the unredeemed capital of the national debt, 
 amounting to 769,272,562, the reduction which has 
 now been proposed would amount to 88,883,024, 
 equal to 11 lls Id per cent, on the capital of that 
 portion of the debt. And, if to this we add the sum 
 of 1,713,987 resulting from the deduction made on 
 the value of the Terminable Annuities, the total reduc- 
 tion in the amount of debt at present standing against 
 the people will be 90,597,011 in favor of the nation's 
 ability to pay off the fundholders. 
 
 We have now made an estimate of the gross amount 
 of wealth in the nation, and enumerated the various and 
 graduated rates of taxation to be imposed upon each 
 
OP PROPERTY. 229 
 
 denomination of property ; also having proved that by 
 a just and proportional deduction from the amount to 
 be paid to the fundholders, means may be brought in aid 
 towards the payment of the national debt; we shall con- 
 centrate these estimates into a tabular form ; so as to 
 place them more directly before the reader. 
 
 Value of property in the United Kingdom, and the 
 amount of duty required of it, with the amount of im- 
 post to be levied upon the public stocks, towards paying 
 off the national debt. 
 
 Millions. 
 Value of Land . 2250 Amount of duty 173,250,000 
 
 Value of House Property 
 
 and other Buildings . 1000 Amount of duty 50,000,000 
 
 Value of Capital invested 
 in Banks, Warehouses, 
 Shops, Mines, Docks, 
 Farm stock, &c. . . 5000 Amount of duty 237,500,000 
 
 Value of Railway Pro- 
 perty . ... 140 Amount of duty 7,000,000 
 
 Value of Ships and River 
 
 Boats ... 80 Amount of duty 4,000,000 
 
 Total Value of Total Amount 
 
 Property 8470 of duty 471,750,000 
 
 Amount realizable by the sale of Crown Lands . 36,000,000 
 
 507,750,000 
 
 Amount of 3 per ct. Amount of reduc- 
 
 stocka . 518,485,654 tion thereon . 63,810,831 
 
 Ditto 3| ditto . 250,353,782 Ditto ditto . 25,035,378 
 
 Ditto 5 ditto . 433,126 Ditto ditto . 36,815 
 Amount of the Ter- 
 minable Annuities 
 per an.3,808,862, 
 
 valued at . . 22,853,172 Ditto ditto . 1,713,987 
 
 Total Amount available towards paying off 
 
 the National Debt . . . 598,347,011 
 
230 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 By tins table it appears that the tax to be levied upon 
 property, with the reduction on the amount of the public 
 stocks, is only 598,347,011. Whereas the amount of 
 the unredeemed debt is 769,272,562 ; thus leaving a 
 balance unprovided for of 170,925,551, which we pro- 
 pose to raise by the following means : 
 
 Whilst so great a right is being restored to the in- 
 dustrious classes, as that of the emancipation of labour 
 from the unjust burden of the national debt, and of hav- 
 ing to fulfil the duties of property without an adequate 
 participation in its privileges, we do not intend to 
 permit the labourers to go scot free ; therefore we 
 propose, during the ten years over which the taxa- 
 tion for the liquidation of the national debt is to be 
 equally divided, that the people shall continue to pay 
 annually the same rates of taxes as at present, so as to 
 keep up the revenue to its current amount. And as the 
 debt is yearly being paid off, thereby diminishing the 
 charge to be paid thereon, let the surplus ordinary re- 
 venue be annually made use of to purchase a portion 
 of the debt. 
 
 Having imposed upon property its duties, and levied 
 from the people theirs, thereby placing in the hands of 
 the Chancellor of the Exchequer for economical disposal 
 an enormous sum of money, we should expect that he 
 would make use of it, not only to pay the fundholders, 
 but also on the Exchange in purchasing stock on the 
 most advantageous terms, with a view towards the 
 economical liquidation of the public burdens. 
 
 We are of opinion that the Chancellor of the Exche- 
 quer, or the commissioners for the reduction of the debt, 
 with forty or fifty millions of money at their command, 
 
OF PROPERTY. 231 
 
 by judiciously investing it in the public stocks, could so 
 raise tbeir value above par, that the rate of per centage 
 payable tbereon migbt easily be reduced. And we are 
 surprised tbat successive Chancellors of the Exchequer 
 have so seldom made themselves masters of the money 
 market. With twenty or thirty millions it might be 
 effected ; but with fifty millions in the Exchequer, the 
 Stock Exchange would be under the control of the 
 government. 
 
 The amount of the tax upon moveable property being 
 immediately levied subject to a reduction of five per 
 cent-, would bring into the Exchequer the sum of' 
 237,500,000. The balance of the amount of re- 
 sources, namely 360,847,011, we propose should be 
 paid in equal yearly instalments of 36,084,701, ex- 
 tending over a period of ten years; each yearly pay- 
 ment to be made in advance ; thus placing at the 
 disposal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or the 
 commissioners for the liquidation of the national debt, 
 at the beginning of the first financial year, the sum of 
 273,584,701. 
 
 The Chancellor of the Exchequer, with even less than 
 half the above amount of money at his command, would 
 not certainly require, yearly to fight for, or to defend 
 his financial budget behind contemptible barricades in 
 the House of Commons. He could, by buying in the 
 funds, assume an independent and commanding position 
 in the money market, and demonstrate to the country, 
 on a grand scale, the verification of the proverb, that 
 " it is money which makes money ;" and thus, by 
 forcing upon the money market so much superabundant 
 capital, he could raise the price of stocks above par, as 
 
232 THF- RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 the fundholders, knowing that they were sure of being 
 paid in full, would not sell below par, but naturally 
 would demand as much above it as any purchaser could 
 be induced to give. 
 
 Having once, through the natural effects of the law of 
 supply and demand upon the money market, raised 
 the price of stocks above par, the Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer could ask the House of Commons to reduce 
 the interest payable on the 3 per cent, stocks to 
 2^ per cent, per annum, or even less, thereby effecting 
 a saving every year of at least ,2,592,428, being one- 
 sixth of the amount now paid on the 3 per cent, stocks. 
 
 The interest payable upon the 3^ per cent, stock will, 
 by the act 7th Victoria, cap. 4 & 5, be reduced on and 
 after the 10th October, 1854, to 3 per cent. This re- 
 duction will effect an annual saving of 625,884. 
 However, by the said act the interest to be paid to the 
 holders of this kind of stock, cannot be again reduced 
 before the 10th October, 1874 ; therefore, in case of a 
 superabundance of money on the Exchange, the 3 per 
 cent, stocks might be reduced to 2^ per cent, but the 
 present 3^ per cent, stock would not be subject to the 
 same influence, whilst the said act was in force. 
 
 In the subsequent tables, we shall demonstrate the 
 gradual operation by which we propose annually to pay 
 off, during a period of ten successive years, the whole of 
 the National Debt. 
 
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236 THE BIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 Were we not certainly persuaded that there is abun- 
 dance of means in the nation to pay off the national debt 
 in some such way as that which we have proposed, we 
 should consider it unjustifiable to endeavour to experi- 
 ment upon society by financial schemes, which might 
 tend, if abortive, to retard it in its onward march. We 
 do not, however, pretend to say that our plan of liquida- 
 tion is the only one, or the very best which might be 
 adopted ; we only proffer it as an example to endeavour 
 to draw the attention of the nation towards some such 
 just and practicable settlement of a dispute, which vivi- 
 fies every day more and more, and which will inevitably 
 lead to a disruption of our constitution, if not harmoni- 
 ously settled by proprietors fulfilling the duties of pro- 
 perty, in paying a debt, which they have shifted from 
 themselves, upon industry. 
 
 The rights and duties of property are essentially linked 
 together, and so much is this concatenation absolute, that 
 it is only by a fulfilment of obligations, and on a discharge 
 of certain duties, that wealth can be entitled to claim, 
 or to possess any rights. On payment of those imposts 
 or duties, wealth becomes as it were possessed of the 
 rights to enter the social sphere, arid to circulate freely 
 in it, under the name of property, being shielded from 
 aggression by social laws. 
 
 The French designate taxation by the appellation of 
 impost, " U impot" and call duties levied at the Custom 
 House, ' c Les droits d* entre" the rights of entering. 
 It is not, however, the price of the rights of entering into 
 the country which is imposed upon goods when they pass 
 the scrupulous hands of the revenue officers ; but it is 
 the purchase worth of the rights of recognition to share 
 
OF PROPERTY. 237 
 
 in an adequate protection as property, after they have 
 passed into, and become a portion of the wealth of the 
 social union whose barrier they may have passed. And 
 that purchase money is to defray the expenses of the 
 government, whose function is to spend, as its servants 
 are non-producers, though not useless members of society. 
 Therefore, to buy social protection for life and property, 
 by privation, is the principle upon which taxation is 
 founded. 
 
 The smuggler as a model free trader, introduces his 
 goods, contemning the rights, " le droit d' entre," which 
 should have been paid on importation ; but his goods are, 
 by the revenue laws legally bastardized; and not having 
 received Custom House baptism, they are under the ban 
 of excommunication, excluded from the church of pro- 
 perty, and denied any participation whatever in the rights 
 of its covenants, because they have despised and evaded 
 its duties. 
 
 If property is to be recognised, as being within the 
 sacred precincts of the social sanctuary, it can only be so 
 by shewing credentials, that it is stamped with the seal 
 of society ; social obligations have been fulfilled, and 
 social duties are expiated. When property shall have 
 been thus faithfully stamped, the tomb of the national 
 debt will have been effectually sealed, and the glorious 
 reigri of property begun. " Then let us pray, that come 
 it may, and come it will for a' that." 
 
 Through the utter derelictions of proprietors in exon- 
 erating property from its duties, the people are at pre- 
 sent compelled by law, under the semblance of justice, 
 to fulfil the duties of property, whilst it goes quite 
 free. But were the incubus which has been immorally 
 
238 THE BIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 placed upon labour removed, through property either 
 being compelled to fulfil its duties, or being deprived of 
 its assumed rights, the industrious classes in future would 
 only have to bear their equitable proportion of the current 
 expenses of the nation; which ought to be levied in pro- 
 portion to the amount of protection afforded by govern- 
 ment to each individual; first, in proportion to the 
 amount of protection which he required in the prose- 
 cution of his daily avocations; and secondly, in graduated 
 proportion to the nature and extent of his realized pro- 
 perty. This principle of taxation involves the necessity 
 of rigidly protecting property ; because, if proprietors are 
 to be made to pay taxes in proportion to their property, 
 those who contribute largely must be guaranteed certain 
 rights in proportion to the extent of their payments ; or 
 if not, proportional taxation would be an organised sys- 
 tem of oppression against the possessors of property. 
 
 Though we have asserted that it is ^ paramount duty 
 of property to pay the national debt, ancl maintained the 
 principle, that, until it shall have recognised and discharged 
 this obligation, it is not property, but a patenteed mono- 
 poly ; still we do not consider when it shall have fulfilled 
 this duty which has been so long in abeyance, that it will 
 be entitled to social recognition unless it shall be prepared 
 to discharge its duties for the future ; therefore, it is pro- 
 posed, that immediately on the national debt having been 
 paid, all excise imposts and customs duties shall be abo- 
 lished, and the revenues of the country raised by taxation 
 on property and incomes. It would, therefore, devolve 
 on realized property, to pay the greater proportion of 
 the amount of taxation required for the ordinary expen- 
 diture of our civil and military establishments, which 
 
OP PROPERTY. 230 
 
 must be efficiently organised and maintained, if social 
 order and peace be desirable, and an adequate protection 
 to commerce vouchsafed. As the possessors of realized 
 property not only require personal protection, but like- 
 wise, in proportion to the extent of their property, do they 
 require from government an extended amount of expen- 
 diture, in order to guard, protect, and defend it ; they 
 ought, therefore, to be doubly taxed by a graduated scale 
 made applicable to each of those principles of taxation. 
 
 A tax of one quarter per cent, upon the realized pro- 
 perty of the country would produce upwards of twenty 
 millions annually; and an income tax, founded on a 
 graduated scale, would yield at least seven millions, 
 and if properly levied ten millions. By these means 
 more revenue could be raised than would be required 
 to meet the current expenditure of the country, which 
 for the year ending the 5th January, 1851, amounted 
 to 22,1 14,290, exclusive of the charge upon the funded 
 and unfunded debt. 
 
 Some small savings might be effected in various go- 
 vernment departments, however, retrenchments in the 
 Army, Navy, and Ordnance cannot with safety to the 
 best interests of the nation be carried to such an extent 
 as to afford any very perceptible or lasting benefit to the 
 people ; and^ those who exaggerate the expenditure 
 of government on these branches of the public service, 
 with a view to effect small savings by hazardous re- 
 trenchments, are ineffectually diverting the public mind 
 from the real cause of the evil, which lies concealed in 
 the funding system, and is unquestionably the serpent 
 which insidiously bites the people, and whose deadly 
 and envenomed sting must be removed before they can 
 
240 THE BIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 have any permanently healthful constitution, or freedom 
 from oppressive taxation. It is not, therefore, the current 
 expenditure of the forces necessary to preserve social 
 order at home, and to maintain public peace abroad, to 
 which political economists and patriots ought primarily 
 to devote their energies ; for, though a trifling advantage 
 may be gained to the people by such a paltry line of 
 action, still, it is that radical evil which besets the 
 nation, the national debt, which ought to have their 
 first consideration. That would be a subject more wor- 
 thy of them, and calculated to lead to far greater benefits 
 than any small amount of saving which they may be 
 able to effect by huckstering with government. 
 
 Besides bearing the expense of social government, 
 property has other duties to discharge towards society; 
 and were they properly fulfilled, then it has unques- 
 tionably purchased of society a title to certain rights, 
 which society is bound to respect and to guarantee ; but 
 if property have not rendered those dutie&to society, then 
 it can claim no peculiar rights whatever. It is on the 
 evidence of the non-fulfilment of the duties of property 
 that we have arraigned it at the bar of social justice for 
 derelictions of duties, through which its rights have 
 become forfeited to society, and its possessors reduced to 
 the grade of monopolists. 
 
 Property is by society accounted sacred ; monopoly is 
 almost universally condemned ; yet proprietors, though 
 degenerated and fallen, are useful in the development of 
 social progress ; because monopolists are one of the con- 
 stituent parts of society, that without them would retro- 
 gade into primitive barbarity, were it not that monopoly 
 acts as a spur to urge it on, in its invariably progressive 
 
OF PROPERTY. 241 
 
 -course. Monopoly, by ensuring to capitalists the fruits 
 of their speculations, has been the means of increasing 
 the wealth of the world; but this augmentation has 
 often been effected at the sacrifice of the labourers, who 
 are made prisoners to capital by free trade, and hanged 
 or smothered by monopoly, which, being the scourge of 
 industry, urges on the labourers to produce commodities 
 to feed it ; and when they have done so, it sucks those 
 productions from them as voraciously as .the horse-leech 
 bleeds its victim. Monopoly lives on the parings it slices 
 off industry, and when its grinding policy is called in 
 question by philanthropists, it pleads its 'irresponsibility, 
 Ego sum qui ego sum. 
 
 Property, however, in essence, is neither a hastard nor 
 an imposture, for originally it was the legitimate offspring 
 of society ; hut on account of its having ultimately ava- 
 riciously sold its birthright for monopoly, we have brought 
 the accusation of breach of faith against it, conscious 
 nevertheless of the forensic prejudice of our jury, who 
 have all more or less heen brought up in the present reli- 
 gion of property, and many of them imbued with its dog- 
 mas, as taught by the interested pedagogues of property. 
 
 However, we do not wish to destroy the rights of pro- 
 perty, for did we entertain so a^urd and ^malicious an 
 intention, we should be attempting the -annihilation of 
 society which would become all but extinct were the 
 sustenance which it derives from property withdrawn. 
 All that we wish and labour for, is to establish the rights 
 of property upon renovated and sound principles, know- 
 ing, as we do, that its present constitution and develop- 
 ment are based upon principles which are unsound and 
 unjust. 
 
242 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 M. A. Thiers, in his work, " Du Dr6it de Propriete" 
 has ably stated many of the advantages which property 
 is calculated to confer upon man, and the beneficial 
 effects which it has upon society ; yet he has very ina- 
 dequately pourtrayed property, because, in his special 
 pleading in vindication of the immaculate rights of pro- 
 perty as at present developed, he has, through infatua- 
 tion, studiously avoided all consideration whatever, as to 
 what its duties are, and therefore, instead of philosophi- 
 cally investigating property, he has exhibited it but on one 
 side, parading before his readers its beauties, but leaving 
 them ignorant of its defects. In taking up the defence 
 of the rights of property, he asks this question, 6 How- 
 has it been brought about that property, the natural 
 instinct of man, of the child, of the animal, only end, 
 indispensable recompense of labour, was called in ques- 
 tion in our age ?' 
 
 In striking the lyre of property, M. Thiers has laid 
 his fingers bewildered amongst the strings, and uncon- 
 sciously exposed the present rights of property to a 
 simple and untenable defence ; ' for/ says he, ' pro- 
 perty is the natural instinct of man, of the child, and of 
 the animal/ If the natural instinct of man urges him 
 forward in the attainment of property, then every ob- 
 stacle which is thrown in his way is a frustration of 
 natural propensities and a subversion of the free deve- 
 lopment of natural instinct, which is pretty equally 
 divided in various forms and modifications amongst man- 
 kind, so that they are all more or less dependant upon 
 one another. The talent of a Homer being scrupulously 
 equipoised by natural laws with those of a Solon, a 
 Herodotus, a Demosthenes, or an Alexander ; and the 
 
OF PROPERTY. 243 
 
 works of the learned Lave their equivalent in nature 
 with those of the husbandmen. Were it not, therefore, 
 for artificial compacts, which have no affinity with nature, 
 property would be naturally divided, and protection and 
 liberty secured for all. The rights to a free develop- 
 ment of natural instincts, if not injurious to the rights 
 of others, were born with man ; but if natural instinct 
 be the reservoir which leads to property, then non-pro- 
 prietors may either justly hlame nature for bestowing 
 upon them inadequate functions, or else accuse society of 
 having sanctioned their disinheritance. If natural in- 
 stinct begets property, how stands it with those who had 
 property assigned to them before they were conceived? 
 It may be said, society by its laws has given them this 
 right; if so, then property must be of social creation : 
 but we are told by M. Thiers, that it is a natural right, 
 proceeding from man's natural instinct. 
 
 Property must have its origin either in nature or in 
 society; and if it have its origin in nature, then to under- 
 stand it we must have clearly stated to us what are our 
 natural rights, and the economy of our instincts; until 
 this be done, and their origin defined, it is premature to 
 attempt to establish the rights of property on nature. 
 For if to attain property be natural to the animal, as well 
 as to man, how comes it to pass that the animals do 
 neither possess the power nor the right of disposing of 
 it by gift, or assignment, to whomsoever they please ? 
 'for,' says M. Thiers, 'the giving or bequeathing of 
 property is one of the necessary ways of using it, qu9 
 le don est I une des manieres necessaire & user de la 
 propriete.' M. Thiers, however, mistakes possession for 
 property, and therefore, he confuses himself with the idea 
 
244 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 that animals become through instinct proprietors, whereas 
 they are only possessors for the time being of whatever 
 they may hold. Property exists only in society, and 
 without its limits there is no property; therefore, as soci- 
 ety was founded on principles of equality in the asso- 
 ciated, property as an institution of society must have 
 for its principle equality. 
 
 M. Thiers, doubting after a long and studious inves- 
 tigation, that the origin of property was neither to be 
 found in the natural instinct of man, Dans les besoin* 
 de r homme^ nor by an exact observation of the deve- 
 lopment of human nature, L' exacte observation de la 
 nature kumaine est done la metkode d suivre pour de- 
 couvrir et demontrer les droils de I homme, he endea- 
 vours to trace its origin to labour, man having been born 
 as he says naked into a naked world. Qa il r^salte de 
 tout ce qm precede, que le travail est le vrai fondement 
 du droit de propriety. La propritte, recompense indis- 
 pensable du travail. 
 
 Nature was clothed in verdant robes before the age 
 of Adam, and she still puts on seasonably the same rich 
 vestments, though the labourers are now often clothed 
 in rags, notwithstanding the additional production with 
 which they impregnate her, and which she brings forth ; 
 and, as it has been admitted, that property ought to be 
 the reward of labour ; but this not being the case, that is 
 the reason why property, like a criminal, has been put on 
 its trial, and that M. Thiers has been driven to the neces- 
 sity of making all sorts of suppositions and assertions to 
 account for its origin, and of playing fast and loose alter- 
 nately to establish its present rights. 
 
 If labour be the origin of property, how, in the name 
 
OF PROPERTY. 245 
 
 of justice is it that those who labour hardest are gene- 
 rally worst paid; and that property is found in abundance 
 in the possession of those who do not labour at all, but 
 who contrive by scheming to make others labour for 
 them, and who take the lion's share in the production ? 
 If labour be the origin of property, and if property be 
 called in question, then, the better course for proprietors 
 to pursue, is, not to quote their disputed titles, but to 
 shew their handiwork, in order that it may be weighed, 
 measured, and valued, by the proportion which it bears 
 to the productions of other men's labour. 
 
 With natural instinct as the origin of property, its 
 equality is inevitable ; and with labour, as its parent, 
 many of the present holders are usurpers, whose titles 
 have been justly called in question by the labourers. 
 M. Thiers, not being able to establish a satisfactory origin 
 for property in either of those, endeavours to fix the 
 rights of a certain amount of property to the law of 
 prescription. Que si lafraude et la violence sont quel- 
 quefois I'origine de la propriety la transmission pendant 
 quelques annees t sous des lois regulieres, lui rendlecarac- 
 terc respectable el sacre de la propriete fondte sur le 
 travail. 
 
 That property is sometimes acquired by fraud and 
 violence, is here admitted by M. Thiers; but he has 
 signally failed to prove, that its transmission from hand 
 to hand for a few years, renders its character as respec- 
 table and sacred as that property which had been pro- 
 duced by labour. Besides, no length of time can destroy 
 the Jus in re, which man has to the earth, and its natural 
 products, and also to the fruits of his labour ; therefore, 
 all that we see around us belongs equally to all men as 
 
246 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 the free gift of nature, and to men individually in pro- 
 portion to their labour ; consequently, all statutes of 
 limitations are only conventional sliding-scale barriers, set 
 up to bar the claims, jus od rem, which the labourers 
 have, through the donation of nature and of labour, to be 
 reinstated in their rights. Proprietors ! can you form 
 statutes of prescriptions to curb the mind of man, and to 
 limit his ideas by any conventional measures of restraint? 
 You know your impuissance to fabricate such laws. Then 
 avow, frankly, that all prescriptions and limitations in 
 your code of jurisprudence, are only fleeting compacts 
 to which the disinherited have not subscribed their con- 
 sent. When the individuals, who are created proprietors 
 by statutes of prescriptions, after their having been in 
 possession ten, twenty, a hundred years, or to whatever 
 length of period the statutes of limitations may be confined, 
 began the period of probation fixed by the law, they 
 were in the eyes of the law only possessors of a part of 
 the social property. If so, then statutes, of limitations 
 can only confirm that possession; but they cannot change 
 the possessor into a proprietor, except by presuming to 
 legislate upon what did not previously exist. Therefore, 
 every statute of limitation, in so far as it attempts to 
 establish the rights of property, is an act to create a new 
 order of. beings, made after the image of proprietors ; 
 in fact, it is an innovation of a new, or an eight day's 
 creation in society, of which political economy, in defence 
 of natural and social rights, denounces the evening and 
 the morning, to be very bad. 
 
 ' How was property called in question in our age ?' To 
 this philosophical question, we reply, that the rights of 
 property are not disputed at the present day ; but, that 
 
OP PROPERTY. 247 
 
 it is the rights of monopoly which are assailed with 
 greater force and vigour than they have usually been 
 in any age ; and, that not even in Rome, when the 
 patricians monopolized the whole of the land, and reduced 
 the plebeians to be farmers of their own inheritances, did 
 the dispute create so much noise within the limits of the 
 Roman empire, as the resuscitation of that giant invigora- 
 tion of the claims of labour, which has recently been 
 evoked in Europe, is creating throughout society. 
 
 The rights of monopoly have been called in question 
 since the day that Abram and Lot's herdsmen strove about 
 the possession of their common territory. Had M. 
 Thiers, therefore, drawn the line of demarcation between 
 property and monopoly, he would have discovered, that 
 it was only the rights of monopoly, more scientifically 
 speaking, the pretensions of monopoly, which were called 
 in question, * Quifut mise en question dans notre sieclej 
 and not the legitimate rights of property. Had he per- 
 spicuously understood the heterogenous principles of the 
 two systems which were rolling under his pen, he would 
 not have mixed them up together so indiscriminately, and 
 thereby have imposed upon his readers the labour of 
 analysing them. 
 
 Another fundamental error into which M. Thiers has 
 fallen, in his investigation of the rights of property, is, 
 that he states, that none of the causes which led, very 
 justly as he says, to the revolution of 1789, remained to 
 cause that of 1848, ' cherchez done, cherchez dans cetle 
 societt (Icfaiie^ refaite tant defois depuis quatre-vingt- 
 neuf, et je vous dcfie de trouver autre chose a sacrifier 
 que la propriety' Learn then, M. Thiers, learn by the 
 science of political economy to distinguish between pro- 
 
248 THE BIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 perty and monopoly, and you will easily discover, that 
 monopoly is now rampant under the escutcheon of pro- 
 prietorship ; and though it may not be possible to sacri- 
 fice it altogether, still, the rescue and preservation of 
 society demands of us to bridle the unmerciful dragon of 
 monopoly, which is sucking the blood from industry, and 
 devouring society. If, therefore, society requires a sacri- 
 fice, wherefore not let monopoly be garnished and made 
 the oblation? that execrable monopoly, whose hand is 
 against every man, and, with a few exceptions, every 
 one's tongue against it. 
 
 The French Revolution, in 1789, was a rebellion of the 
 people against monopoly ; the nobles paid only a small 
 portion of the taxes; the clergy, notwithstanding that they 
 were the second order in the state, had been exempted 
 from paying any taxes at all. There were distinct laws 
 for different orders of individuals, and the aristocracy 
 enjoyed innumerable monopolies. The people emanci- 
 pated themselves from the iniquitous burdens which had 
 been imposed upon them by the nobles and clergy; and 
 had it not been for the interference of England, the 
 government and destinies of France would have assumed 
 a different form, and iti aspect at the present would have 
 been totally unlike what it is. The revolution of 1830, 
 was a faint and ineffectual throb of France to breathe 
 more freely the atmosphere of freedom, which was being 
 gradually contracted. By this social throe, it passed into 
 another state of transition until 1848, when, in its strug- 
 gles against monopoly and oppression, it bore that Repub- 
 lic, which had been begotten in 1789, and which France 
 will baptise in blood when the mature time for its chris- 
 tening shall have arrived. The social organization of 
 
OF PROPERTY. 249 
 
 1848 was the natural concrete of the centripetal beat 
 which was engendered in the social atmosphere by the 
 refraction of society in 1789. Those two dates include 
 one epoch, and serve like stations on the way to shew the 
 progress of the social train, where the passengers refresh 
 themselves before taking their places for the next station. 
 
 Were we to judge precipitately as to what the rights of 
 property are, from the quantity of matter that M. Thiers 
 has verbosely piled up as a barricade in its defence, we 
 should be infatuously deluded from the field of philoso- 
 phical investigation; but no, we judge of the worth of his 
 advocacy by its quality, and not by its plethoric quantity. 
 Therefore, in estimating the gravity and value of what 
 he has written on the subject of property, though he has 
 said much which merits the respect of society, the result 
 is, that he understands better the art of writing popu- 
 larly about property than that he comprehends its nature. 
 And if his theoretical knowledge of the rights of property 
 is defective, his practical government of it, when he was 
 prime minister of France in 1840, was weighed in the 
 balance of European politics, and found wanting. 
 
 M. V. Considerant, in scrutinizing the political ability 
 of M. Thiers, says, * we have explained why and where- 
 fore there are individuals who believe in the political 
 abilities of M. Thiers. In France, agility, skill, and 
 genius, joined to an upright conduct, have always for a 
 time conferred reputation and authority; but let any one 
 instance an act, the management of government, or of 
 party, anything in fact which may be for Mr. Thiers a 
 title of superior ability, I will be most happy to be in- 
 formed of any thing.' 
 
 4 1 have watched him for these last eighteen years. 
 
250 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 Often I have shewn that ahsurd disputes were raised 
 against him ; I feel myself perfectly inclined to praise 
 him to-morrow, if this evening he would do something 
 good ; but at present, I know nothing which points him 
 out as a public man of any superiority. Quite otherwise, 
 and his inconsistency has only yielded to him mystifica- 
 tions in Europe, where no one has ever taken him to be 
 serious ; and they have had good reason/ 
 
 'As to ability, other than the juggle of the tribune, 
 and the talent of a diffuse writer, placing facts in the 
 place of right, and his inventions in the place of facts, I 
 totally deny it to him. Never man has more woefully 
 governed a country and a party. In power, M. Thiers 
 has ruined French politics ; and for being allied to him, 
 the parliamentary opposition saw itself fall into that 
 species of political annihilation, which invariably follows 
 the abandonment of principles. Let any one cite to me 
 a political act of M. Thiers, one only, denoting a superior 
 man, and I will engage to cite a hundred, and again a 
 hundred, arid a hundred besides, shewing inferiority, 
 narrowness, wild vanity, contempt of principles, and an 
 inconstant and confused representation of the subject. 
 ' Behold the saviour of the country, the Hercules com- 
 missioned to crush the hydra of Socialism !' 
 
 6 M. Thiers has spent eighteen years in being continu- 
 ally the compeer and dupe of Louis Philippe; and his last 
 act of complicity, his last coquetry, to reestablish him- 
 self, if possible, under the father, or at least, to prepare 
 himself to be the minister of the regency, has bereaved 
 the Orleans dynasty of the only chance of safety that it 
 retained. M. Thiers, was, nevertheless, well-disposed. 
 Listen to some of his expressions, in the discussion of 
 the regency, 20th August, 1842 : 
 
OF PROPERTY. 251 
 
 4 Pour moi, quand la charte a institue la royaule 
 comme nous Vavons cest une institution profonde, ad- 
 mirable^ qu aucun docteur de droit public n a inventee, 
 que la nature seule a inventee dans les grands pays. 
 Pour moi, cest V invention admirable du genie, non- 
 pas de tel on telgenie^ mats du vrai genie de I homme. 
 
 * Je adhere a la charte, non pas seulement comme a une 
 lettre ecrite, mais de toute la puissance de mon esprit. 
 Je crois que la royautt, quelle a fait est la bonne royaute 
 la senle que le bon sens moderne put conseiller, la seule 
 qui satisfait a tons les inte'rets* 
 
 If, with those opinions M. Thiers has not been ahle 
 to save the monarchy, we demand how, with these same 
 convictions (without douht they were too profound and 
 too absolute to have been changed) how M. Thiers will 
 save the Republic ? We ask how, a man who admired 
 to this degree the charter and the monarchical govern- 
 ment, to whom that model was the only idea, the only 
 philosophy, the only religion, how, that man has dared to 
 come into a republican organization, and there assume 
 the air of wishing to associate himself at the foundation 
 of a Republic? In conclusion, we ask, at all the simple- 
 tons who admit, that, after all, their dearest interest at 
 present is the consolidation and tranquillisation of the 
 Republic ; that none other form is henceforth possible ; 
 that all attempts of imperial restorations, legitimists, or 
 Orleanists, are only pregnant with devastation, bloodshed, 
 and misery ; we demand of them, why they do not com- 
 prehend that they ought to leave the establishment of the 
 Republic to the democrats, and not to throw intrigues 
 and embarrassments in their way by supporting such 
 men as have the antecedents, the habits, and the species 
 of political faculties of M. Thiers ? 
 
252 THE EIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 4 M. Thiers has ruined, we repeat it, the policy of France 
 by his deplorable and extravagant administration of the 
 1st March ; the opposition in associating itself with him 
 was destroyed; he at last ruined the monarchy by repul- 
 sing the regency of a respected and popular woman in 
 France, only to leave in reserve, to the monarchy, at the 
 first casualty, of the unpopularity of Louis Philippe, the 
 unpopularity of the Duke de Nemours ; u Vantez nout 
 done la haute capacite politique de M. Thiers^ et sauvez- 
 moi la socicte avec un pareil sauveurJ 
 
 * M. Thiers supposes that the revolution of 1789, in 
 destroying the corporations and wardenships, and in con- 
 fiscating the properties of the nobles and clergy to distri- 
 bute them amongst the victorious citizens, bourgeoisie, 
 has exhausted all that there was to take ; that there are 
 no longer any spoils to divide, no more privileges to de- 
 stroy, no more morsels of any cake to offer to the masses/ 
 
 4 1 remark to him, that Europe is at the commence- 
 ment of a revolution to which that of 17&& was a simple 
 prologue ; that this revolution has a social character ; 
 that the question propounded is, that of labour, and of 
 the constitution of property ; that the opinions of the 
 socialists, even the most negative in regard to the privi- 
 leges of property, cannot appear to M. Thiers, and to all 
 the defenders of old society such as it is ; more illegiti- 
 mate, more false, more spoliatory, and more detestable, 
 than that of the philosophy, the politics, and the orators 
 of the Bourgeoisie appeared false, illegitimate, spoliatory, 
 and odious to the nobility, clergy, royalty, to all the ancient 
 privileged classes; that nevertheless these last opinions 
 have had, and still have, the support of the classes which 
 they have freed and enriched by the destructions that 
 
OP PROPERTY. 253 
 
 they have consummated, by the spoliations that they have 
 practised, accomplished, and legalized. They have even 
 for them the historians, who have related these practices, 
 affranchisements, destructions, spoliations.' 
 
 Such are some of the opinions entertained in regard to 
 M. Thiers' political philosophy by a most powerful school 
 in France. It is not, however, with M. Thiers' tergiver- 
 sations in politics that we have to deal, in prosecuting our 
 enquiries into the rights and duties of property ; but, as 
 he has written on the rights of property so unphiloso- 
 phically, taking a one-sided view of so momentous a 
 subject, and struggling amongst his propositions as 
 if he were contending for a victory at the expense 
 of truth, through the suppression of evidence, and the 
 concealment of facts, which ought to have been cogently 
 before his mind ; we have, therefore, considered it requi- 
 site, in vindication of political integrity, and for the main- 
 tenance of the rights and duties of property, which have 
 been more so put in jeopardy by his unscientific elucidations 
 of their peculiar natures, than they have been explained 
 and substantiated, to prove by the evidence of his own 
 countrymen, that his theories ought not to be readily 
 adopted by political economists without circumspect in- 
 vestigation; because, through their practical development 
 in France, they have become very much distrusted by 
 many profound politicians, and they are only partly accre- 
 dited in Europe by those who do not thoroughly examine 
 and comprehend them ; but who, notwithstanding, admit 
 them as truths, simply because they emanate from a 
 popular political writer, whose style is fascinating, and 
 whose diction is versatile and plausible. 
 
 In resuming the investigation of the rights and duties 
 
254 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 of property, in order to draw our subject to a conclusion, 
 we shall briefly state their relative positions when placed 
 in hostile antagonism, and also when united in social orga- 
 nization. These two social bulwarks were reared together 
 to fulfil one and the same design ; but, through the neglect 
 of society, the fulfilment of the duties of property have 
 been allowed to fall into disuse and decay, therefore, the 
 expense of social government has been gradually and in- 
 sidiously removed from property, and imposed upon labour, 
 thereby placing the existence of society itself in imminent 
 danger through means of its own defalcations and neglect 
 of duty. 
 
 Unless the rights of property are strictly maintained 
 in their social spirit, by preserving to the producer the 
 just reward of his labour, society must slowly decline 
 and perish by a natural and social death. And if the 
 duties of property be not fulfilled by proprietors, society 
 runs the risk of being extinguished by violent and rapid 
 social insurrections. It, therefore, behoves the adminis- 
 trators of social government to watch circumspectly that 
 the rights of property are not unjustly invaded, and that 
 the duties of property are rigidly performed ; if either 
 of these duties are neglected by government, to the extent 
 of that neglect there will be disorder and misery in society. 
 Under the present constitution of society, property is 
 protected by the laws, but it is not obliged to fulfil its duties; 
 therefore, through the derelictions of society, proprietors 
 evade the performance of their obligations, and a hostility 
 between the producers of wealth and the occupiers of 
 property has been created, which is likely to pave the 
 way towards a disruption of the present rights of pro- 
 perty; and may lead ultimate!-' to a social revolution, if 
 
OF PROPERTY. 255 
 
 it be not averted in time, by property being bound to 
 fulfil the duties originally and socially imposed upon it. 
 The movement by which economical science is at pre- 
 sent actuated, is not, as has erroneously been supposed 
 by superficial thinkers, to destroy property which is 
 too respectfully and justly grounded in the affections of 
 the industrious classes, and too closely bound up with 
 their hopes and aspirations to admit of any doubt as to 
 its perfect preservation. The present bent of political 
 economy is to restore, confirm, and consolidate the rights 
 of property, which have been put in danger through the 
 insinuative aggressions of proprietors ; and, in prosecuting 
 their philanthropic labour, the pioneers of social organiza- 
 tion and civil rights consider it a paramount duty to im- 
 press upon the mind of society the momentous facts, that 
 property has not fulfilled its duties, and that society is 
 bound, in defence of its own existence, and in vindication 
 of the rights of labour whose protection has been dele- 
 gated to it, to compel proprietors to pay the expense of 
 the social administration of property. If society refuse 
 to afford the people equitable social justice and civil 
 rights, then the labourers are no longer morally obliged 
 to respect either society, or the rights of property. 
 However, they are bound by the legal force of the law, 
 not the moral law, to pay respect to the rights of pro- 
 perty, and to be obedient members of society, so long as 
 the civil government of the nation considers that it is 
 for the benefit of society to maintain those laws; and 
 no man has a legitimate prerogative, when he may think 
 fit, to set the laws of society at defiance, because his 
 opinions of what justice ought to be do not exactly coin- 
 cide with the civil law. At the same time, every indi- 
 
256 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 vidual who is governed by laws over which he has no 
 power in making, or in unmaking, is not a freeman of 
 society. 
 
 Were the duties which devolve upon property fulfilled 
 by proprietors, the labourers would respect and defend 
 the rights of property, because they would then be 
 convinced that, in doing so, they would at the same 
 time be defending their own ; and we should have no 
 more chartist gatherings, fortifications of the Bank 
 of England by sand bags, nor the trouble of orga- 
 nizing and swearing in of special constables for the 
 maintenance of social order. Besides, we should be 
 enabled to dispense with, if not totally to disbandon our 
 indocile army of pen and ink scribblers, on printed forms, 
 who, under the designation of excise and custom house 
 officers, ferret, if they think proper, into every house in 
 the kingdom, so that no lady's bedroom is even sacred ; 
 search passengers on the frontier ; thrusting their hands 
 into their pockets, or below the folds f the ladies' 
 dresses ; unfolding with their rude hands, and repacking 
 still more rudely the linen, Les chemises et les chemisettes^ 
 of every lady or gentleman who has had the misfortune to be 
 careful in folding their clothes, or in packing their trunks. 
 
 The duties of property have not been fulfilled, and 
 the nation has been subjected to a debt which was con- 
 tracted for the benefit of the possessors of property, and 
 in defence of th e then existing rights of property. It is, 
 therefore, to property that this debt entirely belongs ; and 
 until the possessors of property shall have paid it off, 
 rights of property must be considered as being held in 
 pledge by those who are made to pay the taxes; and that 
 those calling themselves proprietors, are only in possession, 
 thro ugh the sufferance of industry, and not by inherent right. 
 
OF PROPERTY. 257 
 
 The rights that property is entitled to, were it to fulfil 
 faithfully its duties, having been forfeited to the people, 
 one would suppose that property would have been com- 
 pelled to bear the expense of the civil government ; but, 
 through an aberration of society, that charge has been 
 shifted from property and imposed upon labour, there- 
 fore, while proprietors have become exempt from the 
 performance of their duties, the productive classes have 
 been subjugated to bear the burden of taxation instead 
 of the possessors of property. 
 
 This unsocial position of property, rather we might 
 say, that the social organization of monopoly under the 
 name of property, will be methodically perpetuated in 
 nearly the same form as long as the people are not repre- 
 sented in the legislature. Therefore, by extending the 
 elective franchise to the people, the powers of monopoly 
 would be weakened, the assumptive rights of monopoly 
 put in danger, and society exposed to be renovated by 
 the free development of the rights of labour. 
 
 We trust that we have now demonstrated that the old 
 world of property requires reorganization, because its 
 possessors have become monopolists, and do not fulfil 
 their functions for the well-being of society. Also, we 
 have endeavoured to shew some of the practical benefits 
 which would result to the nation, were property to fulfil 
 its duties, not the least of which would be, the liqui- 
 dation of the national debt, thereby emancipating industry 
 from a burden of unjust and unequal taxation. We 
 likewise, have expressed our opinion, that the aspect of 
 the nations of the earth, and the progress which philo- 
 sophy and true political knowledge have recently made 
 among the people, and in the minds of statesmen, indi- 
 
258 THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
 
 cate, that the old world of monopoly is about being 
 dissolved into its original elements, in which the present 
 race of self-existent, antediluvian proprietors, will either 
 be suffocated by free trade, or drowned by the elective 
 voice of the people. 
 
 Proprietors ! it has been very far remote from our 
 intention, in philosophically surveying your position amidst 
 the dissolving views which are being exhibited in the 
 laboratory of society, to wish to deprive any of you of 
 your legitimate rights, or to rob you of your property, 
 by fostering a spirit of malicious envy and animosity 
 against your order ; rather, we have endeavoured, you 
 will have perceived, were you able to appreciate unvar- 
 nished truth and candour, to substantiate your claims, 
 by expostulating with and warning you of the imminent 
 danger which you have brought yourselves into, through 
 neglecting the performance of your duties towards soci- 
 ety, by whom alone your rights and property can be 
 perpetuated. If we have, in the fulfilment of our duty, 
 said any thing which may in the least have given you 
 offence, we assure you, it has been undesignedly done 
 and solely with a view to promulgate truth, therefore, 
 merit we your indulgence ; and when political science 
 shall have advanced, and society shall have outgrown 
 its present ligaments, then shall what we have said be 
 fully appreciated and lauded by the holders of property. 
 Labourers ! to whom the patrimony of the world was 
 given, but who are become disinherited, your title is still 
 good, as neither time nor circumstances have obliterated 
 your claims, or cancelled your rights. Therefore, in 
 suing to be reinstated in your inheritance, be calm and 
 firm, as men contending for their just rights; and do not 
 
OF PROPERTY. 259 
 
 nourish vindictive feelings, neither foment hatred against 
 proprietors, nor maliciously disturb the peace of society ; 
 but, in claiming your social rights, assume an honorable and 
 dignified position, and though your deprivation may last 
 for a short time longer, be assured, that, by pacifically 
 and steadily urging your claims on the attention of soci- 
 ety, you cannot ultimately fail of success in so just a cause. 
 For, unless the rights of labour are restored, the rights of 
 property must inevitably rest insecure; consequently, the 
 interests of proprietors will induce them, in proportion 
 to the appreciation of this fact, to conform property 
 to the conditions of the social compact, and to relinquish 
 their infringements on the rights of labour. Be steadfast, 
 therefore, and reasonable in your social demands, con- 
 forming your actions to the laws, until such time as you 
 are able constitutionally to reform what may be unjust 
 in those laws. Let prudence, moderation, and justice, 
 be your policy ; integrity the guide in all your actions, 
 and society will become regenerated under your potency ! 
 
 THE END. 
 
 E. JU8TIN8 & SON, PRINTERS, 59, FENCHURCH STREET. 
 

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