UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 MAY TREAT MORRISON 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 ALEXANDER F MORRISON
 
 ESSAYS 
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR 
 
 AB CONNECTED WITH 
 
 KATURVL LAW A. N D THE CONSTITUTION 
 OF SOCIETY. 
 
 BY FRANCIS LIEBER. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 HARPER «K BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS. 
 
 1856.
 
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1841 by 
 
 Harper & Brothers, . 
 In the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New-York,
 
 HB 
 
 7ol 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 BY REV. A. POTTER, D.D. 
 
 Having been requested by the author and 
 his publishers to introduce this volume with 
 a few prefatory remarks, I take pleasure in 
 complying with the request, but without 
 any hope that I shall be able to add either 
 ^ to the interest or the utility of Essays pro- 
 * ceeding from one so well known and so 
 3 justly distinguished as Mr. Lieber. 
 uj Studious men, who are accustomed to in- 
 < vestigate the nature and foundation of our 
 ^ rights, are well aware that the theory of 
 2 property, as unfolded by some of the great- 
 ■3 est writers of modern times, is incomplete. 
 C By some, as Hobbes, for instance, property 
 is represented as a gift or grant from the 
 government, and as held, therefore, subject, 
 of right and without reserve, to its disposal. 
 Grotius and PufFendorf supposed that they 
 
 z 
 
 C9
 
 IV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 had discovered the origin of the right to 
 property in a prior occupancy ; while Locke, 
 Barbeyrac, and Stewart ascribe it to labour. 
 Paley, who, with his usual sagacity and prac- 
 tical wisdom, was able to detect the insuffi- 
 ciency of each of these theories to account 
 for all the facts, undertook to gather from 
 them the materials for a new and more com- 
 prehensive system. His success was not 
 complete. Some of his doctrines are un- 
 satisfactory, and his views — especially in re- 
 gard to property in land, and the right of 
 transmitting estates by will — are liable to 
 serious abuse. 
 
 In treating of the origin of property, wri- 
 ters have not always distinguished between 
 its actual and its jural origin; between the 
 manner in which it Avas acquired in fact, and 
 the manner in which it might be acquired 
 rightfully. They have laid great stress, too, 
 upon imaginary compacts in the infancy of 
 society, or upon the formal action of govern- 
 ments. The foundation which has been 
 laid for property in the very nature of man 
 and of human society — its intimate connex-
 
 INTRODUCTION. V 
 
 ion with the progress of civilization, and 
 with the development, not only of industry, 
 but of some of our noblest and most re- 
 fined sentiments, all this has been in a great 
 measure overlooked. Instead of interroga- 
 ting consciousness, and finding there in our 
 primitive feelings and wants its true origin, 
 philosophers have endeavoured to deduce 
 this right from some single axiom of natural 
 law, overlooking the diversity and compli- 
 cation of circumstances with which it en- 
 twines itself, and which become, in the 
 course of time, part of its very substance. 
 They have supposed it necessary, too, to go 
 back to a period when everything was held 
 in common, and when this institution Avas 
 formally voted into existence, by the joint 
 suffrages of all, or by the authoritative decree 
 of the few ; not remembering that these are 
 periods, of which there is no trace in the 
 early history of our race, nor any example 
 in its present state. To expose these er- 
 rors, and to demonstrate the connexion of 
 property with the earliest and most lasting 
 necessities of our being — to show that, in-
 
 VI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Stead of being the^ creature of law or gov- 
 ernment, it must have had being long before 
 formal governments existed, and that it con- 
 stituted, in truth, one principal reason for 
 their establishment — this is an important 
 service to philosophy, and has been render- 
 ed, by the writer of this volume, in a forcible 
 and impressive manner. 
 
 It is not to be expected that minds trained 
 in different schools, and accustomed to sur- 
 vey subjects from different points of view, 
 will always reach the same conclusions. 
 But it is believed that few persons, in the 
 habit of reflecting on this branch of Natural 
 Law, will rise from the perusal of these Es- 
 says without a high respect for the author's 
 powers, or without feeling that they have 
 gained new light on a difficult and much- 
 contested subject. The discussion is en- 
 riched with many pertinent and striking il- 
 lustrations, derived from travellers and his- 
 torians, and is pervaded by that suggestive 
 spirit which belongs only to works of the 
 higher class in philosophy, and which has a 
 peculiar charm for the thoughtful reader.
 
 INTRODUCTION. VU 
 
 It is not, however, for such readers only 
 that these Essays Avill have interest. We 
 live in an age, when all questions respecting 
 natural rights are opened for renewed ex- 
 amination, and in a country, where free scope 
 is given for the boldest discussion by all the 
 people. We live, too, when abuses of every 
 kind are the subjects of searching scrutiny, 
 and when, in their impatience of such abuses, 
 men are ready for almost any change which 
 the rash or interested may propose. At 
 such a time, it is to be expected that the in- 
 equalities which prevail in the distribution 
 of property will excite fresh attention, and 
 that men will charge, now on the institu- 
 tion itself, and now on the laws which reg- 
 ulate it, evils which ought, in justice, to be 
 ascribed to their own improvidence. On 
 the other hand, it must be remembered that 
 there are evils inherent in, or incidental to, 
 everything human, and that, in the case of 
 property, these evils have unquestionably 
 been aggravated by bad legislation. To cor- 
 rect such legislation becomes, of course, a 
 high duty, and he who resists all change is as
 
 VIU INTRODUCTION. 
 
 unwise and unpatriotic as he who looks upon 
 it as, in itself, a blessing. It is the first and 
 most imperative duty of the philosopher, as 
 of the statesmen, to mediate between the fa- 
 natical excesses of these reforming ai d con- 
 servative tendencies in society. He will be 
 IS anxious to eradicate Avhat is bad as to 
 preserve what is good ; but he will be pro- 
 foundly sensible of the delicacy and extreme 
 difficulty of the task. While he does not 
 discourage the spirit of improvement, he 
 ■will labour to inspire men with a proper 
 sense of their present advantages ; and he 
 will warn them, lest they touch with rash 
 and violent hand, institutions which have 
 become incorporated with the very exist- 
 ence of civil society. 
 
 Property exerts its benign influence on 
 mdividuals and nations, only in proportion 
 as it becomes invested in the popular mind, 
 as well as by the letter of the law, with a 
 complete sacredness. In preserving that 
 sacredness, the labourer has more interest 
 even than the capitalist ; since he has every- 
 thing yet to acquire, and his gains can have
 
 INTRODUCTiq\. Ki 
 
 no security if the right which a rr,«n hns to 
 the fruits of his industry, sagacity, and fru- 
 gality be not acknowledged and respected. 
 " Good order," says that philosopher and 
 statesman of the last century on whom the 
 mantle of Bacon fell, " good order is the 
 foundation of all good things. To be ena- 
 bled to acquire, the people, without being 
 servile, must have reverence for the laws. 
 They must labour to obtain Avhat by labour 
 can be obtained ; and when they find the 
 success disproportioned to the endeavour, 
 they must be taught their consolation in the 
 final proportions of eternal justice. Of this 
 consolation, whoever deprives them dead- 
 ens their industry, and strikes at the root of 
 all acquisition, as of all conservation. He 
 that does this is the cruel oppressor, the 
 merciless enemy of the poor and wretched ; 
 at the same time that by his wicked specu- 
 lations he exposes the fruits of successful 
 mdustry and the accumulations of fortune 
 to the plunder of the negligent, the disap- 
 pointed, and the unprosperous."* 
 
 * Burke's ReflectiDns on tlie French Revolution. 
 
 A
 
 X'.- :'; . . : inxh;oi?uction. 
 
 .*. • In: the -pfDgi;es3 q{ le'j^islation on this sub- 
 ject," it 'iVedrlifsniy-t'o be hoped that the 
 spirit of liberality and of moderation may 
 both be cultivated. Dark and ominous will 
 be the day which finds " the leaders in the 
 work choosing," to borrow the words of 
 the same great master, " to make them- 
 selves bidders at an auction of popularity. 
 They will then become flatterers instead of 
 legislators. If any of them should happen 
 to propose a scheme, soberly limited and 
 defended with proper qualifications, he will 
 be immediately outbid by his competitors, 
 who will produce something more splendid- 
 ly popular. Suspicions will be raised of his 
 fidelity to his cause. Moderation will be 
 stigmatized as the virtue of cowards, and 
 compromise as the prudence of traitors ; 
 until, in hopes of preserving the credit which 
 may enable him to moderate on some oc- 
 casions, the popular leader is obliged to be- 
 come active in propagating doctrines and 
 establishing powers that will ultimately de- 
 feat any sober purpose at which he ulti- 
 mately might have aimed."
 
 INTRODUCTION. XI 
 
 It is worthy of remark, however, that, for 
 most of the prevailing inequalities in prop- 
 erty, which admit of remedy, legislation can 
 do little. To expect too much of govern- 
 ments, and too little from individual and 
 social efforts, has always been the error of 
 mankind, and it is one to which we are pe- 
 culiarly liable at present. Political inter- 
 ests are now so predominant, and so much 
 has been gained within the last century 
 throughout the world by political changes, 
 that it is by no means surprising that men 
 should be tempted to think that everything 
 depends on the course of law and of admin- 
 istration. We forget the multitude of in- 
 terests with which law can never interfere 
 without doing harm ; nor do we consider 
 that even when great revolutions are desira- 
 ble, a fundamental change of law, to be 
 effective, must be preceded by a change 
 in the habits and opinions of the people. 
 Quid leges sine moribus ? 
 
 Take, for instance, one of those causes 
 which tend most powerfully to disturb the 
 equal distribution of property — intemper-
 
 Xll INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ance. The drinking usages -svhich prevail 
 among us cause an immense amount of 
 drunkenness ; and drunkenness, as is well 
 known, occasions four out of five parts of 
 all our pauperism. But is this pauperism to 
 be cured by any legislation about property, 
 or even about intemperance ? Let us sup- 
 pose that the entire capital of the country 
 were taken from its present proprietors and 
 thrown into one common fund ; that it were 
 then redistributed in equal portions to all 
 the people, and that the most stringent 
 laws were passed to prevent unequal accu- 
 mulation ! If intemperance continues to 
 prevail, not ten years would elapse before 
 most of the families afflicted by this vice 
 would become destitute, and their shares of 
 the original fund would be found in the 
 hands of their frugal and industrious neigh- 
 bours. Absolute equality can, of course, 
 exist nowhere but in the dreams of the 
 Utopian politician or philanthropist ; and so 
 long as labour, economy, and sobriety are 
 conditions (as evidently they should be) for 
 getting or retaining wealth, so long w.>W
 
 INTRODUCTION. XIH 
 
 the idle, improvident, and intemperate be 
 doomed vo poverty. To remedy such pov- 
 erty, we must begin with its causes. 
 
 But what is the appropriate remedy for 
 those causes ? Is idleness to be cured by 
 legislation ? Let the laws prevalent in Eu- 
 rope for several centuries respecting the 
 wages and hours of labour, and the subsist- 
 ence of labourers and vagrants, answer the 
 question. Let the history of sumptuary 
 laws, again, teach how far governments 
 can force economy and providence on a 
 people. The experiments which have been 
 made by legislators in regard *o intemper- 
 ance have been attended by the same re- 
 sult. For ages they attempted at one time 
 to regulate, at another to prohibit ; but, in 
 spite of all the terrors of penalties and pros- 
 ecutions, the desolating vice still kept on its 
 way, till men like Theobald Mathew ap- 
 pealed from law to reason and moral senti- 
 ment, and free associations were formed 
 to withstand the tyranny of p'^rnieious cus- 
 toms. We all know the isso of that ap- 
 peal. It should impress deeply on our
 
 XIV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 minds the great truth so forcibly suggested 
 by many events of our time, that a remedy 
 for some of our greatest evils is to be found 
 in social rather than ■political action ; that 
 law can do comparatively little in achieving 
 those benignant reforms, which must be 
 gradual in order to be safe, and which will 
 win their way by persuasion and example 
 to a peaceful and enduring triumph, when 
 force would only rouse resistance, or com- 
 pel the form without the spirit of submission. 
 " It is not in our stars" nor in our laws 
 •'that we are underlings." I am far from 
 "wishing to underrate the vast influence of 
 governments, over the condition and des- 
 tiny of individuals. I well know that a bad- 
 ly constituted or badly administered system 
 may paralyze the best energies of any peo- 
 ple. Still it must be conceded that, under 
 a system like ours, conceived and matured 
 in the spirit of the largest liberty, a system 
 to which we are proud to ascribe the pre- 
 eminent blessings we enjoy, and by whose 
 fostering care such multitudes have been 
 conducted from penury to comfort, and even
 
 INTRODUCTION. XV 
 
 to opulence, our first reliance should be 
 upon ourselves. " It is not by levelling 
 property, but by moderating passion," says 
 Aristotle, '• that we shall best attain that 
 mediocrity which ought to be the aim of 
 legislation."* That people who labour to 
 ensure subsistence by industry, and who, at 
 the same time, cultivate habits of modera- 
 tion and self-command, can never long 
 want, in a country like ours, the benefit of 
 equal laws. Indeed, in this age, not even 
 bad governments can long withstand the de- 
 mands, if reasonable, of a frugal, industri- 
 ous, and virtuous people. So long as the 
 population of Ireland remained debased and 
 idle, so long they suffered under the opera- 
 tion of invidious and disqualifying legisla- 
 tion. J3ut no sooner did industry begin to 
 emancipate them from their abject state, 
 than the work of political regeneration com- 
 menced ; and should the change which has 
 recently passed, as if by magic, over their 
 moral condition prove permanent, there can 
 
 • See on this subject Aristotle's Politics, ii., 5
 
 Xn INTRODUCTION. 
 
 be litllc doubt that that regoneration will 
 soon be consummated. 
 
 In thus urging individual and social im- 
 provement in place of political reforms, it 
 may be proper to guard against mistake. 
 This is not recommended as an expedient 
 which will replace legislation, or whoUy 
 supersede it, but as a means by which it 
 can be rendered safe and salutary. It must 
 not be forgotten that legislation may err on 
 the side of omission as well as on the side 
 of excess, and may do even more evil by 
 removing venerable landmarks than by cre- 
 ating new and unnecessary barriers and re- 
 strictions. It is against this error that we 
 are called to guard now. In receding from 
 the arbitrary and intermeddling policy of 
 former ages, governments are liable lo pass 
 to the opposite extreme. They are urged 
 to this not only by the desire of change 
 among the people, but also by the prevail- 
 ing spirit of philosophy. They are now 
 taught, and wisely loo, that they should sub- 
 stitute confidence and conciliation for the 
 distrust and suspicion with which they have
 
 INTRODUCTION. XVU 
 
 too long regarded mankind ; that our race 
 IS moved by sentiments liigher than fear ; 
 and that an appeal to these sentiments will 
 furnish means at once the most appropriate 
 and the most effectual to control it. Had 
 these truths been learned, as they should 
 have been ages ago, in the school of Chris- 
 tianity, they would there have been so qual- 
 ified with just views of man's frailty and 
 corruption, such lessons would have been 
 inculcated of the majesty and supremacy ot 
 law, and such salutary terrors inspired by 
 the revelations of a coming judgment, that 
 nothing but unmixed good Avould have re- 
 sulted from their application to human af- 
 fairs. 
 
 But, unhappily for mankind, the first apos- 
 tles of philanthropy were men who scorned 
 to be instructed by One who came out of 
 Nazareth. They inculcated the most un- 
 bounded confidence in the sagacity and suf- 
 ficiency of man's native instincts, and bade 
 him go forward without fear in the task 
 of renovating society. The rhapsodies of 
 
 Rousseau, in which he celebrates the supe- 
 B
 
 XVlll INTRODUCTION. 
 
 riority of savage over civilized life, and in- 
 vokes the reign of sentiment in place of an- 
 cient institutions and the " coarser ties of 
 human law," these afford but an exaggera- 
 ted specimen of a philosophy which circu- 
 lated during the last century in almost all 
 the schools of Europe. It was reproduced 
 not alone in the coarse versions of Godwin, 
 and of those who, like him, frown on all 
 the restraints of law as inconsistent with 
 " that increasing perfection which is the 
 only salubrious element of mind." We see 
 much of it, though greatly chastened and 
 animated by a spirit altogether more ra- 
 tional and more truly generous, in the spec- 
 ulations of political economists. Sickened 
 and wearied with the view of almost end- 
 less restrictions, which for ages had fettered 
 trade and industry, they seem to have con- 
 cluded that restraint was all that man had 
 to dread, and that entire freedom Avould be 
 synonymous Avith entire prosperity. They 
 appear to have sometimes forgotten that la- 
 bour itself could not be free unless it were 
 secured against wrong, and that this secu-
 
 INTRODUCTIOX. XlX 
 
 nty, as it implies a restraint operating on all. 
 would be a check on the labourer's oun 
 passions. If they did not overlook, they 
 neglected to enforce with sufficient frequen- 
 cy and emphasis, the truth which cannot be 
 too often repeated, that order is tlie most es- 
 sential element of liberty ; that such order 
 cannot exist without obedience to law ; and 
 that law cannot be obeyed unless men cul- 
 tivate habits of self-control, and impose re- 
 straint on the very sentiments which impel 
 them to industry and thrift. 
 
 But it is time to bring these remarks to a 
 close. It will be found that in these Es- 
 says the author has taken a judicious mean 
 between those who would hedge property 
 about with needless safeguards and those 
 who would leave it without protection. He 
 is the advocate of an enlightened freedom ; 
 a freedom tempered only by such restraints 
 as are indispensable to its own preservation, 
 and inseparable from the present lot of hu- 
 manity. He has endeavoured to unfold 
 some of the purposes with which a benefi- 
 cent Creator has assigned to man an earthly
 
 XX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 inheritance of labour and care. He shows 
 how the welfare of the whole human family 
 is identified with the savings of economy, 
 or, in other words, with the accumulation 
 of capital ; and how deeply the labourer is 
 interested in sustaining those laws which 
 protect each man in the enjoyment of his 
 earnings, and of the earnings of his parents 
 or benefactors. He points out the wisdom 
 of that beautiful provision by which God 
 has connected the progress of our race with 
 the humble labours of industry ; and how 
 far such labours are from degrading the in- 
 dividual who pursues them, or from diffu- 
 sing through society a sordid or unworthy 
 spirit. Such lessons arc always seasonable. 
 In this age, pre-eminently devoted to indus- 
 trious enterprise and accumulating wealth 
 with unparalleled rapidity, they are especi- 
 ally needed, and it is much to be desired 
 that they may be widely circulated. 
 
 A. P. 
 
 Union College, September lUth, 1841.
 
 PROPER TV AND LABOUR
 
 The subject of property and labour is one 
 of great extent, and in all its details of such 
 moment to human society, that it would be 
 impossible even merely to allude in these 
 essays to every important point connected 
 with it. It will be more serviceable to 
 those readers who may not have deeply re- 
 flected upon it, if they should find some 
 truths of elementary and extensive impor- 
 tance clearly portrayed, and should be led 
 by them to a deeper consideration of the 
 general subject than could be induced by a 
 more comprehensive yet hasty sketch. 
 
 Every man who enjoys an active share in 
 the government of his country is bound to 
 endeavour, as far as lies in his power, to 
 make himself acquainted with the elements 
 of the society in which he lives ; and of 
 these elements the institutions of property 
 and marriage are the two most essential.
 
 16 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 Property and marriage have been at all 
 periods the two most powerful institutions 
 to calm, protect, and improve mankind. 
 The family, which can exist only where the 
 institution of marriage exists as an exclusive 
 and permanent connexion of the sexes, has 
 been, and will continue to be, through all 
 ages, the true " nursery of the common- 
 wealth ;" and property, Avhich induces man 
 to start on the career of industry and ex- 
 change, has also been through all periods the 
 firm foundation for peace. Notwithstanding 
 the contention and crime to which property 
 often leads, and the misery which matrimo- 
 ny sometimes entails, the one is still the great 
 source of peace, the other of kind affections 
 and happiness ; and both are fountains of 
 industry, of morality, love of kind and coun- 
 try, and of generous impulses. " These 
 two great institutions convert the selfish, as 
 well as the social, passions of our nature 
 into the firmest bands of a peaceable and 
 orderly intercourse ; they change the sour- 
 ces of discord into principles of quiet ; they 
 discipline the most ungovernable ; they re-
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 17 
 
 fine the grossest, and they exalt the most 
 sordid propensities ; so that they become 
 the perpetual fountain of all that strength- 
 ens, and preserves, and adorns society ; 
 they sustain the individual, and they per- 
 petuate the race. Around these institutions 
 all pur social duties will be found, at various 
 distances, to range themselves ; some more 
 near, obviously essential to the good order 
 of human life ; others more remote, and of 
 which the necessity is not, at first view, so 
 apparent ; and some so distant that their 
 importance has been sometimes doubted, 
 though, upon more mature consideration, 
 they will be found to be outposts and ad- 
 vance-guards of these fundamental princi- 
 ples ; that man should securely enjoy the 
 fruits of his labour, and that the society of 
 the sexes should be so wisely ordered as to 
 make it a school of the kind affections, and 
 a fit nursery for the commonwealth.'" 
 
 Eloquent as these lines are, they are not 
 more so than numerous passages on the 
 game subject in the ancient poets and prose 
 * Mackintosh, Disc, on the Law of Nature and Nations.
 
 18 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 writers. Indeed, we find that man, in 
 whatever period or country, so that he have 
 arrived at that degree of maturity which 
 calls on him to reflect upon the component 
 elements of human society, discovers and 
 amply acknowledges property and marriage 
 as the two main stays of social life, and the 
 two most active agents in civilizing the hu- 
 man race. The Greeks, and before them 
 the Egyptians and Hindoos, together with 
 the Chinese, prove the same fact, which is 
 evinced by the history of civilization in 
 modem Europe. 
 
 It is natural, therefore, that at all periods 
 when peculiar attention is directed to an 
 inquiry into the elements of society, these 
 institutions, too, should become the subjects 
 of renewed discussion. Our own period 
 does not make an exception ; for, if the 
 subject of marriage is less discussed than 
 that of property with reference to its practi- 
 cal importance, it is owing, not to the want 
 of importance attached to it, but, on ihe 
 contrary, because the Western World — all 
 Europe, with her many descendant nations
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 19 
 
 —acknowledge, with one voice, not only- 
 marriage, but monogamy, to be of the last 
 importance for the cause of human advance- 
 ment. 
 
 That the Western World thus highly dis- 
 tinguishes the institution of monogamy Avith 
 one voice, is not using an extravagant term, 
 because those writers who have attempted 
 to break in upon this ancient and indispen- 
 sable institution excite our contempt for 
 their shallowness, and our disgust at their 
 low sensuality, and are, withal, very few in 
 number, compared with the multitude who 
 have held a different opinion. The theory 
 of these few stands contradicted on every 
 page of history by the laws and existing in- 
 stitutions of generations after generations.' 
 
 ' It is a fact which deserves attention, that, on the one 
 hand, none of those writers, to have produced whona is tho 
 melancholy distinction of our own times, recommend polyg- 
 amy; but-if they attack the sanctuary of monogamy, they 
 do it either in demanding promiscuous intercourse, or exclu- 
 sive intercourse for a limited time ; and that, on the other 
 hand, the most distinguished moralists of the East strongly 
 recommend monogamy. Thus, to give but one instance, the 
 most esteemed ethical work of Middle Asia, called Akhlak-I>
 
 20 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 The whole subject of marriage is a sim- 
 ple one. Property, however, although not 
 less universally acknowledged by man, is 
 necessarily subject to far more modifica- 
 tions. These, and the fact of its enduring 
 
 Jalaly, says, section iii. of book ii. : "Excepting, indeed, the 
 case of kings, who marry to multiply offspring, and towards 
 whom the wife has no alternative but obedience, plurality of 
 wives is not defensible. Even in their case it were better to 
 be cautious ; for husband and wife are like heart and body, 
 and like as one heart cannot supply life to two bodies, one 
 man can hardly provide for the management of two homes." 
 Translated by W. F. Thompson, of the Bengal service, for 
 the Oriental Translation Fund, London, 1839, page 266. This 
 singularly confirms some views taken in the Political Ethics 
 on the subject. When the author stated ihem he was not 
 yet acquainted with this passage. GutzlaS", in his China 
 Opened, states pretty much the same in regard to that vast 
 empire. In saying that certain disgusting views, boldly avow- 
 ed, form a melancholy distinction of our times, I am well 
 aware that on many previous occasions religious fanatics, both 
 catholic and protestant, have impiously preached and practis- 
 ed " intercourse of the faithful not subject to the fetters of the 
 law ;" but they were at least religious fanatics or designing 
 criminals, who merely used this cloak of fanaticism. In our 
 times we find writers and lecturers who are so degraded that 
 they speak of man's offspring with a loathsomely calculating 
 indifference, as fishermen would speak of the spawn of their 
 oysters, and who dare to hold up their doctrine as the height 
 of philanthropy.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 21 
 
 beyond the life of man, lead to a greater 
 variety of reflections, not only upon these 
 modifications, but also upon the whole char- 
 acter, essence, and origin of property ; nor 
 is it possible to give any connected view of 
 the rights and obligations of man, or of his 
 social, and especially of his political exist- 
 ence, without largely treating of the subject 
 of property. An age like ours, which, among 
 other peculiar features, is very strongly 
 marked by a political character, could not 
 fail to produce many arguments and theo- 
 ries upon this subject. 
 
 If we take, from the highest point of view, 
 a survey of the whole history of civilization, 
 we shall find that its two great divisions are 
 Asiatic and European civilization; the one 
 fixing, and often immuring, all knowledge, 
 rights, relations, and even the intercourse 
 and exchange among men by means of un- 
 alterable religious dogmas ;' the other char- 
 
 • The three Asiatic religions which count most votaries, 
 iie religion of Bramah, Buduh, and Mohammed, especially 
 ttbs two first, unalterably fix almost all branches of science, 
 astronomy, geography, and natural philosophy, no less so than
 
 22 PROPERTY .AND LABOUR. 
 
 acterized by criticism, by boundless, often 
 restless inquiry. It fairly began with th«"- 
 Greek historian Thucydides, and, in general, 
 forms the essential difference in the charac- 
 ter of Grecian science and that of contem- 
 poraneous Asiatic nations. 
 
 civil and political relations, weights, measures, and interest of 
 money ; so that it becomes impossible for a follower of Bu- 
 duh, for instance, to adopt more rational views or correct 
 knowledge, without, according to his belief, impiously aban- 
 doning the doctrine of his sacred writings. The blessing of 
 perfect liberty, granted to us in this respect by the absence 
 of political and scientific discussions or axioms in the New 
 Testament, is not sufficiently valued by those who attempt to 
 use the bible in order to settle questions belonging to these 
 branches of knowledge. So decided is the dogmatic charac- 
 ter of the Asiatics, that even the Chinese, the least religiously- 
 disposed people on earth, consider their so-called classic wri- 
 ters as forestalling all inquiry. "What they have said on 
 morals, politics, natural history, physics, medicine, geography, 
 and architecture, style of writing and poetry, is unalterable 
 law, a fixed dogma to the vast Chinese population ; and if, in 
 other countries of the East, the inquirer endangers his reli- 
 gious welfare, he becomes in China a presumptuous innovator, 
 guilty of the heinous offence of wantmg in filial piety to his 
 ancestors. Mr. Gutzlaff shows this very abundantly in the 
 work cited in the preceding note. It gives, so far as I know, 
 the most thorough and detailed account of that remarkable 
 nation.
 
 PROPERTY AXD LABOUR. 23 
 
 There have been periods in the history of 
 Europe, indeed, in which the inquiring spir- 
 it of the Western race was greatly fettered 
 by the dogmas imposed upon it by an exten- 
 sive system of theology, and a philosophy 
 closely interlinked with it ; but the Euro- 
 pean mind has always resumed its free in- 
 quiry, especially so after the restoration of 
 learning and the reformation of religion. 
 
 Since these two great events have exer- 
 cised their powerful influence upon the great 
 family of Western nations, a boldness and 
 activity have been imparted to the inquiring 
 mind, and the extent of research has been 
 widened in such a degree, that men have 
 sometimes fallen into the extreme opposite 
 to that of the spellbound Asiatic. Men 
 have at times forgotten the continuity of 
 mankind, of society, and civilization ; they 
 have hastily reasoned from doubtful, and oft- 
 en arbitrary abstract principles in spheres, 
 in which sound reasoning can consist in a 
 shrewd and cautious investigation of expe- 
 rience only ; and in morals as well as in 
 politics, they have not unfrequently substitu
 
 24 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 ted an opinion rashly formed and vehement- 
 ly maintained for those rules which can be 
 safe and unalterable only if they are the 
 joint result of calm and impartial reflection 
 upon the feelings and irresistible impulses 
 of man, manifested in the transactions of 
 life and the institutions grown up out of 
 them, and upon the accumulated and im- 
 bodied experience of mankind. The dis- 
 cussions on the subject of property have 
 not remained free from these evils, which 
 have been the greater, because many mod- 
 ern Avriters, most distinguished for extrav- 
 agant theories, have been able to plead in 
 their favour, with some degree of plausibil- 
 ity, the opinions or principles incautious- 
 ly advanced by others, who nevertheless 
 maintained, upon the whole, the very oppo- 
 site system.' 
 
 The first rencAved discussions upon prop- 
 erty took place at a time when it was a com- 
 mon error, probably unavoidable at that pe- 
 
 ' The principles on property exp'essed by Paley have been 
 used to support extravagant and ruinous theories, which are 
 the opposite to that which he wished to demoastiate.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 25 
 
 riod, to ascribe things, which we now ob- 
 serve before us in a definite and systematic 
 stale of existence, to as definite and well- 
 planned an origin, effected by distinct re- 
 flection and conscious will — in short, to in- 
 vention, almost as clear and as well guided 
 by a collected judgment as we know the 
 mental process to have been which resulted 
 in the invention of some complicated ma- 
 chines, or the ingenious removal of some 
 disturbing action. The invention of lan- 
 guages, governments, property, and even 
 of the fine arts, was spoken of in this sense 
 of the word. We thus read of the agree- 
 ments of men to establish governments ; 
 of their convention to use certain sounds 
 for certain ideas ; or of their resolving to 
 use the precious metals as coins and meas- 
 urements of value. In many cases in which 
 it was absolutely impossible to refer a com- 
 mon usage or a prevailing idea of justice, 
 imbodied in a universal law, to a definite 
 pact, a tacit contract was at least supposed 
 as their original starting point. A great 
 writer, whom civilized mankind will always 
 C
 
 26 
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 return to consider as one of their true 
 benefactors, whatever it was lately the fash- 
 ion to say in derogation of him,' even he 
 could not wholly free himself of this view, 
 which the advanced state of knowledge 
 and the deeper research of modern times 
 teach us to be untenable. He speaks, 
 in his immortal work, " of the intention of 
 those who first introduced private property," 
 and says that " it is but reasonable to sup- 
 pose that, in making this introduction of 
 property, they would as little as possible de- 
 viate from the original principles of natural 
 equity." 
 
 History, however, shows us no such ori- 
 ginal introduction of property. The idea 
 of property was not conceived in the human 
 mind in reasoning upon certain existing 
 evils or expected advantages, as in some 
 instances, indeed, the government of coun- 
 tries has been changed in consequence of 
 deliberation upon existing and pressing cir- 
 
 ' Hugo Grotius, in his work on the Rights of Vv'ar a.rA 
 Peace. The student will remember likewise Paley's passage 
 on property.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 27 
 
 cumstaiices, or as the Constitution of the 
 United States was adopted after protracted 
 discussion.' 
 
 The thing was before the word ; the 
 word before reflection upon its meaning, 
 extent, and usefulness. Upon inquiry, we 
 shall find that private property exists many 
 centuries, probably thousands of years, bc- 
 
 ' The framers of our Constitution made and adopted this 
 instrument, indeed ; but, although we are able to refer its in- 
 troduction to a definite day and hour, we must guard our- 
 selves against considering even this act an invention. Be- 
 sides that it is founded upon the bulk of the English Common 
 Law, nearly all its essential features are either directly adopted 
 from the British Bill of Rights, the Act of Settlement, and 
 the British Constitution, or are modifications, improvements, 
 or expansions of inherited principles. It is for this reason 
 that its framers produced a living thing, taking root at once 
 in the practical life of the people. Had they acted otherwise, 
 we would now read of their instrument as we do of a consti- 
 tution of Herault de Sechellcs, and several others produced in 
 the convulsions of the first French revolution. The lawgiv- 
 ers of antiquity, the Lycurguses, the Solons, did not invent; 
 they did not spin the thread of their political systems out of 
 themselves as the silkworm weaves its thread from out it- 
 self; they collected, simplified, digested, modified, and im- 
 proved the common law of their land or tribe; and more no 
 legislator can do, if he means to produce that which shall bo 
 useful and lasting, and has the breath of life.
 
 28 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 fore men began to reflect upon its origin 
 its fairness and utility; and that those among 
 whom it introduced itself, or with whom 
 it grew up, had no conscious intention of 
 bringing it about, nor any clear concep- 
 tion of the many effects which might re- 
 sult from it. Neither did they reason upon the 
 right by which they held it, any more than 
 the daring fisherman does now, who sails in 
 his craft to the Banks of Newfoundland to 
 catch the unappropriated fish of the sea, but 
 who feels his right very strongly so soon as 
 any one attempts to dispossess him of the 
 well-earned produce of his labour and dan- 
 ger. The origin of property can be refer- 
 red to no fixed point of time. It grew up 
 with man, as language, as government did. 
 It was the necessary and unavoidable ef- 
 fect of his physical and moral nature. The 
 two first human beings could not but feel 
 the import of Mine and Thine.' 
 
 On the other hand, it is an error not less 
 common at present to ascribe everything, the 
 
 ' I must here refer the reader to my Political Ethics, where 
 I have enlarged upon this point.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 29 
 
 commencement of which we are unable to 
 refer to a distinct act of reflection and con- 
 scious will — to a barbarous origin, and to 
 infer that we have, for that reason alone, 
 the right or even the duty to refashion or de- 
 stroy it. A power of comprehension or 
 foresight is thus ascribed to the mind of the 
 individual which it never possesses ; the re- 
 sult of influence on man's nature, of things 
 and circumstances around him, is wholly 
 left out of consideration. It is conceived 
 that civilization dates but from our period, 
 and that everythmg which does not accord 
 with our systems, classification, and theo- 
 ries is bad on that account, and no time 
 ought to be lost in changing all institutions 
 accordingly. The fact that private property 
 has existed at all periods with all nations 
 from time immemorial, is considered to be 
 rather a proof of its viciousness and barbar- 
 ity than an evidence that we ought to view 
 it with mature and cautious reflection, well 
 weighing whether there be not that in it 
 which agrees with our inmost nature for our 
 best interest.
 
 30 PROPERTY AND LABOLK. 
 
 Man acts according to the principles of 
 his nature from the beginning, and to it he 
 always returns, if, for a time, violence, blind- 
 ness, or fanaticism force him away. It is a 
 living principle within him, long before the 
 philosopher acknowledges it as a subject of 
 consciousness or imbodies it in a system; a 
 principle which is the more clearly acknowl- 
 edged and the more extensively acted upon 
 the farther essential civilization advances ; 
 and which it is one of the most important 
 problems of the philosopher in the closet, 
 and the lawgiver in the assembly, to present 
 clearly, and free of all accidental adhesion, 
 so that it may the more purely be acted 
 upon in Avider and wider spheres. 
 
 Such, for instance, is the consciousness 
 of every human being, that he who lives has 
 an original right to live. All men have 
 ever acted upon this principle ; innumera- 
 ble laws silently acknowledge it, yet it may 
 not have been pronounced in so many 
 words for thousands of years, A constitu- 
 tion which should propound this primitive, 
 indelible, and absolute consciousness in a
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 31 
 
 prefatory declaration of rights, would con- 
 tain something very useless; and a Legisla- 
 ture which, upon seeing that this right is 
 nowhere acknowledged by Avords, should 
 enact a declaration to that end, would ren- 
 der itself ridiculous. 
 
 A due appreciation of property, in so far 
 as it consists in Avealth, has likewise suffer- 
 ed from the fact that, before the truths of 
 the science of political economy were well 
 established, Avealth was pretty generally 
 considered to consist in money; an error 
 into which men easily fell, because all 
 wealth and values are measured by money. 
 If a man possesses a farm Avorth tAventy 
 thousand dollars, we say that he possesses 
 tAventy thousand dollars. Money, and coin 
 or specie, again, are ideas very much asso- 
 ciated in the minds of men ; and as it is 
 certain that there exists but a limited and 
 fixed quantity of coin, Avhich cannot be in- 
 creased at pleasure, it Avas soon believed 
 that, just as much property as one person 
 possesses, so much Avas taken from the 
 others, or so much Avere the others prevent-
 
 32 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 ed from possessing. Political econorr v has 
 exhibited this fallacy, but the truths which 
 this science develops have not been suffi 
 ciently regarded by those writers who of 
 late have treated of property, although it 
 seems that without those truths it is impos- 
 sible fully to comprehend its nature.
 
 II. 
 
 Property is that which we own, and we 
 own a thing if we have the exclusive dispo- 
 sal of it, or can exclusively use it for our 
 purposes (use or abuse it). Possession, 
 strictly speaking, means the mere fact of 
 having a thing in our power, lawfully or not. 
 A thing may be possessed and not owned, 
 as the thief posseses, for the time, his stolen 
 goods ; and it may be owned and not actu- 
 ally possessed, as the land which is rented 
 for a number of years. In this case the 
 owner has parted with his right of posses- 
 sion for some consideration or other. The 
 act of taking possession of things unown- 
 ed, or of seizing them and making them sub- 
 ject to ourselves, with the intention of hold- 
 ing them as property, is called occupying 
 them.' Occupation leads to appropriation. 
 
 ' Occupancy thus involves the idea of the presence of the 
 occupier. We must be careful, however, to attach a correct
 
 34 
 
 PROriCUTV AND LAROLR. 
 
 Property, like go\ernment, shows itself 
 from the earliest periods, and during all 
 stages through which man passes in his long 
 career of civilization ; first, in an incipient 
 and less defined state, but more clearly de- 
 veloped with every progressive step of that 
 ■civilization which unfolds the true nature of 
 man as it gradually advances. Civilization 
 is man's real state of nature. Property, 
 in this respect, resembles all those institu- 
 tions which are the necessary effects of 
 man's natur», that is, of his physical and 
 mental constitution, and the objects for 
 which he was created ; effects, such as mar- 
 riage, the administration of justice, or, as 
 was mentioned above, government itself. 
 
 idea to the term Presence in this connexion. Actual physical 
 presence at every moment cannot be me^nt, for this would 
 demand physical ubiquity, and in this sense Iiind could never 
 be occupied. We shall find, therefore, that Presence means 
 personal controlling power. Some arguments directed against 
 \-.'*. 'Wat of property arising out of occupancy, on the giound 
 thit it requires presence, which is in many of the most im- 
 portant cases impossible, seemed to require this explanation. 
 For a comprehensive discussion on Occupancy the reader ia 
 referred to the articles on this subject in the Encyclopedia 
 Americana, to Kent's Commentaries, and also to the first 
 chapter of Story's Comm. on the Const, of the U. States.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 35 
 
 There is no property which has not ori- 
 ginated either in peaceable appropriation, 
 that is, in making that our own which had 
 1 u owner before ; or in production, that is, 
 in bestowing exchangeable value (utility or 
 desirableness) upon that which had no value 
 before ; or in long-continued and undisturb- 
 ed possession ; or in forcible seizure ; or, 
 lastly, in acts which are a mixture of the 
 preceding ones.' 
 
 Those philosophers who have maintained 
 that the original state of man, which they 
 called his state of nature, is a state of war, 
 every one warring with every one, Avere ne- 
 cessarily obliged to consider property as the 
 later invention of man, or a thing made by 
 government, which they likewise considered 
 as an institution made by a distinct and con- 
 scious act of men who had become tired of 
 the previous state of continued warfare. 
 
 ■ Political eco!iomists have said that mere appropriation, in 
 some cases, bestows value upon the thing. I believe there is 
 no case belonging to this class in which it is not the removal 
 of the thing which gives it value. But this discussion seems 
 to be unnecessary for our present inquiry.
 
 36 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 Unimportant as a speculation of this kind 
 may appear at first, it is not so if we con- 
 sider the consequences which are immedi- 
 ately drawn from the first position, that 
 property is either an absolute creature of 
 government, or that all property originates 
 in rapine and violence/ But as love is be- 
 fore hatred, and in its nature lasts longer, 
 so is peace before war. War is but in- 
 terrupted peace, not peace suspended war. 
 To define peace by a state of interrupted 
 war would be as incorrect as to say that 
 rightful property, the exception, is that which 
 is not the produce of pilfering, the general. 
 Dispute, quarrel, persecution, and enmity 
 have a definite object ; that once obtained, 
 they cease ; but peace and good-will are 
 general, and their own end. They must 
 first be disturbed before they cease, and re- 
 turn of themselves so soon as the disturb- 
 ance is at an end. Peace and war are 
 
 1 That which we now behold as peaceably- possessed and 
 well-secured property, has indeed, at times, changed owners by 
 violence or fraud ; but this is an interruption of peaceful 
 transmission of property, not its origin. We shall recur to 
 this subject farther below.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 37 
 
 like health and fever, like food and medi- 
 cine, like calm and storm ; and property, 
 resulting from the nature of man, is chiefly 
 the effect of peace. Indeed, the idea of 
 Rightful could never have originated out of 
 vv^ar. If men declare thai property acqui- 
 red by war shall be rightful property, it is 
 necessary that they should have acquired the 
 idea of rightful property previously, and in 
 relations founded upon right, not upon mere 
 violence. All to which man could have el- 
 evated himself under such circumstances 
 would have been the idea of bare possession. 
 We shall see that property arises mainly 
 out of the state of peace, when we consider 
 the necessity of property, the right of prop- 
 erty, and the agreement of property with 
 our essential nature. 
 
 Necessity of Property. 
 
 Man, in common with all animals, must 
 sustain his body by nourishment, which is 
 not offered to him as to the plants, but he 
 must go in search of it. Man must take, ap- 
 propriate the food he finds ; but, unlike most 
 
 4o;s;^48
 
 38 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 of the Other animals, he is obliged, even in 
 the most savage state, to store up. He is 
 bound to do this, because, although in part 
 a carnivorous animal, he cannot remain so 
 long without food as the animals of prey ; he 
 requires a more regular supply ; because his 
 body, unaided by w^eapons or traps, is unfit 
 to obtain for him animal food ; he must, 
 therefore, regularly pursue the chase at the 
 proper time of the day and at the proper 
 season, and must gather stores during fa- 
 vourable periods for unpropitious times; 
 and, lastly, because his children depend 
 longer upon him for food than the young 
 ones of any animal upon their parent. 
 
 When the mammalia cease to take milk 
 from the mother, they begin to shift for them- 
 selves, and, as a general rule, the parental 
 care of animals does not extend beyond a 
 season ; so that, before the new litter makes 
 its appearance, the preceding brood takes 
 care of itself. It is very different with the 
 human species. Children require to be 
 provided for, years after they have ceased 
 to be nursed. In the mean time, successive
 
 PUOI'KRTV AXD LABOUR. 39 
 
 children are born, and the female parent is 
 prevented from obtaining food by the neces- 
 sary care which the young ones require.' In 
 short, man must provide for his family, Avhich 
 
 ■ Lord Karnes, in his Law Tract on Property, mentions al- 
 ready that " Man, by the frame of his body, is unqualified to 
 be an animal of prey." The travellers to the Polar Regions, 
 for instance Captain Ross, inform us of the enormous power of 
 swallowing, and the capacity of sustaitiiiig liunger, which the 
 inhabitants of those unhappy regions acquire, from being most 
 irregularly supplied with food. Yet even this does not equal 
 the power of many animals of prey ; and in how wretched a 
 condition are those people ! 
 
 There seems to be a general law pervading the animal 
 world, that the higher the animal stands in the scale of cre- 
 ation, the longer is its close dependence upon the parent. The 
 reptiles deposite their eggs ; they abandon them ; the sun 
 hatches them, and the young ones take care of themselves. 
 The viviparous reptile provides in no case, I believe, for its 
 young. The fish is born, and does not know, even for a brief 
 term, its parent. The bird parts with the egg, that is, with 
 its issue, before it is a separate living individual, but there is 
 hatching and feeding by the parents. The mammalia retain 
 the offspring until it is a living being, and give nourishment to 
 it from out themselves. Men, at last, furnish the same food, 
 but the child continues to be dependant long after the period 
 of lactation. Families are formed, and continue beyond the 
 period of physical dependance, because the long time of de- 
 pendance gives scope to the development of mutual and en- 
 during afTections, of gratitude and love.
 
 40 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 he cannot do without storing up, in all 
 those many regions in which the fruits of 
 the forest are insufficient to support hina. 
 
 Indeed, it seems that they are insufficient 
 to do so without a proper search and conse- 
 quent accumulation even in the most favour- 
 ed regions. The fruits of the earth, with- 
 out gathering and storing, and without ex- 
 change, which presupposes accumulation, 
 furnish but very scanty food, even in such 
 luxuriant districts as Upper California.' The 
 peculiar physical organization of man obli- 
 ges him in another way to acquire property, 
 even in his lowest stages. His limbs are 
 nimble and of the nicest organization, yet 
 without talons ; his mouth does not protrude 
 so that it might be used for attack ; his body 
 is unprotected by fur or feather. He must 
 make arms and provide shelter for himself; 
 he must produce, even though he desire no- 
 
 ' A History of Upper and Lower California, comprising an 
 Account of the Climate, &c., by Alexander Forbes, Lon- 
 don, 1839. This work furnishes us with a striking illustration 
 of the wretchedness of man, if he lives without exchange and 
 well-developed property, even though surrounded by a bounti- 
 ful nature.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 41 
 
 thing more than to live ; and even the low- 
 est savage is well aware that what he him- 
 self has produced is his. It requires no rea- 
 soning ; he is conscious of it. 
 
 Tile destiny of man, however, is not 
 merely to exist ; he must become civilized ; 
 civilization cannot take place without in- 
 crease of population, and population can- 
 not increase without increased production, 
 increased accumulation and exchange of 
 products. 
 
 Wherever men do not accumulate prop- 
 erty, either because they actually cannot do 
 so, owing to the inclemency of their climate, 
 or will not do so, because they are yet too 
 brutish, we find a very thin population. All 
 the sustenance offered by a luxuriant forest 
 well stocked with game, or by the rivers and 
 sea, suffices to support but a very scanty 
 population. The Tchucktshi on the north- 
 ern coast of Asia,' the Californians already 
 mentioned, the New-Zealanders, our Indians 
 in the West, and the inhabitants of Bur- 
 
 • Narrative of an Expedition to the Polar Sea (North of 
 Asia), by Admiral von Wrangcll, London, 1840. 
 
 D
 
 42 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 mah," are striking instances of the truth of 
 this remark. 
 
 But civilization does not only require ac- 
 cumulated property because it caimot exist 
 without increased population ; the progress 
 of civilization itself demands greater and 
 greater accumulation. Without it all men 
 must spend their whole time in the search 
 of food, like the animals, and in the pur- 
 suit of the most necessary articles of pro- 
 tection ; and no values^ can be spared for 
 all those pursuits which, in the end, increase 
 comfort and happiness indeed, even food 
 
 ' A Description of the Burmese Empire, compiled chiefly 
 from native Documents, by the Rer. Father Sangermano, 
 missionary; translated by William Tandy, D.D., London Ori- 
 ental Translation Fund, Rome, 1833. 
 
 ^ Value is generally used for exchangeable value, because 
 in political economy we treat of these only. Value is every- 
 thing that is useful or desirable for more than one, and for 
 which those that do not possess it are willing, because they 
 desire it, to part with other values called equivalents, that is, 
 things which are as much desired by the possessor of the value 
 of which we first spoke. A has a barrel of flour, B has forty 
 pounds of coflfee ; A desires the coffee, B the flour. They 
 exchange it. Flour and coffee, therefore, are exchangeable 
 values, and the barrel of the one and the forty pounds of the 
 Other are equivalents in this case.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 43 
 
 and raiment, yet not necessarily immediate- 
 ly so ; such, for in^stance, as astronomy and 
 mineralogy. Our next inquiry into the 
 right of property will bring us back to this 
 subject. 
 
 The reader has found in the last note an 
 explanation of the term value ; and we may 
 now define the term property more correctly 
 by saying, we call values property when we 
 consider them Avith reference to their own- 
 ers.' 
 
 ' Ii would seem that this more correct definition is not 
 without importance. The value of a thing is not the same 
 with its substance. Value is utility, desirableness. It may be 
 depreciated, although the substance, the matter of the thing, 
 rcmams absolutely the same, or may even improve. Coffee 
 becomes belter by being old ; yet, while thus the substance 
 improves, its price, its value, its desirableness may be depreci- 
 ated by large importations, so that the owner receives now 
 for the better coffee less than he would have obtained a year 
 before for inferior coffee. After the rout of the French at 
 Victoria by Wellington, the British soldiers sold eight Spanish 
 silver dollars for one guinea, because silver was too heavy to 
 carry, and thus the gold became highly desirable. — Ma.xweH's 
 Life of Wellington. If we keep this definition of property 
 strictly in view, it will be far easier to see the justice of exclu- 
 sive property, even in land. For the value, constituting the 
 chief ingredient of property, is mainly the creation of man. 
 On the other hand, it will enable us to judge with justice and
 
 44 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 The Right of Property. 
 
 The necessity of acquiring property for 
 the merely physical subsistence, as well as 
 the civilized state of man, would sufficiently 
 prove the original right of acquiring it ; for, 
 if the Creator calls man into existence to 
 live, and has destined mankind for civiliza- 
 tion, he must, as an intelligent being, have 
 furnished them with adequate means to sup- 
 port the one and to attain the other ; and 
 property, which is one of these adequate 
 means, cannot, therefore, be unlawful. But 
 it will be necessary to consider the right of 
 property, especially the right and necessity 
 of private or individual property, more in 
 detail. 
 
 The primary origin of all individual prop- 
 erty must be occupation ; rightful, if the 
 thing appropriated belonged to no one ; 
 wrongful, if it be taken by stealth or vio- 
 lence from a rightful owner. Production 
 
 perspicuity of such property as does not offer itself to our eyes 
 in a definite bulk; for instance, the exclusive right of property 
 which the literary producer has in his own product, the literary 
 work. — See my Letter on International Copyright.
 
 PROPERTY A\D LABOUR. 45 
 
 must be preceded by appropriating unowned 
 things, for value cannot be bestowed upon 
 any nnaterial by oiu- industry without first 
 appropriating the material, and some instrn- 
 ment, say a sharp stone or an indented 
 bone, to Avork withal. The savage, before 
 he can scoop out a tree to serve him as a 
 canoe, must have appropriated the trunk 
 and something which may serve as a tool. 
 
 Appropriation, however, does not only 
 precede production in the earliest stages 
 of a tribe ; it continues to do so, in innu- 
 merable cases, throughout all stages of hu- 
 man society, from the rudest to the most 
 refined. Appropriation and production go 
 almost constantly hand in hand. In very 
 many cases the whole act of production 
 consists solely, or in a very high degree, 
 merely in appropriation and removal. The 
 fisherman appropriates the distant fish, and, 
 by removing it from the banks of the sea, 
 where it is desired by no one, and, con- 
 sequently, has no value, to the market of 
 Boston, where it is desired by many, he be- 
 stows value upon it; he produces The peb-
 
 46 I*R( PERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 bles on the seashore are worth nothing ; 
 they are removed to the garden cf a resi- 
 dent a hundred miles up Hudson's River, 
 where the o^vner is desirous of making a 
 dry walk, and the gravel is sold to him 
 at a very considerable price. The black- 
 berries, and many other fruits of the forest, 
 medicinal plants, or the translucent ice of 
 the Kennebec River, are appropriated and 
 carried, the one to a populous city or dis- 
 tant hospitals, the other to New-Orleans 
 and Calcutta, where they are desirable, and 
 where prices are obtained for them suffi- 
 cient to encourage these branches of indus- 
 try. In the place where these lines are 
 writing, twelve and a half cents are willing- 
 ly paid even for a pound of inferior ice. 
 Leeches, of no value whatever in the brooks 
 of Sweden, are exported from that coun- 
 try, and sold at high prices in the United 
 States, because they are a very desirable 
 f.rticle here. The owner of a factory ap- 
 propriates the power of the swift rivulet for 
 the time that it passes through his premises, 
 and uses it to bestow a greatly increased
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 47 
 
 value ujooii the substance which he works 
 up into cloth ; the bleacher appropriates the 
 rain which falls upon the linen sent to him 
 to receive a white colour. 
 
 Right and Duty of Appropriation or Occu- 
 pancy, and Production. 
 
 The right of appropriation is founded 
 upon that primitive and absolute conscious- 
 ness, which is acknowledged by all, because 
 it lives in the breasts of all, and precedes all 
 acknowledgment of right by government. 
 It is the same consciousness on which the 
 right of parents over their children is found- 
 ed ; the right of resistance against wrong ; 
 the right of a human society to punish of- 
 fenders ; the right of protecting what is our 
 own, or our virtue, or the right we have 
 to demand justice ; in short, the conscious- 
 ness upon which all those primitive rights 
 are founded of which the largest and most 
 detailed codes are but amplifications. 
 
 Although mankind have acted at all times 
 upon this truth, philosophers have not un- 
 frequently insisted only upon that right of
 
 48 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 property which is given by the act of pro- 
 duction. It is evident ,o every human 
 understanding, even the -wt'akfhit, and ac- 
 cordant with the feelings of every one, that 
 no person has a right to take from me that 
 which is tiie sole fruit of my labour, toil, 
 peril, or daring, if, in producing it, I did not 
 interfere with the same rights of others, as 
 good as my own. The right of appropria- 
 tion or occupancy was insisted upon by an- 
 cient philosophers, but by later ones has 
 been either not so distinctly maintained, or 
 has been wholly passed over. This was 
 owing, for th-j most part, probably, to three 
 causes : first, philosophers started from the 
 idea that originally all things belonged to 
 all men, and things not appropriated, or not 
 belonging to any individual, belonged, there- 
 fore, to all in common ; secondly, it was not 
 observed \\\\\\ sufficient distinctness that 
 there can exist no production without pre- 
 vious occupancy ; and, lastly, the peculiar 
 nature of landed property, a subject which 
 has some difficulties of its own, was not suf- 
 ficiently considered.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 49 
 
 Th'i second point has already been spo- 
 ken of, and the sequel of these tracts will 
 contain remarks on the first and third. 
 Here it is necessary to observe again, that 
 by appropriation we understand the act of 
 making that our own which belongs to wo- 
 body. 
 
 We make a thing belonging to nobody 
 our own, if we bring it under our control, 
 and use or enjoy it. The term of enjoying 
 is preferable, as of more extensive meaning. 
 If I find a beautiful shell on the seashore, 
 and pick it up to embellish my mantelpiece 
 or to amuse my little ones, or an Indian 
 finds a feather, and ornaments his head with 
 it, these articles are bona fide our own, al- 
 though it may be said they are not of any 
 actual use to us; but we enjoy them; we 
 desire their possession ; nor is it possible in 
 poli'iical economy to draw a distinct and, 
 general line between mere utility and de- 
 sirableness for any other purpose.' Now, 
 
 ' It would be very difficult, indeed impossible, to draw a 
 line where actual utility ceases, respecting houses, furniture 
 food, or dress. The advancement of civilization is in a great 
 
 E
 
 50 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 what belongs to no one may evident.y be 
 occupied by any one ;' for if it belonged 
 to no one, who will dispute the exclusive 
 right of him who first brought it within his 
 power, and uses or enjoys it ? 
 
 An instance may illustrate our position. 
 A savage, and though we imagine him of 
 the lowest order, walks on the beach of the 
 sea, and finds a stone which he considers fit 
 to serve as an axe or some other instrument. 
 It belongs to no one ; he is conscious of 
 having a right of appropriating it. If an- 
 other man should come to despoil him of 
 this useful stone, he would feel indignant at 
 
 measure founded upon the fact that what is luxury in one 
 age becomes want in the next. Shirts and window-glass 
 were in no very remote periods articles of great luxury. 
 Paupers, at the present time, receive in England and the Uni- 
 ted Stales a weekly allowance of tea. 
 
 ' Some have maintained that it amounts to the same, wheth- 
 er we assume that things belonged originally to no one or ta 
 all. This seems to be enoneous. One or the other assump- 
 tion leads to different results. Farther below I shall giva 
 my reasons why I believe it cannot be maintained that things 
 unowned by any individual belong on that account to all. 
 I am obliged to defer this inquiry, because it would lead u( 
 here too far from the main subject of the present page.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 51 
 
 the injustice, and resist the aggressor. He 
 feels as clearly as man can feel anything, 
 that priority of possession gives the fullest 
 possible title to property. It belonged to 
 no one ; now it is in his individual posses- 
 sion, and nothing more than individual pos- 
 session is necessary to make it his own, 
 wholly and entirely. It is not, in this case, 
 his labour or toil, however insignificant, 
 which makes the stone his own, or converts 
 the unowned thing into property. The ag- 
 gressor, whom we have supposed, may have 
 come from the distance of three miles for 
 the purpose of seeking for precisely such a 
 stone, and the j&rst finder may have slept 
 near the spot where he found it. It would 
 change in no respect the feelings of the pro- 
 prietor.' Nor does, as stated before, the 
 degree of utility for which it is wanted 
 
 ' Some twenty or thirty years ago the following case was 
 decided in a court of the Slate of New- York. B had pur- 
 sued a wild animal, if I remember right, a hare, for a very 
 long distance, when suddenly C stepped in, shot, and appropri- 
 ated it. B claimed the animal, but the court was of opinion 
 that his labour had not yet produced, or been preceded by oc- 
 cupancy or possession, while the killing by C had produced it
 
 52 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 change anything. If the article found were 
 a shell, which the finder desires for an or- 
 nament, but the aggressor for a cooking 
 utensil, the consciousness of the first that 
 the shell is his would be as complete as if 
 himself had wanted it for a spoon. 
 
 The savage now forms an axe of the flint 
 which he appropriated ; he bestows labour, 
 and, by doing so, confers utility upon it ; he 
 produces. If he chooses to exchange the 
 flint axe for something more desirable to 
 him, or if others desire to exchange their 
 property for this axe, he produces what we 
 have seen already is called an exchangeable 
 value. If he desires to keep the instrument 
 in order to fell a tree and hollow it for the 
 purpose of using it as a canoe, we call his 
 axe the capital, Avhich, in making the canoe, 
 he uses productively, inasmuch as the canoe 
 is of greater utility to him, and, if exchan- 
 ged, of greater value than the axe. Capi- 
 tal is the value used in producing new val- 
 ues. He launches the canoe in order to 
 catch fish ; the canoe, in turn, becomes cap- 
 ital, -used productively in appropriating the 
 unowned inhabitants of the sea.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 53 
 
 We have observed already the necessity 
 of appropriating, preserving, accumulating, 
 and producing, and have thus seen the duty 
 as well as the rightfulness of appropriation 
 and production. 
 
 Right and Duty of Exchange. 
 
 The man, whom we have selected as an 
 instance in the preceding passages, may 
 catch in his canoe as many fish as he deems 
 proper to satisfy his own appetite, and that 
 of his wife and children ; either to pro- 
 vide for their wants of that day, of a whole 
 week, or a year to come, if he have learned 
 by this time how to preserve the produce of 
 his industry. He may not only catch as 
 many fishes as will be actually consumed by 
 his family, but he has a right to appropriate 
 many more, which he means to barter for 
 such things as are desirable for the suste- 
 nance, comfort, or health of his household, 
 but which he is unable to produce himself. 
 
 If experience has taught him already 
 that he cannot always depend upon having 
 the fish precisely at the time when hunger
 
 54 PROPERTY ANO LABOUR. 
 
 calls for them, or that he stands in need of 
 other products "vvhich he nevertheless can- 
 not, or wishes not to produce himself, he 
 has not only the right of accumulating and 
 bartering away that which is truly his own, 
 but it is his duty to do so ; for the laws 
 of nature make wife and children dependant 
 upon him, and he is bound to provide for 
 them. 
 
 If he exchanges his surplus of fish for 
 fruits or game which another obtained while 
 he himself was engaged in catching fish, 
 he knows that the former are now, after the 
 exchange has taken place, as much his 
 own as the fish were before that act was 
 completed. Both these men soon find out 
 that, by pursuing each his peculiar branch 
 of industry, and afterward exchanging what, 
 according to their desires, are equivalents, 
 they are enabled to produce far more, and 
 obtain the enjoyment of a much greater va- 
 riety of products, than they would be able to 
 do if eacli one should continue to produce all 
 that he himself directly wanted for his own 
 consumption. By division of labour (which
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 55 
 
 rests on the undoubted right of every indi- 
 vidual to apply liis strengtii and skill as 
 he thinks best, and which rests on the same 
 primitive consciousness with our right of ac- 
 quiring individual property by appropriation 
 or production) and by exchange, mankind 
 are enabled to increase rapidly, and to ex- 
 ist in great numbers in districts which pro- 
 duce but one or two articles of food, or, 
 perhaps, none at all, but Avhich supply some 
 other article that is desired by others, and 
 for which these are willing to give what is 
 wanted by the first. The richest raining dis- 
 tricts may be totally destitute of food ; nor 
 could the people of the pepper countries live 
 upon that produce : so that by division of 
 labour and exchange, two expedients which 
 distinguish man from tlie animal, we pro 
 duce infinitely more than we could do oth- 
 erwise, and to it we must ascribe, in a great 
 measure, the remarkable phenomenon of 
 the steady increase of mankind from coun- 
 try to country. Without them man could 
 not have carried out the great law, that, dif- 
 fering from the animal, he shall produce ills
 
 5Q PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 own support, and vastly increase it with 
 increased population; nor could mankind 
 without them have increased to the number 
 of the wild beasts, scanty even in the most 
 fertile forests ; and, on the other hand, if 
 animals had been capable of exchange, 
 they, with their vastly greater fecundity, 
 must soon have overrun the earth and exter- 
 minated man, notwithstanding all his at- 
 tempts to destroy them.' 
 
 It is not, however, produce alone that 
 men have a full right and a bounden duty 
 to exchange ; they may exchange anything 
 that is theirs, and of which they can freely 
 dispose. Suppose one fisherman finds that, 
 in spite of all his exertions, he cannot ob- 
 tain so much produce as would be sufficient 
 for food, raiment, and other wants of hia 
 growing family ; wants, moreover, which 
 
 ' The enormous power of multiply ing in an animal such as 
 the rat may serve as an instance. If that Nature which has 
 endowed tho rat with great procreative power, had not also 
 provided for means of limiting their number otherwise than in 
 our mind, which would naturally lead men to the invention o( 
 traps, it requires no calculation to see how easily the vermin 
 would prevail over man, vainly struggling against their number.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 57 
 
 increase in number as men advance, step 
 by step, in the career of civilization. He 
 has stored fish and grain or dried venison, 
 and now offers a part of it to a healthy lad 
 if he will work for him, or in exchange 
 for his labour. The parents of this lad have 
 been too indolent to accumulate, or they 
 have pursued an unproductive branch of in- 
 dustry, or may have met with repeated mis- 
 fortunes, by which their accumulations were 
 destroyed. The lad is willing to work, the 
 fisherman willing to part with a share of his 
 accumulations, because the labour of the 
 young man will produce him more than 
 that with which he parts ; yet without this 
 capital, previously accumulated, the lad 
 could produce nothing, or not live so well as 
 he may do in the fisherman's family. Both, 
 therefore, are benefited, both entitled to the 
 produce of their exchange. 
 
 Exchange is one of the fundamental prin- 
 ciples of the great household of mankind, 
 and exchange presupposes property ; for we 
 can exchange those values only over which 
 we have an exclusive right ; and, by offer-
 
 58 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 ing our products for others, we acknowl- 
 edge that their possessor has a right to dis- 
 pose of them as he thinks proper. 
 
 Right and Duty of Accumulaiiun. 
 Accumulation of property, of values or 
 wealth, does not chiefly consist in the pres- 
 ervation and storing of a certain substance 
 for the purpose of direct, though gradual 
 consumption, but it consists in the gradual 
 increase, from year to year, of aggregate 
 values. The inhabitants of some polar re- 
 gions are obliged to catch, at the proper 
 season, as much fish as they possibly can, 
 and to preserve them in excavations made 
 in the ice, in order to have food for the rest 
 of the year. The hunters in the northwest- 
 ern tracts of America must make their ca- 
 ches,^ so that they may not be exposed to 
 
 ' A cache, from the French cacher, to hide, designates, in 
 the language of the northwestern hunters, some food, for in- 
 stance pemican, which is carefully put up, and deposited, as 
 far as possible, out of the reach of searching animals, on 
 trees, or, which is more common, under rocks. — See, among 
 other works. Captain Back's Narrative of the Arctic Land 
 Expedition. Captain Parry's deposite of the stores of the
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 59 
 
 Starvation when they retrace their steps. 
 These are stores for direct use, but would 
 not be called accumulations of property, be- 
 cause the whole is every year reduced to 
 nothing, and he who was the owner is not a 
 particle the wealthier when he has consumed 
 his store. 
 
 When a man, however, clears land, sows, 
 reaps, and at the end of the year has saved 
 some grain, after having fed and clothed 
 his family, repaired his implements, sup- 
 ported his cattle, and paid his hands, he has 
 really increased his values, he is wealthier. 
 If he exchanges these saved values for tim- 
 ber, builds a sawmill, and carries on a pros- 
 perous business, he again increases his val- 
 ues, which he may invest in building a ves- 
 sel. As ship-owner he earns the freight ; 
 he may lay out his savings in cargoes which 
 make a profitable return, for which he may 
 erect a factory, where he produces calicoes; 
 and, by the time he retires from business, 
 
 wrecked Fury on the shore of Prince Regent's Inlet, which 
 afterward saved Captain Ross and his gallant crew, waa a 
 cache on a large scale.
 
 60 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 he may be a wealthy man, ahhough his ori- 
 ginal cattle are dead, his vessels broken up, 
 and his factory may be sold, the produce of 
 which he may have invested in canal shares, 
 government stocks, or loans to individuals, 
 who pay him interest. It is this increase of 
 values which we chiefly call accumulation 
 of values or property. It always implies a 
 saving at the end of the year over and above 
 the values owned at the beginning. As it is 
 with individuals, so it is with whole nations. 
 There is, in point of fact, no such thing as 
 national wealth ; this is merely a term for 
 the aggregate wealth of a certain number 
 of individuals. 
 
 Exchange can exist only in an extremely 
 limited degree Avithout accumulation. Had 
 not the fisherman, whom we have chosen for 
 illustration, previously accumulated values, 
 he could not have offered them in exchange 
 for the labour of the young man whom he 
 employed to work for him. 
 
 By saving and accumulating again, and 
 prudently continuing this process, he may 
 succeed in saving so much, that the possess^-
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 61 
 
 or of a patch of land, which he first occu- 
 pied, and lawfully so, because it belonged to 
 no one, and which is now his, because clear- 
 ed by his labour and used for his benefit, 
 may consider it a fair equivalent for his own 
 property. The fisherman may desire it on 
 account of the bananas which grow upon it, 
 and the first cultivator may desire more his 
 accumulated grain, in order to make it pro- 
 ductive in some new land which he means 
 to bring under cultivation. The banana 
 land becomes truly the fisherman's own, be- 
 cause he has given for it what was absolute- 
 ly his own, and the man who bartered it to 
 him had a perfect right to dispose of it as 
 he thought best. 
 
 The fisherman may now, with the stock 
 he has saved already, and the assistance de- 
 rived from those who exchange their labour 
 for the surplus of his industry, reap, when 
 finally the harvest comes round, so much 
 that all the seed is replaced, and that, be- 
 sides, he may maintain his family and hands 
 until another harvest takes place, but no 
 more. This would be a lamentable state
 
 62 PROPERTY AND LAIJOl U. 
 
 of things, for everylliiug rnust remain at a 
 stand ; no new land can be brought under 
 tillage ; the labourers must not marry, for, 
 should they have children, they must starve. 
 Everything that can be saved is already 
 consumed by the existing members of the 
 household ; his own family must not in- 
 crease, nor will they have anything to eat, 
 if, during a bad season, the crop should fail ; 
 no increase of comfort can take place, and, 
 of course, the time of no member can be 
 spared from the fieldwork ; the young ones 
 cannot be taught, nor can they be well at- 
 tended to ; a protracted sickness produces 
 immediately a serious inconvenience in the 
 support of the family ; a deficient crop is 
 followed by starvation. 
 
 We find, therefore, actually that, with 
 some tribes in the lowest stages of civiliza- 
 tion, and with whom no accumulation of 
 values takes place, the old and decrepit, or 
 those that are sick for a long time, are aban- 
 doned to their fate, or more expeditiously 
 killed.' It is possible that this was the 
 
 * I do not remember having met with a more detailed ac-
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 63 
 
 universal custom in the earliest times. Peo- 
 ple would then be driven by starvation to 
 argue, as now shipwrecked people some- 
 times reason, when they throw those over- 
 board who, too sick .to aid in the possible 
 escape, nevertheless consume of the com- 
 mon and scanty store of provision, and 
 thus only contribute to lessen the means of 
 eventual safety. 
 
 If, however, the individual, now become 
 a farmer, can contrive to reap so much that, 
 after hnving replaced his seed-corn, paid 
 his hands, and laid by a sufficient store for 
 his family, a surplus still remains, he may 
 exchange part of this for live-stock tamed or 
 raised by others, while he himself follows 
 the plough, and thus he may encourage and 
 reward their industry, and incite them to 
 
 count of all the wretchedness, continued suffering, brutality, 
 and mental depravity, resulting as the necessary effect of an 
 absence of saving and accumulation, than in Horace Holden's 
 Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Mentor on the Pelew Isl- 
 ands, and his Two Years' Residence with the Inhabitants of 
 Lord North's Island, Boston, 1836. The veracity of the au- 
 thor seems never to have been impugned, nor is there any- 
 thing in his book which would awaken suspicion.
 
 64 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 new production. Another part he may of- 
 fer to thos:; wlio have not yet succeeded iu 
 saving and accumulating any values for 
 themselves, and Avith them he may clear 
 more land, and again save and accumulate 
 values, and thus extend gradually the terri- 
 tory of civilization, increase the capacity of 
 the earth to support the human family, and 
 furnish to others the means of beginning in 
 their turn the important career of saving 
 and accumulating. 
 
 The chief employer is not the only person 
 interested in his own saving and accumula- 
 ting of values. Those that have not yet any 
 implements, live-stock, or assistant hands to 
 begin cultivation for themselves, are deeply 
 interested in it; for without it the employ- 
 er could not offer them anything for their 
 labour. Those that produce other articles 
 are equally so, because if the farmer, whom 
 we instance, consume everything he produ- 
 ces, nothing will be left which he can offer 
 for the products of others. There is nothing 
 but our own product with which we can 
 obtain the products of others, or, in other
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOyR. 65 
 
 words, wherewith we can pay them for their 
 labour and industry.' 
 
 If men had not saved and accumulated 
 values, or saved and increased property, 
 they could never have elevated themselves 
 above the hunter's and fisher's life, the low- 
 est of all the stages through which mankind 
 must pass before populous and well-organ- 
 ized states are formed. Food, in that state, 
 is exceedingly scanty and precarious ; the 
 body poorly protected against the inclemen- 
 cy of the weather ; diseases rage with great 
 violence f and the thin population which ex- 
 ists is hardly otherwise employed than tlie 
 
 ■ Even when we pay money for the product of another, it is 
 always essentially product which purchases product ; for that 
 money itself was (irst obtained by giving a product for it, the 
 farmer his grain, the shoemaker his boots. In cases of salary 
 it is also the same. The salary comes from the taxes of the 
 people, and the people obtain the money in which they pay 
 ihe taxes for products of their own. There is nothing that 
 can pay for produce except produce of others. The more, 
 therefore, is saved from consumption, and is accumulated and 
 used reproductivcly ; in other words, the more wealthy people 
 there are in a communily. the better for all. 
 
 * Nearly some whole tribes of our Indians have at tinaea 
 been extinguished by the smallpox or a famine. 
 
 F
 
 66 PROl'EKTV AND LABOUR. 
 
 animals, namely, in constant quest of food. 
 The mere hunters or fishermen, such as we 
 find, to this day, the Tschuktschi and Ja- 
 kuti in Northern Asia,' have some property 
 indeed, for man cannot live without it ; but 
 it amounts to so little, that with them the 
 idea of property cannot acquire any great 
 importance. 
 
 The next step man makes is, that he no 
 longer kills every animal which he is desi- 
 rous of possessing, but he catches, tames, 
 and breeds animals ; he becomes a nomad, 
 and property presents itself in the more sub- 
 stantial form of his herds. He still moves 
 from place to place, yet he no longer roves 
 daily. Property may now begin to accu- 
 mulate, and civilization to dwell with his 
 horde. The herds are more enduring than 
 the killed game ; property begins to present 
 itself substantially and respectably. The 
 unsettled state of the nomadic life is, indeed, 
 not propitious to civilization ; still it is far 
 more so than the hunter's life ; and, so far 
 as the nomadic life is more civilized, it is 
 
 ^ WraDgell's Narrative.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 67 
 
 mainly owing to a greater amount of saved, 
 accumulated property. 
 
 Individual rights, however, cannot show 
 themselves with very great clearness in the 
 nomadic life. The patriarchal principle, 
 unfavourable to an essentially political civ- 
 ilization,' necessarily prevails, and the mem- 
 bers of a tribe are uninterruptedly in close 
 contact, sharing all dangers, toils, and en- 
 joyments, and depending, in what is most 
 important to them, the pasture of their cat- 
 tle, upon a strictly common stock. All the 
 descriptions of travels among nomadic tribes, 
 of which our literature has been of late fur- 
 nished with many interesting ones, prove 
 the truth of these remarks.^ They hold, 
 likewise, in this essential point, if we apply 
 them to those wandering tribes who live al- 
 most exclusively upon fish, and are not gen- 
 erally included in the nomadic tribes, such 
 as inhabit the most northern regions of Asia. 
 
 ' I have given my views on this subject more at length at 
 the beginning of vol. ii. of Political Ethics. 
 
 ^ GutzlafT, in the before-mentioned work, gives some very 
 interesting proofs of the above remarks, with reference to the 
 nomadic tribes under the Chinese superior sway.
 
 68 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 Civilization may be said to take a fair 
 start only when man begins lastingly, and 
 not for a season merely, to cultivate the 
 ground, and when he establishes enduring 
 individual property in the soil. He then 
 becomes settled, and, on that account alone, 
 a great many values are saved, and become 
 the foundation for farther production and 
 acquisition of values, which would have 
 been wasted in the roving or nomadic state. 
 Landed property inspires a greater interest 
 than that which is movable, or, as Lord 
 Kames expresses it, the affection for proper- 
 ty shows itself more intensely. When man 
 tills the ground, in other words, when he no 
 longer depends upon the fruits which the for- 
 est offers accidentally to him, or on the pas- 
 ture Avhich nature furnishes spontaneously to 
 his cattle, but when he roots out the plants 
 which give no food, and obliges the soil to 
 bear the nutritious plants he stands in need of, 
 and to produce them in increased quantities by 
 his own improvement of the soil, then only 
 a denser population, so indispensable for civ- 
 ilization, becomes possible ; exchange and
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 69 
 
 intercourse, mutual reliance and support, are 
 greatly promoted ; manners become milder ; 
 fruits instead of beasts or men are sacri- 
 ficed ; individual rights are more and more 
 acknowledged ; more than mere safety of 
 life and limb is thought of and sought for ; 
 man rises in his own estimation, because 
 he is no longer a mere accidental unit of 
 his restless nomadic horde, but he feels him- 
 self, with his stationary property, or the im- 
 portant right and capacity of acquiring it, 
 an integral part of society ; indeed, it may 
 be briefly expressed, because the wander- 
 ing horde changes into an organized com- 
 munity ; and, finally, those political socie- 
 ties arise which we call, more properly, 
 states,' or political societies with fixed terri- 
 tories. 
 
 ' In our philosophical arguments we often use the term 
 State in a wider sense, meaning thereby any political society 
 which, by authority, protects and exacts the relations of Right ; 
 which administers justice, both in protecting what ought to be 
 protected, and in deciding between conflicting claims or inter- 
 ests ; and which, in order to do this, prescribes laws ; but 
 more commonly wc mean by a .State a political society with a 
 fixed territory. A nomadic Tatar tribe, with its well-ac- 
 knowledged chief, nobility, courts and laws, and distinci ob«
 
 70 PROl'LK'JV A\D LAUOUR. 
 
 More stable, orgiuii'/ed, nrid regular gov- 
 ernments grow up out of llie various rela- 
 tions of the individuals of this denser popula- 
 tion with one another, and with the soil they 
 inhabit and cultivate. The government 
 does not precede these stales or societies, 
 and it does not make the property. Prop- 
 erly is not the creature of government ; but 
 if by government we understand that sys- 
 tem of protection, authority, and adminis- 
 tered justice which naturally grows up, the 
 stronger and the better defined, the more 
 settled the society becomes, then property 
 precedes government, and the latter arises 
 out of the former. It may be maintained, 
 
 ligations of the individual, as well as a certain tract of land over 
 which it moves in the course of a year, according to the sea- 
 sons, is a State, in the philosophic and comprehensive mean- 
 ing of the word ; but it will hardly be called so in the usual 
 adaptation of the term. This distinction has arisen from a 
 correct feeling. Men have seen and long felt the difference 
 between the incipient political society scattered as hunters over 
 a vast and ill-defined ground, in which in itself they take no in- 
 terest, but only in the game upon it, or a moving horde on the 
 one side, and a stationary political society, with a fixed terri- 
 tory and a deep, manifold, and pervading interest in it on the 
 other.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 71 
 
 therefore, with far greater truth, that gov- 
 ernment is the creature of property.' There 
 is always that consciousness in the bosom 
 of man that he has an undoubted right 
 to appropriate to himself that which be- 
 longs to no one ; and that, what he pro- 
 duces by his own labour and with his 
 own capital, or previously saved values, is 
 his own ; and he invests what is his own in 
 the tillage of the ground long ere a denser 
 population makes a regular and permanent 
 government necessary or possible. 
 
 When this comes gradually to be estab- 
 lished, men are already abundantly in posses- 
 sion of property of all sorts ; usages respect- 
 ing its possession and transfer have already 
 been established, and become that bulk of 
 imbodicd feelings from Avhich the common 
 law of the land is gathered, or Avhich is the 
 more distinct acknowledgment of the usa- 
 ges and feelings of the people. Govern- 
 ment, being the acting exponent of the 
 
 ' The fact, that at later periods landed property has fre- 
 quently been parcelled out by a government consisting of 
 conquerors, will be considered farther below.
 
 72 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 opinions of the community, consolidates and 
 aids in the farther development of those 
 usages, and of property itself. 
 
 It is singularly surprising if an American 
 maintains that property is the creature of 
 government; yet it is not unfrequently done. 
 If this be true, British Parliament had an 
 ample right to tax the colonies, and the 
 whole struggle of the Revolution, instead 
 of being a glorious contest for justice and 
 liberty, was a most senseless one, because 
 our forefathers avowedly drew the sword 
 and plunged into a very doubtful war, not 
 because they complained of being over- 
 taxed — Lord North was willing to give up 
 everything except the right of taxation — but 
 because they denied that Parliament pos- 
 sessed the right of taxation. Chatham, 
 therefore, the champion of the American col- 
 onies, said boldly and nobly, in his famous 
 speech on January 20th, 1775, which Frank- 
 lin, who heard it, extols so highly in his 
 Memoirs : " Property is private, individual, 
 absolute ;" and, speaking of the supreme 
 power of Parliament, he adds : " But this su-
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 73 
 
 preme power has no effect towards exter- 
 nal taxation ; for it does not exist in that re- 
 lation ; there is no such thing, no such idea 
 in this Constitution, as a supreme power 
 operating upon property. As an American, 
 I would recognise in England her supreme 
 right regulating commerce and navigation : 
 as an Enghshman by birth and principle, I 
 recognise in the Americans their supreme 
 unalienable right in their property ; a right 
 which they are justified in the defence of 
 to the last extremity.'" 
 
 "We find, indeed, several tribes who hold 
 land, either as hunting-grounds, pastures, or 
 even for transient tillage, in common. But 
 they do so in the two first cases, because the 
 land itself is of no value, or only of a common 
 one ; the transient benefit alone is of value ; 
 and in the latter case people have no lasting 
 
 ' Chatham's Correspondence, vol. iv., p. 382. That great 
 man said in his rejoinder : " I maintain, and ever shall main- 
 tain, that the right which God, Nature, and the Constitution 
 has given a British subject to his property is invariably inalien- 
 able without his own consent, and no power under heaven 
 can touch it without that consent either implied or exprcssU 
 and directly given." — Correspondence, vol iv., p. 385.
 
 74 PROrERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 individual property in the soil, because they 
 have not yet a lasting interest in it.' Their 
 knowledge of agriculture is yet very lin-iited ; 
 any land will do for their hasty crops ; their 
 manners are not yet sufficiently freed of the 
 original disposition to rove. Such tribes 
 must be considered as in a state of transi- 
 tion, from the nomad or rover to the culti- 
 vator of the soil. Men in this state are 
 interested in the soil only for a passing sea- ■ 
 son ; but, so long as they are actually inter- 
 ested in it, so long is there no community 
 of property ; they till each one the assigned 
 or chosen space for himself. l\Ian always 
 appropriates that which sufficiently interests 
 him, and, accordingly, he excludes others. 
 So far as man accumulates property — not 
 in order to hoard it, but for the purpose of 
 investing it for farther production — so far 
 only advances he in the career of civiliza- 
 tion. The improvidence and Avasteful dis- 
 position of savages, of men in the hunting 
 
 ' It may be proper to cite here a passage of Tacitus, Ger- 
 mania, 26, which will be fully quoted in a subsequent part of 
 this volume. It supports the remarks in this page.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 75 
 
 and fishing states, and of nomads, are well 
 known; and as they contemn labour, while 
 by industry alone accumulation of property 
 can take place, they are found to remain in 
 their subordinate state. The contempt for 
 labour, and also for property beyond a few 
 personal articles, in our Indians is signally 
 deplored by the missionaries and govern- 
 ment agents as the most serious obstacle in 
 the way of civilizing them ;' and a distin- 
 guished traveller in Arabia Petreea, speak- 
 ing of the contrast between the high culti- 
 vation and civilization of parts of it in an- 
 cient times, and their desert state at present, 
 
 ' Mr. Schoolcraft, well known for his intimate knowledge 
 of Indian affairs, says, in his Annual Report of the Acting Su- 
 perintendent of Indian AfTairs for Michigan, made to the Bu- 
 reau of Indian Affairs at Washington, Detroit, 1840, page 15 • 
 "Our Northern Indians are averse to manual labour in ail its 
 forms, but to no species of it are they more so than to agricul- 
 ture ; to fell trees, make fences, grub, plough, sow, and reap, 
 are employments so uncongenial to them, that it is with great 
 difficulty that they can be induced to give even a partial at- 
 tention to them." The author continues to say that sending 
 farmers among them, as is done with mechanics, and thus to 
 win them gradually for civilization, must remain one of the 
 main steps for their improvement, however great the difficulty 
 may be.
 
 76 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 as wcUnsof the hopclcs&ncss of elevating the 
 Bedouin Arab, gives as the cause of these 
 evils the utter contempt of those wayward 
 children of the desert for property and the 
 means of acquiring it. They will rather 
 suffer any inconvenience than degrade 
 themselves, as they hold it, by labour.' One 
 of the great causes of the superiority which 
 the while race has acquired over all others 
 is, that labour has risen to honour, and that 
 industry has at length been closely wedded to 
 science and knowledge. The history of la- 
 bour, and especially of its increased respect- 
 ability, is one of the leading threads which 
 form the warp of the rich tapestry of Euro- 
 pean civilization. Through the increased 
 respect for labour and industry alone was it 
 possible to save that immense amount of 
 values of Avhich civilization stands in need.* 
 
 ' De Laborde, Journey through Arabia Petraea to Mount Si- 
 nai and the Excavated City of Petra, 2d ed., London, 1838. 
 
 2 It has been the endeavour of the author to show the just 
 foundation of the right of property, and that its origin is inde- 
 pendent of government. Whether he has succeeded or not, 
 it will be granted that a theory which acknowledges absolute 
 lights of property must, in its nature, lead to greater stability
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 77 
 
 than that which founds all right, all property in "convenience," 
 a term which allows of all possible changes, and, above all, 
 leads to that slavish and abject doctrine that all property is a 
 creature of government, a theory in which absolutists, both 
 monarchical and democratic, have often agreed. The author, 
 therefore, was somewhat surprised to find that a member of 
 Parliament, reported to be a prominent Liberal, stigmatized in 
 the Commons, on January 29, 1841, the theory of property and 
 personal production, which the author of this volume indicated, 
 in liis Letter to Mr. Preston on International Copyright, as 
 " Watt Tyler doctrine." Of course the member could not 
 stop there ; he broadly pronounced " that there is no such a 
 thing as natural right." This is the most disorganizing abso- 
 lutism, whatever crest its coat of arms may have, crown or 
 cap, that can be preached. That such a member can call 
 himself, and can pass for a Liberal, shows a great confusion 
 of ideas. 
 
 These remarks have been made on the presumption that the 
 debates on Sergeant Talfourd's Copyright Bill were correctly 
 repotted in one of the leading London papers.
 
 III. 
 
 Right of Transfer. Grant, Sale, Bequest. 
 
 The nature of property, which implies 
 free disposal of the thing owned, as well as 
 the right of exchange, of which we have 
 treated, sufficiently prove the right of trans- 
 fer by grant and sale. The latter is nothing 
 more than exchange. It will nevertheless 
 be necessary to consider more in detail some 
 points relating to this subject, and especial- 
 ly the right of bequeathing. 
 
 I must have the right to give away or ex- 
 change what belongs to me ; if not, it does 
 not wholly belong to me. So far as this 
 right of transfer relates to the products of 
 our own labour, and to a transfer during 
 the lifetime of him who transfers, this right 
 has generally been acknowledged by all 
 philosophers, without any farther limitation 
 than the general one, that the individual
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 79 
 
 eannot be allowed to do anything which 
 works manifest injury to others, because man 
 must live in society, and the actions of the 
 individual must accommodate themselves 
 to this supreme law. The rights of trans- 
 ferring property in land, however, and of 
 transfer by testament, have not been admit- 
 ted so unanimously. Their propriety has 
 often been doubted, or they have been de- 
 clared to consist in a mere municipal arv 
 rangement ; to be an absolute invention of 
 government, not founded in the law of Na- 
 ture or the universal feelings of mankind, 
 even by persons who did not question a per- 
 fect and complete right of property in a 
 man's gains. 
 
 There are various reasons for this dis- 
 tinction, of which a few only shall be men- 
 tioned at this stage of our inquiry. One 
 of them is, that philosophers, and among 
 them very great ones, wrote, as indeed it 
 has already been stated, before Political 
 Economy had clearly shown that a pro- 
 duct of our labour is always the joint ef- 
 fect of labour, appropriation, and accumu-
 
 80 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 lation of value reinvested in the new prod- 
 uct. This want of a clear perception of 
 all the component parts of a product made 
 the product of industry, such as an axe or 
 a box, appear radically different from an 
 appropriated and cultivated piece of land. 
 Another reason is to be found in the errone- 
 ous supposition already mentioned, that gov- 
 ernments preceded and made property ; that, 
 therefore, all a man accumulates, or the land 
 w^hich he cultivates, he holds as a boon or 
 at the mercy of government, and that his 
 government did quite enough if it allowed 
 the individual the enjoyment of this proper- 
 ty, which, owing again to an erroneous no- 
 tion already mentioned, was always consid- 
 ered as so much withheld from others during 
 the possessor's lifetime. 
 
 This view is closely connected with the 
 error that there was an original community 
 before property was divided. Lastly, it 
 was maintained, and still is so at times, that 
 transfer and accumulation of property which 
 proceeds by inheritance cannot be proved 
 by any sound logic, and is a violation of all 
 reason.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 81 
 
 Right of Transfer by Bequest. 
 
 The adversaries of this right have main- 
 tained that, Waiving the fact that property 
 is a boon of society, the privilege of be- 
 queathing is against all reason and the first 
 principle of justice, which is, that there 
 shall be no right without a corresponding 
 obligation, and no obligation without a cor- 
 responding right. But by the right of be- 
 queathing we actually give a right to a dead 
 man, or to one who can have no longer 
 any obligations. How can a being, no 
 longer existing in this world, and, conse- 
 quently, a political nonentity, have a right 
 to influence still the actions of the living? 
 A right must be attached to some person 
 or persons who exist. If, then, we allow 
 such a thing as laws of inheritance, it is 
 merely a gracious act of ours, the operation 
 of which we may stop at any time. The 
 law of inheritance is strictly municipal and 
 positive ; a law which exists nowhere un- 
 less directly enacted ; it is no law founded 
 
 in nature. 
 
 G
 
 82 VKOPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 These remarks may have some appear- 
 ance of plausibility, because they may ap- 
 pear to involve strict logical reason. No- 
 where, however, is such apparent strictness 
 more dangerous than in arguments on po- 
 litical subjects. I shall be content if it can 
 be shown that the laws of inheritance are 
 the effect, as well as a recognition, of the 
 distinct and best feelings of man, and that 
 they operate essentially for the good of so- 
 ciety. 
 
 First, it will be remembered that, if our 
 theory is correct, government is far from 
 originating my property. I make it, and 
 no thanks are due to any one for it ; it 
 grows in a hundred cases without the aid 
 of government ; in many cases actually in 
 spite of government ; and one of the chief 
 duties of government, one of the main ends 
 for which it exists, is that it protect me in 
 my lawfully-acquired property. For this 
 service government takes already part of 
 my property, in obliging me to pay taxes. 
 Nowhere does government directly mcrease 
 property ; indeed, it cannot. All that gov-
 
 PROPERTY AND LABbUR. 83 
 
 ernment does directly, is to lessen it ;' for, 
 whatever I pay in taxes, I Avould have saved 
 and employed in reproduction. Nor do val- 
 ues once paid in taxes return as new values 
 to the tax-payer.** Government makes, in- 
 deed, an indirect and very important return 
 for my taxes, by protecting me, by admin- 
 istering justice and maintaining the peace of 
 the land, and by thus vastly increasing the 
 
 I Extraordinary grants of government, especially after con- 
 quests, are, cf course, not spoken of here. They are no in- 
 crease of property. 
 
 ^ If goveniment spends the inoney it receives in taxes, di- 
 rectly or in the shape of salaries to its officers, these values 
 can never be obtained by the original lax-payer e.'icept lie pay 
 new values given in exchange for it. Government may or- 
 der the values received in taxes to be spent in digging a ca- 
 nal, but the tax does not flow back to the people; they must 
 first dig, that is, give a day's labour before they can obtain a 
 day's wages. If the people, therefore, must first work a day 
 to produce »he tax, and an additional day to receive its equiv- 
 alent, it is correct to say that the value of the tax does not 
 flow back to the people. I speak here, of course, of taxes paid 
 for the support of government only. Such a tax as is levied in 
 Philadelphia for the water-work is difTerent. The city govcrn- 
 m*-"*, in this case, has become the simple agent for society to 
 ex*— ule a certain work. The water is purchased. So may 
 two or three families purchase sugar in common, to have it 
 cheaper or better, and divide the expense.
 
 84 PROPERTY AND LABOUP - 
 
 value of property and labour; b/ . it ,9 ja 
 the very reason why people [)iiy tj-.cs urn} 
 despoil themselves of hard-earned values. 
 Without this indirect, yet highly importont 
 return on the part of government, its costly 
 maintenance would be outrageous robbery.' 
 If we consider the subject of inheritance 
 historically, we find invariably, not that it 
 exists from the beginning clearly and sub- 
 stantially, and vanishes with the progress of 
 civilization ; but that, on the contrary, it ex- 
 ists originally in an incipient stage, and de- 
 velops itself more clearly with every prog- 
 ress of civilization, in precisely the same 
 degree as the whole institution of property 
 
 ■ Vessels may sometimes be seen in the harbour of Halifax, 
 Nova Scotia, laden with eggs brought from the coast of Lab- 
 rador, whither many migratory birds proceed during the sea- 
 son of incubation. How has government made that property 1 
 How does government make any merchant's property, whc 
 does not gain it in consequence of government restrictioni 
 on imports or exports 1 How does government make the 
 property of the farmer in the West, who first paid his values 
 for public land — an equivalent the benefit of which society en- 
 joys — and who improves the land, all the time paying part o' 
 his own property for the peace in which he is allowed to pui' 
 sue the agricultural acquisition of property 1
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 85 
 
 becomeij more distinct and definite. There 
 must, then, be some natural principle on 
 which inheritance is founded, which be- 
 comes more distinctly developed the more 
 civilization develops our true nature, or 
 that in us which essentially distinguishes 
 us as men.' It will not be difficult to find 
 this principle, and the perfect right of be- 
 queathing. 
 
 As to the right.^ Originally wills are 
 made by word of mouth. If a man is at 
 the point of death, he says to those who are 
 around him in what manner he Avishcs to 
 dispose of what yet is his, and of which he 
 has, therefore, the full right of disposal. 
 Most codes still acknowledge, under certain 
 circumstances, these oral or nuncupative 
 
 ' This is, in my opinion, the only way of finding out what 
 is essentially natural to man, but not subvening the true order 
 by assuming the savage state, in which almost everything es- 
 sentially human, and, therefore, truly natural to man, is stint- 
 ed and stifled. I have endeavoured to develop this truth in 
 my Political Ethics. 
 
 - The difficulty of this subject may have been increased by 
 the fact that the right of inheritance was far more frequently 
 discussed than that of bequeathing.
 
 86 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 wills, as they are called in law. A soldier 
 dying on the field of battle may, according 
 to the Roman law, make his will in this 
 manner. With a suflioient number of wit- 
 nesses around him, and under certain cir- 
 cumstances, a dying man may thus bequeath 
 his property in Austria. The right cannot 
 be doubted. The dying man disposes of 
 what is yet his own. The danger of these 
 wills, however ; the inability of the dying 
 man calmly and prudently to consider all 
 circumstances ; tiie facility with which those 
 around him may influence him to the detri- 
 ment of the absent ones, or may misrepre- 
 sent him ; and the danger that the priests 
 administering the last rites would use their 
 privilege for their own benefit or that of the 
 church, have induced the various states ei- 
 ther entirely to abolish the nuncupative wills, 
 or greatly to limFt their power. 
 
 A written will is substituted, but it means 
 essentially still, " I write this now, when 
 possessed of clear intellect, and with the 
 advice of proper persons, that it may serve 
 as my last declaration and will when I draw
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 87 
 
 the last breath." As it is written before- 
 hand for caution's sake, so it is opened with 
 the necessary precaution to guard against 
 fraud. Still, all these forms and precau- 
 tions are substitutes for the oral testament. 
 
 It is found by experience, and corre- 
 sponds to the feelings of the whole commu- 
 nity, that, unless there be peculiar reasons 
 for acting differently, parents will leave their 
 property rather to their children than to oth- 
 ers ; relations rather to their kindred ; and 
 as it is felt, moreover, that government or 
 society has no special right whatever to a 
 man's property, which has been lawfully 
 earned and justly accumulated, wise gov- 
 ernments acknowledge this feeling by dis- 
 tinct laws for all cases in which wills are 
 wanting, and settle the order of heirs ac- 
 cording to the distance of relationship, that 
 is, according to the presumed affection of 
 the departed person. In doing this it docs 
 what a true government ought to do. It is 
 the great law of liberty to alVow things fair- 
 ly to take their own course, and to protect 
 where rights thus grown up demand it. It
 
 88 
 
 PROPKRTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 is right that the laws presume, where there 
 is no will, that the deceased would have left 
 his property as seems to be most natural for 
 him to leave it. To presume anything else 
 would be tyranny. The despots, whether 
 monarchical or democratic, are always 
 pleased to consider everything in the state as 
 made by the government — dependant upon 
 them; and that they have a right to meddle 
 with all things. The principle of freedom i» 
 to leave as much as possible to spontaneous 
 action, and to confirm by law what has thus 
 already grown up out of the free action of 
 the people.' 
 
 ■ Magna Charta confirms that the goods of every freeman 
 shall be disposed of according to his will and testament ; and 
 that, if he die intestate, his heirs at law shall succeed to them. 
 In doing this it does not create the law of inheritance. This 
 had grown up from times immemorial ; but it had often been 
 invaded, and thus become necessary to be distinctly pronoun- 
 ced and confirmrd, just as the provision of the same charter 
 that " We (the king) shall sell, delay, or deny justice to no 
 one," does not create the administration of justice which is 
 natural and indispensable to all human society. Nor are the 
 heirs at law, spoken »f in the first- mentioned provision, per- 
 sons made heirs by a positive law, but the heirs whom the 
 feelings of men designate as such, and who had been consid- 
 ered as the proper heirs long ere a positive law con£naed them 
 as such.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 89 
 
 The law becomes still more confirmed 
 when men perceive that an undisturbed 
 right of bequest is one of the greatest incen- 
 tives in men to produce and accumulate, 
 and thus to benefit the whole ; that it en- 
 genders noble feelings of disinterestedness 
 and the invaluable habit of self-depend- 
 ance, while uncertainty of the right of be- 
 quest, or its total absence, prevents accu- 
 mulation, and thus retards civilization,' be- 
 getting timidity, dependance, and selfish- 
 ness. For where you destroy the family 
 bonds and family incentives, it is in vain 
 to hope that a feeling of general patriot- 
 ism for the community at large may be made 
 a substitute to incite, not to single brilliant 
 deeds, but to obscure actions returning with 
 their daily drudgery, such as are involved 
 in the accumulation of property with all 
 persons who do not meet with so great and 
 rapid a success that this alone would be a 
 
 ' For instance in Asia. The unsettled inheritance and gen- 
 eral insecurity of property in Burmah have prevented the ac- 
 cumulation, of value in that rich country to such a degree that 
 money is worth five per cent, a monlb. — Sangermano. 
 
 H
 
 90 PROPERTV AND LAnOUR. 
 
 sufficient incentive. Insecurity of proper- 
 ty, the thought "who knows what will be- 
 come of my property after I am dead," 
 make the Asiatics proverbially selfish. The 
 fiercest and most loathsome egotism would 
 follow from an adoption of Plato's destruc- 
 tion of the family ; and where we destroy the 
 laws of individual inheritance, we must ef- 
 fectually destroy the family ; for if proper- 
 ty does not go to wife and children, who 
 shall take care of them ? of course, the 
 state. We must have, then, some sort of 
 Spartan republic. Indeed, since the fam- 
 ily cannot exist without individual inherit- 
 ance, and modern civilization and liberty 
 depend essentially upon the family and the 
 perfect protection of the individual, it may 
 be safely said that modern liberty cannot 
 exist without individual inheritance.' 
 
 There is still a higher view which we 
 may take of the right of bequeathing. It 
 
 ' The great importance of the family and of the individual 
 for modern liberty, and the difference of the latter in this re- 
 gard from the liberty of the ancients, has been dwelt upon at 
 length in the Political Ethics.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 91 
 
 rests on these two points, that a just regard 
 for man's dignity prompts us to adopt some 
 prospective and retrospective measures re- 
 specting him, although he does not yet ex- 
 ist, or exists no more ; and that we are 
 bound to honour feelings of great impor- 
 tance to mankind, by imbodying our respect 
 in positive laws. Yet none of these meas- 
 ures may be deducible from the postulates 
 of politics with geometrical strictness or 
 a logical symmetry.' The protection af- 
 
 ' There can be rio doubt but that every good and pure citi- 
 zen is bound to assist in bringing offenders to condign pun- 
 ishment, and especially to state, if called upon as a witness, 
 all that he knows of the offence , and, farther, that the welfare 
 of the country and society at large is superior to that of the 
 family. Yet, in spite of these truths, most, perhaps all, the 
 lately enacted codes exempt near relations from this painful 
 duty, on the ground that kindly feelings towards relations are 
 of great importance to society, and the citizen ought not to be 
 forced to violate them. Other codes distinctly exempt citi- 
 zens from the duty of informing against a committed crime, 
 on the ground that our best feelings, which ought not to be 
 outraged, revolt in many cases against informing. In short, 
 we do not deal in politics with an abstract notion called man, 
 but with a living compound of body, mind, affection, and ap- 
 petite. " Civil knowledge is conversant about a subject 
 which, above all others, is ma«t immersed in matter, and hard- 
 liest reduced to axiqni." — Bacon.
 
 92 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 forded by the laws to the unborn infont is 
 perhaps the most striking instance; that can 
 be given. To have personal rights, there 
 must be a person, that is, a human indi- 
 vidual with reason and responsibility. Ani- 
 mals have no rights, having no responsibility. 
 Still we protect man when not yet born 
 and only forming a part of the mother ; 
 and we punish offences of that mother 
 against part of herself when she uses vio- 
 lence against her own fruit. We allow no 
 '>ne to kill an idiot, although he may have 
 5unk below the capacity of superior animals, 
 ind be without any responsibility. We re- 
 .tpect the memory of a man, and, in most 
 civilized countries, actions of slander against 
 he honour and reputation of a deceased fa- 
 irer may be sustained; yet the father, no 
 1 )nger living, can no longer be injured, and, 
 pjoperly speaking, where there is no injury, 
 tl-ere can lie no action.' 
 
 ' The sons of Fouche, duke of Otranto, gained an action 
 against a publisher for issuing a book in which iheir father 
 was called a traitor upon unsustained reports. If I remembei 
 right, the action was brought only for the suppression of the 
 eale of that book.
 
 PKOPERTY AND LABOUR. 93 
 
 In the case of bequeathing, or of leaving 
 the property to the nearest relations if no 
 will is made, we honour, even after death, 
 the right which the individual had when liv- 
 ing, of freely disposing of his own, one of 
 the most precious boons of freedom. We 
 confirm and elevate thereby the institution 
 of the family, which is one of the primitive 
 fountains of all civilization ; and, by re- 
 specting the will of the deceased, we show, 
 as well as by the protection of rights before 
 the individual is born, that wc acknowledge 
 the continuity and importance of the politi- 
 cal society to which we belong,as an organic 
 whole, of which we are but passing mem- 
 bers, and not merely as an accidental mass of 
 huddled units.' 
 
 • The question, is the Slate nothing more than an associa- 
 tion for the purpose of mutual protection against bodily harm, 
 or is it a society with its peculiar character and a iiigh desti- 
 ny of its own, is of radical importance in discussing the politi- 
 cal relations of man. I have repeatedly treated of it in my 
 work on Political Ethics, and will only add here that the sub- 
 ject of Bequest is of very great importance in this politico- 
 ethical point of view, and of far deeper and more philosophi- 
 cal import than those believe who assume that nothing is phil- 
 osophical which cannot be proved according to the most ap- 
 parent and the grossest interests of men.
 
 94 
 
 J'ROPr.RTV AND i.ABorn. 
 
 Some additional Remarks on Accumulation^ 
 and on Security of Property. 
 The three elements, or, rather, factors of 
 that product which we call national wealth, 
 or the aggregate of all values possessed 
 by the individuals of a nation, are industry, 
 frugality, and security. Without either of 
 these the wealth of a nation will not in- 
 crease ; and to their increase, Avithin the last 
 two or three centuries, are owing the vast 
 increase of diffused wealth of the Western 
 race, the great amount of capital possessed 
 by that race, which other nations of antiquity 
 have never acquired, and the elevated stand- 
 ard of comfort of the great mass of people.' 
 
 ' Many declamations are made on increased luxury and 
 universal ruin. That peculiar circumstances at times produce 
 evil habits of luxury and dissipation no one will deny ; but 
 none acquainted with details and history will gainsay that habits 
 of frugality have vastly increased, while, as one of their effects 
 and most desirable blessings, the universal standard of com 
 fort has been greatly heightened. The waste during the many 
 former court-feasts, even of the smallest courts, and the prodi^ 
 gal manners of a great part of the nobility, are well known to 
 the reader of works which contain historical curiosities, and 
 contrast strongly with the great frugality, if we speak compar-
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 95 
 
 Without industrious exchange on the one 
 hand, and security of property on the other, 
 property caiuiot accumulate to any great 
 amount ; yet, we have seen before, it is only 
 accumulated values or capital which can 
 pay for the personal labour of those who, 
 with sound limbs and a fair skill, are desi- 
 rous to work, and, if possible, to save of their 
 wages some small amount, which they, in 
 turn, may invest productively, and accumu- 
 late as their property. 
 
 It is universally acknowledged that there 
 is nothing on earth which can pay for labour 
 except capital. All those, therefore, who 
 have not yet acquired lasting property, are 
 deeply interested in the increase and farther 
 accumulation in general ; the poorer a man 
 
 atively, of modern courts. Articles which but a century and 
 a half ago were objects of great luxury, for instance, silver 
 forks, silk gowns, tea, or fine cloth, are now common; but 
 we can afford it, owing to the cheaper production and greatly 
 more accumulated values. Mankind are richer. Still it is not 
 denied that fashion, like a ruinous tyrant, may at times, in cer- 
 tain places or whole districts, counteract ail industry, and pro- 
 duce disastrous effects, as it cannot be doubled that in some 
 parts jf the United States extravagance in dress, furniture, and 
 viands lately defeated very palpably the eflfects of industry.
 
 96 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 is, the more important is general accumula- 
 tion of wealth to him. His personal ser- 
 vices cannot be of any use to him, or any 
 one else, if there be not sufRciently acc;u- 
 mulated capital beforeiiand to pay for them. 
 Every obstruction to these accumulations or 
 their protection, every dissipation of them, 
 every withdrawal of them from the country 
 he lives in, is necessarily a material injury to 
 his only means of gaining a livelihood, and 
 the ruin or spoliation of the classes that hold 
 property is infallibly followed by the suffer- 
 ing and degradation of the classes Avhich 
 have no property ; by the poor and the des- 
 titute. 
 
 Every disturbance of property is a pro- 
 portional blow to industry ; and as, on the 
 one hand, the laws of individual inherit- 
 ance are the greatest stimulus to the accu- 
 mulation of property, one of the most suc- 
 cessful means to render the individual 
 sharpsighted in pursuing industry and ac- 
 cumulation, and the best safeguard against 
 the dissipating of values unproductively ; so 
 would a law against individual and family
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 97 
 
 inheritance in one country have the infalli- 
 ble effect of driving capital out of that coun- 
 try into others where it would be protected. 
 The industrious would thus be deprived of 
 the means which makes their industry avail- 
 able. 
 
 Property may be rendered insecure in a 
 great variety of ways ; by bad laws, by the 
 absence of laws, by war or riots ; by pend- 
 ing measures which threaten to interfere 
 with the individual possession of property ; 
 by an interference with free exchange of the 
 products of the pursuits which each indi- 
 vidual considers most fit for his situation, 
 talents, and skill ; by the elements, and by 
 anything which disturbs the fair trust and 
 confidence that we, and our children after 
 us, shall enjoy the fruits of our endeavours. 
 If exchange, accumulation, and inheritance 
 are disturbed by impending or actual meas- 
 ures, and in general by distrust in the fu- 
 ture, it appears from the preceding passa- 
 ges that no farther increase of capital takes 
 place, no increase of population, no advance 
 of civilization ; the union of men, depend-
 
 98 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 ance of one upon the other, trust and credit, 
 must be disturbed or wholly rooted up, as 
 we see it in such fearful times as the French 
 revolution or the Roman empire ;' and, lastly, 
 ma-^hinery cannot be invented and used on 
 an extensive scale in such a state of things. 
 
 • The unspeakable misery efldured during the Roman em- 
 pire, and the retrograde movement of Italy during many peri- 
 ods of those five centuries, were chiefly owing to the immense 
 dissipation of values by war, neglect of cultivation, breaking 
 down of roads, extinction of herds, and by the msecure state 
 of inheritance. If men do not know what will become of 
 their properly, they become reckless of their goods, as we 
 find them reckless of life in most periods of extensive pesti- 
 lences. Sismondi's Fail of the Roman Empire furnishes 
 many a material for this reflection. The Thirty Years' War 
 threw back Germany many years, and sapped her wealth to 
 an almost incredible extent, civilization necessarily following 
 the retrograde movement of property. The destruction of val- 
 ues, accumulated during centuries, in that sad period of Ger- 
 man history, the abandonment of culture, of roads and mills, 
 and the recklessness engendered by the insecurity of prop- 
 erty, appear with their appalling truth by a study of detailed 
 accounts and chronicles. A country sinks to its lowest mis- 
 ery when protracted fanatical wars break up property and the 
 means of supporting labour, to such a degree that the mass 
 of the people find it easier to join the destroyers of the only 
 lasting support of those that live by their labour ; thus swell- 
 ing the tide of general destruction, and diminishing still more 
 the existing means of support. The French religious wars
 
 PROPERTY AXD LABOUR. 99 
 
 Yet machinery is the greatest means of 
 Srtving labour, or of using far less labour to 
 effect the same product, and of using that 
 labour which now is saved for the produc- 
 tion of other articles or the purchase of other 
 objects. Machinery thus elevates the stand- 
 ard of comfort, respectability, and morality, 
 of knowledge, science, and civilization in 
 general, and makes it possible to support a 
 far greater population. 
 
 Without machinery every populous coun- 
 try (for even then population will, in most 
 cases, slowly increase in the course of cen- 
 turies) must sink into that state in which 
 we find China, wiiere almost every one of 
 that enormous population of three hundred 
 and sixty millions of human beings is most 
 laboriously working, far more so even than 
 the industrious white race in Europe or 
 North America, merely to obtain the scan- 
 tiest food and simplest raiment,' and in which 
 no values can be saved for hospitals, asy- 
 
 afHicted France in a similar way. Sully's Memoirs contain 
 many proofs of this. 
 
 * Henry Ellis, in his Journal of the Embassy to China un»
 
 100 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 lunis for Ihc blind or deaf and diinrib, oi 
 for extensive scientific pursuits, and in which 
 every public calamity immediately disturbs 
 the nicely-balanced state of things, and ex- 
 poses thousands upon thousands to starva- 
 tion.' 
 
 When a machine is invented many peo- 
 ple are thrown out of employ, and very 
 frequently exposed to suffering or evea 
 wretchedness. No one will deny the fact ; 
 but this is an inconvenience which the state 
 ought to strive to counteract by wise meas- 
 ures as much as possible. It is no argu- 
 
 der Lord Amherst, mentions several times the great many 
 eating-houses in every Chinese city, where the labourers ob- 
 tairj their meals for tickets in which they are paid by iheii 
 employers, and in which frequently the whole wages consist. 
 ' See Gutzlaff in many places. Gulzlaif likewise mentionfc 
 repeatedly that millions and millions are ready to work sim- 
 ply for their bare subsistencj^e upon rice. It would seem that, 
 besides the many more advantageous circumstances in which 
 the American farmer is placed, his more rapid accumulation 
 of wealth than that of the Chinese, although the Americau 
 consumes far more, must be in part attributed to his infinitely 
 more perfect implements, and implements are in their charactei 
 machines. At least so it appears if we examine the agricul- 
 tural implements in Mr. Dunn's Chinese Museum, and then 
 enter a shop where our farming utensils are sold.
 
 PROPERTY AND ).AB0'ii11.' 101 
 
 ment against the immense ailvariftaf^eis ob- 
 tained by machinery for the poorer classes 
 themselves, and, moreover, it is no argu- 
 ment which applies solely to machinery, but 
 would hold against every sort of saving la- 
 bour. 
 
 Yet what is the whole course of indus- 
 try but a continued exertion to save la- 
 bour ? If we should use the bare hands to 
 till a field, far more people would be ne- 
 cessary than now, when we have the spade 
 and the plough. These people, however, 
 would live wretchedly, and incomparably 
 ess soil would be under cultivation; con- 
 sequently, far less people supported than 
 at present. Before regular mails were es- 
 tablished, there were periodical messengers 
 between Paris, where many German youth 
 pursued their studies, and several parts of 
 Germany. These messengers were necessa- 
 rily thrown out of employ when that vast la- 
 bour-saving machine, the post establishment, 
 was instituted. Yet how many millions of 
 people now find employment directly or in- 
 directly through the post estabhshracnt for
 
 10^ Pn.de7^RTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 the benefit of human society ? How much 
 does the Post increase industry and the val- 
 ue of all products ? Roads are labour-saving 
 machines, and, when first made, they fre- 
 quently throw many people out of employ. 
 We find that there were many riots in Eng- 
 land under the administration of Walpole? 
 because application had been made to Par- 
 liament for the establishment of an extensive 
 system of turnpike roads. Now, however, 
 a highly-distinguished writer, Mr. Dupin, 
 shows, as one of the reasons of England's 
 superior wealth, the immense extent of roads 
 and canals in proportion to her territory, if 
 compared to other countries.' 
 
 ' Charles Dupin, Productive and Commercial Forces of 
 France, Paris, 1828. The same argument might now be ap- 
 plied to the introduction of railroads. The rent of a great 
 many inns has been lowered by them, and many thousands 
 of horses have been thrown out of employ. But all the corn, 
 consumed formerly by these horses in order to transport a far 
 smaller amount of goods and passengers in a much longer 
 time, can now be used to feed an additional number of men, 
 and the traveller can do the business, in many cases, in a day, 
 for which, but sixty years ago, l,e would have wanted a week. 
 He can therefore use the rest of the week in farther pursuit 
 of industry.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 103 
 
 There is probably no more striking exam- 
 ple of the benefit bestowed upon mankind 
 by machinery than the invention of the print- 
 ing-press. A single work employed many 
 more hands, or the same number for a far 
 longer time, when books were copied ; yet 
 thousands of people are now employed by 
 the press where but tens found a living by 
 copying, because machinery lowers the price, 
 and, consequently, increases consumption 
 and demand. It is the same with the cot- 
 ton-mills. A piece of cotton goods re- 
 quires more labour if produced by the hand- 
 loom ; yet machinery has lowered the price 
 of calico so much that millions can use it 
 and decently dress themselves who before 
 were doomed to go in rags ; and this vastly 
 increased demand makes the employment of 
 hundreds of thousands possible in weaving it 
 by machinery, while in our country it has 
 increased wealth by the culture of cotton.' 
 
 ■ Our age is frequently called the age of machinery, not 
 without a sneer, or in order to indicate that it is a peculiarly 
 maierial, and not an intellectual one. But what is machinery, 
 if not an evidence of the empire of mind over brute matter ?
 
 104 PROPERTY AXD LABOUR. 
 
 To recapitulate, then, mach' ^ry is neces- 
 sary for an advanced state cJ society, and 
 machinery requires accumulative property, 
 which cannot accumulate without security. 
 
 What is the invention of James Watt but a most illustrious 
 victory of mind over matter 1 What is Fulton's invention 1 
 If the employment of labour were the object, and not produc- 
 tion, and consequent increase of comfort, peace, and civiliza- 
 tion, it is clear that the Bostonians ought not to fetch their 
 granite from Quincy, but from a distant place, in order to em- 
 ploy more labour. Why does every man wish to have a well 
 in his yard 1 Because he desires to have the indispensable 
 article water with as little trouble, that is, with as little em- 
 ployment of labour as possible. We have but to look around 
 us in our nearest circles, and everywhere we find man most 
 wisely and instinctively engaged in abbreviating labour. A 
 book worthy of perusal in this as in many other respects is the 
 Life of James Watt, by Mr. Arago, translated, 3d edit., Edin- 
 burgh, 1839. Tliere are also London editions. Very judi- 
 cious remarks on this subject are also to be found in R. Tor- 
 rens.On Wages and Combinatii a, Lond., 1834, p. 37 and seqq.
 
 IV. 
 
 On the Supposed Original Community of 
 Property. 
 
 In ancient as well as modern times it has 
 been frequently supposed that there was an 
 age Avhen all things belonged to all men, 
 and that originally the earth, and all that is 
 in and upon it, was first given by the com- 
 mon Maker to mankind at large,' or claim- 
 ed by the Reason of man as common prop- 
 erty. When this idea was once adopted, 
 the inference was natural that individual 
 property had been introduced by violence 
 
 ' The argument has also been used, that man, being a 
 creature of God as well as all the other objects of creation, it 
 results that all creatures are His, and man can have no right 
 of property unless God gives it to him. He, however, it was 
 maintained, gave all things to men, and no particular things 
 to any particular men. The sequel will show that the author 
 holds this theological view unfounded in Scripture, as the pre- 
 ceding passages must have shown that he does not consider it 
 to be founded in reason. 
 
 I
 
 106 PROPERTY AND LADOJIR. 
 
 and oppression on the one hand, or, on the 
 other, by the lawful desire to obtain protec- 
 tion against th's oppression, which had al- 
 ready disturocd the original, and. as it was 
 assumed, happy community of property. 
 
 It is not always easy to ascertain what 
 sort of community is meant when writers 
 on the subject of property use the term. 
 Sometimes their arguments would lead us 
 to suppose that the prevailing idea of their 
 minds is a supposed state of things when 
 everything belonged to every one ; at other 
 times it seems that they mean a community 
 of property within a certain tribe, clan, or 
 nation, but a distinct separation of this bulk 
 of property from that of other tribes. Again, 
 we find speculations founded upon the sup- 
 posed original community of property, bu( 
 are not told whether it be assumed to have 
 extended to all that man can claim as hia 
 own, to garments, implements, and weap- 
 ons, to the produce of the chase, fishing, 
 and the first rude attempts at agriculture, or 
 to the possession of ^and only. Very fre- 
 quently the latter only is supposed, and an
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 107 
 
 absolute individual right of property is con- 
 ceded to the products of individual indus- 
 try ; yet, strange to say, we meet sometimes 
 with arguments against the right of be- 
 queathing individual property, of whatever 
 sort this may be, deduced, nevertheless, 
 from the hypothesis of an original commu- 
 nity of property extending to the soil only. 
 
 Owing to the distinction made by former 
 writers between the title of property in the 
 products of individual industry and in land, 
 it was either found very difficult to show 
 how a perfect title of property could accrue 
 out of a mere priority of occupancy of that 
 which was believed to belong to all, or it 
 was maintained that property in the prod- 
 ucts of industry is perfect according to the 
 law of nature, but that property in the soil is 
 absolutely made by municipal laws. Mr. 
 Dugald Stewart, one of the latest English 
 philosophers, makes this distinction.' But 
 in doing so, it seems that he falls into that 
 inconsistency in which all who before him 
 
 ' Supplement to chapter second, book fourth, of D. Stew- 
 art's Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers of Man.
 
 108 PROPERTY AND LADOUR. 
 
 have adopted this distinction have become 
 entangled, that while he denies the original 
 right of individual property in the soil, he 
 forgets that he denies it likewise to any spe- 
 cific society — a tribe or state, which needs 
 must have the right of property in the soil 
 in order to make those municipal laws upon 
 which, according to him, all individual titles 
 of property can alone be founded. 
 
 The original question is not whether A 
 or B shall be the possessors of this or that 
 specific patch of land. The question is 
 whether there can exist any exclusive title 
 of property in the soil. It is very indif- 
 ferent, as to this first question, whether 
 the exclusive possession forever is granted 
 to one, to a few, to many, or to a whole 
 nation. Compared to the rest of mankind, 
 the British nation is but an individual, and 
 the exclusiveness of its possession of British 
 soil, denying all other nations any direct 
 share in its use and profits, is just as easy or 
 as difficult to be proved as the exclusiveness 
 of possession vested in an individual man. 
 The exclusive, permanent, and lawful pes-
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 109 
 
 session, whether shared by several persons 
 or not, is the only subject of importance in 
 discussing the original title of property in 
 the soil.' 
 
 The causes which have led man to pre- 
 sume that there existed originally a commu- 
 nity of property, may be chiefly the follow- 
 ing : The fact that, when men came to re- 
 flect on this subject, they actually observed 
 that many tribes seemed to hold at least their 
 landed property in common, namely, all 
 those tribes which were yet in the hunter's 
 or the nomadic state. Secondly, the poets, 
 who imagined that there had existed a state 
 of bliss, when men lived without labour or 
 toil of any sort, and, of course, had every- 
 
 ■ ' If the views taken in the previous essays be correct, the 
 distinction between the political right of a state or its gov- 
 ernment over a territory, or the right of dominion, and the in- 
 dividual ownership in the land, which is not a thing made by 
 government, apfiears to be easy and clear. Government pro- 
 nounces or sanctions certain rules of action for the guidance 
 of the people who inhabit its territory, but it does not necessa- 
 rily own all the soil by the title of property. If, on the oth- 
 er hand, property be the creature of government, the propel 
 distinction, it would seem, cannot be made, and we must neces- 
 sarily involve o irselves continually in inextricable difficulties.
 
 110 PROPERTY AXD LABOUR. 
 
 thing in common, because there ivns no ob- 
 ject in possessing anything in particular. 
 Thirdly, that, as has been observed already, 
 men are ever prone to ascribe distinct insti- 
 tutions to as distinct acts of invention ; peo- 
 ple, therefore, seeing that property was dis- 
 tributed among men, thought that at some 
 time or other a division had taken place, and 
 did not perceive that all property is the joint 
 and gradual effect of the appropriation, pro- 
 duction, exchange, and accumulation of val- 
 ues. Fourthly, the ownership in the soil, as 
 it now stands, has in many countries, perhaps 
 in nearly all the most civilized ones, actually 
 arisen out of conquest, the breaking up of 
 the Roman empire by invading tribes, when, 
 indeed, a parcelling out of the soil, to a very 
 great extent, by the conquerors among them- 
 selves took place. Fifthly, it was believed 
 that the view of the ancients was strongly 
 supported by the bible, wherein it v/as sup- 
 posed it was distinctly said that originally all 
 the earth was given to all, and that, conse- 
 quently, if there now exists individual prop' 
 erty, it must needs have been produc-ed by
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. Ill 
 
 a preceding division. Lastly, there are 
 certain peculiar qualities inherent in the 
 property in land which promoted these 
 views. 
 
 It has been already stated that the fact 
 of a community of certain property, espe- 
 cially of land, existing with some tribes, or, 
 perhaps, with most, at a certain stage of civ- 
 ilization, proves nothing against the right of 
 individual property. The original question 
 is. Can there be any such thing as individ- 
 ual property in soil according to sound rea- 
 son and the immutable principles of right ? 
 The next question is, Is it expedient that 
 land should be held by individual titles of 
 property, like other things or moveables, or 
 would it not be preferable to return to a 
 community of property in the soil forming 
 the territory of some extensive society, espe- 
 cially of a sovereign society or state ? We 
 have already seen that as to the matter of 
 right, the property in the soil claimed by a 
 whole clan or tribe is as individual a spe- 
 cies of property, with reference to all the 
 rest of mankind excluded from it, as the
 
 112 
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 ownership of land vested in a single indi- 
 vidual is with reference to the rest of his 
 tribe or nation. 
 
 The chief instances usually adduced to 
 prove that individual property in the soil is 
 a late abuse, introduced by violence or cu- 
 pidity under the artificial systems of gov- 
 ernment belonging to degenerate times, are 
 the common hunting tribes of the North 
 American Indians ; Caesar's mention that 
 private and separate property in the soil was 
 unknown to the Germans;' that the patri- 
 archs moved with their herds freely whith- 
 ersoever they listed ; and that even the reg- 
 ular system of the Jewish government, pro- 
 ceeding from the highest of all authorities, 
 recognised, to a certain extent, a communi- 
 ty of property, inasmuch as the Hebrew laws 
 forestalled alienation and consequent accu- 
 
 ' Comment., iv., c. i. At the time of Casar the Germans 
 chiefly occupied themselves with grazing (on the common 
 meadows and in the common forests). So soon as ihe groimd 
 was more industriously tilled, separate property arose ; henc« 
 the fact that the Franks in Gaul had more separate property, 
 allodium, because they were obliged to rely more on tilling 
 the ground than on grazing cattle.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 113 
 
 miilation of this species of property by the 
 year of Jubilee, when " ye shall return ev- 
 ery man unto his possession,'" that is, into 
 his original patrimonial possession of land 
 or family estate; for " the land shall not be 
 sold forever : for the land is mine : for ye 
 are strangers and sojourners with me."^ 
 
 An attentive consideration of these cases 
 will show us that the Indians, the patri- 
 archs, who were chiefs or sheiks of wan- 
 dering hordes, and the Germans in the 
 early ages, always acted upon the principle 
 that a man might convert to his own uses 
 that which was before unappropriated, and 
 claim it as exclusively his own. But man 
 only appropriates that which has a value in 
 his eyes : to the Indian, land is worthless 
 excepting as a hunting-ground. He has in- 
 dividually neither claim nor possession, but 
 the tribe to which he belongs claims the 
 possession of large districts of country as 
 ground on which its members are privileged 
 to follow the game, and from which the 
 hunters of other tribes must be excluded. 
 
 > Leviticus, XXV., 13-16. 2 lb., xxv., 23.
 
 114 I'KOl'KRTY AXD LABOUR. 
 
 When, however, an Indian tribe, like the 
 Cherokees, becomes sensible of the superioi 
 advantages of the agricultural over the hunt- 
 ing state, and turns its attention to the cul- 
 tivation of the soil, land beconnes valuable 
 in proportion to its fertility and the degree 
 of labour bestowed upon it, and property 
 in the soil itself is claimed by individuals. 
 
 The same remark may be applied to the 
 patriarchs of old. Land had for them val- 
 ue only as pasture-ground ; as such they 
 occupied and held it in common, and any 
 stranger leading his herds to the same 
 ground, subsequently to this partial occupa 
 tion, was looked upon as a trespasser. 
 Everything, however, which had individual 
 value in their eyes, their camels, horses, 
 cattle, their tents and arms, they possessed 
 individually. 
 
 The Germans, when Caesar became ac- 
 quainted with them, were not an agricultural 
 people, or, at least, so unskilled in the art of 
 cultivation that their interest in the soil was 
 always limited to the growing crop. This 
 indifference and ignorance of the value of
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 115 
 
 landed property existed in full force even 
 during the time of Tacitus, as may be seen 
 in his description of German manners. 
 
 As for the adduced custom of the Jews, 
 we must not forget that the code of no na- 
 tion is less fit to be adopted by others than 
 the law of Moses, because the object of the 
 Jewish scheme of government was not only 
 peculiar, but unique. The political charac- 
 ter of that government, indeed every rela- 
 tion of right, was Avith the Jews subservient 
 to the one great hierarchical object of Is- 
 rael. The whole frame of government, 
 from the fundamental idea that the chief 
 magistrate was Jehovah himself, whose vis- 
 ible vicegerent was the high-priest, to the 
 minutest detail ; and from the first founda- 
 tion of their government, which was uncon- 
 ditional conquest, to the division and sub- 
 division of land, and the exclusion of the 
 tribe of Levi from all participation in such 
 property ; everything, in short, which had 
 any relation to the original political organ- 
 ization of their government, was made sub- 
 servient to the one great object, namely,
 
 116 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 the preservation of a belief in the true God, 
 notwithstanding the allurements of the pol- 
 ytheism of surrounding nations, and in spite 
 of the idolatrous tendency of the Jews them- 
 selves. 
 
 Yet it is remarkable that the Jews, having 
 once changed from a nomadic nation, which 
 they were in the desert, to an agricultural, 
 so soon as firmly settled in Palestine, seem 
 never before the exile to have fully applied 
 either the law enjoining the jubilee, or the 
 total rest of all tillage in every seventh 
 or sabbatical year, although so explicitly 
 commanded in several places of their code.' 
 At least this seems strongly to appear from 
 numerous passages in the Old Testament,' 
 and is the opinion of distinguished theolo- 
 gians.^ The whole of the country inhab- 
 
 ' Exodus, xxiii., 10, and scq. Levit., xsvi., 8. 
 
 2 1 Kings, sxi., 2. Isaiah, v., 8. 2 Chronicles, xxxvi., 
 21. Levi^icus, xxvi.,34. But in 2 Maccab.,vi., 49, it is men- 
 tioned : " But those in Betbzura could no longer tarry there- 
 in on account of hunger, for it was the seventh year, in which 
 it was law to leave the fields barren." And Joseph., Anliq., 
 xiv., 10, 6. 
 
 3 For instance. Dr. De Wette, in his Manual of Hehro-
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 117 
 
 ited by the Israelites was conquered in the 
 name of Jehovah ; the original inhabitants 
 were extirpated in his name ; in his name 
 was the land divided, and every title of prop- 
 erty was held as a direct gift of that govern- 
 ment ; and with reference to all these rela- 
 tions of the land-owner, the latter was called 
 a stranger and a sojourner ; the land itself 
 Jehovah's. He, Jehovah, in the capacity of 
 the national God, monarch, and conqueror, 
 was actually, in the Israelitic scheme of hi- 
 erarchical politics, the only true, original, 
 and perpetual land-owner ; the Jews were 
 but tenants at will, " sojourners." 
 
 These peculiar relations, however, do not 
 obtain Avith us any more than numberless 
 
 Judaic ArchtEology, 2d. ed., 1830, paragraph 153. In this 
 book the preceding quotations will be found. It is not a little 
 curious that Tacitus speaks of the Sabbath and the Sabbati- 
 cal year as believed to owe their origin to idleness. " On the 
 seventh day, it is reported," says Tacitus (Hist., v., 4), "that 
 they have liked rest, because this day brought them an end of 
 their toils ; and when once they had obtained a taste for lei- 
 sure, the seventh year likewise had been consecrated to idle- 
 ness." (Dein blandicnte inertia, scptimum quoque annum ig- 
 navix datum.) So difficult it is even for a great observer to 
 Dnderstand the institutions of distant nations.
 
 il8 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 Other principles of the Mosaic code, which 
 are wholly inapplicable to our state of 
 things, or, if applied, would be revolting, 
 and throw us back into a state of barbarity.' 
 Poet? have repeatedly indulged in descri- 
 bing a primitive state of pure happiness, 
 when not only land was held in common, 
 but all property whatsoever. It is one of 
 the objects of poetry to delight, to seize upon 
 
 ' Although the Jewish theory has actually been adduced to 
 support the opinion that the king, the vicegerent of God, is 
 the original and perpetual land-owner, for instance, under Lou- 
 is the Fourteenth, king of France, it is hoped that no refuta- 
 tion of so extravagant and unfounded a theory is nowadays ne- 
 cessary. In countries where theoretically the feudal principle, 
 ihat the first titles of property in land flow from the monarch, 
 IS still maintained, as in England, he is nevertheless by no 
 means believed to be the original land-owner ; for he derives 
 his title from the common law of the land, which is not con- 
 sidered his creature. We have seen already how very strong 
 a theory to the contrary Lord Chatham maintained in Parlia- 
 ment. The same law which theoretically elevates the mon- 
 arch so high, regardmg primary land-titles, decrees also that 
 he cannot take the land as he lists ; a law much older than 
 the Norman Conquest, and which was accepted by William and 
 confirmed by Henry, of whose charter Lord Lyttlelon says, 
 "By this charter Henry the First restored the Saxon laws which 
 were in use under Edward the Confessor, and settled m Mag- 
 na Charta."
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 119 
 
 the indistinct yearnings of the human heart, 
 and to use them as the means of sympathy 
 with its own creations, and, in imagination, 
 to carry out in detail, and to represent Avith 
 clearness, that which may exist in the hu- 
 man breast as an undefined yet strong de- 
 sire. One of these desires is to be freed 
 from all the toil, trouble, pain, and misery 
 which ever surround us in this world ; and 
 nothing can be more natural than for those 
 who possess a creative imagination to sing 
 in distinct Avords, clothed in substantial im- 
 ages, what the less gifted can but breathe 
 forth as an indistinct wish in the sigh of 
 suffering. 
 
 This world is a world of grief; man has 
 ever felt it ; and if the cheerful prospect of a 
 future world of peace is not before the eyes 
 of the sufferer, he indulges at least in the 
 pleasing contemplation of a supposed past 
 world, when there was not yet any labour— 
 the golden age ; when the language of man 
 did not yet contain the two stern words of 
 Mine and Thine. 
 
 It is clear to all, even the least scrutini*
 
 120 PROPERTr AND LABOUR. 
 
 zing, that much of the troubled state of 
 the human mind, of jealousy, vice, and 
 crime, suffering and iniquity, arise out of the 
 institution of property and the accumulation 
 of riches. Poetic minds, therefore, readily 
 imagined a state of things where this source 
 of so much evil had no existence. But it 
 happened in this case as so frequently in 
 others ; men well knew one state of things 
 in detail, by personal experience and reality 
 around them ; the other, however, by their 
 fancy and in general outlines only. 
 
 They did not see that, even were such a 
 state of universal community of property 
 possible, which it is not, the evils attending 
 it, the overwhelming insipidity, the stagna- 
 tion of mind, and all the jealousy still 'ari- 
 sing out of the different mental, physical, 
 and moral individualities, must have been far 
 greater. Or must we imagine not only an 
 absence of all property in that golden age, 
 but also men looking all alike, neither hand- 
 Bom.e nor plain, equally gifted, neither wise 
 nor dull, and equally moral, neither gentle 
 nor impetuous ?' What indescribable dul- 
 
 ' So nave most wars ol estetilishcd uaiions some relerenrc
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 121 
 
 ness and barbarous want of all civilization 
 would this state of things produce ! The 
 fabled golden age, with its absence of la- 
 bour, is as little founded as the poet's state 
 of pastoral innocence and happiness. So 
 far from this state having ever existed, we 
 find that all pastoral tribes belong to the 
 most barbarous and vicious.' Indeed, it is 
 very evident that the fancied state of labour- 
 less existence and absence of exertion is the 
 
 to their territories. A poet might imagine a state of things 
 when there were no national landmarks, and, of course, all 
 causes pf a territorial character for wars would be removed. 
 But would wars really be removed 1 Do not the wandering 
 tribes fight infinitely more than the settled ones 1 Precisely 
 in the same manner would there be more dispute, jealousy, 
 and want of peace between individuals if the lines of Individ 
 ual properly within a nation were erased. 
 
 ' In the first volume of the Political Ethics, page 150, in 
 troaling of this fact, I have given several instances, but ex- 
 pressed my ignorance of the moral condition of the shepiierds 
 forming a large class of tho population of Spain. I have since 
 met with the following passage in Chateaubriand's Memoirs : 
 " The sprucely-dressed majo of the Guadalquivir, with his 
 dagger in his shepherd's crook, and his hair confined in a net, 
 never distinguishes the thing from the person, and reduces all 
 difference of opinion to the alternative — kill or die." There 
 is a similar remark, if I remember right, in Mr. Slidell's work 
 on Spain, but I am mable to turn to it at this moment. 
 K
 
 122 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 creation of ages when mental formed but a 
 minimum, compared to physical activity. 
 But who is there in an intellectual age that 
 sighs for a listless existence ? 
 
 This view of the poets became general, 
 and philosophers and historians adopted gen- 
 erally, as a universally received fact and 
 without farther inquiry, the view that, as, for 
 instance, Justin said,' "All things formed a 
 common stock for all mankind, as the in- 
 heritors of one general patrimony ;" or as 
 Cicero expresses it by comparing the world 
 to a theatre, in which the seats are common 
 property, yet every spectator claims the one 
 he occupies for the time being, but no long- 
 er.'^ It was believed that the views of the 
 
 ' Book 43. 
 
 * Mr. Dugald Stewart quotes this comparison with approba- 
 tion, as illustrating the fact that occupancy of common property 
 cannot produce a title of individual property without the aid of 
 municipal laws. But he forgets that the theatre is individual 
 property, common, indeed, to a certain number of people (as 
 the ancient theatres were public buildings), but the number 
 is limited, and that, besides, the occupant claims his right 
 to the seat, which he possesses for the time being, by priority 
 of occupancy or temporary appropriation, so long as it is of 
 interest or use to him, that is, so long as the performance
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 123 
 
 ancients were coniirmcd by the bible. Gro- 
 tius says: "God gave to mankind in gen- 
 eral, dominion over all the creatures of the 
 earth, from the first creation of the world ; 
 a grant which was renewed upon the restO' 
 ration of the world after the deluge.'" Upon 
 perusing the passages adduced by that great 
 jurist, especially in conjunction with the 
 twenty-eighth verse of the first chapter of 
 Genesis, it will appear, first, that nothing 
 more is expressed in them than the right of 
 man to use the animals and fruits of the 
 
 lasts. Mr. Stewart then adds an instance of his own, name- 
 ly, a man who rests himself in the shade of a tree. It would, 
 he says, certainly be unjust 'o claim the spot for the same 
 purpose so long as the first occupier rests there, but it gives 
 no enduring right to the occupier. This instance serves to 
 show the nature of temporary occupancy, but not that of prop- 
 erty in law. If that spot of ground was unappropriated, and 
 the man wanted every day to rest in that shade from his la- 
 bour — in short, if he had a permanent interest of enjoyment 
 or use in that spot, he had likewise the right of appropriating it 
 to himself; that of exchanging it for another spot equally shady, 
 if his neighbour desires his spot for a better use, and so on. 
 
 ' The Rights of War and Peace, book ii., chapter ii., 2 ; 
 where, iir confirmation of the above, are quoted Genesis, i., 
 29, 30, and ix., 2.
 
 124 niOPERTY AND 1 ABOLR. 
 
 earth for his sustenance ; and, secondly, that 
 "the dominion" which is bestowed upon 
 man does not mean any general property, 
 but the power which he, with his superior 
 intellect, will and ought to exercise over 
 animals fiercer or swifter than himself, and 
 the right of appropriation, or of making 
 property. He shall "subdue it," that is, 
 make it his own. The first, and, in my 
 opinion, the most important of the passages 
 relating to this subject, is the one last ci- 
 ted.' It reads thus : " And God blessed 
 them (namely, the first male and female) ; 
 and God said unto them. Be fruitful and 
 multiply, and replenish the earth, and sub- 
 due it : and have dominion over the fish 
 of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and 
 over every living thing that movetii upon 
 the earth." 
 
 Man is here authorized and commanded 
 to subdue, and the authority of dominion is 
 given him ; not a dominion already existing, 
 
 ' Genesis, i., 28, which authority of appropriation is be- 
 stowed immediately after the creation of man a/id woman, 
 related in the preceding verse.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOLR. 125 
 
 but one vhich he has a right and a duty to 
 acquire. For, what dominion would that be 
 wiiich has no sort of power for its exercise ? 
 How did Adam rule over a distant fish or a 
 fowl, whose existence he could affect in no 
 manner whatever ? Was not the animal 
 roving through a distant forest, to which the 
 first man never penetrated, far more the ru- 
 ler of that forest than he himself, if actual 
 dominion, and, still more, if possession and 
 property had been bestowed, and not the 
 right and power of appropriation and pro- 
 duction, ever accompanying man as one of 
 his attributes whithersover he or his chil- 
 dren should move ? 
 
 If the whole earth was originally given as 
 actual common property, by what right docs 
 any individual or separate nation single out 
 and appropriate anything to themselves ; 
 and what sense can we possibly connect 
 with the idea that the fish in Baffin's Bay are 
 the common property of the Esquimaux, the 
 Briton, the Caffre, and the Japanese, or that 
 it was the common property of the patri- 
 archs or of the first sons of Adam ? The
 
 126 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 term property has no meaning in these ca- 
 ses. Where can any one show even the 
 most indirect consent of the united inhabi- 
 tants of the earth, which might be construed 
 as bestowing upon a single whaling captain 
 the right of making all the whales he catch- 
 es his own or his employer's? No theory 
 ever so bold, no assumed tacit consent, can 
 be imagined, even with a stretch of our im- 
 agination, to serve this purpose here. 
 
 If, however, the quoted passage of the bi- 
 ble be adduced, as has been done, to prove 
 that the dominion over the soil itself was 
 never bestowed, but merely over the fruits 
 and animals, and that, consequently, the 
 property in land ought to be held in com- 
 mon, the question again arises, Whence do 
 governments or nations hold the right of 
 property in a certain district — which, ac- 
 cording to these theorists, ought to be held 
 in common — to the exclusion of all other 
 nations ? 
 
 If the bible proves anything of the kind, 
 it proves that w^e must never pass beyond 
 the hunter's and nomadic state, and that to
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 127 
 
 this day the New-Zealander has as good a 
 right in the timber of all the State of Maine 
 as he had when it was unappropriated, if he 
 could have appropriated it to himself in 
 some way or other. Those who maintain 
 that the game and the fruits of the earth 
 may be appropriated as individual property, 
 because they are the effect of individual ex- 
 ertion, but that land cannot, and, therefore, 
 is either specifically bestowed by govern- 
 ment and by positive law, or that it ought to 
 be held in common forever — these reason- 
 ers, as I intimated before, take an erro- 
 neous view of property in the soil and of 
 the creation of value. The land Nvas not 
 made by man, but the cultivated field is as 
 much a product of industry and ingenuity 
 as the house which is built of appropria- 
 ted timber, or as a cargo of dried codfish. 
 
 The early- theologians thought that the 
 view of an original common property was 
 supported by passages in the New Testa- 
 ment, in which it is related that the first Chris- 
 tians joined their property. It was main- 
 tained that holding individual property was
 
 128 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 no sin, but it originated out of sin, inas- 
 much as the rapacious and the wiciicd first 
 introduced private property, and the good 
 were consequently obliged to protect them- 
 selves. I have spoken elsewhere of this 
 subject, and cited some important passages 
 of renowned theologians.' Still this view, 
 according to which things unowned belong 
 to all, is not absolutely universal, for we 
 meet with passages in distant codes which 
 speak of land belonging to no one.^ 
 
 The very term Property implies, as an 
 essential qualification of its meaning, a- high 
 degree of exclusiveness and power of the 
 owner over the thing owned. It cannot, 
 therefore, be applied to all ; and to advance 
 that something belongs to all men, or that 
 everything was given as actual property to 
 the first man, is slating a contradiction in 
 itself. But it implies no contradiction if 
 we say that the necessity of the creation of 
 property lies in the nature of man, and that 
 
 1 Political Ethics, vol. i., p. 125. 
 
 ^ For instance, the Damasat, the Buduh code of the Bur- 
 mese, speaks of woods that belong to no one.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 129 
 
 he carries along with himself the inextin- 
 guishable necessity, right, and duty of ap- 
 propriation and production, and that, be- 
 cause it is natural to man, we find the 
 trongest desire of property in all periods 
 )f history, with all nations, and at all ages 
 )f life, and in situations in which it can be 
 atisfied only on a most reduced scale.' 
 
 ' Children soon claim things as their own, and love to point 
 :ut a bed in the garden, a flower, a fowl in the yard as theirs, 
 n many cases wholly independent of an expected exclu- 
 sive use. But the youthful mind is naturally pleased in thus 
 seeing its individuality reflected in the material world 
 jrouiid it. Children in Houses of Refuge, upon the cellular 
 system at night and constant common labour during the day, 
 will still delight in iiaving in their little cell something they 
 can call exclusively their own. Prisoners in the penitentiaries, 
 monks in their convents, though the order may wholly abol- 
 ;sh individual property within itself — even galley-slaves, who 
 sleep and work in common, show this original urgency in man 
 Dy contriving to save some trifle, very frequently without the 
 cast use, and keeping it in a little box. Every one who habit- 
 lally visits prisons will remember the little boxes of the pris- 
 iners or juvenile inmates, which manifest the struggle of 
 :uman nature against that state of things in which it is so sig- 
 lally repressed. Dr. Howe, in his Ninth Annual Report to 
 the Trustees of the Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind, 
 slates of that unfortunate and interesting being, Laura Bridg- 
 man, who is blind, deaf, and dumb, that even she, who enjoys 
 L
 
 130 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 If the bible seems to support the theory of 
 original common property or of its general 
 preferableness, in some passages, we ought 
 not to forget others which indicate the con- 
 trary. Of the six commandments wliich, 
 to distinguish them from the others of a more 
 strictly religious character, may be called 
 ethical, two relate to the sacredness of pri- 
 vate property. We should not even covet our 
 neighbour's property; and the code of Moses 
 curses him that removes the landmark.' 
 
 To find how universal the acknowledg- 
 ment of the right of private property has al- 
 ways been, we have only to examine the 
 political or religious codes of any nation. 
 The most distant countries, and periods most 
 
 always in comnaon with other inmates of the asylum all that is 
 to be enjoyed, and who is so dependant in every way upon oth- 
 ers, " is fond of acquiring property, and seems to have an idea of 
 the ownership of things which she has long since laid aside and 
 no longer uses." If I remember right, the same was ob- 
 served in the girl similarly circumstanced at the Hartford Asy- 
 lum for the Deaf and Dumb. 
 
 ' Deuteronomy, xxvii., 17. Also Proverbs, xxii., 28 ; again, 
 xxiii., 10. Job, xxiv., 2. — The kerma, or landmark of the 
 Greeks, became the altar of a god, of Termon and the Romas 
 Terminus.
 
 PROPERTY AND LAHOUR. 131 
 
 remote from one another agree in this point, 
 and never has there existed an individual 
 desirous of performing great actions who 
 did not feel obliged to respect this element 
 of society. One of the Buduh command- 
 ments against the five chief sins is for the 
 protection of property." The rules by the 
 observance of which Timur the Conqueror 
 says that he became great, and which he 
 lays down for his successors to maintain that 
 greatness, contain one for the protection of 
 property, and the punishment of robbery and 
 oppression.'' The Twelve Tables of Rome, 
 
 * These five commandments are ; 
 Thou shall not kill. 
 Thou shalt not steal. 
 Thou shalt not commit fornication. 
 Thou shalt not lie. 
 
 Thou shalt not drink intoxicating liquor. 
 See the Sacred and Historical Books of Ceylon, &c., edited 
 by Edward Upham, London, 1833, vol. i., p. 20, and several 
 jther places. 
 
 ' Timur mentions in this autobiography twelve rules, to the 
 itrict observance of which he ascribes his success. We are 
 not called upon here to discuss bow strictly be observed thetr, 
 It is sufficient for us to know that even this most mighty con- 
 queror acknowledged of how great a practical and radical im- 
 portance the sacredness of property is. If a Timur acknowl-
 
 132 PROPERTY AND LAUOUR. 
 
 the early Greek laws, in short, all codes 
 might be cited. 
 
 As to the fact that many of the present 
 political societies arose out of conquest, 
 when titles of property were often violently 
 changed, it neither proves that government 
 makes property, nor that property was held 
 at any period in common, although it may 
 at the first glance appear to do so. It has 
 been sufficiently shown that government 
 cannot in general make property ; it has 
 not the power of doing so, for property is 
 made by appropriation and production ; but 
 it may bestow, confirm, or change titles to 
 property, and in doing so it may act ac- 
 cording to justice, unjustly, violently, or 
 peaceably, as it may do in performing any 
 other act. The conquerors of Gaul, Spam, 
 
 edges it, it must be founded as one of the very elements in 
 human nature. The twelve rules of the gigantic conqueror 
 may be reduced to, Administration of Impartial Justice (rule 
 1, 2, 4, 7) ; Love of Truth (2, 6, 7) ; Obedience to God's 
 Commands and Esteem of Religion (3, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12); 
 Protection of Property (8) ; Mercy (4). — They may be found 
 in Mulfazat Timury, or Autobiographic Memoirs of Timur, 
 &c., transl. by Major Charles Stewart, London, 1830, Orien- 
 tal Translation Fund.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 133 
 
 and Italy have at no time conceived the 
 idea of common property, unless the very 
 brief period between a conquest and the 
 actual settlement be thus called ; but there 
 is no student of history who would refer to 
 these conquests for a proof that govern 
 ments originate property. Indeed, the in- 
 dividual appears prominent in the Germanic 
 conquests, which by no means ended always 
 in distribution alone ; much landed property 
 was violently seized by the individual, and 
 retained by him without first passing through 
 the act of a general apportionment. 
 
 Of certain Peculiarities of Property in Land. 
 
 There are peculiar qualities inherent in 
 the ownership of land which have been in- 
 fluential in creating a belief that originally 
 landed property was either held in common 
 or as a mere gift of government. Of these 
 qualities the following may be remarked : 
 
 Like moveable property, land can be sur- 
 veyed, its extent ascertained, and its owner- 
 ship established ; but, unlike moveable prop- 
 erty, it remains forever on the same spot,
 
 134 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 and is incapable of destruction or oblitera- 
 tion. It cannot be transferred from place 
 to place at the option of its owner, and this 
 incapacity of removal it shares in common 
 with the unappropriated sea. Misled by 
 this similarity in one respect, certain theo- 
 rists have believed and asserted that, inas- 
 much as the products of the sea, and not 
 the sea itself, may become private property, 
 so the products of the land, its trees, its 
 fruits, and its herbage, may be subjected to 
 individual ownership, and not the land it- 
 self. But these writers, while contending 
 for a community of landed property with 
 reference to the individual members of the 
 same state, forgot that an extension of the 
 principle would invalidate the claim of any 
 political society to hold certain districts of 
 country to the exclusion of other political 
 societies, and overlooked the important dif- 
 ference which exists between land and wa- 
 ter — the former being susceptible of im- 
 provement, and capable of being made an 
 object of exchangeable value. If men could 
 build upon the sea, and " curse him who
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 135 
 
 removeth" the seamark, it cannot be doubt- 
 ed but that we would have private maritime 
 property, as we now have private landed 
 property. Indeed, appropriation of the sea 
 does exist, as far as such appropriation is 
 possible. Harbours and bays are admitted 
 to belong, by the law of nations, that is, by 
 the common sense of mankind, to the do- 
 minion of whoever has sovereign authority 
 over the neighbouring land. 
 
 The durable nature of land causes it to 
 pass through a longer series of owners than 
 other objects of property, and the connex- 
 ion existing between a government and its 
 territory necessarily exposes the title of 
 landed property, in the course of years, to 
 those violent actions, such as conquest or 
 revolution, which affect the right of owner- 
 ship. The paramount law of necessity also 
 causes the state to interfere more frequent- 
 ly and directly with the ownership or trans- 
 fer of this species of property than of any 
 other ; so that the original appropriation of 
 land is involved in more obscurity than that 
 of things more recently appropriated by us,
 
 136 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 or of tilings produced by us, in which the 
 substance upon which we have conferred 
 additional value by our labour is less promi- 
 nent, or the productive agency of nature 
 less apparent than it is in the case of land 
 to which cultivation has given value. 
 
 Of the Lapse of Land into an Unappropria 
 ted State. 
 
 Soil, or the existence of land, outlasts all 
 the vast changes of institutions and opinions 
 through which mankind pass in the course of 
 centuries, and many of which destroy the 
 societies \i^hich owned the land, or the ob- 
 jects for which it was given by individuals or 
 granted by public authority. It is evident, 
 therefore, that, in the long lapse of time, 
 property in land must be peculiarly subject 
 to those changes which are made on the 
 ground of superior necessity, and the ulti- 
 mate and sovereign demand that man, ac- 
 cording to his nature and destiny, must live 
 in society, and that, if other interests clash 
 with this high destiny, they must yield. It 
 is a demand of man's nature that he should
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 137 
 
 live in political societies, and, if other inter- 
 ests are made subordinate to this ultimate 
 and sovereign demand, it is done upon the 
 same ground upon which the Roman law 
 admits the otherwise unauthorized appro- 
 priation of another man's private property 
 in case of absolute necessity, for instance, 
 the appropriation of another man's stores 
 in case of actual starvation.' 
 
 Changes of property, having become ne- 
 cessary on this ground, may be threefold : 
 The owner may totally vanish ; for instance, 
 when the Reformation was introduced in 
 some countries, monasteries which held land 
 were extinguished : or the object for which 
 it was given may be extinguished, and 
 yet the property may have been held in 
 trust for that sole purpose ; as when the 
 revenue of some land was destined, without 
 any contingent condition, for the reading 
 
 ' See the Carolina, or" Penal Code of Charles the Fifth for 
 Germany, art. 166. Mittermayer's Manual by Feuerbach, 
 13th ed., p 454. The English law does not allow appropria* 
 tion in this case ; but, of course, a jury would allow the rea- 
 Bon to have proper weight
 
 138 PROPERTY AND LA DOUR. 
 
 of Masses for some deceased person, and a 
 change of religion abolishes them, or when 
 the state actually declares the object un- 
 lawful :' or property may, by some special 
 abuse or not, have become so concentrated, 
 or have assumed so peculiar a form, that it 
 militates against the safety and peace, or 
 against some other elementary principle of 
 the state.^ 
 
 In these cases it is seen that disimpropria- 
 
 * When pious men in Spain left property for the purpose 
 of redeeming christian slaves from bondage in the Barbary 
 Slates, and these give up their piratical expeditions ; or if 
 property is left for lectures on a certain subject, which an im- 
 proved state of knowledge erases from the catalogue of sci- 
 ences, it is clear that the property must be apportioned oth- 
 erwise. 
 
 8 For instance, when, at the time of the Gracchi, landed 
 jiroperty in Italy had become concentrated in comparativelj 
 a few vast plantations, called latifundia, from which the most 
 important class in any free and well-regulated community, the 
 c>ass of small farmers, had vanished, and the lands of which 
 were converted to pasture-grounds because slave-labour was 
 Jound to be more profitably employed in the management of 
 herds and flocks than in tillage ; or when, in consequence of 
 former prevailing religious views, landed property had accu- 
 mulated in the hands of the church to such an extent that it 
 *ecame wholly incompatible with the welfare of the state, as 
 France or Spain before their revolutions.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 139 
 
 tion, if I may use the word, may take place 
 of itself, by the extinction of owners, or of 
 the causes which gave definite character to 
 the property ; and either already existing 
 laws may forthwith appropriate the same 
 anew, or specific laws may be made for it 
 by a society already far advanced in civil- 
 ization ; or the owners may be despoiled 
 either by a law or a revolution, embracing 
 this as well as other forcible changes. In 
 this case we must not forget that it is a 
 violent change, which it is admitted may 
 become necessary, in a like manner as 
 conquest may become necessary, which can- 
 not either be adopted as the rule, or be ad- 
 duced as confirming the belief that property 
 is always held as a boon of government, or 
 that property was originally held in com- 
 mon. 
 
 If a revolution wrests property from its 
 owner, the despoiler forthwith, and general- 
 ly by the same act which etl'ects the spolia- 
 tion, appropriates the soil.' It is therefore 
 
 ' The property does not pass through that undefined state of 
 Delonging to no one. It is a violent change of possessors.
 
 140 I'ROnuiTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 contrary lo tlic law of nature to maintain, 
 as has been done of late, that government 
 has a natural and enduring right to abolish 
 individual inheritance or individual property 
 inland. If a man pays full value for land, 
 it becomes, according to the law of nature, 
 which permits and enjoins accumulation 
 and exchange, verily his own, because taken 
 in exchange for values which were his, and 
 it is revolution alone which can dispossess 
 him without an equivalent. 
 
 These revolutions, as has been fully ad- 
 mitted, may become necessary. The neces- 
 sity, however, consists in something very dif- 
 ferent from the impatient desire of seeing the 
 realization of some fanciful theory, in order 
 to remedy some real or imagined evil. Do- 
 mestic revolutions, which violently change 
 the ownership of property, are dire events, 
 not on account of the unavoidable blood- 
 shed alone, but because they shake the 
 whole social system, engender the worst 
 and fiercest of all passions — cruelty com- 
 bined with cupidity ; because they induce 
 depravity at large by unsettling the stability
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 141 
 
 of justice, and reduce the general standard 
 of morality, loyalty, confidence, and high- 
 mindedness ; and because, by the insecuri- 
 ty which is necessarily their result, they for 
 a long time prevent the productive employ- 
 ment of a nation's accumulated values. 
 Thus they spread suffering and misery far 
 and wide, and arrest the people on their path 
 of civilization for a long time.' 
 
 In the preceding instances, such cases 
 alone as occur within a political society 
 have been considered. Disimpropriation, 
 in these cases, has reference only to the in- 
 dividual owners, and, so soon as it takes 
 place, their respective state or nation ap- 
 propriates forthwith what may have become 
 ownerless. It is a different question wheth- 
 er, according to the strict law of nature, 
 property may become alienated from a state 
 without the positive action of its govern- 
 
 ' It belongs to the more particularly speculative part of nat- 
 oral law to show how relations of right and lawful property 
 may develop themselves out of original violence, or other 
 disturbances of right and justice. The subject has been dwel. 
 upon in the fust volume of the Political Ethics.
 
 142 PROiM-.llTY AND LATJOUR. 
 
 ment, and, consequently, may be appropri- 
 ated anew by him who chances and chooses 
 to be the first to occupy it. This question 
 is of practical importance to America, as the 
 case of Texas proves. Here is the vast 
 American Continent, with rich, extensive 
 territories appropriated or declared to be 
 appropriated by certain governments, and 
 by people who in many cases have made 
 no use of the soil or any of its products 
 on the one hand, and, on the other hand, 
 an active, adventurous, bold, and industri- 
 ous population, spreading in all directions. 
 These two portions of mankind, in a soil so 
 peculiarly circumstanced, live at a period 
 when men are far less disposed to cut 
 short any international difficulty by the 
 sword, or to realize any desire to possess 
 land with the cannon, than in former ages. 
 The question of appropriation or conquest, 
 therefore, appears really to present itself in 
 an entirely new aspect, and requires dispas- 
 sionate investigation. 
 
 To decide the question, we must first 
 again distinctly present to ourselves the
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 143 
 
 characteristic principle of appropriation. I 
 appropriate a thing if I make it mine, the 
 thing having had no owner before ; and a 
 thing becomes in fairness mine if I am the 
 first to make it subservient to my individual 
 use ; if I assimilate my labour with it for 
 direct use ; or if I leave it, in general, in the 
 state m which I found it, and only effect 
 that change which brings it under my power 
 of protection, for future use or enjoyment. 
 
 It is often said that no man can object to 
 another's occupying as much land as he can 
 make use of ; but this term Use is left unex- 
 plained. It certainly cannot be restricted 
 to actual cultivation. Suppose a man sees 
 his family rapidly increasing, or sees that 
 his timber is fast failing, but that, on another 
 spot, timber such as he wants is growing, 
 and will be fit for use by the time his present 
 timber will be consumed ; it cannot be de- 
 nied that the spot on which the timber grows 
 falls within the term of usefulness to the ap- 
 propriator. But, to make that hitherto im- 
 appropriated thing my own, which is of 
 prospective advantage to me, a mere decla-
 
 144 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 ration to that effecl will not suffice. No 
 matter how fully my intention may have 
 been expressed, this single expression does 
 not make the thing mine, nor does it in any 
 way stamp it with the character of property. 
 To give to it this character, it is necessary 
 that the claimant be in some direct connex- 
 ion with the thing claimed, and can mark it 
 as his individually. This may be done by 
 assimilating his individuality Avith it, either 
 by changing its character in connecting it 
 with his labour, or by the exercise of imme- 
 diate authority or control over it. If he does 
 not stamp it as his, or, rather, does not pro- 
 duce by his labour, in conjunction with the 
 natural agents, a new thing (such as con- 
 verting waste land into arable), nor main- 
 tain his appropriation for future enjoyment 
 by protectiug the thing appropriated, he 
 cannot claim it as his, because he has no 
 disposing power — no mastership over it.' 
 
 1 It has been maintained by several former writers that 
 marking an unowned thing suffices for occupancy, out of 
 which appropriation arises. But this will not be urged at 
 jiresent without much limitation ; it establishes of itself nt
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 145 
 
 The right of appropriation lies, as we 
 have seen, in the fact that the thing has not 
 
 connexion between the thing and he who marks it, and, more- 
 over, might be extended, especially with reference to land, to 
 a most unreasonable extent. If, however, the marking itself 
 proves great previous labour, or the slaying of an animal, 
 and shows an immediate desire to use it, especially if it is 
 clear that he who marked is prevented from using the 
 thing by circumstances, the case seems difTerent. As an 
 illustration, I will quote a usage which has grown out of the 
 common feeling of our whalers when many thousands of miles 
 from their home and their political society. Mr. G. T. Cur- 
 tis, in his Rights and Duties of Merchant Seamen, Boston, 
 1841, gives, in note 4 on whale-fishery, page ^94, the fol- 
 lowing remark, as communicated by a professional gentleman 
 of New-Bedford, Mass. : 
 
 " The rule with regard to the occupancy of these animals 
 (the whales), • fera; naturae,' is believed to be somewhat dif- 
 ferent from the rule of the common law in regard to land ani- 
 mals. The whaling-craft of every vessel is marked, harpoons, 
 lances, dec. When a whale has been actually killed, and other 
 game is in sight, or it is inconvenient, for any other reason, 
 to take him on board, it is usual for the captors to fasten a 
 ' waif (marked iron) into the body and leave it. Many days 
 may elapse before the animal is recovered ; and if, in the 
 mean time, another ship should fall in with it, and the waif is 
 still adhering to the body, the right of property is considered 
 as remaining in the original captors, and is strictly respected. 
 If it were violated trover would undoubtedly lie. When a 
 number of vessels are engaged in pursuit of the same whale, 
 and a boat's crew succeeds in making fast to it, no new crew 
 M
 
 146 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 yet been appropriated ; the object, in use- 
 fulness; the means with which we effect it, 
 in use and power (for prospective use). If 
 these are lost, property is lapsed. In a na- 
 tion in a state of peace, a total lapse of 
 property is never allowed actually to take 
 place;, and laws declare that, so soon as a 
 thing becomes ownerless, the state at large 
 becomes the owner, and shall dispose of it 
 according to the best advantage of society, 
 because any other arrangement would natu- 
 rally lead to a great disturbance of peace. 
 But if a whole district of land is not used 
 by a nation directly or indirectly, and if the 
 nation has not been able to protect it as its 
 own for a long time, it seems that the 
 essential characteristics of property are re- 
 ally lost, and disimpropriation has taken 
 place. The earth was given to mankind 
 for use ; and if it be left wholly unused, it 
 fails to obtain its object. The power of do- 
 
 from any other vessel have any right to attack the whale. But 
 should the harpoons of the first draw and the boat beconne 
 detached, they have then a right to renew the chase equally 
 with the others. '
 
 PROF Ear Y AND LABOUR. 147 
 
 minion in a government corresponds to the 
 power of control or influence in the indi- 
 vidual. 
 
 It is readily acknowledged that such 
 words as Use, or Direct and Indirect Use, 
 are terms, the correct meaning of which 
 must depend upon our fairness, and, of 
 course, may be very easily misconstrued 
 by reckless cupidity. This fact, however, 
 does not invalidate the truth of our position., 
 that nonuscr, fairly to be considered as such 
 (which ought to include, in the law of na- 
 tions, absence of all productive use, of util- 
 ity to the safety of the whole, and powe* to 
 claim or protect it), works between nations 
 a lapse or " waiver." But since it is, in the 
 nature of things, difficult to decide when 
 this international waiver or forfeiture has 
 taken place, and since our judgment is so 
 easily influenced by arguments originally 
 suggested by cupidity, perhaps unconscious- 
 ly to ourselves, we ought to be exceedingly 
 cautious in making use of a right thus de- 
 volved, and especially not to abandon a coun- 
 try abounding in uncultivated land ard thin-
 
 148 PROPERTY AND LABOUK. 
 
 ly peopled, from sheer rceklessncss, for a 
 soil to whieh v/c can lay claim only accord- 
 ing to principles superseding established 
 and Avritten laws or ti'eaties. 
 
 The question respecting Texas must be, 
 perhaps, decided upon this ground : Was or 
 Avas not the District of Coahuila and Texas 
 unused and unappropriated for a long scries 
 of years by the government which claimed 
 it by declaration ? This seems to have 
 been the question ;' we will not attempt to 
 solve it here ; but, to give an illustration of 
 the remarks just made, Upper California 
 may be instanced. 
 
 In reading Mr. Forbes's History of Up- 
 per and Lower California,^ the author can- 
 
 ' If, indeed, the other view be not taken, according to which 
 Texas vvas for a long time claimed by the United States, in 
 their diplomatic transactions, as justly belonging to Louisiana. 
 The Texans accordingly otfercd themselves as a state to the 
 Union, and, when the United States declined receiving them, 
 they established their own separate government. The reader 
 may find a sketch of the diplomatic transactions respectmg 
 the claim of dominion over Texas insisted upon by the gov- 
 ernment of the United States, in a Letter of N. Biddle, ap- 
 pended to a work entitled Texas and the Texans, by H. S. 
 Footc, Philad., 1841. 
 
 ' A History Df Upper and Lower California, from their first
 
 PROPKRTY A.VD LABC UR. 149 
 
 didly acknowledges, that he could not pre- 
 vent his mind from yielding to the convic- 
 tion that here a case of actual international 
 disimpropriation has taken place, if, as no 
 doubt can be entertained, the account be 
 correct. One of the fairest portions of the 
 globe ; rich in every kindly gift of nature ; a 
 fertile, and, in parts, luxuriant soil, well tim- 
 bered ; navigable streams abounding in fish ; 
 a healthy, invigorating climate ; an exten- 
 sive country with a long seacoast, with 
 harbours to aid effectively in a commerce 
 across the Pacific, and thus uniting more ef- 
 ficiently Europe, America, and Asia in that 
 first of all requisites of advancing mankind 
 — in the exchange of their products — this 
 vast territory, which might substantially con- 
 Discovery to the Present Time, comprising an Account of 
 Climate, &c., with a fall View of the Missionary Establish- 
 ments and Condition of the free and domesticated Indians, 
 with an Appendix relating to the Steam Navigation in the 
 Pacific, &c., by Alexander Forbes, London, 1839. To pre- 
 vent any misunderstanding, it ought perhaps to be mentioned, 
 that Mr. Forbes does not once indicate, directly or indirectly, 
 any opinion whatever approaching to the one above. It is the 
 author's own, and, whatever censure may be bestowed upon it, 
 he must take it solely upon himself.
 
 150 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 tribute to the great mart of nations, where 
 the production of every new commodity 
 forms a demand for the production of equiv- 
 alents, and might offer to millions upon mill- 
 ions happy and prosperous homes, is, while 
 other territories are crowded and many 
 overpeopled, nevertheless inhabited by a 
 very few of the poorest and lowest Indians, 
 and wholly unprotected by the Mexican 
 government, Avhich cannot possibly extend 
 its power to this region. It seems that no 
 mere declaration, " This belongs to us," can 
 become a bar against the very destiny of so 
 genial a soil.' 
 
 * The ground upon which the title arising out of occupan- 
 cy alone is conceded to our Indians, but not the actual own- 
 ership of the land, is this, that they do not use the land as it 
 was destined to be used, for the support of mankind, and that 
 but very few individuals can be maintained by the produce of 
 the chase. The same argument, but in a higher degree, 
 would apply to a government which neither uses nor protects 
 a tract of land. The reader who desires more accurate in- 
 formation on the subject of Indian occupancy and the owner- 
 ship of land vested in the United States, is referred to th» 
 interesting cases adjudged in the Supreme Court of the Uni- 
 ted States : Johnson v. M'Intosh, 8 Whcaton, 543, and 
 Fletcher v. Peck, 6 Cranch, 142, 143. The whole of Lec- 
 ture li., vol. iii., of Kent's Commentaries, is of much inter- 
 ist on this subject.
 
 V. 
 
 « 
 
 On Common Property in Land. 
 
 Private property in land is as natural 
 and unfailing an effect of man's right and 
 duty to appropriate and accumulate, as 
 property in other things. It is true, indeed, 
 as we have seen, that we find in the early 
 history of many, perhaps of most, nations 
 now existing, a general distribution of land, 
 because all these nations obtained posses- 
 sion of the soil which they now occupy by 
 conquest, or, as was frequently the case in 
 America, by public barter ; in short, by a 
 process in which a community already form- 
 ed acquired, as such, the land as a whole 
 mass, and, of course, was obliged to resort 
 to a division, either at once and throughout 
 the territory, or gradually, according to pre- 
 scribed rules. Conquest, liowever, belongs 
 to those many acts of violence which may 
 forcibly change the owners of any property.
 
 152 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 The universal tendency is towards private 
 property ; a tendency which shows itself in- 
 variably the clearer with the advance of 
 civilization and cultivation. 
 
 It remains now only to inquire wljether it 
 is expedient for a community either to re- 
 tain the common ownership of land, after it 
 has been obtained by fair or violent means, 
 barter or conquest, or to return to it by a 
 general legislative spoliation of the private 
 owners, or by the main force of a revolution 
 — a civil war and internal conquest, as it 
 were. 
 
 The instances which are at times addu- 
 ced in order to prove the prosperity of as- 
 sociations holding landed property in com- 
 mon, and uniting all their profits which may 
 result from any branches of their industry, 
 such as Mr. Rapp's community, or the as- 
 sociations of the people generally called 
 Shaking Quakers, are wholly insufficient to 
 prove any principle of general political ac- 
 tion. 
 
 These communities are either very limit, 
 ed, so that, indeed, they have, in many re-
 
 PROPERTY A\D LABOUR. 153 
 
 » pects, the attributes of private owners, and 
 have existed but a short time, or they are 
 founded upon religious views so peculiar, 
 and at the sacrifice of so much that is held 
 vitally important by all the rest of man- 
 kind, that they prove nothing against the law 
 of mankind exhibited by the course of his- 
 tory, that the more civilized a tribe be- 
 comes, the more distinctly does private 
 property in land develop itself; and that 
 the more this development is retarded, by 
 whatever causes, the less is land made ser- 
 viceable for the great purposes of mankind. 
 This truth applies not only to whole 
 states at large, and comprehensive institu- 
 tions, which may promote or retard private 
 property in land, but it obtains likewise 
 with reference to every period of advancing 
 civilization and political progress. With 
 every onward step which culture makes, 
 some land, until then held in common, as 
 waste land, huge forests, or common pas- 
 ture, is parcelled out to private ownership, 
 in order to receive the fertilizing culture of 
 private industry, and the exertions of him
 
 154 PROPERTY AN'D LABOUR. 
 
 wb^ose individual success, hope, and pride 
 are bound up in a specific piece of land 
 that he can distinctly and exclusively call 
 his own. 
 
 It has been proposed to unite the advan- 
 tages of private and common property, by 
 parcelling the land into farms sufficient to 
 maintain a family, and to give the use of it 
 for life. As these standard farms .become 
 vacated by the death of the owner for life, 
 the person highest on the list of those who 
 have become of age is to enter as the new 
 occupier. This arrangement, if it could 
 possibly be carried into effect,' would go a 
 great deal farther than the ancient Lace- 
 dsemonian institution of landed property, 
 which made it at least family property. 
 The Lacedsemonian institution only pre- 
 vented too large an accumulation of landed 
 property, and was meant to prevent every 
 citizen from remaining without land. 
 
 ' The question of the right, arising out of the right and duty 
 of accumulation, and the wrong done to the possessor who has 
 given his equivalents in accumulated values for a portion of 
 the soil, has been touched upon in a previous passage, and 
 need not be discussed here.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 155 
 
 Those who propose so fanciful a scheme 
 forget to tell us what should become of 
 those who, after all, do not receive a farm 
 for life ; how the original division shall re- 
 main adequate to an increasing population, 
 or whether new divisions from time to time 
 shall take place, which even in Sparta, ac- 
 customed as the ancients were to consider 
 themselves individually wholly the creatures 
 of their state, nevertheless led to frequent 
 tumults and disorders.' 
 
 What shall become of the surplus reve- 
 nue derived by the temporary possessor of 
 the land from his farm ? Shall he be bound 
 by law to reinvest it in the farm ? How 
 can he be forced to do so ? And if not, 
 will he not endeavour by all means to in- 
 vest it in a manner so as to secure it for 
 his children ? What is to be done with his 
 widow ? is she to be maintained at the public 
 expense ? If we are answered that the en- 
 tailed roperty of the British peer descends 
 whole ind entire, without reference to his 
 
 > Aristotle, Polit., 5, 6, 2.
 
 156 PROPERTY AND LABOUR 
 
 widow, wc must remember that At any rate 
 it does descend in the family ; she is pro- 
 vided for ; and that the revenue derived by 
 the possessor may be invested, and, after 
 death, disposed of as tlic owner thinks best. 
 Let us ask farther, How shall the tempo- 
 rary owner of the farm for life be induced 
 to improve his farm to the utmost, that it 
 may keep pace with advancing culture in 
 other countries, and with increasing popula- 
 tion ? or, rather, How shall he be prevented 
 from acting as the former governors of 
 Spanish South America did, sent as they 
 were for a brief time only, and generally, 
 theiefore, disposed to make the best of their 
 allotted time, and to fill their coffers as 
 quickly as possible ? How can so disas- 
 trous a system be prevented from spreading 
 desolation over the land, and driving capi- 
 tal into foreign parts, instead of investing it 
 anew in land or other branches of industry ? 
 Why shall this arrangement extend to farm- 
 ing industry only ? Shall the farmers form a 
 caste, as in the East ? How shall the phy- 
 sician, the lawyer, the manufacturer, or
 
 PROPERTY AXD LABOUR. 157 
 
 merchant, be induced to invest their accu- 
 mulations in land ? Not to speak here of 
 the demoralizing effect which so incongru- 
 ous a system would inevitably produce upon 
 all, by rendering all possession unstable, and 
 by vastly increasing poverty through uni- 
 versally reduced productiveness. 
 
 Those who have proposed so irrational 
 and unnatural a measure seem to start from 
 the idea that land is value of itself, and 
 yields sustenance like a wild fruit -tree. 
 They do not seem to consider that we can- 
 not turn land to any account unless we 
 have capital or accumulated values to be- 
 gin with, and that Ave must continue to save 
 and accumulate values lest a rapid falling 
 back into barbarity should take place, as it 
 actually has taken place at all times when 
 this fearful fact occurred ; for instance, as 
 was mentioned before, in many parts of 
 the Roman empire during the iirst centuries 
 of our era. 
 
 The Constitution of Lycurgus provided 
 for a primary distribution of land, which 
 had been conquered by the Dorians from
 
 158 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 the original LacedsDmonians, and in various 
 ways endeavoured to extinguish the idea of 
 individual property in land. Each citizen 
 should, if possible, possess one share (/cA^pof), 
 and no more ; nor should he sell it or di- 
 vide it. The whole share should belong to 
 the family [olKog, house). One of the very 
 objects of this institution was, that the Spar- 
 tans, the conquerors and rulers, should en- 
 joy the leisure (apyia) which became an 
 acknowledged object of the state. Agri- 
 culture was degraded, and considered fit for 
 helots and serfs only. Cleomenes the elder 
 called Homer a poet fit for Spartans, and 
 Hesiod for helots, because the latter had 
 made agriculture the burden of his song. 
 
 The natural consequence was, that Lace- 
 daemon became one of the least productive 
 countries of Greece, and the Spartans were 
 continually and necessarily engaged in con- 
 quests, while, on the other hand, the Consti- 
 tution of Lycurgus seems never to have 
 been fully exacted. Soon it was altogeth- 
 er abandoned, with its idle dreams of iron 
 money. If the Spartans degenerated, it is
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 159 
 
 equally clear that, had they really adhered 
 to all the regulations of Lycurgus, they 
 could not have made wars and conquering 
 excursions upon others, and must have sunk 
 into a state of barbarous inanity. Whence 
 should the means of conquest have been de- 
 rived ? I believe it cannot be denied that, 
 while the Constitution of Lycurgus banish- 
 ed luxury and trade, in order to make the 
 Spartan state an essentially military one, to 
 which every other consideration seems to 
 have been sacrificed, it was the military ex- 
 peditions themselves which obliged the Spar- 
 tans to disregard the Lycurgan law against 
 treasures by accumulating them, in order to 
 be able to defray the heavy expenses of 
 their wars. 
 
 An instance of community of landed 
 property, somewhat more similar to that 
 which has been proposed, may be taken 
 from the picture' which Tacitus gives of the 
 Germans. The passage itself, to which I 
 have previously alluded, will sufficiently 
 show that it simply arose out of the low 
 state of agriculture. People valued the
 
 160 PROPKRTV AND LABOUR. 
 
 land but for a short season. " The fields, " 
 says Tacitus, " are occupied alternately 
 by entire communities, in proportion to 
 the iiumber of the cultivators, and imme- 
 diately they are divided among themselves 
 according to rank. The business of divis- 
 ion is facilitated by the wide space of the 
 fields. The seed-fields are changed an- 
 nually, and they have land for this purpose 
 in abundance. For, these people do not vie 
 by exertion with the fertility and extent of 
 soil, for instance, by planting orchards, lay- 
 ing out meadows, irrigating gardens ; no- 
 thing but the seed is intrusted to the earth. 
 Hence they even divide the year less mi- 
 nutely ; of winter, spring, and summer they 
 have ideas, and name them ; a name for au- 
 tumn is as unknown to them as the gifts of 
 this season.'" 
 
 A modern instance of a continued com- 
 munity of land and temporary division 
 among families, and periodical exchange 
 of good and bad land, connected as a mat- 
 ter of course with all the dangers of tumult 
 ' Germania, 26.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 161 
 
 and bloodshed, we find in a large part of 
 the Afghaun tribes, a people in Central 
 A.sia. The custom of submitting, every ten 
 years, or at periods of less duration, the 
 tenure of the land to the lot, is called by 
 them Waish, and described by Mr. Elphin- 
 stone in his Account of the Kingdom of 
 Caubul.' The author mentions in a note 
 appended to his description of the Waish, 
 that Mr. Volney describes this custom as 
 being in practice in Corsica. Neither the 
 one nor the other will be found alluring 
 examples, either on account of the advanced 
 state of the people or the condition of the 
 soil, for the active, industrious, and inde- 
 pendent people of northern Europe and 
 their descendants. 
 
 ' Hon. Mountstuart Elphinstone's Account of the King- 
 dom of Caubul, &c., comprehending a View of the Afghaun 
 Nation, 2d ed., London, 1839, vol. ii., p. 16 and seq. This 
 work, of much interest on many accounts, contains the de- 
 scription of a systematized patriarchal system, which, in the- 
 ory at least, is carried out by division and subdivision, from 
 the king through a varielv of larger and lesser divisions, tribes 
 and clans, to the last head of a single family, such as proba- 
 bly exists nowhere else. 
 
 N
 
 162 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 Among the great and elennentary changes 
 within the last half century, Avhich have 
 been made in the internal administration 
 of the most civilized nations, the conversion 
 of common property into private must be 
 considered as the most prominent.' It was 
 found that in all cases in which the value 
 of the property is not positively injured by 
 division — for instance, a pasture-ground so 
 poor that it hardly affords scanty food, from 
 time to time, to a few cattle in common — a 
 far greater value is developed by private 
 industry. This process had been going on, 
 indeed, more or less ever since the end of 
 the Middle Ages, but it may be said to have 
 become one of the distinguishing features 
 
 • In Prussia a law was passed, September 14, 1811, wliich 
 enabled every land-owner to absolve his feudal services, by 
 obliging him to whom they were due to lake an equivalent for 
 them, and which divided all lands held by communities for 
 constant or alternate common use, and which were, accord- 
 ing to their quality, divisible into private property. We do 
 not speak here, of course, of property held by communities or 
 corporations, so that the profits accrue to them collectively, 
 but only of common lands, made use of by the members of ihfi 
 community individually.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 163 
 
 of the age during the last century, and is 
 closely connected with what may be fairly 
 called the main problem of \he last period 
 of history, the Commons' Liberty — individ- 
 ual independence brought down to the 
 great mass of citizens, and not restricted 
 either to the nobility, or to corporations or 
 chartered bodies.' 
 
 ' The characteristic difference between civil liberty in an- 
 cient limes, the Middle Ages, and modern times, or of City 
 States, Corporation States, and National States, forms one of 
 the most interesting and most instructive subjects for the 
 philosophical inquirer into history. I have endeavoured to 
 sketch this diflference, as well as the occasion permitted, in 
 the second volume of my Political Ethics, where the peculiar 
 character of the Representative, and the duties arising out of 
 it, are discussed. I am not aware that there e.Tists anywhere 
 a history of property in which a strictly historical sketch of the 
 ♦.itles and tenure of property is given. It would be one of the 
 most interesting contributions to the history of civilization.
 
 VI. 
 
 On the Inequality of Individual Property. 
 
 The theories which from time to time, 
 since the first centuries of our era, have been 
 started with reference to a community of 
 property, either on religious, political, or 
 strictly social grounds, and which have of 
 late been renewed in some countries with 
 redoubled activity,' are owing to several 
 
 ' Community of property was repeatedly preached by reli- 
 gious fanatics in the Middle Ages, long before the reforma- 
 tion. Allusion is made here, not to the founders of monastic 
 orders, who established a community of property within the 
 limits of their orders, but to those sects who actually preached 
 a general community of all property. Of course, they never 
 had a chance to try the realization of what needs must be im- 
 possible, although they created misery and suffering, vice and 
 crime, even in their attempts. The most ferocious preachers 
 of a universal community of property (and even of wives) 
 among the protestants were the anabaptists. 
 
 It may be mentioned here as an interesting, and no doubt 
 significant fact, that, whenever community of property has 
 been held up by christian fanatics, and, I believe, also by Mo- 
 hammedan, community of wives, or promiscuous intercourse 
 of the sexes, was coupled wi'h the fanatical doctrine. We
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 165 
 
 Other reasons than those misconceptions or 
 that confusion of ideas on the original right 
 of private property, or on a community of 
 property within limited bounds, of which we 
 have treated. They have been owing, in 
 part, to the inequality of property. 
 
 No candid man will deny that there is, at 
 the first glance, something startling in the 
 contemplation of a large amount of wealth 
 accumulated in the hands of some individ- 
 uals, while many others are known to live 
 in penury or actual wretchedness from Avant. 
 There seems at first really to be a crynig 
 injustice in such an order of things. 
 
 perceive a similar phonomeiion in regard to the modem 
 socialists, at least in the American followers of the Eng- 
 lish. I am unable to say what the precise theory on this 
 point in the British socialist text-hooks is. The French wri- 
 ters imbued with socialism, for instance Mr. Fourrier, prove 
 the same. 
 
 There is hardly a more interesting suhject which can occu- 
 py the inquirer into the organization of society and politics 
 than this fact, and the tracing of the reasons why an annihila- 
 tion of private property is so closely connected with the de- 
 struction of matrimony, and especially of monogamy. An es- 
 say on this subject would have found a befitting place in this 
 volume according to its contents, but probably not with refer- 
 ence to its immediate destination.
 
 166 PROPERTV AND LABOUR. 
 
 This inequality of fortunes was greater, 
 probably, than at any other period, during 
 the imperial epoch of Rome, the time when 
 the first christian philosophers — the fathers 
 of the church — expressed their ideas on 
 private property and the division of goods, 
 which was caused, as they maintained, by 
 the wicked, and the community of goods 
 which ought to exist, or might exist, among 
 the faithful, in which opinion they were 
 strengthened by the views of the ancient 
 poets. To both, allusion has already been 
 made. 
 
 The question which can occupy us in 
 these essays is not whether fortunes have 
 not at times become alarmingly large, or 
 whether, during some periods, wars have not 
 concentrated immense riches in the hands 
 of a few, and impoverished all the rest, as 
 was the case at the cited period of Rome, 
 when, besides the princely fortunes of the 
 senators and favourites, all else in Italy was 
 poverty and squalid slavery. 
 
 The question for us is, Is inequality of 
 fortune the effect of original injustice, or
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 167 
 
 must it always be the natural effect of the 
 course of things ? Can it be wholly avoid- 
 ed, or will the end of civilization be a total 
 equality of fortunes, as there seems to be 
 no doubt that modern civilization has effect- 
 ed a greater general equality than ever ex- 
 isted before, where accumulation of property 
 existed at all ? Would an avoidance of in- 
 equality of property, if possible, be benefi- 
 cial ? Is there not equal inequality in all 
 other spheres of human life and action ? 
 And, finally, would not those remedies, 
 which have been proposed with a view of 
 extinguishing inequality of property, and 
 with it inequality of condition, entail infi- 
 nitely greater misery ? 
 
 Is the inequality of property the effect of 
 injustice, or is it natural, consonant with our 
 organization, agreeable to our destiny ? 
 
 We have seen that the acquisition of 
 property by appropriation and production is 
 one of the essential attributes of man, is ne- 
 cessary for the advancement of mankind, 
 and cannot be eradicated from our nature. 
 Property is a primitive, direct, and absolute
 
 168 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 manifcslnlion of it, as much as language or 
 the political existence of man. Individuals 
 may rise from time to time, and question 
 the justice of private property, as there have 
 been, and still are, fanatics who question 
 all authority whatever except the light with- 
 in each person, and wholly deny the justice 
 of compulsory measures ; but neither the 
 one nor the other can repress the nature of 
 man, who will go on, and who cannot help 
 going on, appropriating and producing, and, 
 consequently, making property ; and who 
 will continue to consider it not only a duty, 
 but a privilege, which distinguishes him from 
 the brute, that he can acknowledge authority 
 and obey laws.' 
 
 Fortune, if we mean by this term a fa- 
 vourable or unfavourable efl'ect of things, 
 wholly uncontrollable by the individual af- 
 fected, has, as every one willingly acknowl- 
 edges, as great a share in the enjoyment of 
 property as it has in all other human affairs. 
 To be born the son of an industrious and 
 
 ' See Political Ethics, on Obedience to the Laws.
 
 PROPERTY A\D LABOUR. 169 
 
 skilful man, Avho contrived to save every 
 year some values over and above his ex- 
 penses, and to accumulate them, so that the 
 son has a capital to begin with when he, in 
 turn, sei'is out for himself in practical and 
 productive life, is to be fortunate. It is a 
 species of good luck which may fall to the lot 
 of one not half so deserving as a son of an 
 improvident father who does not accumu- 
 late, or one Avho, himself oppressed with 
 poverty, has never enjoyed a chance to ac- 
 cumulate any vahies. 
 
 But can we eradicate the influence which 
 birth necessarily has upon every individual ? 
 The inequality of property, indeed, is but 
 a minimum of the universal inequality of all 
 things, and existing in all spheres of action. 
 Every individual is strongly influenced, 
 both physically and morally, by the place 
 where, the period, the political system, and 
 religion in which, and the parents of whom, 
 he is born. The general state of health of 
 the parents greatly aff'ects that of their is- 
 sue ; the virtue or vice of the parents influ- 
 ences the education of their children . Chan- 
 O
 
 170 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 ces, or uncontrollable, yet influencing occur- 
 rences affect us at every moment of our life. 
 
 Men have ever perceived this truth, and all 
 ages, therefore, have felt their dependancc, 
 and been led to a belief in an overruling 
 power. When the ancient fervently prayed 
 to the goddess of Fortune for his newborn 
 child, he was right in his consciousness of the 
 utter insufficiency of human power, although 
 his arms, stretched out in prayer, groped 
 in the dark, and were directed towards a 
 phantom. Bitterly as many of us do feel 
 the inequality of condition, still man is not, 
 what the Titan strove to be, his own god. 
 
 We cannot possibly eradicate the thou* 
 sand effects of the chances of birth within the 
 limits of a certain country, any more than the 
 immense difference which there is between 
 the fact of being born of Esquimaux parents 
 near the icy pole, or of a contented farmer 
 on the Ohio, or of an Athenian father at the 
 times of Pericles. 
 
 Equality of property is desired in order to 
 produce equality of condition, but does con- 
 dition depend upon property alone or chief- 
 ly ? How can an erinalitv of condition
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 171 
 
 among civilized men be imagined, when the 
 whole scale of the brute creation hardly 
 shows so great a difference between the 
 highest and the loAvest animal as that be- 
 tween the most gifted aiid the lowest man ? 
 An infinite diversity in the physical as Avell 
 as intellectual and moral world is the great 
 pervading law of the universe. We cannot 
 change the different degrees of fertility of 
 soil in the various countries, although it 
 may at first appear to us startling that some 
 parts of the globe should be so genial, and 
 abounding in wealth almost at the mere 
 touch of the human hand, while other soils 
 grant but grudgingly the barest subsistence 
 upon mean food to the hardest toil and jHod- 
 ding perseverance. Yet we shall find that 
 it is owing, before all otlier things, to this 
 very variety of soil, and the different angle 
 in which it receives the rays of the sun, that 
 men exchange, have commerce and indus- 
 try, are enabled to people the world in great 
 numbers, are obliged to have intercourse 
 with one another, and to become civilized. 
 Perfect equality of soil and clime, even
 
 172 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 though of the most fruitful kind, would 
 have rendered possible a very sparse popu- 
 lation only, and this would have remained in 
 a Stat? of continued stagnation, simply be- 
 cause there would have been no exchange. 
 If the levelling principle be adopted, upon 
 which inequality of fortune is considered an 
 injustice, it seems that the poor Norwegian 
 peasant, feeding upon his compound bread 
 of oatmeal and bark, would have the fairest 
 possible claim to share in the values which 
 his far more fortunate fellow - farmer in 
 the Genesee Valley, that happy land of 
 the cultivator, is enabled to accumulate — I 
 mean, to share in them in a direct way, and 
 not, as he now actually possesses a right of 
 doing, in offering values which he may have 
 accumulated for land which may be offered 
 here for sale. Has the Genesee farmer 
 made his oAvn lot and destiny ? If it be 
 unjust that there are men within the country 
 richer than himself, it is equally unjust that 
 he is richer than others either in his country 
 or abroad ; and — which is always left out of 
 consideration by the declaimers against the
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 173 
 
 inequality of condition among men — if ine- 
 quality of condition is the great source of 
 crime and vice Avithin a countryj it will ne- 
 cessarily still continue to be the same, even 
 if their visionary schemes could be exe- 
 cuted, but an equality of fortune and condi- 
 tion among the various states, tribes, and 
 nations should continue. 
 
 Equality is found nowhere. As it would 
 produce stagnation in the physical, so it 
 would effect inanity in the moral and social 
 world. If all bodies were equally bulky, 
 at equal distance and of equal attraction, 
 there would be no motion of the heavenly 
 bodies, no seasons, no vegetation. Diver- 
 sity is the indispensable law of life. If the 
 dispositions, constitutions, and characters of 
 all men were equal, a state of inane no- 
 thingness, " in which all opposites have 
 ceased," such as the contemplative Hindoo 
 considers perfection, must ensue. Inequal- 
 ity of property is the will of the Creator ; 
 for individual property cannot exist without 
 it, and individual property lies at the bot- 
 tom of human advancement and civilization.
 
 174 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 The argument, sometimes used against 
 riches, that it is wrong that some sliould be 
 rich so k ng as others are poor, is insuffi- 
 cient. If it were correct it would hold 
 against all inequality of property ; and if 
 we abolish inequality of property, we must 
 sink into unproductive barbarity, where all 
 are poor. So natural and necessary is in- 
 dividual property to man, that there is no 
 fear that it can ever be eradicated ; but 
 men may arrive at this ultimate conclusion 
 only after fearful and sanguinary attempts 
 at its extinction. Every attempt at what is 
 unnatural rr.ust prove unsuccessful in the 
 end, but the attempts themselves produce 
 suffering and misery, or, if only wished for, 
 discontent and unfitness for an active and 
 useful life. 
 
 From what has been stated before, it 
 must have appeared that the view of the in- 
 justice of diverse fortunes is founded upon 
 another serious error. It was remarked 
 that it is not long since the science of polit- 
 ical economy has clearly proved that wealth 
 does not consist in so much coin or specie,
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 175 
 
 but in values ; and that, to repeat previous 
 remarks, values are produced by conferring 
 utility or desirableness upon things, so that 
 they may be exchanged one for the other 
 to the benefit and the increased possession 
 of values or wealth of both the exchangers. 
 When money alone was considered to 
 constitute wealth, and when, again, nearly 
 all men harboured the distinct or dim idea 
 that money and specie were the same, it 
 was likewise believed, and openly stated, 
 that what makes one man the richer must 
 make another poorer ; that if one nation 
 prospers, others must needs proportionately 
 suffer ; for there is but a certain amount of 
 specie, and if wealth consists in specie, it is 
 clear that, if it accumulates in one place, 
 it must lessen in another.' Accumulated 
 wealth in private individuals appeared like- 
 wise as so much wealth taken from others, 
 and withheld from those who do not pos- 
 sess it. 
 
 ' The author is aware that he has staled this before, but he 
 cannot avoid exhibiting again so deep-rooted and yet so fatal 
 an error.
 
 176 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 Since wc know, liowevcr, that wealth con- 
 sists in values ; that values must be accumu- 
 lated in order to furnish capital to begin 
 the production of new and farther values; 
 and that exchange of values is in all judi- 
 cious cases for the benefit of both exchan- 
 gers, we know, too, that accumulated cap- 
 itals are not spoliations of others, and, if 
 honestly acquired, hoAvever great, imply no 
 injustice whatever ; but, on the contrary, 
 that, as Adam Smith expresses it, every sa- 
 ving and accumulating man is like the 
 founder of an almshouse for all future gen- 
 erations. He is indeed more ; for he lays 
 the foundation for the support of labour for 
 all generations to come, indeed forever, un- 
 less the beneficent efTect of accumulation 
 is arrested by a wasteful process, tiiat is, by 
 some unproductive consumption.' 
 
 If a merchant uses his means to transport 
 commodities desired and valued in America 
 from a place Avhere they are abundant and 
 
 ' Every sound work on Political Economy shows this fact 
 conclusively. There is perhaps none which does so mor* 
 plainly and cogently than Mr. Say's Political Economy.
 
 PROPERTY ANT) LABOUR. 177 
 
 cheap, and offers in exchange, to the produ- 
 cer of the connnodities a higher vahie than 
 the latter could obtain where they are not 
 desired, as in Anncrica ; and if the same 
 merchant offers these desired commodities, 
 even after he has added to their price the 
 amount of value w^hich he means to make as 
 his profit, for a lower price to the American 
 consumer than that at which they possibly 
 could have been obtained without the mer- 
 chant's assistance, does he not benefit both 
 tlie consumer and producer ? Whom has 
 he despoiled ? His profit is strictly of 
 his own creation, and, while he benefits 
 both producer and consumer, he bestows 
 the additional benefit upon his community 
 of creating and accumulating new values, 
 namely, in his own profits. These values 
 did not exist before, and henceforth form 
 part of the national capital to support la- 
 bour, to serve in the production of further 
 new values, to support still more labour, to 
 feed more mouths, clothe more bodies, and 
 warm more homes ; in brief, to extend com- 
 fort and civilization.
 
 178 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 Is there not equal and still greater in- 
 equality in all Dther spheres than in the pos- 
 session of property ? The inequality of for- 
 tunes is great indeed; but, however great, it 
 is not so surprising and vast as that which 
 subsists between a sage and a fool ; a heal- 
 thy and a sickly person; a gifted and a dull 
 intellect ; a naturally gentle and harnnionious 
 soul, and an impetuous, passionate heart ; a 
 man whose parents had befriended them- 
 selves with many people far and wide, or 
 whose father had acquired reputation and 
 distinction, and one born of obscure parents, 
 left at an early age as a friendless orphan. 
 
 We all know that a natural suavity and 
 gentleness, accompanied by an engaging 
 countenance and pleasing form, frequent- 
 ly become the key to unlock the first gates 
 of success, which may remain closed to an- 
 other of equal worth and talent, but unen- 
 dowed with these means of first introduc- 
 tion ? And may not all this happen with- 
 out any fault or injustice being chargeable 
 to any one ? Should we attempt to level 
 all these diversities too ? Should we com-
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 179 
 
 plain of the injustice which elevates a Ba- 
 con, a Shakspeare, or a Chatham in intel- 
 lect, genius, and energy so high above un- 
 counted millions of their fellow-creatures, 
 that their eminent minds must have enjoyed 
 mental activities of which we, but poorly 
 gifted, can have no conception ? And is, 
 indeed, this inequality not far more impor- 
 tant and surprising than that of property ? 
 
 Can the Inequality of Property be eradi- 
 cated ? 
 
 Is it in our power to remedy the inequal- 
 ity of property of which we have just spo- 
 ken, if it were desirable to do so ? and would 
 not those remedies which have been pro- 
 posed entail still greater misery ? Many re- 
 marks in the course of the present inqui- 
 ry have already, in a great measure, an- 
 swered these questions. 
 
 One of the chief evils complained of in re- 
 gard to the inequality of property and conse- 
 quent difTerence of condition among men is, 
 I believe, the unduly small share which the 
 workman has in the ultimate profits derived
 
 180 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 from the product. While the owner of the 
 factory makes thousands a year, the actual 
 weaver, or the person who attends the spin- 
 ning machines, receives so small a share that, 
 in some countries, he can but barely exist 
 upon it. The means which have been pro- 
 posed to remedy this evil are associations, 
 in which the net profit shall be equally di- 
 vided among all persons, or in which all 
 profits shall be held as common property ; 
 in short, the abolition of wages and the ab- 
 olition of individual inheritance. Tempo- 
 rary redress has been sought for in associa- 
 tions to enforce higher wages.' 
 
 Although certain numbers of men may 
 unite in associations holding certain kinds 
 of property in common, and throw their 
 profits into one common fund, they will still 
 hold their property, with reference to others, 
 as private property, and between these dif- 
 ferent associations there must necessarily ex- 
 ist the same inequality of property as now 
 exists among individuals. Even within 
 
 1 These associations hive been usually called Trades' 
 Unions.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 181 
 
 themselves the associations can never wholly 
 extinguish the idea of private property in 
 apparel and other articles, if they are found- 
 ed upon those religious views which enjoin 
 celibacy upon the members, and can only 
 check for a time the natural desire of 
 man to acquire property of his own if they 
 allow the existence of families. Should 
 they attempt to extinguish the knowledge 
 of parentage, as Plato proposes in his 
 Republic for one class of his citizens, 
 they still farther encroach upon the im- 
 mutable laws of nature, and create still 
 greater moral and physical disorder. But 
 none of these societies, which abolish pri- 
 vate property, and with it the liberty of be- 
 quest, can exist for any great length of time 
 unless they allow constant egress, and in that 
 case they might indeed be imagined to be 
 of some benefit under very peculiar circum- 
 stances, but only as exceptions, and for en- 
 tirely different reasons than the general ab- 
 olition of private property or of the ine- 
 quality of conditions. 
 
 Man must ever return to his nature, and
 
 182 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 he promotes general progress and civiliza- 
 tion only in so far as he conscientiously de- 
 velops that nature which for wise ends his 
 Maker has given him. IVIan is conscious 
 that what he is, he is individually. 
 
 Destined as he is for society, he is still 
 conscious that no one can be good or bad, 
 healthy or sick, happy or unhappy, cold or 
 warm, for another. He naturally flies from 
 a state of things in which his individuality 
 would be lost ; a situation in whose forced 
 or dull uniformity he would be only distin- 
 guished from others, as the prisoner is in a 
 penitentiary — by a number ; in which his 
 own gifts, his own exertions, in short, all 
 that may be called his peculiar individual- 
 ity, could not distinctly imprint itself on his 
 actions and their effects, and in which he 
 should be deprived of his natural and inval- 
 uable right to call the product of his own 
 exertions, his own property ; to accumulate 
 as he chooses ; to exchange it lor what he 
 desires, and to dispose of it for the benefit 
 of his individual family, which bears his 
 name, has been reared by himself, and for
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 183 
 
 whom he collected it with toil and trouble. 
 Man yearns to see his individuality repre- 
 sented and reflected in the eflects of his ex- 
 ertions — in property. It is as inextinguish- 
 able a principle as his own individuality, 
 and has that quality in common with all 
 original laws in our nature, which are abso- 
 lutely necessary for man's physical or in- 
 tellectual progress or existence, that it de- 
 lights man in being acted out, and distresses 
 him at being repressed. Man justly, and not 
 wickedly, rejoices in honestly saving values 
 and accumulating property. It is a pleasure 
 as natural and as pure as the physical pleas- 
 ure of drinking when we are thirsty, of rest- 
 ing when we are tired, or the mental delight 
 of exercising our peculiar gifts and talents 
 when we find our proper sphere of action. 
 
 Societies which strive to extinguish pri- 
 vate property must necessarily extinguish, in 
 the same degree, great individual exertion, 
 and, consequently, retard general produc- 
 tion. How long and in how extended a 
 sphere would that enthusiasm last Avhich 
 might prompt a man for a time to labour in-
 
 184 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 dustrionsly for the indolent ? What a source 
 of jealousy and discontent would this alone 
 form I what an inducement to the indolent 
 to relax still more I Those who see great 
 riches on the one hand, but oppressive pover- 
 ty, on the other, and propose the remedy of 
 an equalization of property, forget that the 
 process itself would destroy countless val- 
 ues, and, consequently, the support of so 
 many of the poor as were supported by 
 them. If, on the other iiand, a system were 
 devised by which repeated and continued 
 equalization of property should be forced 
 upon men, the destruction of property and 
 prevention of its accumulation would be 
 made permanent. Thus capital, the only 
 support of labour, would be destroyed, and 
 infinitely more misery must ensue than now 
 exists. 
 
 If a higher moral state is expected from 
 associations acknowledging no private prop- 
 erty, because it is supposed that the main 
 source of jealousy is taken away, we have 
 only to examine the actual state of mon- 
 asteries or other similar societies. Those
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 185 
 
 little communities are well known to be full 
 of petty jealousies and heart-burnings. The 
 nature of man does not improve by being 
 cramped and counteracted. 
 
 If, however, the system of wages, as it 
 has been erroneously called — for we might 
 as well speak of the system of prices, and 
 its abolition — if wages could be abolished 
 in any other way except by associations 
 with common property,' the immediate ef- 
 fect must be to reduce man to the barbarous 
 state when producer and capitalist are the 
 same, with which he begins the care<;r of 
 civilization, and in which production is ne- 
 cessarily very dear, because the cheapening 
 process of producing on a large scale can- 
 not take place. Accumulation of capital 
 would be much impeded, arid the support of 
 mankind fail ; indeed, capital could not ac- 
 
 • It is difficult, however, as I stated before, to see how the 
 many associations composing a nation can help standing in a 
 similar relation, in which now the individuals stand, exchan- 
 ging labour or products. Or shall we imagine a whole nation 
 turned into one society of this sort T We can scarcely depict to 
 our mind the barbarity, wretchedness, and dulncss of such a 
 nation in sufficiently strong colours. 
 P
 
 186 rROI'KKTV AM) LABOUR. 
 
 cumulate ; or, if it should do so, of what use 
 would it be ? Ijabour could not be pro- 
 cured for it, because we argue under the 
 supposition that wages are abolished. 
 
 Wages, it is maintained, are too low. If 
 by this assertion it be meant that in some 
 countries honest exertion is insufficient to 
 support a man, it is unfortunately true ; and 
 everything that a wise government or active 
 charity could devise to better such a state 
 ought to be done. But the measures which 
 ought to be resorted to are far different from 
 those which imply a change of the nature of 
 things, which is, that in the great exchange 
 of mankind, things, services, labour, capi- 
 tal, talent, skill, learning, utility, or enjoy- 
 ment, obtain the price which, in all the com- 
 bination of circumstances, they are consider- 
 ed worth ; that is to say, people are willing 
 to exchange for them values of their own 
 which they consider equivalents ; and all 
 measures which attempt to abolish this first 
 principle, that the price is regulated by the 
 desirableness of the thmg offered, in the 
 free exchange of mankind, can only in- 
 crease the evil tenfold.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 187 
 
 Some writers actually express themselves 
 as though mere physical labour' were the 
 only thing that ought to have value ; as 
 though capital could be dispensed with in 
 production, and, if not, as if it should re- 
 ceive no share of the profits. But what 
 is this share ? That is wholly regulated by 
 its desirableness ; if there be much capital 
 and little labour in the market, capital will 
 receive a small share in the profits of the 
 product, and vice versa ; but any attempt 
 to force up the value of the one and depress 
 the other must create ruin and mischief. 
 Wages are no more an invention than prop- 
 erty itself. They are the natural and ne- 
 cessary effect of the state of things — of the 
 relation of man to the things around him. 
 
 Neither can any real and lasting good be 
 effected by associations whose object is to 
 enforce, by combination, wages higher than 
 the natural price of labour, which is the effect 
 
 ' I do not pretend to understand these writers, who claim 
 such high estimation for mere physical lahour. Man's labour 
 IS almost always guided by his judgment ; if not, we strive 
 to substitute animal power or machmes. If human labour if 
 still continued, it stands on a par with animal power.
 
 188 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 of demand and supply offered in the market, 
 or exchange. If the members of a Trades' 
 Union succeed in raising wages, the em> 
 ployer either continues to manufacture or 
 not. If not, of course the means of sup- 
 port of labour are destroyed ; if he does, 
 without sufficient remuneration for his capi- 
 tal, he will soon remove it, and employ it in 
 some other way. In this case the work- 
 men of course lose their support, and so- 
 ciety at large loses, because a loss is neces- 
 sarily incurred at each violent change of in- 
 vestment or of productive channel. Should 
 the employer raise the price of the product 
 according to the rise of wages, others will 
 undersell him, if not in his OAvn country, cer- 
 tainly in foreign parts. Indeed, strikes of 
 Trades' Unions are very apt to drive whole 
 branches of industry into foreign regions, 
 and always drive capital, that is, the support 
 of labour, from the places where they hap- 
 pen. 
 
 In the mean time, the destruction which 
 they cause by the interference with produc- 
 tion, and by the useless consumption of val-
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 189 
 
 ues which the workmen were able to save 
 at previous periods, is frightful. Mr. Du- 
 pin, a distinguished M-riter who has been 
 mentioned before, lately stated that, during 
 a strike of the Paris workmen in the au- 
 tumn of the year 1840, thirteen millions of 
 francs were drawn from the Savings' Bank at 
 Paris. Here the industrious workmen had 
 deposited their saved values ; they received 
 interest for it, while they earned additional 
 values so long as they worked. They stop- 
 ped working, and Avere obliged to consume 
 what they had saved. Whether they did 
 this, or should have continued to work, and 
 have thrown all they had saved into the 
 River Seine, amounts precisely to the same. 
 They, and, with them, mankind, are thirteen 
 millions of francs less wealthy. This sum 
 exists no longer, to be used productively, to 
 support labour, ^ind to create new demands 
 by offering for exchange the products which 
 would have been the result of these millions. 
 A calculation was made at the time of the 
 trial of the Glasgow cotton-spinners in 1838, 
 by Mr. Tait. He found that the loss of the 
 workmen, exclusive of the loss by the em-
 
 190 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 ployers of profits, interest on capital, and 
 diversion of trade, v/as, during a strike of 
 seventeen weeks, two hundred and forty- 
 five thousand dollars.' 
 
 When men speak against private prop- 
 erty, it is easy to detect that many have in 
 their minds some few princely fortunes, 
 some ideas of vast riches ; but they do not 
 remember that the whole subject of prop- 
 erty is of infinitely greater importance to 
 the vast class of small property holders, and 
 the equally vast one composed of those 
 
 ' Torrens, on Wages and Combination, treats of the neces- 
 sary effects of the latter. The injurious effects upon morals 
 by Trades' Unions have been discussed in the Political Eth- 
 ics. Only since the whole of these tracts were written has 
 their author become acquainted with the Political Economy, 
 its Objects, Uses, and Principles, by A. Potter, IS'ew-York, 
 1840. The Supplementary Chapter of this work contains an 
 essay on the Condition of Labouring Men in the United 
 States, in which an inquiry into the character and necessary 
 effects of Trades' Unions is to be found, much the best, so far 
 as my knowledge extends, of all writings which treat of this 
 subject with reference to the United States. It is brief, lucid, 
 and replete with important facts. Remarks on Unions of 
 Trades, of interest with reference to their history, may be found 
 in S. Wade's History of the Middle and Working Classes, 
 London, 1S33> chap, x
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 191 
 
 members of society who do not possess 
 much enduring property, but acquire and 
 consume property daily or weekly. If we 
 declare a community of property of what- 
 ever sort, we must sensibly affect and let- 
 ter the previous freedom of acquiring it 
 whether this be done to save it or to con 
 sume the whole again ; in short, we musi 
 affect the invaluable right of every free man 
 to exchange his labour for what he find? 
 most advisable, and seriously cripple the 
 creation of that which can be offered in eX' 
 change for human exertion, and consequent- 
 ly support it. 
 
 When we reflect upon the fact that a vast 
 majority of all law-cases arise out of dis- 
 putes about Mine and Thine, wc might, if 
 sufficiently hasty, conclude that an abolition 
 of this source of contest would be the great- 
 est harbinger of peace to mankind. The 
 fact, however, would be far different. Only 
 when men have acquired private and dis- 
 tinct property in the soil, they unite into 
 closer and more peaceful societies, soften in 
 manners, and then only grow up the more
 
 192 
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 distinct governments, which form one of the 
 indispensable means of civilization. How- 
 ever frequent the disputes about property 
 may be in populous communities, it is nev- 
 ertheless the very lie of society. 
 
 Private property, and the unshackled right 
 of acquiring it, is, all appearances at a hasty 
 glance to the contrary, nevertheless the nour- 
 isher of man and the cement of society; the 
 incentive of individual industry, and broad 
 foundation of general prosperity ; it is the 
 basis of social advancement, the support of 
 knowledge, and a mirror in which man be- 
 holds his rights ; it is the promoter of manly 
 consciousness and individual independence, 
 and a firm foundation-stone of the fabric of 
 national liberty. The security of its acqui- 
 sition, and, when acquired, of its transmis- 
 sion to other generations ; the consciousness 
 of holding property by an inherent natural 
 right, and not simply at the mercy of the 
 ruler — it is these that constitute the striking 
 difference between man as he appears in 
 Asia, and the Western man. It is this 
 prominent feature of individual property
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 193 
 
 independent of government, and, however 
 often disturbed upon erroneous reasons or 
 for tyrannical purposes, yet far more often 
 acknowledged and insisted upon by theory, 
 fact, charter, or rebellion, which forms one 
 of the broadest fundamental differences of 
 European and Asiatic history ; which has 
 invariably shown itself clearer at the periods 
 favourable to freedom, and has been pro- 
 portionately obscured when despotism wield- 
 ed its fearful sway, under whatever form or 
 name it happened to make its appearance. 
 With the security of individual property 
 must general morality, manliness, ajid res- 
 olute activity stand and flourish, or with 
 its extinction be changed into slavishness, 
 which never fails to crouch before the des- 
 pot, be he one or many, that disposes of the 
 tenure of property. It is this feature and 
 peculiarity of private property which gives 
 it so great an importance in the whole history 
 of Europe, and so little in that of Asia, while 
 even the Asiatic himself acknowledges the 
 Western man more liberal in matters of 
 value than the Eastern.
 
 VII. 
 
 Concluding Remarks. 
 
 The many natural advantages of the 
 United States ; the abundance of fertile 
 land, with a thin population, unexposed to 
 the evils and dangers with which crowded 
 countries are rife ; the high political privi- 
 leges enjoyed by every one, and the unim- 
 peded pursuit of any trade or profession 
 open to every person ; the descent of the 
 people from the most energetic and enlight- 
 ened nations of the earth ; the distance of 
 America from those countries with which, 
 by a common civilization, it is nevertheless 
 united, and its thus being able politically to 
 keep aloof from many diplomatic influen- 
 ces and difficulties which nations situated 
 in closer vicinity cannot avoid — these, and 
 many other circumstances, which unitedly 
 were, at no previous period, enjoyed by any 
 other nation, or, at least, in the same de-
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 195 
 
 gree, would make it probable that general 
 contentment, if it might be expected any- 
 where where mortals dwell, should be met 
 with in this vast and beneficently endowed 
 dominion of ours. 
 
 But it is not so. A fretful uneasiness, a 
 discontent unable calmly to enjoy these ac- 
 knowledged blessings, and leading to a de- 
 sire of changing real or supposed grievan- 
 ces by rash and extravagant schemes of 
 sudden innovation, and not by gradual, and, 
 therefore, sure improvements, pervade many 
 large classes of our citizens. Above all, 
 here, as in other countries, many people 
 imagine that almost every ill to Avhich hu- 
 man life is subject is to be extinguished 
 by political legislation, or by some radical 
 and violent change of social organization. 
 Many men here, as elsewhere, seem to be 
 ignorant of the fact that the great aphorism 
 of Bacon regarding man's capacity of ac- 
 quiring a knowledge of physical nature ap- 
 plies, and with as much force, to his ability 
 of acquiring a sound knowledge of the 
 moral nature of man and of the wliolo
 
 196 PROrERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 organization of society. They start, in- 
 considerately, new theories and hazardous 
 schemes, without patient observation and 
 mature reflection. Here, as elsewhere, im- 
 aginary complaints take the place of real 
 ones. Here, as elsewhere, men speak, 
 write, and act as though the world were 
 not yet made, but must now only be res- 
 cued by their exertions from a shapeless 
 chaos, and may be fashioned by them, for 
 the first time, into order. 
 
 It is not my object to inquire into all the 
 causes, moral, religious, or political, of this 
 uniformity of discontent among men — a sub- 
 ject doubtless of great interest, but of a na- 
 ture not to be discussed here in any degree 
 adequate to its importance. All that I can 
 propose doing is to offer some remarks on 
 this discontent, as bearing directly on the 
 subject of property and labour. Many of 
 the previous reflections have, indeed, alrea- 
 dy touched upon several subjects offering 
 themselves under the present head. To 
 these it may not be amiss to add the fol- 
 lowing.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 197 
 
 The free nature of our political institu- 
 tions requires every member of the commu- 
 nity to judge for himself of whatever affects 
 the public welfare ; a variety of opinions 
 must be the consequence, for such is the ef- 
 fect of freedom in every sphere. The opin- 
 ion which many thus form of the importance 
 of their own judgment must necessarily, in 
 numerous cases, be raised above what a cor- 
 rect appreciation would warrant.' These 
 are unavoidable evils. No enlightened man 
 who perceives the-m would on that account 
 prefer the self-abandoning resignation of the 
 Asiatic, inured to despotism, Avho never 
 looks to his own means of righting himself 
 against public wrongs, and believes he has 
 done enough if he patiently submits, and ex- 
 claims " Allah is great !" But it ought not 
 to be forgotten that due contentment, proper 
 resignation, absence of envy and jealousy, 
 
 ' The vole, wbich gives a positive and practical importance 
 to the opinion of the voter, contributes greatly to enhance his 
 judgment of his own powers ; for the vote of all is, as a mat- 
 ter of course, alike ; and not a few judge that, if their vote 
 counts as well as that of any other citizen, their opinion is as 
 sound, and their intellect as strong, as that of anv oih«^r person.
 
 198 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 and a resolute endeavour to enjoy the bless- 
 ings given to us by Providence to the best 
 of our powers, without frittering away our 
 means and iinbittcring our lives, is true 
 manliness, and shows far greater elevation 
 of soul than perpetual restlessness in stri- 
 ving for unattainable objects, in envying 
 others for their enjoyment of advantages 
 which have been denied us, and in forgetting 
 of how much they are deprived which we; 
 on the other hand, possess in abundance. 
 
 Contentment with one's worldly lot is not 
 only a religious virtue, but an important 
 political one ; nor is it less necessary for 
 private than for public prosperity. Yet 
 how many are there that daily stir up a 
 spirit of discontent, frequently for no other 
 purpose than to raise their own importance ; 
 and, comparatively, how few men look to the 
 many blessings they enjoy, compare them 
 with the grievances they suffer, and draw 
 from the comparison new motives of thank- 
 fulness to the Creator of their beins: ? But 
 vanity prospers far more by agitation than 
 by calmness.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 199 
 
 Many well-disposed as well as design- 
 ing men have much increased this want of 
 contentment, by diffusing strained ideas of 
 the destiny of man, and by representing 
 labour at one time as degrading to him, or 
 vastly interfering with this high-wrought 
 destiny ; at others, by representing the so- 
 called labouring classes as more important 
 than all others ; by magnifying the disad- 
 vantages to v/hich comparative poverty ex- 
 poses them ; and again, by arrogating for 
 them alone the distinction of hard-working 
 men, as though the great judgment that we 
 shall eat our bread in the sweat of our 
 brow, pronounced over all men, applied in 
 the present age to them alone. 
 
 We cannot abrogate social order, or 
 change human nature \ipon which social 
 order is founded. More men in this world 
 must needs be engaged in working than in 
 contemplating ; and he that labours physi- 
 cally during ten or twelve hours of the day, 
 cannot, of course, be as fit for reflection 
 as the man who follows consecutively, 
 and, therefore, with increasing intensity of
 
 200 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 thought, his intellectual pursuits. A Her- 
 schel' may indeed play his violin for his 
 support to a late hour of the night, and 
 still, after this labour, retire to his great as- 
 tronomical task'; a Spinosa may obtain his 
 sustenance by grinding optical glasses, and 
 yet pursue his philosophical meditations ; 
 a Franklin or a Roscoe may be engaged in 
 practical pursuits, and yet be distinguished 
 as a philosopher or an historian ; yet it re- 
 quires a Herschel, Spinosa, Franklin, or 
 Roscoe to be able to combine both, :inf^ 
 every future Herschel or Spinosa will break 
 through the same difficulties. 
 
 It would, indeed, have been a great mis- 
 fortune for mankind had Newton been for- 
 ced by circumstances to work in some me- 
 chanical trade so assiduously for his sup- 
 port that no time had remained for study ; 
 but it would be far worse if ever it should 
 come to pass that the majority of farmers 
 or mechanics should think they did not ful- 
 
 1 Sir William Herschel had already completed many tele- 
 scopes, and even a twenty-feet reflector, before be withdrew 
 from his profession as a musician.
 
 PROPERTY A.\D LABOUR. 201 
 
 fil their destiny if they did not strive to 
 become Newtons. Universal wretchedness 
 would be the unavoidable consequence of 
 so overwrought a state of things. There 
 is a fair exchange in this as in all other 
 spheres. If some individuals are freed, not 
 from hard labour, indeed, but from physi- 
 cal labour, they offer the results of their 
 work, be it in the shape of new truths and 
 discoveries, of increased exchange by the 
 pursuit of commerce, as teachers, or in what- 
 ever other form, to mankind in return, who 
 greatly profit thereby. They could not 
 do so were all obliged to exert themselves 
 in the same manner. And is there not also 
 a compensation ? Does the workman not 
 enjoy immunities vainly longed for by oth- 
 ers ? 
 
 But it is a serious error to suppose that 
 those who constitute the labouring classes 
 are, because they must labour, either degra- 
 ded or greatly injured. There are various 
 spheres of human activity, many superior 
 to others ; but shall a professor, engaged in 
 the honourable pujsuit of instructing young 
 Q
 
 202 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 men in a college, consider himself degraded 
 because he must acknowledge that the 
 spheres of action in which a leader of the 
 House of Commons, or a commanding gen- 
 eral who rescues his country, moves, are in- 
 finitely superior to his ? 
 
 No one can deny that there are countries 
 in which whole and numerous classes are 
 depressed into Avretchedness, and even into 
 barbarity, in the midst of surrounding civil- 
 ization and refinement ; but it is poverty 
 which overwhelms, not labour which de- 
 grades or brutalizes them. And where are 
 these classes of depressed labouring men to 
 be found in the United States, the country 
 where every species of labour meets with 
 its fair reward, if ever it did in any land 
 — at least every exertion of mechanical 
 skill ? The complaint that the workman re- 
 ceives always the smallest share of profit is 
 unfounded in the United States ;' and if hap- 
 
 ^ The complaint is singularly unfounded in a country 
 where very many workmen earn from ten to fifteen dollars a 
 week, and eight dollars are the wages for common skill in 
 common trades, and where it very frequently occurs that jour
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 203 
 
 piness among men be possible, it has ever 
 appeared to me that the American working 
 man, but especially the American farmer, 
 has as many elements of contentment around 
 him as are vouchsafed to man. Plenty of 
 fertile and cheap land, not only for himself, 
 but for his children also ; with excellent im- 
 plements, fine stock, and a great variety of 
 seed and fruit ; with fair prices and cheap 
 educts for his produce ; with liberty and high 
 political privileges, together with considera- 
 tion in society ; with every possible career 
 open before his children ; descended of a 
 good race, and surrounded by intelligent 
 neighbours, and with a religion which com- 
 forts and strengthens — what element of con- 
 tentment is there Avanting ? 
 
 Labour honours and does not degrade ; 
 every honest and industrious man feels it 
 in the independence of his mind, whatever 
 sentimental orators may tell him to the con- 
 
 neymen abstain from setting up for themselves, alihough unre- 
 stricted in all their movements, because they find it to be to 
 their advantage to earn the high wages without incurring the 
 risk of the master workman, who must advance capital, pay 
 rent, &c.
 
 204 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 trary. A sound political community is ivot 
 unaptly depicted in our forests. There, too, 
 is the greatest variety, from the overshad- 
 owing, broad oak and the towering tulip- 
 tree, to the smallest blade and floweret, each 
 striving upwards to the light of the sun, and, 
 in doing so, developing its own peculiar indi- 
 viduality and destiny; no one interfering 
 with the other, but all serving and aiding all ; 
 none degraded by the other, but all impor- 
 tant in their own way, and forming, in their 
 union only, that forest, without which none 
 singly could exist or be what it is. 
 
 Farmers and mechanics have been term- 
 ed by way of excellence, or at times they 
 have arrogated to themselves the name of, 
 hard-working classes. Does the term Hard 
 Work refer, in this meaning, to the time 
 daily engaged in work, or the effect it has 
 on the body, or the remuneration it re- 
 ceives ? There are very few men in the 
 operative classes in the United States, if 
 any, who work as hard as many scholars 
 do. The farmer, indeed, retires from the 
 field at sunset with a fatigued, yet also with
 
 PROPERTY AND I ABOUR. 205 
 
 a healthy body ; he enjoys his meal and a 
 sound rest, while the scholar has yet many 
 hours of more exhausting labour before him 
 ere he retires to a scanty sleep, perhaps 
 many times interrupted by an indifferent 
 state of health, the effect of liis laborious 
 life. Are physicians, lawyers, ministers, 
 professors, naturalists, not hard-working 
 men ? Who of all the working classes has 
 worked and physically toiled as hard as a 
 Humboldt ? 
 
 We see, indeed, some individuals of these 
 classes enjoying wealth, and perhaps lei- 
 sure ; but their number is very small com- 
 pared to the tailors, carpenters, shoemakers, 
 or farmers who have obtained wealth, and 
 either wholly retired from business, or con- 
 tinue it by a general direction only, in ease 
 and comfort. 
 
 Very few scholars have arrived, in spite 
 of incessant, hard, trying, and most useful 
 labour, to wealth, or even a competency. 
 Some perhaps object that it is their own 
 choice. So it is, but not more so than tlie 
 choice of a trade or handicraft. Tlieoreti-
 
 206 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 cally, we are all free in the choice of our 
 pursuits where no castes exist ; but there 
 are circumstances in the life of every man 
 which more or less determine his career, 
 and wliich prevent many possible things from 
 being feasible. Yet even though the scholar 
 were perfectly free to engage suddenly in a 
 pursuit far more promising in a worldly Avay, 
 but should not enter upon it because his 
 mind, the bent of his whole inward man, 
 Avill not permit it, is he on this account a 
 less hard-working man, and does he not fol- 
 low his high duty for the benefit of his fel- 
 low-men in obeying the call which his Cre- 
 ator makes upon him by the endowments 
 with which he has gifted him ? May it not 
 be maintained, with perfect truth, that many 
 merchants Avork as hard as farmers ? Or 
 will it be said that the word Hard applies 
 to physical labour only, and not to intellect- 
 ual or mixed labour, which, in fact, try the 
 body more ? 
 
 Among the complaints which have been 
 proffered by some fanciful writers in the 
 name <'f the working-classes, even the soil-
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 207 
 
 mg work and " nastiness of workshops" to 
 which they are doomed have been held up 
 as a proof of their degradation. The place 
 where the farmer works, under God's own 
 canopy, the workshop of the carpenter and 
 many other mechanics, are healthier and 
 more inviting than most lawyers' offices or 
 scholars' studies ; and if the dyer shall be- 
 come ashamed of hands tinged with indigo, 
 and the scholar of the inkspot on his fore- 
 finger or the dust of his books, we may 
 perhaps expect the farmer to quarrel with 
 nature, that the sun which ripens his corn 
 makes also his body perspire. 
 
 The term Working Class has been most 
 arbitrarily used ; even the superintendent 
 of a number of factory-girls working in one 
 room, shopmen, and farmers who own soil, 
 have of late been excluded, leaving those 
 only that work physically, without the use 
 of the mind, or, in other words, for whose 
 work animal or mechanical power might be 
 substituted. This indeed is degrading ; but 
 where is the line to be drawn ? The fac- 
 tory-girl has to use her mind in her work,
 
 208 PROPERTY AND LA£OfR. 
 
 and why is she not cxchided ? As the schol- 
 ar chielly uses his mind, yet also works 
 physically with liis hands, so does the ca- 
 nal-digger chiefly work with the body, yet 
 also with his intellect, and the line between 
 the two cannot be distinctly drawn. 
 
 If the test shall be whether an individual 
 possesses any capital or not ; in other Avords, 
 whether he uses any property of his own in 
 working his product or not, we have not 
 gained a more accurate distinction ; for no 
 work whatever is done by the free labour- 
 er in civilized countries towards which 
 he does not bring some capital, that is, 
 some values, without which, under existing 
 circumstances, he cannot begin his work, 
 or which, if he himself is really deprived of 
 them, must be advanced by the capitalist ; 
 and to draw a distinct line fit to divide so- 
 ciety into two antagonistic parts, between 
 the poorest woodsman, whose only capital 
 consists in his clothes, a frying-pan, and an 
 axe and knife, on the one hand, and the 
 richest manufacturer of Leeds o fi the other, 
 is very hard.
 
 PROPERTT AND LABOUR. 209 
 
 It is surprising to see how easily every 
 agitation or presumptuous theory started in 
 foreign parts is introduced into this country. 
 Crowded by population, and heavily taxed 
 as England is ; deeply wretched as a part 
 of her people are, especially in the manufac- 
 turing districts, it is ik) wonder that many 
 just or unfounded complaints should be 
 made. France, having passed through a 
 revolution which, in cutting off the whole 
 previous state of things, and uprooting near- 
 ly all social and political relations, is not 
 equalled by any other in history for its 
 numberless new schemes, more or less bold, 
 rash, judicious, or arrogant. This too is 
 natural, for even the lapse of half a century 
 has not sufficed to settle France after such 
 an overthrow of things — an overthrow pre- 
 pared by centuries of wretched government. 
 But, when these conceptions of individuals 
 are forthwith introduced, or their complaints 
 are reiterated here, where the circumstances 
 to which they apply, or out of which they 
 have arisen, do not exist, it becomes a mere 
 handle for mischief. Never before has a
 
 210 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 country existed in ■which industry, honesty, 
 and frugality were so sure of success in 
 acquiring a fair livelihood and an honoura- 
 ble standing in the community as in our 
 own. We are not exempt from evils of 
 our own, and grave evils too. Flatterers 
 who wish to make us believe the contrary 
 are as wrong as those that would make our 
 farmer or mechanic believe that he was 
 worse off than the slave ; but the truth that 
 industry, honesty, and frugality give a sup- 
 port and independence is certain, and one 
 of great import. 
 
 Still, though it were not so, no truth is 
 more firmly established than that the equiv- 
 alent given for labour or wages depends, in 
 the natural course of things, upon demand 
 and supply, upon capital productively em- 
 ployed by that labour. There is no such 
 thing as forcing wages up by legislation ; 
 and, though hundreds and thousands should 
 die, legislation cannot raise wages by law. 
 Legislation may remove impediments crea- 
 ted by previous legislation, by which labour 
 was prevented from obtaining the equiva-
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 211 
 
 lent to which, in the natural and unimpeded 
 course, it was entitled ; but no legislation 
 can possibly raise them Jjy maximum or 
 minimum prices. It has been tried full 
 often enough, and has always ended in in- 
 creasing misery. Prices cannot be prescri- 
 bed, without infinite injury to the producer 
 and consumer, either by government or 
 combination. 
 
 On the contrary, as capital must ever 
 seek its best employment, which is there 
 where profit and security are combined, ev- 
 ery forced action makes it flow out of the 
 country, and therefore withdraws so much 
 from the fund which must sustain labour, 
 and thus increases the evil. Nor can any 
 human power, not even death impending 
 upon the exportation of capital, prevent it. 
 
 Maximum and minimum prices Avere de- 
 creed in France during the Reign of Ter- 
 ror, and death inflicted for taking more or 
 less ; death was the penalty affixed in Spain 
 to the exportation of the precious metals— 
 but all in vain. Russia, witli the threat of 
 banishment in Siberia, and an extensive
 
 212 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 and watchful police, did not succeed in pre- 
 venting the exportation of gold whenever it 
 became a highly^ desirable article in Eng- 
 land, during the wars of Napoleon. Nor 
 can any combination among workmen per- 
 manently raise wages. On the contrary, 
 they interfere with the free production of 
 capital, and make that already existing flow 
 to other places of employment.' Nothing 
 can permanently raise wages with those 
 nations who belong to the great civilized 
 family of men but a greater abundance of 
 values to be offered for them, and values 
 cannot be legislated into existence. They 
 must be produced. New sources of indus- 
 try must be opened ; communications be ac- 
 celerated ; free and safe exchange of prod- 
 ucts must be promoted ; habits of sobriety 
 and thriftiness, of saving and reproduction, 
 knowledge and education, must be diffused ; 
 emigration must be favoured ; the process- 
 es of production must be shortened and be 
 made more saving ; substances, until now 
 
 1 The reader is again referred to Torrens on Wages and 
 Combination, and Potter on Political Economy.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 213 
 
 refuse, must be turned to account ; restric- 
 tions must be removed ; political morality 
 must be increased ; riots and all other dis- 
 turbances, as well as idleness, must be di- 
 minished ; a higher sense of duty in sacred- 
 ly fulfilling our obligations must be estab- 
 lished throughout the land : it is by such, 
 and only such means, that wages can be 
 raised, or, what amounts to the same thing, 
 that the prices of commodities can be low- 
 ered. All else can only enhance the price 
 of things in comparison to the amount of la- 
 bour, the wages for which are equal to that 
 price, and must affect the working classes 
 most, as they are the great consumers. No 
 law interfering wnth the accumulation of 
 property, or cutting off its freely-chosen 
 transference, can remedy the evil, or even 
 become a palliative. It is the people at 
 large, the working classes, who would needs 
 suffer first and most bitterly were ever the 
 attempt made to put such superficially con- 
 ceived, and yet, in their effect, cruel schemes 
 into practice.
 
 214 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 Neither do we want legislative acts to 
 prevent the accumulation of riches in single' 
 hands. Riches do not accumulate to a dan- 
 gerous amount, in the present highly indus- 
 trious age, for want of legislation. The nat- 
 ural and unfailing tendency is towards a 
 constant distribution and diffusion of wealth. 
 It is by legislation, by positive enactments 
 only, that this natural course can be arrest- 
 ed, and that riches can be made to accumu- 
 late in a degree so disproportionate to the 
 general standard of wealth, that they become 
 dangerous to liberty and public welfare. 
 
 Acknowledging the existence of this dan- 
 ger, when unwise positive laws intercept the 
 natural and inherent diffusion of wealth, it 
 seems, nevertheless, that it is greatly over- 
 rated by many modern writers, especially 
 when their remarks apply to the riches which 
 accumulate in the hands of an individual 
 during his lifetime by the natural effects of 
 industry, judgment, and good luck, or in the 
 hands of his successors by our present laws 
 of individual inheritance. 
 
 Riches are considered incompatible with
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 215 
 
 liberty. These were the views of the an- 
 cients, and many modern writers copy what 
 they said. The ancients were right in taking 
 this view, but, before we reiterate their re- 
 marks, we must inquire whether our state of 
 things is the same with theirs, or whether 
 there be not an essential difference between 
 ancient and modern liberty, between the 
 free city-states of antiquity and the consti- 
 tutional liberty of modern national or en- 
 larged states with extensive territories, over 
 which equal comprehensive guarantees of 
 individual freedom extend. 
 
 The great problem of ancient political 
 philosophers was the security of the contin- 
 uance of the state, and every consideration 
 of the individual was merged in this great 
 problem. We, in modern times, feel so safe 
 on this score, that it has become almost a 
 secondary consideration. With us the rights 
 and protection of the individual stand fore- 
 most. The ancient states were founded 
 upon absolutism ; that is to say, power, 
 wherever it dwelt, was considered tanta- 
 mount ; and the more democratic the states
 
 216 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 became, the more unlimited was this pow- 
 er, and the more decidedly came the indi- 
 vidual to be considered merely as a compo- 
 nent part of the state, in which alone he 
 found his Avhole m-eaning and existence. 
 
 The modern citizen is considered to be a 
 member of his political society for the pur- 
 pose of finding his individual rights, indis- 
 pensable to the fulfilment of his career as 
 Man, the more firmly guarantied. The 
 essence of ancient liberty consisted in the 
 equal participation of every one in the gov- 
 ernment ; no matter how this was effected, 
 even though it should be by lot ; or what this 
 government decreed, even if it interfered 
 with the most private concerns, required the 
 sacrifice of the institution of the family, or 
 demanded the loss of what we consider the 
 most invaluable personal rights. Modern 
 liberty consists essentially in guarantees of 
 the individual rights of man, and, conse- 
 quently, in checks upon power, and the 
 protection of the minority against aggres- 
 sions by the majority. Hence our consti- 
 tutions, binding even overwhelming majori*
 
 PROrERTY AND LABOUR. 217 
 
 ties. The ancients felt themselves men, be- 
 cause they were citizens ; we are citizens, 
 because we know that without political so- 
 cieties we cannot obtain the great objects 
 of man. 
 
 Under these circumstances, it was natural 
 that the ancients should have known nothing 
 of Opposition, such as this vital element of 
 modern liberty and safest of all measures to 
 unite liberty with peace, exists in our con- 
 stitutional states.' All opposition, nay, all 
 displeasure with public measures, even al- 
 most all dissent, were viewed, therefore, as 
 factious, and seldom failed really to become 
 so in cases Qf sufficient importance. 
 
 Riches were then really dangerous ; and 
 democratic absolutism naturally requires the 
 levelling principle applied to property, which 
 is necessary for regal absolutism. Absolu- 
 tism, whether popular or monarchical, in- 
 
 1 I have g'iven my views on the important difforcnce between 
 ancictit and modern liberty at full leni^th towards the conclusion 
 of the first volume of my Political Ethics, and those on what I 
 feel tempted to call the great institution of tho Opposition, in 
 the chapter relating to tiiat subject in tho same work. 
 
 R
 
 218 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 gtinctively takes umbrage at any influencf^ or 
 power out of its own sphere of action ; and, as 
 the ancients decreed the contribution of large 
 sums because a citizen was too wealthy, so 
 do we find the Eastern systems of despot- 
 ism, to this day, engaged in what they hold 
 to be one of the highest problems of states- 
 manship — the absorption of large private 
 fortunes. They are thus employed in a con- 
 tinual process of annihilating or preventing 
 the accumulation of values, and, therefore, 
 of destroying one of the great means of 
 spreading civilization, and the establishment 
 of firmer security and public peace.' 
 
 ' The jealousy of the Eastern governments leads not only to 
 a frequent transfer of property from the private individual to 
 the monarch (which process alone indtfces a considerable de- 
 struction of values), but actually to an intentional waste, so that 
 the possessors shall be reduced to a degree of wealth more 
 compatible with the safety of the government. The feudal 
 princes of Japan are bound to appear periodically at Yedo 
 with a retinue of many thousands, said to amount at times 
 even to ten and twenty thousand, for the purpose of saddling 
 them with great expense. The same object is at other times 
 obtained by the ziogoon (or nominal hereditary vicegerent of 
 the mikado, but virtual sovereign) inviting himself, in Queen 
 Elizabeth's style, to the abode of some feudal lord. This ne-
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 219 
 
 Our fair and noble constitutional liberty 
 is as much above the jealous fear of the 
 
 cessary waste of property in Asia, when once acquired, and 
 the consequent prevention of production and accumuiaiion, 
 owing to the danger of possessing wealth, form, in my opin- 
 ion, one of the causes which have produced a phenomenon in 
 history of the highest importance, namely, that Asia, with the 
 immense hoarding of treasures, has accumulated so little wealth 
 compared with Europe, where there is no hoarding, yet great 
 accumulation of wealth, although so much younger in civili- 
 zation. 
 
 Adam Smith, as well as Say, treat of the causes of rapidly- 
 ries compared with its accumulation in the Middle Ages. The 
 increased wealth in Europe and America during the last centu- 
 inquiry may be extended, for the phenomenon fully deserves 
 it. Why are the Europeans and their descendants so much 
 wealthier, or, in other words, why have they succeeded in 
 accumulating values to an amount infinitely greater than that 
 which exists in Asia 1 Among the various causes, the follow- 
 ing may be the most important : The one just mentioned, 
 namely, the natural jealousy of despotism, the insecurity of 
 property, and the general prevalence of mere force. This 
 naturally induces people to hoard those values which men 
 have succeeded in producing in spite of the insecure state of 
 things. \Vc are struck, in reading the English works on the 
 campaigns in India, for instance, with the enormous treasures 
 found in the residences of the princes. All these hoarded 
 treasures were unproductive values while thus hoarded. Pri- 
 vate individuals hoard likewise, in order to hide their wealth ; 
 but no treasure can be hidden without being unproductive. 
 Then, the princely pageantry so peculiar to Asia ; the costli-
 
 220 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 riches which an individual may amass, in a 
 political point of view, as it is above the 
 fear of seeing arms in the hands of every 
 citizen. We know that our governments 
 
 ness of Budhuism and Brahmaism ; the great number of per- 
 sons withdrawn by them from production, without instructing 
 or essentially meliorating men ; the many richly-endowed tem- 
 ples, with their costly feeding of elephants, &c., make these 
 modes of worship, at least, very expensive, although Moham- 
 medanism is probably one of the least so of the wide-spread re- 
 ligions. And, lastly, the pursuit of knowledge being fettered 
 by their religious dogmas, as was mentioned in a previous note. 
 It seems that all these circumstances must have powerfully co- 
 operated to prevent the production of values, or the dissipation 
 of them after they had been produced. Civilization, as was 
 observed in a former passage, requires a great amount of value. 
 To give a single instance : Mr. Hoffmann, in his Statistics of 
 Prussia, shows, upon a very moderate computation, that the 
 law which requires all children of a certain age in the king- 
 dom of Prussia to visit the common schools, prevents, for the 
 time, the production of about ten millions of Prussian dollars 
 annually. No doubt, the kingdom amply gains by this sacri- 
 fice, because, the better a nation is educated, the more pro- 
 ductively will the trades be pursued ; knowledge is advanta- 
 geous even in a pecuniary way ; and the more knowledge is 
 diffused in a country, the more firmly secured is its peace ; but 
 peace, that is, security, enhances the values of land and every- 
 thing else. This is, however, the very thing which it was in- 
 tended to prove. Civilization, which is highly productive in 
 its character, requires a great amount of value to be firs* at- 
 tained, and, when attained, to be promoted.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 221 
 
 are safer, although our Astors and Girards 
 may command many millions of dollars, 
 than ancient states, with all their jealousy 
 of riches, just as we know our President to 
 be more safely lodged at the White House, 
 without a single sentinel, than the Eastern 
 despots, who, from anxious fear to trust their 
 safety to armed men, form their inner pal- 
 ace-guards of well-accoutred females,' be- 
 cause among them the ruler need not fear 
 conspiracies. 
 
 Our newspapers ; our debates and parlia- 
 mentary law ; our industry and rapid ex- 
 change, domestic as well as foreign ; our 
 common law, a body of rules of action 
 grown up spontaneously, and independently 
 of direct legislative or executive action ; the 
 vastness of our territories, and the large 
 numbers of subjects to one and the same 
 state ; our sciences, our arts, and the difl'u- 
 sion of knowledge ; our revered representa- 
 tive principle, which is of a tempering and be- 
 
 ' To this it has actually come in Further Asia, where these 
 body-guards, consisting of armed viragoes, are frequently met 
 with.
 
 222 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 calming character ; our art of printing, and 
 many other elements constituting our social 
 and political life, are so many checks upon 
 the political influence of riches in the hands 
 of individuals. Indeed, can this influence 
 be traced ? Are our richest men politically 
 the most influential ? No one will seriously 
 assert it. 
 
 Riches, unsupported by anything else, 
 Avill be found to be rather in the Avay oJ 
 political influence than otherwise. Such is 
 the result of my observation. In conjunc- 
 tion, however, with other advantages, the 
 possession of large property will imdoubt- 
 ediy add Aveight. But so will a thousand 
 other advantages, if properly supported by 
 talent and character. Wealth stands on a 
 par with a winning countenance, with a fine 
 voice or fluent eloquence, and with the fact 
 of one's being the son of a cherished and 
 widely-known citizen, of accomplishments 
 and a liberal education. All these may aid a 
 man, if properly supported by sterling worth, 
 but he would greatly deceive himself were 
 he to rely on the one or the other alone.
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 223 
 
 ADDENDUM. 
 
 TuE author has stated, in the note ap- 
 pended to page 218, that the sacrifice 
 brought by the Prussian people to their 
 general elementary school system amounts 
 annually to eight millions of Prussian dol- 
 lars. He wrote from memory; and, finding 
 now that his statement is not correct, and 
 that the case is much stronger, he is anx- 
 ious to give the facts as they actually are. 
 
 Mr. Hoffmann, director of the general 
 Statistical Board of Prussia, states, in his 
 work, the Population of the Prussian Mon- 
 archy, Berlin, 1839, that there arc in that 
 kingdom 2,830,328 children of both sexes, 
 between eight and fourteen years of age, or, 
 as they are called, "school-bound" (schul- 
 pflichtige) children. The expense actually 
 incurred by the state for the support of the 
 elementary schools amounts to seven mill- 
 ions of Prussian dollars. These children,
 
 224 PROPEKTY AND LABOUR. 
 
 however, might already produce valuesy 
 and contribute their share to the bulk of na- 
 tional wealth, instead of wliich they merely 
 consume, and produce nothing while going 
 to school. If the value which each child 
 might produce per day is put down at the 
 very low valuation of one silver groschen, 
 the production of seventy-one millions of 
 Prussian dollars annually is thus prevented 
 by the elementary school system of Prussia. 
 Mr. Hoffmann adds to this statement the 
 following judicious remark : " A people^ 
 therefore, Avhich understands how to em- 
 ploy its time productively, actually makes a 
 sacrifice, the magnitude of which is rarely 
 estimated to its full amount, if it withdraws 
 the children from labour to send them to 
 school ; and this fact explains why nations 
 so rich and civilized as the English and 
 French, find it, nevertheless, so difficult to 
 make a comprehensive elementary school 
 system general. The more industry ad- 
 vances, and the more productive it becomes, 
 the greater becomes also this sacrifice, which, 
 it is true, is abundantly repaid by the ef-
 
 PROPERTY AND LABOUR. 225 
 
 fects of a judicious general school system ; 
 still, it requires a great amount of general 
 wealth to be capable of making the sacri- 
 fice." 
 
 The reader will remember the remarks 
 which have been made in this work respect- 
 ing the great amount of wealth requisite for 
 civilization, and the reciprocal effect which 
 wealth and civilization exercise upon one 
 another. School systems, like religion with 
 her churches, seminaries, ministers, and rest 
 from labour on Sundays, or government with 
 Its paid officers, courts of law, armies, and 
 navies, require much wealth ; for as to their 
 first direct operation, they only consume, or 
 prevent production; they cannot produce. 
 But, inasmuch as they promote peace, knowl- 
 edge, light, rectitude, honour, safety, and 
 civilization in general, they, on the one 
 hand, save incalculable amounts of value, 
 which otherwise must have been wasted, 
 and, on tlie other hand, aid most powerfully 
 llie productive energies of a nation. 
 
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