LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN DIEGO
 
 IHU'lA'l IK
 
 THE PIONEERS 
 
 OF 
 
 LAND REFORM
 
 BOHNS LIBRARIES WERE INAUGUR- 
 ATED IN 1847 BY HENRY GEORGE 
 BOHN, AND IN 1864 WERE TAKEN 
 OVER BY THE PRESENT PUBLISHERS. 
 THE PRESENT VOLUME CONTAINS 
 ESSAYS BY THE THREE PIONEERS OF 
 THE MODERN LAND REFORM MOVE- 
 MENT : THOMAS SPENCE, WILLIAM 
 OGILVIE, AND THOMAS PAINE : NOW 
 ISSUED TOGETHER FOR THE 
 FIRST TIME IN BOHN'S 
 POPULAR LIBRARY
 
 THE PIONEERS OF 
 LAND REFORM 
 
 THOMAS SPENCE 
 WILLIAM OGILVIE 
 THOMAS PAINE 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 M. BEER 
 
 AUTHOR OF " A HISTORY OF BRITISH SOCIALISM " 
 
 LONDON 
 
 G. BELL AND SONS, LTD. 
 i 920
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE modern land reform movement originated, 
 in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, 
 in Great Britain. Its aims and ends are 
 different from those of the Peasants' War (1381, 
 1449, 1549) and the Diggers (1649), for, while 
 these fought either for a restoration of the 
 village community or the establishment of com- 
 munism, it advocates a compromise between 
 communism and private property, with a view 
 to increase the number of farmers and, gener- 
 ally, to improve the condition of the labouring 
 population. 
 
 The pioneers are Thomas Spence (1750-1814), 
 William Ogilvie (1736-1813), and, to some 
 extent, Thomas Paine (1737-1809). They all 
 argue from the natural law doctrines, according 
 to which the earth and the fulness thereof were, 
 in the original state of society, or the state of 
 nature, the common property of mankind, so 
 that every child born into the world had ipso 
 facto an inalienable right to an equal share in the 
 common inheritance. Further, in the state of
 
 vi LAND REFORM 
 
 nature all men were free no government, no 
 man-made law coerced or regulated society. 
 Economic equalit}' and social liberty are thus 
 the fundamental rights of man. This conception 
 is very old ; it arose, as is well known, in anti- 
 quity, and governed social thought throughout 
 the ages up to recent times ; the last British 
 scholar who made use of it was Alfred Russel 
 Wallace, his book Land 'Nationalisation (London, 
 1882) being based on it. With the rise of natural 
 history study that theory received a new aspect. 
 While in former times natural law philosophy 
 was bound up with ethics and religion, original 
 society began to be regarded, since the latter half 
 of the eighteenth century, as a horde of human 
 animals, whose common pasture was the earth, 
 just as much as the forests, woods, rivers, and seas 
 were the common feeding and breeding places of 
 the other species of the animal kingdom. This 
 latter mode of thinking is to be found in Spence. 
 Various causes united to put an end to the 
 state of nature. The growing moral deteriora- 
 tion of man as well as the insufficiency of the 
 means of life for the increasing population led 
 to inconveniences and disturbances ; the strong 
 and crafty offered violence to the weak, and 
 appropriated large portions of the land for their 
 own exclusive use ; finally, notions of private 
 property arose with regard to those things which 
 men created or considerably improved and made 
 valuable by their own labour. The old order
 
 INTRODUCTION vii 
 
 of communism, equality, and liberty was being 
 undermined ; a new order was urgently called for; 
 therefore men, by express or tacit agreement, 
 abandoned the communist mode of life and 
 established civil government and private pro- 
 perty. Civil society brought certain great advan- 
 tages by promoting agriculture and trades, thus 
 increasing the national wealth ; but it produced 
 the division of society into rich and poor, into 
 oppressing and oppressed classes, and furthered 
 covetousness, selfishness, crime, ignorance, and 
 misery of the many. The moral deterioration, 
 far from being checked by the new order of 
 things, reached its lowest depths in civil society. 
 Hence the need for a reform which would combine 
 the advantages of both forms of society and 
 exclude their disadvantages. 
 
 Spence asks the nation to cancel, by virtue of 
 its sovereignty, the social compact and to ex- 
 propriate the landlords and restore the land to its 
 rightful heirs, whereupon it should be transferred 
 to the parishes, who would let it to farmers on a 
 moderate rental. This rent would form the only 
 tax, from which the expenses of local and central 
 administration would be defrayed. No other 
 taxes or duties to be levied. Free trade and 
 manufacture, a flourishing agriculture, and com- 
 plete democracy would unite to lift the nation 
 to a high moral level. Spence must be regarded 
 as the author of " Single Tax," which was advo- 
 cated, a century later, by Henry George. He is
 
 viii LAND REFORM 
 
 also against nationalisation, his ideal being a 
 nation consisting of a loose federation of auto- 
 nomous communes. 
 
 Spence was of Scottish origin, his father having 
 left Aberdeen for Newcastle, where Thomas was 
 born. From a self-taught workman he gradually 
 became a tutor and lecturer. On November 8, 
 1775, he delivered his lecture on land reform 
 before the Newcastle Philosophical Society. 
 Later on he left for London, where he took part 
 in all revolutionary movements, arid was twice 
 imprisoned, for altogether seventeen months. 
 In 1793 he republished his Newcastle Lecture 
 under the title The Real Rights of Man, and in 
 1796 under the title The Meridian Sun of Liberty, 
 or The Whole Rights of Man displayed. It was 
 republished in 1882 by Mr H. M. Hyndman, who 
 gave it the title Nationalisation of the Land, and 
 in 1896 by Messrs Verinder and Morrison David- 
 son for the Land Restoration League. 
 
 William Ogilvie was Professor at Aberdeen 
 University ; he was also a successful agricul- 
 turist. His Essay on the Right of Property in 
 Land (1781) was published anonymously. His 
 critical views on the existing land tenure are, at 
 least, as severe as Spence's, but much more 
 scholarly ; in his reform proposals he is, however, 
 incomparably milder, and rejects any catastrophic 
 break with the past. The utmost he desires to do 
 for the citizen without property is to procure him 
 a farm of 40 acres, for which he is to pay a fixed
 
 INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 rent and to render certain feudal services to the 
 landlord. Ogilvie'e Essay was republished in 
 1838 and in 1891. 
 
 Thomas Paine's Agrarian Justice (1795-96) is 
 brilliantly written, and breathes the spirit of the 
 French Revolution. The contrast between the 
 state of nature and civil society is clearly depicted. 
 His reform programme is very moderate, and was 
 therefore taken to task by Spence in a pamphlet 
 entitled Rights of Infants (1797). He was a 
 member of the Society of Friends, and a worthy 
 successor of the great social reformer John 
 Sellers (1655-1725).
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE REAL RIGHTS OF MAN. By THOMAS 
 
 SPENCE 5 
 
 THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND. By 
 
 WILLIAM OGILVIE 35 
 
 AGRARIAN JUSTICE. By THOMAS PAINE . .181 

 
 THE REAL RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 BY THOMAS SPENCE
 
 ; A LECTURE 
 
 DELIVERED AT NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE 
 
 J775 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS SPENCE
 
 A LECTURE 
 
 READ AT THE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 
 IN NEWCASTLE ON NOVEMBER STH, 
 1775, FOR PRINTING OF WHICH THE 
 SOCIETY DID THE AUTHOR THE HONOUR 
 TO EXPEL HIM. 
 
 MR PRESIDENT, It being my turn to lecture, I 
 beg to give some thoughts on this important 
 question, viz. : Whether mankind in society 
 reap all the advantages from their natural and 
 equal rights of property in land and liberty, which 
 in that state they possibly may and ought to 
 expect ? And as I hope you, Mr President and 
 the good company here, are sincere friends to 
 truth, I am under no apprehensions of giving 
 offence by defending her cause with freedom. 
 
 That property in land and liberty among men 
 in a state of nature ought to be equal, few, one 
 would be fain to hope, would be foolish enough 
 to deny. Therefore, taking this to be granted, 
 the country of any people, in a native state, is 
 properly their common, in which each of them has 
 an equal property, with free liberty to sustain 
 
 5
 
 6 LAND REFORM 
 
 himself and family with the animals, fruits and 
 other products thereof. Thus such a people 
 reap jointly the whole ad vantages of their country, 
 or neighbourhood, without having their right in 
 so doing called in question by any, not even by 
 the most selfish and corrupt. For upon what 
 must they live if not upon the productions of 
 the country in which they reside ? Surely, to 
 deny them that right is in effect denying them 
 a right to live. Well, methinks some are now 
 ready to say, but is it lawful, reasonable and 
 just, for this people to sell, or make a present 
 even, of the whole of their country, or common, 
 to whom they will, to be held by them and their 
 heirs for ever ? 
 
 To this I answer, If their posterity require no 
 grosser materials to live and move upon than 
 air, it would certainly be very ill-natured to 
 dispute their right of parting, for what of their 
 own, their posterity would never have occasion 
 for ; but if their posterity cannot live but as 
 grossly as they do, the same gross materials must 
 be left them to live upon. For the right to de- 
 prive anything of the means of living, supposes 
 a right to deprive it of life ; and this right 
 ancestors are not supposed to have over their 
 posterity. 
 
 Hence it is plain that the land or earth, in any 
 country or neighbourhood, with everything in or 
 on the same, or pertaining thereto, belongs at all 
 times to the living inhabitants of the said country
 
 LECTURE BY THOMAS SPENCE 7 
 
 or neighbourhood in an equal manner. For, as 
 I said before, there is no living but on land and 
 its productions, consequently, what we cannot 
 live without we have the same property in as 
 our lives. 
 
 Now as society ought properly to be nothing 
 but a mutual agreement among the inhabitants 
 of a country to maintain the natural rights and 
 privileges of one another against all opposers, 
 whether foreign or domestic, it would lead one 
 to expect to find those rights and privileges no 
 further infringed upon among men pretending 
 to be in that state, than necessity absolutely 
 required. I say again, it would lead one to 
 think so. But I am afraid whoever does will be 
 mightily mistaken. However, as the truth here 
 is of much importance to be known, let it be 
 boldly fought out ; in order to which it may not 
 be improper to trace the present method of hold 
 ing land among men in society from its original. 
 
 If we look back to the origin of the present 
 nations, we shall see that the land, with all its 
 appurtenances, was claimed by a few, and divided 
 among themselves, in as assured a manner as if 
 they had manufactured it and it had been the 
 work of their own hands ; and by being un- 
 questioned, or not called to an account for such 
 usurpations and unjust claims, they fell into a 
 habit of thinking, or, which is the same thing 
 to the rest of mankind, of acting as if the earth 
 was made for or by them, and did not scruple
 
 8 LAND REFORM 
 
 to call it their own property, which they might 
 dispose of without regard to any other living 
 creature in the universe. Accordingly they did 
 so ; and no man, more than any other creature, 
 could claim a right to so much as a blade of grass, 
 or a nut or an acorn, a fish or a fowl, or any 
 natural production whatever, though to save his 
 life, without the permission of the pretended 
 proprietor ; and not a foot of land, water, rock 
 or heath but was claimed by one or other of 
 those lords ; so that all things, men as well as 
 other creatures who lived, were obliged to owe 
 their lives to some or other's property, conse- 
 quently they like the creatures were claimed, and, 
 certainly as properly as the wood herbs, etc., 
 that were nourished by the soil. And so we 
 find, that whether they lived, multiplied, worked 
 or fought, it was all for their respective lords ; 
 and they, God bless them, most graciously 
 accepted of all as their due. For by granting 
 the means of life, they granted the life itself ; and 
 of course, they thought they had a right to all 
 the services and advantages that the life or death 
 of the creatures they gave life to could yield. 
 
 Thus the title of gods seems suitable enough 
 to such great beings ; nor is it to be wondered 
 at that no services could be thought too great 
 by poor dependent needy wretches to such 
 mighty and all-sufficient lords, in whom they 
 seemed to live and move and have their being. 
 Thus were the first landholders usurpers and
 
 LECTURE BY THOMAS SPENCE 9 
 
 tyrants ; and all who have since possessed their 
 lands, have done so by right of inheritance, 
 purchase, etc., from them ; and the present pro- 
 prietors, like their predecessors, are proud to 
 own it ; and like them, too, they exclude all 
 others from the least pretence to their respective 
 properties. And any one of them still can, by 
 laws of their own making, oblige every living 
 creature to remove off his property (which, to 
 the great distress of mankind, is too often put 
 in execution) ; so of consequence were all the 
 landholders to be of one mind, and determined 
 to take their properties into their own hands, all 
 the rest of mankind might go to heaven if they 
 would, for there would be no place found for 
 them here. Thus men may not live in any part 
 of this world, not even where they are born, but 
 as strangers, and by the permission of the pre- 
 tender to the property thereof ; which permission 
 is, for the most part, paid extravagantly for, 
 though many people are so straitened to pay 
 the present demands, that it is believed if they 
 hold on, there will be few to grant the favour 
 to. And those land-makers, as we shall call 
 them, justify all this by the practice of other 
 manufacturers, who take all they can get for the 
 products of their hands ; and because that every- 
 one ought to live by his business as well as he 
 can, and consequently so ought the land-makers. 
 Now, having before supposed it both proved and 
 allowed, that mankind have as equal and just a
 
 io LAND REFORM 
 
 property in land as they have in liberty, air, or 
 the light and heat of the sun, and having also 
 considered upon what hard conditions they 
 enjoy those common gifts of nature, it is plain 
 they are far from reaping all the advantages 
 from them which they may and ought to 
 expect. 
 
 But lest it should be said that a system where- 
 by they may reap more advantages consistent 
 with the nature of society cannot be proposed, 
 I will attempt to show the outlines of such 
 a plan. 
 
 Let it be supposed, then, that the whole people 
 in some country, after much reasoning and 
 deliberation, should conclude that every man 
 has an equal property in the land in the neigh- 
 bourhood where he resides. They therefore 
 resolve that if they live in society together, it 
 shall only be with a view that everyone may 
 reap all the benefits from their natural rights 
 and privileges possible. 
 
 Therefore a day appointed on which the 
 inhabitants of each parish meet, in their respec- 
 tive parishes, to take their long-lost rights into 
 possession, and to form themselves into corpora- 
 tions. So then each parish becomes a corpora- 
 tion, and all men who are inhabitants become 
 members or burghers. The land, with all that 
 appertains to it, is in every parish made the 
 property of the corporation or parish, with as 
 ample power to let, repair, or alter all or any
 
 LECTURE BY THOMAS SPENCE n 
 
 part thereof as a lord of the manor enjoys over 
 his lands, houses, etc. ; but the power of alienating 
 the least morsel, in any manner, from the parish 
 either at this or any time hereafter is denied. 
 For it is solemnly agreed to, by the whole nation, 
 that a parish that shall either sell or give- away 
 any part of its landed property, shall be looked 
 upon with as much horror and detestation, and 
 used by them as if they had sold all their children 
 to be slaves, or massacred them with their own 
 hands. Thus are there no more nor other lands 
 in the whole country than the parishes ; and 
 each of them is sovereign lord of its own terri- 
 tories. 
 
 Then you may behold the rent which the 
 people have paid into the parish treasuries, 
 employed by each parish in paying the Govern- 
 ment its share of the sum which the Parliament 
 or National Congress at any time grants ; in 
 maintaining and relieving its own poor, and 
 people out of work ; in paying the necessary 
 officers their salaries ; in building, repairing, and 
 adorning its houses, bridges, and other structures ; 
 in making and maintaining convenient and 
 delightful streets, highways, and passages both 
 for foot and carriages ; in making and maintain- 
 ing canals and other conveniences for trade and 
 navigation .; in planting and taking in waste 
 grounds ; in providing and keeping up a magazine 
 of ammunition, and all sorts of arms sufficient 
 for all its inhabitants in case of danger from
 
 12 LAND REFORM 
 
 enemies ; in premiums for the encouragement of 
 agriculture, or anything else thought worthy of 
 encouragement ; and, in a word, in doing what- 
 ever the people think proper ; and not, as 
 formerly, to support and spread luxury, pride, 
 and all manner of vice. As for corruption in 
 elections, it has now no being or effect among 
 them ; all affairs to be determined by voting, 
 either in a full meeting of a parish, its com- 
 mittees, or in the house of representatives, are 
 done by balloting, so that votings or elections 
 among them occasion no animosities, for none 
 need to let another know for which side he votes ; 
 all that can be done, therefore, in order to gain 
 a majority of votes for anything, is to make it 
 appear in the best light possible by speaking or 
 writing. Among them Government does not 
 meddle in every trifle ; but on the contrary, 
 allows each parish the power of putting the laws 
 in force in all cases, and does not interfere but 
 when they act manifestly to the prej udice of society 
 and the rights and liberties of mankind, as 
 established in their glorious constitution and laws. 
 For the judgment of a parish may be as much 
 depended upon as that of a House of Lords, 
 because they have as little to fear from speaking 
 or voting according to truth as they. 
 
 A certain number of neighbouring parishes, as 
 those in a town or county, have each an equal 
 vote in the election of persons to represent them 
 in Parliament, Senate, or Congress ; and each of
 
 LECTURE BY THOMAS SPENCE 13 
 
 them pays equally towards their maintenance. 
 They are chosen thus : all the candidates are 
 proposed in every parish on the same day, when 
 the election by balloting immediately proceeds 
 in all the parishes at once, to prevent too great 
 a concourse at one place ; and they who are 
 found to have a majority, on a proper survey of 
 the several poll-books, are acknowledged to be 
 their representatives. 
 
 A man by dwelling a whole year in any parish, 
 becomes a parishioner or member of its corpora- 
 tion ; and retains that privilege till he lives a 
 full year in some other, when he becomes a 
 member in that parish, and immediately loses 
 all his right to the former for ever, unless he 
 choose to go back and recover it by dwelling 
 again a full year there. Thus none can be a 
 member of two parishes at once, and yet a man 
 is always member of one though he move ever 
 so oft. 
 
 If in any parish should be dwelling strangers 
 from foreign nations, or people from distant 
 countries who by sickness or other casualties 
 should become so necessitous as to require relief 
 before they have acquired a settlement by dwell- 
 ing a full year therein ; then this parish, as if it 
 were their proper settlement, immediately takes 
 them under its humane protection, and the 
 expenses thus incurred by any parish in provid- 
 ing those not properly their own poor being 
 taken account of,- is discounted by the Exchequer
 
 14 LAND REFORM 
 
 out of the first payment made to the State. Thus 
 poor strangers, being the poor of the State, are not 
 looked upon with an envious eye lest they should 
 become burthensome, neither are the poor 
 harassed about in the extremity of distress, and 
 perhaps in a dying condition, to justify the 
 litigiousness of the parishes. 
 
 All the men in every parish, at times of their 
 own choosing, repair together to a field for that 
 purpose, with their officers, arms, banners, and 
 all sorts of martial music, in order to learn or 
 retain the complete art of war ; there they 
 become soldiers. Yet not to molest their neigh- 
 bours unprovoked, but to be able to defend what 
 none have a right to dispute their title to the 
 enjoyment of ; and woe be to them who occasion 
 them to do this, they would use them worse than 
 highwaymen or pirates if they got them in their 
 power. 
 
 There is no army kept in pay among them in 
 times of peace ; as all have property alike to 
 defend, they are alike ready to run to arms 
 when their country is in danger ; and when an 
 army is to be sent abroad, it is soon raised, 
 of ready trained soldiers, either as volunteers 
 or by casting lots in each parish for so many 
 men. 
 
 Besides, as each man has a vote in all the 
 affairs of his parish, and for his own sake must 
 wish well to the public, the land is let in very 
 small farms, which makes employment for a
 
 LECTURE BY THOMAS SPENCE 15 
 
 greater number of hands, and makes more 
 victualling of all kinds be raised. 
 
 There are no tolls or taxes of any kind paid 
 among them by native or foreigner, but the 
 aforesaid rent which every person pays to the 
 parish, according to the quantity, quality, and 
 conveniences of the land, housing, etc., which he 
 occupies in it. The government, poor, roads, 
 etc. etc., as said before, are all maintained by the 
 parishes with the rent ; on which account all 
 wares, manufactures, allowable trade employ- 
 ments or actions are entirely duty free. Free- 
 dom to do anything whatever cannot there be 
 bought ; a thing is either entirely prohibited, as 
 theft or murder ; or entirely free to everyone 
 without tax or price, and the rents are still not 
 so high, notwithstanding all that is done with 
 them, as they were formerly for only the main- 
 tenance of a few haughty, unthankful landlords. 
 For the government, which may be said to be 
 the greatest mouth, having neither excisemen, 
 custom-house men, collectors, army, pensioners, 
 bribery, nor such like ruination vermin to 
 maintain, is soon satisfied, and moreover there 
 are no more persons employed in offices, either 
 about the government or parishes, than are 
 absolutely necessary ; and their salaries are but 
 just sufficient to maintain them suitably to their 
 offices. And, as to the other charges, they are 
 but trifles, and might be increased or diminished 
 at pleasure.
 
 16 LAND REFORM 
 
 But though the rent, which includes all public 
 burdens, were obliged to be somewhat raised, 
 what then ? All nations have a devouring 
 landed interest to support besides those necessary 
 expenses of the public ; and they might be 
 raised very high indeed before their burden 
 would be as heavy as that of their neighbours, 
 who pay rent and taxes too. And it surely 
 would be the same for a person in any country 
 to pay for instance an increase of rent if required, 
 as to pay the same sum by little and little on 
 everything he gets. It would certainly save him 
 a great deal of trouble and inconvenience, and 
 Government much expense. 
 
 But what makes this prospect yet more glow- 
 ing is that after this empire of right and reason 
 is thus established, it will stand for ever. Force 
 and corruption attempting its downfall shall 
 equally be baffled, and all other nations, struck 
 with wonder and admiration at its happiness 
 and stability, shall follow the example ; and thus 
 the whole earth shall at last be happy and live 
 like brethren.
 
 THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY 
 IN LAND 
 
 BY WILLIAM OGILVIE
 
 ON THE RIGHT OF 
 
 With respect to its Foundation 
 
 IN THE 
 
 
 
 LAW OF NATURE 
 
 Its present Establishment 
 BY THE 
 
 MUNICIPAL LAWS OF EUROPE 
 
 AND 
 
 The Regulations by which it might be rendered 
 more beneficial to the lower Ranks of Mankind
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION 29 
 
 PART I 
 
 SECTION I 
 
 Of the Right of Property in Land as derived 
 from the Law of Nature 
 
 1. Each individual derives from the right of 
 
 general occupancy a right to an equal share 
 
 of the soil 35 
 
 2 . This right cannot be precluded by any possession 
 
 of others 36 
 
 3. Nor is it tacitly renounced by those who have 
 
 had no opportunity of entering upon it . . 38 
 
 4. The opportunity of claiming this right ought to 
 
 be reserved for every citizen ... 38 
 
 5. Rude societies have respected this right ; in the 
 
 progress of arts it is overlooked, and by 
 conquests generally subverted 39 
 
 6. Speculative reasoners have confounded this 
 
 equal right with that which is founded in 
 labour, and ascertained by municipal law . 39 
 
 7. The right of a landholder to an extensive estate 
 
 must be founded chiefly in labour . . 40 
 
 8. The progress of cultivation gives an ascendant 
 
 to the right of labour over that of general 
 
 occupancy 40 
 
 21
 
 22 LAND REFORM 
 
 9. But the public good requires that both should 
 
 be respected and combined together . . 41 
 TO. Such combination is difficult, and has rarely 
 
 been established for any length of time . 41 
 
 11. It is the proper object of Agrarian laws, and 
 
 effectual means of establishing it may be 
 devised ....... 42 
 
 12. The value of an estate in land consists of three 
 
 parts the original, the improved, and the 
 improvable value ..... 42 
 
 1 3 . The original and the improvable value of a great 
 
 estate still belong to the community, the 
 improved alone to the landholder . . 44 
 
 14. The original value is the proper subject of 
 
 land-taxes ; the improvable value may be 
 separated from the improved, and ought 
 to be still open to the claims of the com- 
 munity ....... 45 
 
 SECTION II 
 
 Of the Right of Property in Land as founded 
 on Public Utility 
 
 15. Public happiness is the object of good govern- 
 
 ment ; it is not always increased by increased 
 wealth and dominion .... set. 48 
 
 1 6. Nor by increase of numbers . . .49 
 
 17. The happiness of citizens bears proportion to 
 
 their virtue ; some situations are favourable .<*. 
 to virtue, that of the independent cultivator 
 more especially is so 49 
 
 1 8. Men in that situation increase more in number . ,50 
 
 19. And by their industry most effectually promote 
 
 the real wealth of the public . . -50 
 
 20. Comeliness and strength are the least equivocal 
 
 marks of prosperity in a race of people . xt. 50 
 
 21. In these respects the race of cultivators excel . 51 
 
 22. To increase the number of men in this situation, 
 
 seems to increase public happiness . . 51
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 23 
 
 23 The natural rights and best interests of men 
 
 require the same economy of property in land 5 1 
 
 24. Other plans for increasing happiness ought to be 
 
 postponed to independent cultivation . . 52 
 
 25 Manufactures and commerce in particular ought 
 
 to be postponed to it . . . . .53 
 
 26. If every field is cultivated by its proprietor, 
 
 and every person who chooses it may become 
 proprietor of a field, the highest public 
 prosperity may be said to be obtained. . 54 
 
 SECTION III 
 
 Of the Abuses and Pernicious Effects of that 
 Exorbitant Right of Property in Land which 
 the Municipal Laws of Europe have established 
 
 27. The actual state of Europe, with respect to 
 
 property in land, the cultivation of the soil, 
 and the prosperity of the lower ranks, is very 
 different from what might be desired . . 58 
 
 28. The imperfection of this state arises from that 
 
 right to the improvable value of the soil 
 which landholders possess .... 59 
 
 29. The oppression proceeding from this right 
 
 debases the spirit and corrupts the probity 
 
 of the lower ranks ..... 60 
 
 30. The rent which may be taken for land ought to 
 
 be submitted to regulations not less than the 
 interest of money ..... 60 
 
 31. It is of more importance that regulations should 
 
 be imposed on property in land . . .61 
 
 32. And though difficult, not impracticable . . 62 
 
 33. Property in land, as at present established in 
 
 Europe, is a monopoly of the most pernicious 
 kind . . 63 
 
 34. By this monopoly, population is rendered almost 
 
 stationary in Europe ..... 64 
 
 35. It checks the progress of agriculture in fertilising 
 
 the earth ...,.. 65
 
 24 LAND REFORM 
 
 36. Under its influence the increase of population 
 
 tends to diminish happiness, and the celibacy 
 of particular orders cannot be called a politi- 
 cal evil ....... 66 
 
 37. The interest of landholders is substituted for 
 
 that of the community ; it ought to be the 
 same, but is not 67 
 
 38. The landholders of a nation levy the most 
 
 oppressive of all taxes ; they receive the most 
 unmerited of all pensions, if tithes are 
 oppressive to industry, rents capable of being 
 raised from time to time are much more so . 67 
 
 39. All property ought to be the reward of industry ; 
 
 all industry ought to be secured of its full 
 reward ; the exorbitant right of the land- 
 holders subverts both these maxims of good 
 policy ........ 69 
 
 40. It is the indirect influence of this monopoly 
 
 which makes a poor-rate necessary ; re- 
 quires unnatural severity in penal laws ; 
 renders sumptuary laws unpolitical,^and the 
 improvement of machinery for facilitating 
 labour unpopular, and perhaps pernicious . 70 
 
 41. While such a monopoly subsists, emigration 
 
 ought to be left free, if not facilitated . . 74 
 
 42. The oppressed state of the cultivators, being 
 
 universal, has been regarded by themselves 
 
 and others as necessary and irremediable . 76 
 
 43. A sound policy respecting property in land is 
 
 perhaps the greatest improvement that can 
 
 be made in human affairs . . . -> . 77 
 
 44. It might restore a sinking state 77
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 25 
 
 PART II 
 SECTION I 
 
 Of Circumstances and Occasions favourable to a 
 complete Reformation of the Laws respecting 
 Property in Land, by the sovereign or legis- 
 lative power 
 
 45. Reformation iii this important point is not 
 
 to be despaired of ; the establishment of 
 property in land has changed, and may 
 hereafter receive other innovations . . 79 
 
 46. Conquering princes might establish the most 
 
 equitable and beneficial system in countries 
 subdued by their arms .... 82 
 
 47. In new colonies it ought to be established by 
 
 the parent state 84 
 
 48. In small dependent states the sovereign of a 
 
 great nation may establish it without 
 danger 85 
 
 49. Princes of heroic minds, born to absolute 
 
 monarchy, might establish a complete refor- 
 mation in their whole dominions at once . 86 
 
 SECTION II 
 
 Of Circumstances and Occasions favourable to a 
 partial Reformation of the Laws respecting 
 Property in Land, by the sovereign or legis- 
 lative power 
 
 50. Absolute monarchs might without difficulty 
 
 establish many regulations of partial yet 
 very extensive reformation .... 89 
 
 5 1 . The whole community may be disposed to adopt 
 
 the most beneficial plans for public good . 91
 
 26 LAND REFORM 
 
 52. Under cover of other regulations some changes 
 
 favourable to cultivation may be intro- 
 duced ........ 97 
 
 53. Certain regulations particularly require, and 
 
 may justify such changes . . . .100 
 
 54. The regulation of leases is not unusual, and 
 
 might be made productive of the best 
 effects 102 
 
 55. A right of redemption might be given to the 
 
 cultivators of any estate exposed to sale . 105 
 
 56. Forfeited and escheated lands might be made 
 
 the subject of beneficial establishments . 106 
 
 SECTION III 
 
 Of Circumstances which might induce the rulers of 
 a State to turn their wishes and endeavours 
 towards the accomplishment of such a Change 
 
 57. The collective body of the people, if at any time 
 
 their power shall predominate, ought above 
 all things to insist on a just regulation of 
 property in land . . . . . ;.; 108 
 
 58. The candidates for disputed thrones might 
 
 offer this reformation to the body of the 
 people . . . . . . .no 
 
 59. Whatever bodies of men are oppressed in other 
 
 respects ought to claim this right also. It 
 might become the ministers of religion to 
 support it . . .'*'. <'' :'"' . < :'. in 
 
 60. Public calamities may induce rulers of a state 
 
 to think of renovating the vigour of the 
 community by a just regulation of property 
 in land . . . . . 1 1 4 
 
 61. Imminent and continual dangers may have the 
 
 same effect '" .' 115 
 
 62. And the accumulation of public debts ought to 
 
 have it 118
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 27 
 
 SECTION IV 
 
 Of Public Institutions calculated for promoting a 
 gradual and salutary Change in the state of 
 Property in Land 
 
 63. A board instituted for that purpose might pro- 
 
 mote the independence of cultivation by 
 calm and silent operations .... 123 
 
 64. Premiums might produce some effect, as in 
 
 affairs of inferior importance . . . 126 
 
 SECTION V 
 
 Of such examples and beginnings of reformation 
 as might be expected from the generous efforts 
 of private persons acting singly 
 
 65. In the management of a great estate, various 
 
 measures favourable to independent cultiva- 
 tion might be very prudently introduced . 129 
 
 66. And in the settlement of an entail on liberal 
 
 principles ....... 131 
 
 67. Some examples and beginnings may be obtained 
 
 by charitable bequests and foundations . 132 
 
 68. And by the liberality of opulent individuals . 133 
 
 SECTION VI 
 
 Of such examples and beginnings of reformation as 
 might be produced by the combined endeavours 
 of private persons 
 
 69. The joint contribution of many might effect 
 
 what individuals cannot attempt . . ^36 
 
 70. The attentions of societies for the encourage- 
 
 ment of agriculture might be extended to 
 this, the most effectual encouragement of all . 137
 
 28 LAND REFORM 
 
 SECTION VII 
 
 Of a progressive Agrarian law, which might be 
 made the basis of all partial and occasional 
 reformation respecting property in land 
 
 71. Scheme of a progressive Agrarian law, ex- 
 
 hibited in detail . . . . . .138 
 
 72. Peculiar advantages of such a scheme . .148 
 
 73. Variations by which it might be accommodated 
 
 to the interests of various orders . . -152 
 
 74. Modifications more particularly adapted to 
 
 different countries . . . . 157 
 
 75. The inconveniences that cannot be separated 
 
 from such innovations would be more than 
 compensated by probable advantages . .168
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE municipal laws of every country are not only 
 observed as a rule of conduct, but by the bulk of 
 the people they are regarded as the standard of 
 right and of wrong, in all matters to which their 
 regulations are extended. 
 
 In this prejudice, however natural to the crowd, 
 and however salutary it may be deemed, men 
 of enlarged and inquisitive minds are bound by 
 no ties to acquiesce without inquiry. 
 
 Property is one of the principal objects of 
 municipal law, and that to which its regulations 
 are applied with greatest efficacy and precision. 
 With respect to property in movables, great 
 uniformity takes place in the laws of almost 
 all nations ; they differ only as being more or 
 less extended to details, comprehending the 
 diversity of commercial transactions ; and this 
 branch of jurisprudence may be said to have 
 almost attained to its ultimate maturity and 
 perfection. 
 
 But with respect to property in land, different 
 principles have been adopted by different nations 
 29
 
 30 LAND REFORM 
 
 in different ages ; and there is no reason why 
 that system, which now prevails in Europe, 
 and which is derived from an age not deserving 
 to be extolled for legislative wisdom or regard 
 to the equal rights of men, should be supposed 
 to excel any system that has taken place else- 
 where, or to be in itself already advanced beyond 
 the capacity of improvement, or the need of 
 reformation. 
 
 It is to a free and speculative disquisition, 
 concerning the foundation of this right of pro- 
 perty in land, and concerning those modifications, 
 by which it may be rendered in the highest degree 
 beneficial to all ranks of men, that the author 
 of these pages wishes to call the attention of 
 the learned, the ingenious, and the friends of 
 mankind. 
 
 It can give him no surprise, if the opinions 
 he has advanced on a topic of discussion, so 
 new and so interesting to all, shall meet with 
 the approbation of a few only. Were they now 
 for the first time to be presented abruptly to 
 his own mind, he believes that they would 
 startle his first thoughts, and perhaps might be 
 rejected on a transient view. But the leading 
 principles of that system which he now holds, 
 respecting property in land, have been coeval 
 in his mind with the free exercise of his thoughts 
 in speculative inquiries ; they have recurred 
 often, they have been gradually unfolded, and 
 for some years past he has been accustomed to
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 31 
 
 review them frequently, almost in their present 
 form, with still increasing approbation. 
 
 All that he would request in their favour (and 
 the candid will readily grant this) is, that they 
 may not be rejected on a first disgust, and that 
 those who cannot adopt the opinions here 
 advanced may at least bestow some pains in 
 ascertaining their own. These are the opinions 
 of one individual, thinking freely, and for 
 himself ; they are erroneous perhaps and vision- 
 ary ; their singularity may well authorise a 
 suspicion that they are so, and this suspicion 
 ought to have kept them back from the public 
 eye, but for the hope of exciting others to enter 
 into the same train of inquiry, and no longer, 
 in a matter of the first importance to the interests 
 of society, implicitly to acquiesce in traditionary 
 doctrines, never yet submitted to examination. 
 
 Free inquiry, however it may give birth to 
 vain theories and chimerical projects, has never 
 in any department been productive of essential 
 detriment to the true interests of mankind. 
 What undesirable consequences have always 
 arisen from the stagnation of inquiry, and from 
 silent acquiescence, even in establishments that 
 are beneficial, and in opinions that are true, the 
 history of mankind bears witness in every age. 
 
 It is natural to the mind, when new ideas 
 arise on important subjects, to open itself with 
 fondness to the pleasing impression which they 
 make. Yielding to this seducing enthusiasm,
 
 32 LAND REFORM 
 
 the author has been led to speak with freedom 
 of great changes, suddenly to be accomplished, 
 as practicable in some cases, and to be desired 
 in many. Yet is he well aware that great 
 changes, suddenly accomplished, are always 
 pregnant with danger, and with evil, and 
 ought on almost no occasion whatever to be 
 desired, or brought forward by the friends of 
 mankind. Partial reformation, gradual progres- 
 sive innovation, may produce every advantage 
 which the most important and sudden changes 
 can promise, yet without incurring those dreadful 
 hazards, and those inevitable evils, with which 
 great and sudden changes are still attended. 
 
 With the greatest satisfaction of mind he 
 avows his persuasion, that were great and im- 
 portant innovations respecting property in land 
 as practicable and safe, as they are difficult and 
 full of danger, there is no country under the sun 
 which stands less in need of such reformation 
 than England. Although indeed the principles 
 of jurisprudence, respecting property in land, 
 which the laws of England recognise, are derived 
 from the same source, and partake of the same 
 absurd and pernicious nature with those maxims 
 which prevail almost everywhere on the con- 
 tinent of Europe, yet such has been the generosity 
 of English landholders, such their equitable 
 conduct towards their tenants and dependants, 
 and such the manly spirit of the lower classes, 
 fostered by a sense of political rights, that in
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 33 
 
 England the comfortable independence of the 
 farmer and actual cultivator of the soil is 
 established on as secure a footing as the most 
 refined system of property in land deduced from 
 the genuine principles of public good and natural 
 right can propose to render effectual and per- 
 manent. It is to be regretted only that this com- 
 fortable independence which the farmers enjoy 
 cannot be extended to a still greater proportion 
 of the community. English landholders and 
 English farmers are superior in all respects to 
 the same class of men in other countries : in 
 their manly vigour, their plain good sense, their 
 humane virtues, consists the true basis of our 
 national pre-eminence. Their blood circulates 
 in every rank of society, their domestic manners 
 have given the tone to the English character 
 as displayed in all the various departments of 
 business and enterprise ; nor can any wish be 
 formed more favourable to the prosperity of 
 the public, than that the numbers of this class 
 of men may be increased. To increase the 
 number of landholders by advancing farmers 
 to that more independent situation can never 
 be made the object of legislative care in this 
 country, as it might in the absolute monarchies 
 of the continent ; but to increase the number 
 of farmers, by favouring the advancement of 
 day labourers and manufacturers to the more 
 animating and manly occupation of cultivating 
 a small farm for their own account, is an object 
 
 3
 
 34 LAND REFORM 
 
 very similar to many branches of enlightened 
 policy which the British legislature (more than 
 any other) has pursued with attention and 
 success. 
 
 To the worthy and humane English land- 
 holders, and more particularly to those who of 
 late years have voluntarily granted to their 
 tenants an abatement of rent, this short Essay 
 is inscribed by the Author, as to men whom he 
 regards with high esteem, and from whom he 
 may hope that his speculations, should they ever 
 come. to their knowledge, would meet with no 
 unfavourable reception. Why should he not 
 flatter himself with this hope, however seemingly 
 vain, since uninformed by theoretical reasonings, 
 and prompted only by the innate candour and 
 humanity of their own minds, these respectable 
 landholders, truly worthy of their station and 
 of their trust, have habitually acted in con- 
 formity to those principles of public good and 
 natural right which he is desirous to elucidate 
 and establish ?
 
 ESSAY 
 
 ON THE 
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN 
 LAND. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 SECTION I 
 
 Of the Right of Property in Land as derived 
 from the Law of Nature 
 
 i. ALL right of property is founded either in 
 occupancy or labour. The earth having been 
 given to mankind in common occupancy, each 
 individual seems to have by nature a right to 
 possess and cultivate an equal share. This right 
 is little different from that which he has to the 
 free use of the open air and running water; 
 though not so indispensably requisite at short 
 intervals for his actual existence, it is not less 
 essential to the welfare and right state of his 
 life through all its progressive stages. 1 
 
 1 The bulk of mankind in every country are ignorant 
 of the difference between their own laws and those of 
 other nations ; too ignorant to understand, and to value 
 aright what is truly excellent in their own code, or to 
 
 35
 
 36 LAND REFORM 
 
 2. No individual can derive from this general 
 right of occupancy a title to any more than an 
 equal share of the soil of his country. His 
 
 perceive what improvements it may still admit, and what 
 innovations ought to be desired. In no article are they 
 more ignorant than in respect to property in land, the 
 established rules of which are in every country accounted 
 permanent and immutable, as being fixed by the destina- 
 tion of nature. 
 
 In most countries the proprietors of land will ever 
 retain a more than equitable authority over those who 
 cultivate their fields, and not unfortunately for both, did 
 they but remember that the situation of a proprietor is 
 more allied to that of a prince than that of a merchant, 
 and requires some degree of those generous sentiments, 
 and that benign demeanour, which ought to adorn the 
 highest station. 
 
 It cannot be denied, that all over Europe, those who 
 are employed in cultivating the soil lead a very wretched 
 life ; and that it seems very practicable to render their 
 condition much better than it is, without rendering that 
 of their landlords and superiors any worse. 
 
 It cannot be doubted that much more beneficial 
 establishments of property in land than those which 
 obtain in Europe, or almost any that are known to have 
 obtained elsewhere, may be devised, and are capable of 
 being instituted, and receiving form and consistence from 
 human laws. 
 
 The present system of property in land is not adapted 
 to times of commerce, order, and tranquillity, but to 
 warlike and turbulent ages, when the entire dependence 
 of great bodies of men on their leaders, and the confidence 
 of leaders in their respective bands, were requisite for 
 their common safety. 
 
 In the present advanced state of industry, security, and 
 commerce, the relations and ties which arose out of this 
 mutual dependence, with all their concomitant pleasures 
 and advantages, are unknown ; and the landholder, who 
 now abuses that power wherewith an obsolete establish- 
 ment has invested him, to the exacting the last farthing his
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 37 
 
 actual possession of more cannot of right pre- 
 clude the claim of any other person who is 
 not already possessed of such equal share. 1 
 
 lands can produce, and effectuating in combination with 
 others a monopoly of that valuable and necessary com- 
 modity, is, though perhaps he knows it not, of all citizens 
 the most pernicious. He reaps the greatest emoluments 
 from the institutions of society, and contributes least to 
 the increase of plenty, or preservation of order. 
 
 It were unjust to censure the proprietors of land, 
 however, for retaining and exercising, as they do, a right 
 whose foundations have not been inquired into, and whose 
 extent no one has ever yet controverted. It is the situa- 
 tion in which they find themselves placed that prompts 
 their conduct, nor can they readily conceive either the 
 injustice or the detriment which the public surfers, by 
 permitting such rights to be exercised. On the other 
 hand, the farmers and cultivators have no clear perception 
 of the injustice and oppression which they surfer. They 
 feel indeed, and they complain, but do not understand, 
 or dare not consider steadily, from what cause their 
 grievances take their rise. The oppressive rights of the 
 one order, and the patient submission of the other, have 
 grown up together insensibly from remote ages, in which 
 the present state of human affairs could not be foreseen. 
 
 1 " God gave the earth in common to all men, but 
 since He gave it for their benefit, and the greatest con- 
 veniences of life they were capable to draw from it, it 
 cannot be supposed that He meant it should always 
 remain common and uncultivated. He gave it for the 
 use of the industrious and rational ; and labour was to 
 be his title to it." (Mr Locke on government, page 167 
 of Mr Hollis's edition.) Nor yet that it should be appro- 
 priated in such a manner as that, when not more than half 
 cultivated, the farther cultivation and improvement 
 should be stopped short, and the industry of millions will- 
 ing to employ themselves in rendering the earth more fertile 
 should be excluded from its proper field, and denied any 
 parcel of the soil, on which it could be exercised, with 
 security of reaping its full produce and just reward.
 
 38 LAND REFORM 
 
 3. This title to an equal share of property in 
 land seems original, inherent, and indefeasible 
 by any act or determination of others, though 
 capable of being alienated by our own. It is a 
 birthright which every citizen still retains. 
 Though by entering into society and partaking 
 of its advantages, he must be supposed to have 
 submitted this natural right to such regulations 
 as may be established for the general good, yet 
 he can never be understood to have tacitly 
 renounced it altogether ; nor ought anything 
 less to establish such alienation than an express 
 compact in mature age, after having been in 
 actual possession, or having had a free oppor- 
 tunity of entering into the possession of his 
 equal share. 
 
 4. Every state or community ought in justice 
 to reserve for all its citizens the opportunities 
 of entering upon, or returning to, and resuming 
 this their birthright and natural employment, 
 whenever they are inclined to do so. 
 
 Whatever inconveniences may be thought to 
 accompany this reservation, they ought not to 
 stand in the way of essential justice. 
 
 Although at first sight such reservation may 
 appear incompatible with the established order 
 of societies and the permanent cultivation of 
 the earth, yet ought it on the other hand to be 
 presumed, that what is so plainly founded on 
 the natural rights of men, may by wise regula- 
 tions be rendered at least consistent with the
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 39 
 
 best order and prosperity of societies, and with 
 the progress of agriculture, perhaps, very bene- 
 ficial to the one, and the highest encouragement 
 to the other. 
 
 5. In many rude communities, this original 
 right has been respected, and their public 
 institutions accommodated to it, by annual, 
 or at least frequent partitions of the soil, as 
 among the ancient Germans, and among the 
 native Irish even in Spenser's time. 
 
 Wherever conquests have taken place, this 
 right has been commonly subverted and effaced. 
 
 In the progress of commercial arts and refine- 
 ments, it is suffered to fall into obscurity and 
 neglect. 
 
 6. Whatever has been advanced by Mr Locke 
 and his followers, concerning the right of property 
 in land, as independent of the laws of a higher 
 original than they, and of a nature almost 
 similar to that divine right of kings, which their 
 antagonists had maintained, can only be referred 
 to this original right of equal property in land, 
 founded on that general right of occupancy, 
 which the whole community has, to the territory 
 of the State. This equal right is indeed ante- 
 cedent to municipal laws, and not to be abolished 
 by them. But it were a mistake % to ascribe any 
 such sacred and indefeasible nature to that sort 
 of property in land which is established by the 
 regulations of municipal law, which has its 
 foundation in the right of labour, and may be
 
 40 LAND REFORM 
 
 acquired by individuals, in very unequal degrees 
 of extent, and to the accumulation of which very 
 few states have thought fit to set any limits. 
 
 7. That right which the landholder has to an 
 estate, consisting of a thousand times his own 
 original equal share of the soil, cannot be founded 
 in the general right of occupancy, but in the 
 labour which he and those to whom he has 
 succeeded, or from whom he has purchased, 
 have bestowed on the improvement and fertiliza- 
 tion of the soil. To this extent, it is natural 
 and just : but such a right founded in labour 
 cannot supersede that natural right of occupancy, 
 which nine hundred and ninety-nine other 
 persons have to their equal shares of the soil, 
 in its original state. Although it may bar the 
 claim of individuals, it cannot preclude that of 
 the legislature, as trustee and guardian of the 
 whole. 
 
 8. In every country where agriculture has 
 made considerable progress, these two rights 
 are blended together, and that which has its 
 origin in labour is suffered to eclipse the other, 
 founded in occupancy. As the whole extent 
 of soil is affected by both rights at once, and 
 not different parts by each ; as these rights 
 subsist together in the same subject, the limits 
 by which their influence and extent may be 
 discriminated from each other do not readily 
 present themselves to the mind ; and could 
 these limits be distinctly ascertained, it may
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 41 
 
 seem still more difficult to suggest any practicable 
 method by which the subjects of each could 
 be actually separated and detached. 
 
 9. That every man has a right to an equal 
 share of the soil, in its original state, may be 
 admitted to be a maxim of natural law. It is 
 also a maxim of natural law, that every one, 
 by whose labour any portion of the soil has been 
 rendered more fertile, has a right to the additional 
 produce of that fertility, or to the value of it, 
 and may transmit this right to other men. On 
 the first of these maxims depend the freedom 
 and prosperity of the lower ranks. On the 
 second, the perfection of the art of agriculture, 
 and the improvement of the common stock and 
 wealth of the community. Did the laws of 
 any country pay equal regard to both these 
 maxims, so as they might be made to produce 
 their respective good effects, without intrench- 
 ing on one another, the highest degree of 
 public prosperity would result from this com- 
 bination. 
 
 10. Plans for the establishment of this com- 
 bination are not, it must be owned, very obvious, 
 nor have they on the other hand been very 
 industriously sought for. Scarcely has any 
 nation actually carried or attempted to carry 
 into execution any plan having this for its object ; 
 and not many can be said to have attained in 
 any period of their history those enlarged 
 views of the public interest which might lead
 
 42 LAND REFORM 
 
 to the investigation or establishment of such 
 a plan. 
 
 Rude nations have adhered to the first of 
 these maxims, neglecting the second. Nations 
 advanced in industry and arts have adhered 
 to the second, neglecting the first. 
 
 Could any plan be proposed for uniting these 
 two maxims in operation and effect, still, in 
 rich and industrious nations, the supposed (not 
 the real) interests of the less numerous but 
 more powerful orders of men, would be found 
 in opposition to its establishment. 
 
 11. To establish a just combination of these 
 two maxims, at the original foundation of states, 
 so as to render it a fundamental part of their 
 frame and constitution, or to introduce it after- 
 wards with as little violence as may be, to the 
 actual possessions and supposed rights and 
 interests of various orders of men, ought to be 
 the object of all Agrarian laws ; and this object 
 being once distinctly conceived, if wise and 
 benevolent men will turn their attention towards 
 it, no doubt need be entertained that very 
 practicable methods of carrying it into execution 
 will in time be discovered, by comparison of 
 projects, or from the result of trials. 
 
 12. When any piece of land is sold, the price 
 paid by the purchaser may be considered as 
 consisting of three parts, each being the value 
 of a distinct subject, the separate amount of 
 which, men skilful in agriculture, and acquainted
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 43 
 
 with the soil of the country, might accurately 
 enough appreciate. 
 
 These parts are : 
 
 (ist) The original value of the soil, or that 
 which it. might have borne in its natural state, 
 prior to all cultivation. 
 
 (and) The accessory or improved value of the 
 soil : that, to wit, which it has received from 
 the improvements and cultivation bestowed on 
 it by the last proprietor, and those who have 
 preceded him. 
 
 (3rd) The contingent, or improvable value of 
 the soil : that further value which it may still 
 receive from future cultivation and improve- 
 ments, over and above defraying the expense 
 of making such improvements ; or, as it may 
 be otherwise expressed, the value of an exclusive 
 right to make these improvements. 
 
 If, in England, 100 acres of arable are sold 
 for 1500, money being at 5 per cent., the con- 
 tingent value may be reckoned 500 for the 
 superior value of that security which land gives 
 may, in a general argument, be supposed to 
 be counterbalanced by the trouble of manage- 
 ment. Of the remaining 1000, two or three 
 hundred may be computed to be the original 
 value of the soil, a judgment being formed from 
 the nature of the adjoining common, and the 
 700 or 800 remaining is to be accounted the 
 amount of the accessory or improved value. 
 In this example, these three parts of the general
 
 44 LAND REFORM 
 
 value are to one another as 2, 8, and 5. If the 
 example is taken from a hundred acres in Bengal, 
 or the lower Egypt, the proportion of the parts 
 may be supposed to be 10, 4, and i. If from 
 100 acres of uncultivated moorland, in Ireland, 
 or the northern counties of England, the pro- 
 portion of the parts may be as i, o, and 14. 
 
 13. The estate of every landholder may, while 
 he possesses it, be considered as capable of being 
 analysed into these three component parts ; 
 and could the value of each be separately ascer- 
 tained by any equitable method (as by the verdict 
 of an assize), it would not be difficult to dis- 
 tinguish the nature and the extent of his private 
 right, and of that right also which still belongs 
 to the community, in those fields which he is 
 permitted, under the protection of municipal 
 law, to possess. He must be allowed to have a 
 full and absolute right to the original, the im- 
 proved, and contingent value of such portion of 
 his estate, as would fall to his share, on an equal 
 partition of the territory of the State among the 
 citizens. Over all the surplus extent of his 
 estate, he has a full right to the whole accessory 
 value, whether he has been the original improver 
 himself, or has succeeded to, or purchased from 
 the heirs or assignees of such improver. But 
 to the original and contingent value of this 
 surplus extent he has no full right. That must 
 still reside in the community at large, and, 
 though seemingly neglected or relinquished,
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 45 
 
 may be claimed at pleasure by the legislature, 
 or by the magistrate, who is the public trustee. 1 
 14. The difficulty of ascertaining these different 
 sorts of value, and of separating them from one 
 another, if ascertained, may be supposed in 
 general to have prevented such claims from being 
 made. It is particularly difficult to distinguish 
 the original from the accessory value ; nor is 
 the community much injured by suffering these 
 to remain together in the hands of the greater 
 landholders, especially in countries where land- 
 taxes make a principal branch of the public 
 revenue, and no tax is imposed on property 
 of other kinds. The original value of the soil is, 
 in such states, in fact, treated as a fund belonging 
 to the public, and merely deposited in the hands 
 of great proprietors, to be, by the imposition 
 of land-taxes, gradually applied to the public 
 
 1 Even in those countries where the extensive rights of 
 the proprietors of land are most firmly established and 
 guarded, as in Britain, by laws which they themselves have 
 framed, the magistrate, when any public occasion requires 
 it, as in constructing new roads, canals, and streets, 
 building bridges and fortifications, obliges the proprietors, 
 for a reasonable compensation, to part with as much of 
 the soil as may be requisite for the intended works. 
 There is nothing wanting to complete the prosperity of 
 Europe, but a rule, or familiar method, according to 
 which the landholders may be made, for a like compensa- 
 tion, to part with such portions of the soil as are wanted 
 from time to time, for the accommodation of particular 
 citizens, desirous to employ their industry and their stock 
 in the cultivation of the earth, with full security of reaping 
 the due reward.
 
 46 LAND REFORM 
 
 use, and which may be justly drawn from them, 
 as the public occasions require, until the whole 
 be exhausted. Equity, however, requires that 
 from such land-taxes those small tenements 
 which do not exceed the proprietor's natural 
 share of the soil should be exempted. To 
 separate the contingent value from the other 
 two is less difficult, and of more importance ; 
 for the detriment which the public surfers by 
 neglecting this separation, and permitting an 
 exclusive right of improving the soil to accumu- 
 late in the hands of a small part of the com- 
 munity, is far greater, in respect both of the 
 progress of agriculture, and the comfortable 
 independence of the lower ranks. 1 
 
 1 If the original value of the soil be the joint property 
 of the community, no scheme of taxation can be so 
 equitable as a land-tax, by which alone the expenses of 
 the State ought to be supported, until the whole amount 
 of that original value be exhausted ; for the persons who 
 have retained no portion of that public stock, but have 
 suffered their shares to be deposited in the hands of the 
 landholders, may be allowed to complain, if, before that 
 fund is entirely applied to the public use, they are sub- 
 jected to taxes, imposed on any other kind of property, 
 or any articles of consumption. 
 
 How preposterous, then, is the system of that country 
 which maintains a civil and military establishment, by 
 taxes of large amount, without the assistance of any land- 
 tax at all ! In that example may be perceived the true 
 spirit of legislation, as exercised by landholders alone. 
 ; ,_ Without regard to the original value of the soil, the 
 gross amount of property in land is the fittest subject 
 of taxation ; and could it be made to support the whole 
 expense of the public, great advantages would arise to 
 all orders of men. What then, it may be said, would not
 
 47 
 
 in that case the proprietors of stock in trade, in manu- 
 facture and arts, escape taxation, that is, the proprietors 
 of one-half the national income ? They would indeed, 
 be so exempted ; and very justly, and very profitably for 
 the State ; for it accords with the best interests of the 
 community, through successive generations, that active 
 progressive industry should be exempted, if possible, from 
 every public burden, and that the whole weight should be 
 laid on that quiescent stock, which has been formerly 
 accumulated, as the reward of an industry which is now 
 no longer exerted. 
 
 A just and exact valuation of landed property is the 
 necessary basis of an equal land-tax, and the tenant in 
 mortgage ought to sustain a proportional share of the 
 burden, in the actual landholder's stead. 
 
 To keep a land-tax equal, the valuation ought to be 
 renewed from age to age. 
 
 If that valuation returns periodically after long in- 
 tervals, of half a century or more, instead of repressing 
 the progress of improvement in agriculture, it will tend 
 to excite the utmost diligence in that pursuit. 
 
 If in any country there is reason to apprehend that the 
 encumbered state of the finances will constrain the rulers 
 of the State, in a short time, to have recourse to this great 
 fund, the expectation of a new valuation will damp the 
 progress of agriculture ; and the intelligent friends of the 
 public good ought to desire that a scheme which cannot 
 be avoided should take place without delay.
 
 SECTION II 
 
 Of the Right of Property in Land, as 
 founded on Public Utility 
 
 15. THE increase of public happiness is the true 
 primary object which ought to claim the atten- 
 tion of every state. It is to be attained by 
 increasing the common standard or measure of 
 happiness, which every citizen may have a 
 chance of enjoying under the protection of the 
 State ; and by increasing the number of citizens, 
 who are to enjoy this common measure of happi- 
 ness. The increase of opulence, or of dominion, 
 are subordinate objects, and only to be pursued, 
 as they tend to the increase of happiness, or of 
 numbers ; to both of which they are in some 
 respects, and in certain cases, unfriendly. 1 
 
 1 It would be unjust to assert that the landholders 
 have premeditated and intended to effect this oppression 
 of the cultivators, so injurious to that order of men, and 
 so little profitable to the landholders themselves ; it 
 would be a mistake to suppose that it has been accom- 
 plished by any concerted plan of iniquity and fraud. No, 
 it is the course of things that has brought it gradually 
 forward : the natural submission of dependents has been 
 insensibly enforced to this degree ; the cultivators have 
 
 48
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 49 
 
 16. Whatever regulations tend directly to 
 increase the eommon measure of happiness, 
 enjoyed by each individual citizen, tend assuredly 
 to increase the number of citizens. But every 
 regulation tending to increase the number of 
 citizens does not certainly tend to increase the 
 common measure of happiness, and in various 
 situations of the community, may tend to 
 diminish it. The first sort of regulations is 
 therefore to be preferred, in case of interference, 
 to the second. 
 
 17. The happiness of individuals, or of any 
 great body of men, is nearly in proportion to 
 their virtue and their worth. That manner of 
 life, therefore, which is most favourable to the 
 virtue of the citizens, ought, for the sake of their 
 happiness, to be encouraged and promoted by 
 the legislature. Men employed in cultivating 
 the soil, if suffered to enjoy a reasonable inde- 
 pendence, and a just share of the produce of 
 their toil, are of simpler manners, and more 
 virtuous, honest dispositions, than any other 
 class of men. The testimony of all observers, 
 in every age and country, concurs in this, and 
 the reason of it may be found in the nature of 
 their industry, and its reward. Their industry 
 is not like that of the labouring manufacturer, 
 insipidly uniform, but varied, it excludes idle- 
 not been sufficiently aware to protect their own right ; 
 still less has the sovereign power been-attentive to protect 
 the mos useful order of men in the State.
 
 50 LAND REFORM 
 
 ness without imposing excessive drudgery, and 
 its reward consists in abundance of necessary 
 accommodations, without luxury and refinement. 
 
 18. The families which are employed in this 
 healthful industry, and live in this comfortable 
 independence, increase more than others in 
 different situations of life. It is by their progeny 
 chiefly that the waste of great cities, of armies, 
 navies, commercial and manufacturing occupa- 
 tions is continually supplied. 
 
 19. The labour of men applied to the cultiva- 
 tion of the earth tends more to increase the 
 public wealth, for it is more productive of things 
 necessary for the accommodation of life, wherein 
 all real wealth consists, than if it were applied 
 to any other purpose ; and all labour applied 
 to refined and commercial arts, while the State 
 can furnish or procure opportunities of applying 
 it to the cultivation of the soil, may be said 
 to be squandered and misapplied, unless in so 
 far as it is given to those liberal arts, whose 
 productions operate on the mind, and rouse the 
 fancy or the heart. 
 
 20. The most obvious, the surest, and least 
 equivocal indication of prosperity and happiness 
 is the strength and comeliness of a race of men. 1 
 
 1 If it be asked what is the most natural state of human 
 kind, it may be replied, that in which the whole tribe or 
 race approach near to one common standard of comeliness 
 and strength, without any mixture of deformed, dwarfish, 
 or mutilated individuals. In other species of animals, 
 this is always found to take place in their natural state.
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 51 
 
 21. Those who are employed in agriculture, 
 if not oppressed by the superior orders, if per- 
 mitted to enjoy competent independence and 
 rustic plenty, remote from the contagion of 
 intemperance, are known to excel in strength, 
 comeliness, and good health, every other class 
 of men in civilized nations ; and are only excelled 
 in those respects by some simple tribes of men, 
 who enjoy the advantages common to both in 
 a still higher degree. 
 
 22. From all these considerations it may 
 perhaps appear that the best, plainest, and most 
 effectual plan which any government can pursue 
 for increasing the happiness and the numbers 
 of its people is to increase the number of inde- 
 pendent cultivators, to facilitate their establish- 
 ments, and to bring into that favourable situa- 
 tion as great a number of citizens as the extent 
 of its territory will admit. Of two nations 
 equal in extent of territory and in number of 
 citizens, that may be accounted the happiest 
 in which the number of independent cultivators 
 is the greatest. 
 
 23. Any given country will then have the 
 greatest possible number of independent culti- 
 vators, when each individual of mature age 
 
 If we would ascertain whether the slaves of antiquity 
 were more or less happy than the modern artisans, manu- 
 facturers, cottars, and men of various degraded ranks and 
 vocations, abounding in great cities, we ought to inquire 
 whether they degenerated as perceptibly, and became as 
 dwarfish and deformed, as the races of these men become.
 
 52 LAND REFORM 
 
 shall be possessed of an equal share of the soil ; 
 and in such country the common measure or 
 standard of happiness will probably have reached 
 its highest degree. 
 
 Whether therefore we inquire into the natural 
 rights and privileges of men, or consult for the 
 best interests of the greater number, the same 
 practical regulations for the economy of property 
 in land seem to result from either inquiry. 
 
 24. Whatsoever plans seem to promise the 
 increase of wealth, happiness, and numbers in 
 any other channel than the freedom and in- 
 dependence of cultivation, are of a more doubtful 
 nature, and may well have their claim to public 
 encouragement postponed until this paramount 
 object of good policy be carried to its utmost 
 perfection. 1 
 
 1 That nation is greatly deceived and misled which 
 bestows any encouragement on manufactures for exporta- 
 tion, or for any purpose but the necessary internal supply, 
 until the great manufactures of grain and pasturage are 
 carried to their utmost extent. It can never be the 
 interest of the community to do so ; it may be that of the 
 landholders, who desire indeed to be considered as the 
 nation itself, or at least as being representatives of the 
 nation, and having the same interest with the whole body 
 of the people. 
 
 In fact, however, their interest is, in some most im- 
 portant respects, directly opposite to that of the great 
 body of the community, over whom they exercise an ill- 
 , regulated jurisdiction, together with an oppressive 
 monopoly in the commerce of land to be hired for cul- 
 tivation. 
 
 The encouragements granted to commerce and manu- 
 factures, and so universally extolled, seem merely schemes
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 53 
 
 25. Manufactures and commerce promise such 
 augmentation of wealth and people. Some 
 degree of both is requisite for the progress of 
 agriculture, and must attend it ; but neither 
 of them can in any situation of things have any 
 title to encouragement at the risk of obstructing 
 independent agriculture. The balance of their 
 respective claims may always be adjusted in the 
 most unexceptionable manner, by leaving men 
 wholly to their free choice, and removing all 
 obstruction and monopoly equally from the 
 pursuit of both. Let all freedom be given to 
 him who has stock, to employ it in any sort of 
 trade, manufacture, or agriculture, that he may 
 choose ; and let it be made equally easy for the 
 farmer to acquire the full property of the soil 
 on which he is to exercise his industry, as for 
 the manufacturer to acquire the full property 
 of the rude materials he is to work up. 1 
 
 devised for employing the poor and finding subsistence 
 for them, in that manner which may bring most immediate 
 profit to the rich : and these methods are, if not deliber- 
 ately, at least without inquiry, preferred to others, which 
 might bring greater advantage to the body of the people 
 directly, and ultimately even to the rich themselves. 
 
 1 The progress of agriculture will more readily excite 
 the activity of manufactures, and carry that branch of 
 national industry to its proper pitch, than the progress 
 of manufactures will carry agriculture to its most pros- 
 perous state, though each, it must be confessed, has a re- 
 ciprocal influence on the other. 
 
 In certain countries, manufactures seem to have ad- 
 vanced beyond their proper pitch, and begin very sensi- 
 bly to affect the race of people and their manners.
 
 54 LAND REFORM 
 
 26. That every field should be cultivated by 
 its proprietor, is most favourable to agriculture, 
 and cultivation. That every individual who 
 would choose it should be the proprietor of a 
 field, and employed in its cultivation, is most 
 favourable to happiness, and to virtue. In 
 the combination of both circumstances will be 
 found the most consummate prosperity of a 
 people and of their country, and the best plan 
 for accommodating the original right of universal 
 occupancy with the acquired rights of labour. 1 
 
 Notwithstanding the great progress which agriculture 
 has made in England, still greater remains to be made : 
 though regarded by foreign nations as an example worthy 
 of imitation, it remains for Britain still to surpass the 
 best examples hitherto given. 
 
 The chief obstacle to rapid improvement of agriculture 
 is plainly that monopoly of land which resides in the 
 proprietors, and which the commercial system of the 
 present age has taught them to exercise with artful 
 strictness, almost everywhere. 
 
 1 The fields around every gentleman's seat are culti- 
 vated in a better manner, and raised to a higher degree of 
 fertility, than those of the adjacent farms, because they 
 have been for ages cultivated by the proprietors of the 
 soil : in them is seen to what degree of fertility the whole 
 cultivable lands of any country may be brought, were 
 every field in like manner cultivated by its proprietor. 
 
 There is no natural obstacle to prevent the most barren 
 ground from being brought by culture to the same degree 
 of fertility with the kitchen garden of a villa, or the 
 suburbs of a great town. An attentive application of 
 the natural manure of the fields may effect it in a long 
 course"? of, time : the plentiful and judicious use of ex- 
 traneous manures, the great fund of which in the lime- 
 stone quarries and marl pits of the earth cannot be 
 exhausted, will accomplish it in a much shorter period ;
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 55 
 
 but the present care and the secure interest of a proprietor 
 is required for both. 
 
 With a view to depreciate the public credit and re- 
 sources of this nation, it has been observed that England 
 has almost no uncultivated land to be improved. But the 
 author (Dr Franklin, in a paper circulated in 1777) of 
 that observation knows well, that four-fifth parts of the 
 cultivated lands of England are cultivated in a very im- 
 perfect manner, and may yet be raised to a fertility twice 
 if not three times as great as that which they presently 
 have. This is a fund to which the wisdom of the nation 
 may sometime have recourse, and by which the industry 
 and internal wealth of the community may be supported, 
 even in the worst extremities ; nor can it be torn from 
 us but with the independence of the State. 
 
 An unlimited property in land ought not to be possessed 
 by any citizen ; a restricted property in land cannot be 
 communicated to too great a number. 
 
 That high prosperity which some states have attained, 
 by the encouragement of manufactures, and the prosecu- 
 tion of commerce, on enlarged and liberal principles, has 
 become of late the object of emulation, perhaps of envy, 
 to others, so that all civilised nations are now impatient 
 to become manufacturing and commercial in their turn. 
 Yet before the example was set, no one had apprehended 
 the possibility of exciting so much active industry, nor 
 the important effects it was to produce in the great 
 system of Europe. 
 
 Hereafter, perhaps, some fortunate nation will give the 
 example of setting agriculture free from its fetters also, 
 and of introducing a change in that department of 
 industry, similar to that which has been accomplished 
 in manufactures and commerce, by the dissolving of 
 monopolies, and removing obstructions and restraints. 
 A new emulation will then arise among the nations 
 hastening to acquire that still higher vigour and pros- 
 perity, which the emancipation of the first and most 
 usefulfof all arts cannot fail to produce. 
 
 Cultivation by slaves, by villeins, and by metayers, have 
 succeeded one another all over the west of Europe. In 
 England, even the last of these is totally worn out, and 
 has given place to cultivation by farmers, whilst in France
 
 56 LAND REFORM 
 
 two-third parts of the land is still cultivated by metayers, 
 and in Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Russia a yet 
 greater proportion is still cultivated by villeins and slaves. 
 In all these successive changes the landholder has still 
 found his advantage in communicating to the occupier 
 of the ground a greater and greater degree of security in 
 his possession, and the public prosperity has kept pace 
 with this good administration of the landholder's private 
 estate. England perhaps owes that power and lustre, by 
 which she surpasses other nations, chiefly to her having 
 preceded them in the prosecution of these changes. 
 Ought it not therefore to be tried whether the landholder 
 may not still further improve his own interest, as well as 
 the public good, by pursuing the same line a little farther, 
 and communicating still greater security and indepen- 
 dence to the cultivators of his fields ? 
 
 No impracticable Utopian scheme can be said to be 
 suggested, in proposing that property in land should be 
 diffused to as great a number of citizens as may desire it : 
 that is only proposing to carry somewhat farther, and 
 render more extensive, a plan which the experience of 
 many ages has shown to be very practicable, and highly 
 beneficial in every public and private respect. 
 
 It is the oppression of the landholders and their agents, 
 which has ever been the bane of Europe, more than even 
 the oppression of the most arbitrary governments ; and 
 the absence of this more close and prying oppression 
 renders the despotic governments of the East not in- 
 tolerable to their subjects. However numerous and 
 powerful that body of men, by whom this oppressive 
 right is presently exercised, it may in the course of ages 
 be reduced within proper limits, as other exorbitant 
 invasions of the common rights of men have sometimes 
 been. 
 
 The institutions of the Mosaical law respecting property 
 in land have been but little attended to by the learned. 
 
 To that most respectable system an appeal may be 
 made in support' of these speculations ; for the aim of the 
 Mosaical regulations plainly is, that every field should be 
 cultivated by its proprietor, and that every descendant 
 of Jacob should possess in full property a field which he 
 might cultivate.
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 57 
 
 Whoever shall consider the probable effect of such an 
 institution in increasing the number of people, will cease 
 to wonder at the uncommon populousness of Judea in 
 ancient times. The same effect might be renewed in that 
 country, could these Agrarian regulations be restored to 
 their force. The same effect might be exhibited in almost 
 any district of Europe in which they could be established 
 for any length of time. 
 
 While sovereigns, judges, and clergymen, have made 
 continual reference to the Mosaical law, as to a standard 
 by which their regulations and their claims were justified 
 and enforced, it may seem strange, and worthy of regret, 
 that the common people have never had recourse to 
 the same standard, and claimed the advantages of an 
 Agrarian institution, so favourable to the independence 
 of agriculture, the increase of population, and the com- 
 fortable state of the lower classes of men. 
 
 Occasion will be found of treating more at length of 
 the Mosaical Agrarian, considered as an economical 
 regulation, in a history of property in land, which may 
 hereafter be offered to the public, 
 
 In any just system of regulations relative to property 
 in land, the chief difficulty must be to reconcile the 
 interests of an improving agriculture with the natural 
 rights of every individual to a certain share of the soil 
 of his country ; but in the present state of municipal law 
 in Europe, the interest of improving agriculture is sacri- 
 ficed, and yet the right of the people to a common pos- 
 session, or to equal shares on partition, is not provided 
 for. Both are given up, in favour of the lordly rights of 
 one pre-eminent order of men.
 
 SECTION III 
 
 Of the Abuses and Pernicious Effects of that Ex- 
 orbitant Right of Property in Land which the 
 Municipal Laws of Europe have established. 
 
 27. THE means by which a state may attain or 
 approach near to this consummate prosperity 
 cannot be thought to exceed the compass of 
 human wisdom duly applied ; yet if we consider 
 the nature and the effects of that system of 
 property in land, which has superseded all 
 others in the enlightened nations of Europe, 
 and against which hardly any complaint has 
 arisen, we shall find them very different from 
 what might be expected of any system, in which 
 even the smallest attention was paid to the 
 natural rights, or the attainable happiness of 
 the great body of the people. 
 
 Of a million of acres, scarcely twenty thousand 
 are cultivated by proprietors. 
 
 Of a thousand citizens, masters of families, 
 scarcely five hundred are employed in cultivating 
 the soil for their own account, while four hundred 
 and fifty of the remainder would prefer (or at 
 the time of choosing their employment for life 
 
 58
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 59 
 
 would have preferred) that to their present 
 occupation, could they procure on reasonable 
 terms the opportunity of exercising it. 
 
 Of five hundred cultivators, not more than 
 twenty are proprietors, or have any permanent 
 tenure of the soil which they cultivate. 
 
 Of ten thousand acres, scarcely ten are raised 
 to that highest degree of fertility which experi- 
 ence has shown that the common soil of the 
 country may be brought to, by the judicious 
 culture of occupiers, to whom the remotest 
 advantages of that improvement are secured. 
 
 Of one thousand people, not five can be thought 
 to be endowed with that degree of strength and 
 comeliness, which nature seems to have intended 
 for the human race. 
 
 28. All these untoward circumstances, which 
 take place in most countries in Europe, in a 
 higher degree than what is here specified, may 
 be traced up, as to their cause, to that exclusive 
 right to the improvable value of the soil which 
 a few men, never in any country exceeding one- 
 hundredth part of the community, are permitted 
 to engross a most oppressive privilege, by the 
 operation of which the happiness of mankind 
 has been for ages more invaded and restrained, 
 than by all the tyranny of kings, the imposture 
 of priests, and the chicane of lawyers taken 
 together, though these are supposed to be the 
 greatest evils that afflict the societies of human 
 kind.
 
 60 LAND REFORM 
 
 29. The silent but pervading energy of this 
 oppression comes home to the bosoms and to 
 the firesides of the lowest orders of men, who 
 are thereby rendered mean-spirited and servile. 
 It begets in them also, for their own defence, so 
 much cunning, fraud, hypocrisy, and malignant 
 envy towards those who enjoy affluence, that 
 by its wide and continual operation the virtue 
 of mankind is more corrupted, and their minds 
 more debased, than by all the luxury and 
 ostentatious meanness of courts, together with 
 the debauched indigence and riotous profusion 
 of great cities. 
 
 30. Whatever good reasons may be given for 
 restraining money-holders from taking too high 
 interest, may with still greater force be applied 
 to restraining proprietors of land from an abuse 
 of their right. By exacting exorbitant rents, 
 they exercise a most pernicious usury, and deprive 
 industry that is actually exerted of its due 
 reward. By granting only short leases, they 
 stifle and prevent the exertion of that industry 
 which is ready at all times to spring up, were 
 the cultivation of the soil laid open upon equit- 
 able terms. 1 
 
 1 For what reason is the money-holder prohibited from 
 taking the highest interest, or premium, which he can 
 bargain with the borrower to give ? Chiefly, that he may 
 not thus have it in his power to damp the active spirit 
 of commerce and of industry, by levying too high a tax 
 on the means by which it is to be exerted. Why then 
 should not the landholder be restrained from taxing at
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 61 
 
 31. It is of more importance to the com- 
 munity, that regulations should be imposed 
 on the proprietors of land, than on the pro- 
 prietors of money ; for land is the principal 
 
 too high a rate the means of exerting that sort of industry 
 which is of all others the most essential to the community ; 
 and is even necessary for the salutary occupation and 
 best condition of the greater number of its members ? 
 In restraining the interest of money, the legislatures of 
 most countries have not feared to impose a check on the 
 free enjoyment of the reward of industry in its most 
 recent form ; for that reward in its first accumulation, 
 and nearest to the sources, consists always of money, to 
 be lent out at interest, which is afterwards converted into 
 property in land. 
 
 All other kinds of property, as that of the money -holder 
 in his cash, of the inventor in his inventions, even that of 
 the writer in his books, are limited and regulated, by the 
 consideration of what is supposed to tend to the greatest 
 public utility : why ought not then the property of the 
 landholder in his lands, which is the most extensive and 
 most important of all, be submitted to restrictions of 
 the same tendency ? 
 
 Much praise has been bestowed, and not unjustly) on 
 the advantages of that free circulation and ready com- 
 merce which is now established in most countries of 
 Europe. It is, indeed, extremely favourable to the 
 industry of men, and to the provision of a supply for all 
 their wants, that whoever possesses skill, art, or diligence 
 of any kind, may find the materials whereon to exercise 
 his talents at a moderate price ; and may bring the pro- 
 duce of his labour to a free market. 
 
 This freedom is enjoyed completely by every sort of 
 mechanic, manufacturer, and artist, excepting only the 
 cultivator of the ground, who is of all others the most 
 essential artisan to the welfare of the community. He, 
 indeed, in many countries may now bring his produce to 
 a free and open market, but he cannot so easily find the 
 rude materials of his industry at a reasonable price : for
 
 62 LAND REFORM 
 
 stock of every nation, the principal subject of 
 industry, and that the use of which is most 
 necessary for the happiness and due employment 
 of every individual. 
 
 32. Nor is it less practicable to adapt regula- 
 
 he is confined in his inquiry and choice to that narrow 
 district of country with which he is acquainted, and even 
 to the small number of farms that may happen to fall 
 vacant about the same time with his own : in this narrow 
 district a monopoly is established against him in the 
 hands of a few landholders ; in this respect his situation 
 is much inferior to that of the artisan, who can go to a 
 cheap market wherever it is found, and can bring his 
 rude materials from a great distance to his home ; but 
 the cultivator must carry his home to his rude materials 
 when he has found them. 
 
 In another more important respect, the condition of 
 the cultivator is still worse : every other artisan, when 
 he has purchased his rude materials, becomes sole pro- 
 prietor of them for ever, and whatever skill or diligence 
 he bestows in improving or refining them, whatever 
 additional value he gives them, no other person has any 
 right to the whole or to any part of it. It is rarely, indeed, 
 that the cultivator can purchase his materials on such 
 terms ; the fields he has improved he must surrender at 
 a fixed period, and cannot separate the improvements 
 he has made to carry them away with him. Is he not 
 nearly in the state of a borrower of money, who, after 
 thirty-one years' certain possession of the sum borrowed, 
 paying regularly a large interest, should be obliged to 
 refund the capital, and to pay along with it whatever he 
 had gained by the use of the money, and had not thought 
 proper to spend in his daily subsistence ? 
 
 Would it not at least be fair, that if the cultivator 
 cannot purchase his rude materials in perpetual property, 
 he may be permitted to carry off the additional improve- 
 ment he has made ; or (if that cannot be separated from 
 the original subject) entitled to require some equivalent 
 for its value ?
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 63 
 
 tions to the use of land than to the use of money, 
 were the legislative body equally well inclined 
 to impose salutary restrictions on both. The 
 glaring abuses of the one might be as effectually 
 prevented as those of the other ; although the 
 total exclusion of all manner of abuse from 
 either, is not to be looked for. But that class 
 of men in whom the strength of every government 
 resides, and the right of making or the power 
 of influencing and controlling those who possess 
 the right of making laws, have generally been 
 borrowers of money and proprietors of land. 
 
 33. Simple rustics are naturally averse to 
 quit their native soil, and the narrow circuit 
 of that neighbourhood in which their youth has 
 been spent. Hence the unlimited right of 
 property in land becomes a monopoly in the 
 hands of the proprietors of every district : a 
 monopoly which tends not less to the starving 
 of their fellow-citizens, than a monopoly of 
 bakers without any control or inspection of 
 the magistrate would do. It will not produce 
 its effects very suddenly indeed : it is only a 
 lingering piecemeal famine, under which the 
 individual languishes, and the race becomes 
 dwarfish, debilitated, and deformed. 1 
 
 1 The monopoly of rude materials, indispensably 
 requisite for carrying on any branch of industry, is far 
 more pernicious than the monopoly of manufactured 
 commodities ready for consumption. The monopoly 
 possessed by landholders is of the first sort, and affects 
 the prime material of the most essential industry.
 
 64 LAND REFORM 
 
 34. What other cause than this pernicious 
 monopoly can be assigned, why population has 
 
 This monopoly, indeed, cannot be said to take place 
 in any country, until the age of military suite and services 
 be past, and the reign of law and of order well established. 
 Till that time the landholder stands no less in need of 
 brave and strong men to assist and defend him, and 
 attached to his interest, than these men stand in need of 
 cultivable soil on which their industry may be exercised 
 in the intervals of tumult, and from which the subsistence 
 of their families may be procured. Each party, therefore, 
 having a commodity to traffic, of which the other stands 
 in need, the bargain will be made on equitable terms. 
 
 The monopoly possessed by landholders enables them 
 to deprive the peasants not only of the due reward of 
 industry exercised on the soil, but also of that which 
 they may have opportunity of exercising in any other 
 way, and on any other subject ; and hence arises the 
 most obvious interest of the landholder, in promoting 
 manufactures. 
 
 There are districts in which the landholder's rents have 
 been doubled within fifty years, in consequence of a 
 branch of manufacture being introduced and flourishing, 
 without any improvement in the mode of agriculture, or 
 any considerable increase of the produce of the soil. 
 Here, therefore, the landlords are great gainers, but by 
 what industry or attention have they earned their profits? 
 How have they contributed to the progress of this manu- 
 facture, unless by forbearing to obstruct it ? and yet 
 from the necessity under which the manufacturing poor 
 lived, of resorting to these landholders to purchase from 
 them the use of houses and land, for the residence of 
 their families, they have been enabled to tax their humble 
 industry at a very high rate, and to rob them of perhaps 
 more than one-half of its reward. 
 
 Had the manufacturers of such districts possessed what 
 every citizen seems entitled to have, a secure home of 
 their own, had they enjoyed full property in their lands, 
 would not then the reward of their industrious labour 
 have remained entire in their own hands ?
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 65 
 
 been so long at a stand in Europe, and does not 
 advance with nearly the same rapidity as in 
 America ; since so much land remains in every 
 country that may be cultivated, or improved, 
 at little more, perhaps equal, or less expense, 
 than the forests of the new world can be cleared ? 
 Vicinity would compensate some difference in 
 expense, but the persons who would be inclined 
 to bestow their labour on these European 
 wastes, cannot hope to obtain property in them 
 on reasonable terms. 1 
 
 35. What other reason can be given, than the 
 influence of this monopoly, why in countries, 
 for many ages not thinly inhabited, nor un- 
 acquainted with the arts of agriculture, so great 
 a proportion of the soil should still remain barren, 
 or at least far below that state of fertility, to 
 which the judicious cultivation of independent 
 occupiers could bring it ? If in any country 
 this monopoly were abated or removed, popula- 
 
 1 What it is that in England restrains the early 
 marriages of the poor and industrious classes of men ? 
 Alas ! not the Marriage Act, but a system of institutions 
 more difficult to be reformed ; establishing in a few hands 
 that monopoly of land by which the improvable as well 
 as the improved value of the soil is engrossed. It is this 
 which chiefly occasions the difficulty of their finding early 
 and comfortable settlements in life, and so prevents the 
 consent of parents from being given before the legal age. 
 It is this difficulty which even after that age is passed 
 still withholds the consent of parents, restrains the inclina- 
 tions of the parties themselves, and keeps so great a 
 number of the lower classes unmarried to their thirtieth 
 or fortieth years, perhaps for their whole lives. 
 
 5
 
 66 LAND REFORM 
 
 tion and agriculture would advance together 
 gradually, perhaps rapidly ; nor would they find 
 any limit to their progress, until every two 
 acres of dry land, the ridges of mountains 
 excepted, were rendered capable of maintaining 
 a man ; and until the population of that country, 
 if it does not already exceed the mean population 
 of Europe, were increased perhaps five-fold. 1 
 
 36. While the cultivable lands remain locked 
 up, as it were, under the present monopoly, 
 any considerable increase of population in a 
 particular state, though it seems to add to the 
 public strength, must have a pernicious influence 
 on the relative interests of society, and the 
 happiness of the greater number. By diminish- 
 ing the wages of labour, it favours the rich, 
 fosters their luxury, their vanity, their arrogance ; 
 while on the other hand, it deprives the poor of 
 some share of their just reward and necessary 
 
 1 Let it be considered what regulations a colony of men 
 settling in a small island, just sufficient to furnish them 
 subsistence, by the aid of high cultivation, would prob- 
 ably establish in order to render the independent sub- 
 sistence of each individual secure, and to prevent any 
 one, or a few, from engrossing the territory, or acquiring 
 a greater share than might be consistent with the public 
 good ? Just such regulations respecting property in land, 
 it would be the interest of every state to establish at any 
 period of its history. The supposed state of this colony, 
 whose land, aided by the highest cultivation, is but just 
 sufficient to maintain its people, is that to which every 
 nation ought to aspire, as to its most perfect state ; and 
 to that state the progress of physical causes will bring it 
 forward, if no political obstructions are interposed.
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 67 
 
 subsistence. While this monopoly subsists, the 
 celibacy of the Roman Catholic clergy is far less 
 detrimental in a political light, than it has been 
 supposed to be. Justly might that order retort 
 on the landholders the accusation of retarding 
 the population of the State. 
 
 37. When mention is made in political reason- 
 ings of the interest of any nation, and those 
 circumstances, by which it is supposed to be 
 injured or promoted, are canvassed, it is generally 
 the interest of the landholders that is kept in 
 view : nor would there be any mistake in this, 
 if all men were admitted to claim, if they chose 
 it, their natural share of the soil. The prevalence 
 of this manner of speaking and reasoning may 
 well be construed to indicate, amid all the 
 artificial establishments of society, a secret 
 though confused perception of this original 
 right. 
 
 38. Regarding the whole wealth of the com- 
 munity, as belonging of right to themselves, 
 landholders stand foremost in opposing the 
 imposition of exorbitant taxes by the State, 
 forgetting the exorbitancy of that taxation which 
 they themselves impose on the cultivators of the 
 soil, and which the sovereign may in justice, 
 and in the way of retaliation ought to, regu- 
 late and restrain. They clamour aloud against 
 pensions and sinecure places, bestowed by the 
 sovereign, not adverting that their own large 
 incomes are indeed pensions, and salaries of
 
 68 LAND REFORM 
 
 sinecure offices, which they derive from the 
 partiality of municipal law in favour of that 
 order of men by whom its regulations are virtually 
 enacted. The injury done to the community 
 at large is the same, whether such unjust dis- 
 tribution be made by the chief magistrate, or 
 by the system of laws itself. The injustice 
 proceeding from the latter will always be more 
 permanent, and more extensive. Against the 
 tithes of the clergy, landholders have been 
 accustomed to complain bitterly, as the bane 
 of agriculture, as an usurpation on their own 
 most evident rights, as wages exacted for which 
 little or no duty is performed. But, while the 
 bad effects of a tithe right must be acknowledged, 
 in checking improvement, and robbing humble 
 industry of its due reward ; the right of the 
 landholder must be allowed to operate in the 
 same manner, with more unlimited force. The 
 foundation of both rights, notwithstanding pre- 
 judices on either side, is precisely the same, 
 viz., the improvident regulations of municipal 
 law. And if any pretensions to a higher original 
 are advanced, those in favour of. the tithe right 
 are no doubt most plausible. If considered 
 as the reward of duties, to be performed to the 
 public, the incomes of the clergy, after admitting 
 all that spleen has advanced against that order 
 of men, must appear by far better earned. How 
 slight indeed in themselves, and how negligently 
 performed, are those duties which the State
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 69 
 seems to expect at the hands of landholders, 
 in return for their affluence ? 
 
 39. The public good requires that every 
 individual should be excited to employ his 
 industry in increasing the public stock, or to 
 exert his talents in the public service, by the 
 certainty of a due reward. Whoever enjoys any 
 revenue, not proportioned to such industry 
 or exertion of his own, or of his ancestors, is a 
 freebooter, who has found means to cheat or to 
 rob the public, and more especially the indigent 
 of that district in which he lives. But the 
 hereditary revenue of a great landholder is 
 wholly independent of his industry, and secure 
 from every danger that does not threaten the 
 whole State. It increases also without any 
 effort of his, and in proportion to the industry 
 of those who cultivate the soil. In respect 
 of their industry, therefore, it is a taille or pro- 
 gressive tax of the most pernicious nature, 
 and in respect of the landholder himself, it is a 
 premium given to idleness, an inducement to 
 refrain from any active useful employment, 
 and to withhold his talents, whatever they are, 
 from the service of his country. If the circum- 
 stances in which he finds himself placed stimulate 
 to any exertion at all, it is that insidious vigilance 
 by which he himself is debased, and his depen- 
 dents at once corrupted and oppressed. 1 
 
 1 It has been required of the magistrate that he should 
 with the same assiduity apply rewards to virtue as
 
 70 LAND REFORM 
 
 40. The indirect and remote influences of 
 this monopoly are productive of many unnatural 
 situations and many pernicious effects, which 
 the skill of legislature is frequently employed 
 in vain to redress. Were this monopoly any- 
 
 punishment to vice. The part which he has to act in 
 respect of these cases is very different. The natural 
 sentiments of men are sufficient to repress smaller vices, 
 and to encourage and reward great and striking virtues ; 
 but they are not vigorous enough to apply adequate 
 punishment to great crimes, nor steady and uniform 
 enough to secure due reward and regular encouragement 
 to the common and ordinary virtues of human life. It 
 is to great crimes, therefore, that the magistrate must 
 apply fit punishment, and protection he must give to 
 the ordinary virtues. Of these there is none which will 
 stand more in need of his protection, or may be more 
 effectually reached by his care, than industry. The 
 cultivation of the soil is by far the most extensive and 
 most important branch of national industry, and in 
 all respects most worthy of the magistrate's peculiar 
 attention. 
 
 Every man, and every order of men, have their peculiar 
 commodity, which they bring to market for the service 
 of the community, and for procuring the means of their 
 own subsistence. It would be injustice and oppression, 
 therefore, in any one order to impose restrictions on any 
 other, respecting the price they may demand for their 
 peculiar commodity. This injustice, however, certain 
 higher orders have attempted, though generally without 
 success, to put in practice, on various occasions, against 
 their inferiors against hired servants, day labourers, 
 journeymen, and artists of various kinds by prescribing 
 limits to the wages they are allowed to ask or to receive. 
 
 These lower classes of citizens have only the labour of 
 their hands for their commodity, and if any is more than 
 another entitled to the privileges of a free and equal 
 market, it is surely that which may be accounted more 
 immediately the gift of nature to each.
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 71 
 
 where removed, and the cultivation of the soil 
 laid open upon reasonable terms, the lowest 
 classes of men would not be destitute of where- 
 withal to maintain their decayed and infirm 
 relations and neighbours. 1 These charitable at- 
 
 The community has a right, no doubt, to restrain 
 individuals from doing aught that may be pernicious or 
 offensive : what right it can have to compel them to 
 exert their industry for the public service, at a regulated 
 price, may admit of question, excepting only those cases 
 in which the safety of the State is brought into immediate 
 and evident danger. This will not be alleged when 
 journeymen tailors, or even farm servants, refuse to 
 work without an increase of wages. 
 
 1 England virtually acknowledges, by the system of 
 her poor laws, that right of common occupation of the 
 territory of the State which belongs to every individual 
 citizen, and has only varied, perhaps mistaken, the 
 natural means of rendering that right effectual. 
 
 It has been common of late to complain of, and to 
 traduce, this the most generous and the most respectable 
 establishment of which the jurisprudence of nations can 
 boast. It is the monopoly of landholders that renders 
 such an establishment necessary ; it is their discontent 
 that aggravates the complaints against it. All men who 
 can regard the interests of the poor, and of the land- 
 holders, with an impartial eye, will perceive that it is 
 not less just than generous, and will find reason to think 
 that it has proved highly beneficial to England, in respect 
 of the spirit of her people. 
 
 The abuses which may have crept into this respectable 
 system of laws, ought not to be alleged against its utility, 
 for even in the most perverted state of the institution the 
 abuses are fully compensated by equivalent advantages ; 
 and that they are not in a great measure rectified and 
 removed is the fault of those only whose interest and 
 whose duty require them to attend to this care. 
 
 Even while they subsist, the chief abuses of the poor 
 laws tend more to the advantage of the poor than of the
 
 72 LAND REFORM 
 
 tentions, prompted by private affection, would 
 be better discharged, than when they devolve 
 on the public ; and all that encouragement to 
 idleness, that waste, and mismanagement, in- 
 separable from poor rates, and other public 
 institutions of this sort, would be spared. In 
 
 rich ; and of all permanent institutions, there is no other, 
 perhaps, of which this can be affirmed. 
 
 No regulation could tend more effectually to promote 
 a reduction of poor rates than the establishment of certain 
 branches of a progressive Agrarian law ; and it might 
 deserve consideration, whether other methods of reducing 
 these rates, which are attempted, and which may be 
 supposed by the poor themselves to bear hard on the 
 freedom of their condition, ought not to be accompanied 
 with some establishment of that nature ; which, whilst 
 it might contribute effectually to alleviate the burden of 
 the rates, would tend, at the same time, to convert this 
 class of men into a new source of national wealth and of 
 increasing force. 
 
 The great amount of the poor rates is justly imputed 
 to this, that, whilst young and healthy, the lower classes 
 of labourers and servants do not save their wages as they 
 might, for the assistance of their old age. The reason 
 why they do not save for that purpose, is supposed to be 
 the assurance they have of being maintained by the 
 parish when they come to stand in need of it. Another 
 reason might be given : they do not save, because they 
 see no probable view of obtaining by such saving a com- 
 fortable settlement, in which they may spend their old 
 age with their families around them. " I never yet knew," 
 says a writer who has observed them well (Farmer's 
 Letters, p. 294), " one instance of any poor man's working 
 diligently, while in health, to escape coming to the parish 
 when ill or old. Some will aim at taking little farms ; 
 but if by any means they are disappointed in their 
 endeavours, they consider the money they have already 
 saved as of no further value, and spend it long before 
 they really need it." Almost all of them, it may be
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 73 
 
 any country were this monopoly abolished, 
 sumptuary laws, which might have the most 
 salutary effects on the manners, and character, 
 and even on the prosperity of a people, would 
 not be politically absurd and pernicious, as in 
 the present state of Europe they must be con- 
 fessed to be. 1 
 
 believed, would aim at taking small farms, were the 
 opportunities frequent, and the terms easy. 
 
 That much of the dissipation and profligacy of the poor 
 arises from their not having a proper object of saving 
 offered to their hopes, was surely the opinion of those 
 who framed an excellent bill which, in 1773, passed 
 through the House of Commons, for inviting the poor to 
 set apart money, for the purchase of annuities, in their 
 respective parishes and townships. 
 
 An annuity may be a very proper object for the un- 
 married, and those who purpose to have none but them- 
 selves to care for ; but the natural object of every young 
 peasant is a small farm on which he may settle with the 
 companion of his affections, and raise a family of his own ; 
 for this object, if it appears attainable, far the greater 
 number of them will work hard and save with economy. 
 
 Perhaps no better reason can be given for the great 
 increase of poor rates in England, since the reign of 
 Charles II. (while in Wales, they remain almost the same) 
 than the increase of manufactures and the diminished 
 number of small farms. 
 
 1 Sumptuary laws have been frequently turned into 
 ridicule, and not unjustly, as pretending to maintain an 
 impracticable simplicity,'and'an"unnecessary"austerity of 
 manners, among the great body of citizens ; but they 
 deserve a very different estimation, if considered as means 
 of directing the public industry to those exertions which 
 may be productive of the most extensive utility, and most 
 valuable enjoyments to the community at large. 
 
 If those persons who spend their days in"",the manu- 
 factures of velvet and of lace could be induced to employ
 
 74 LAND REFORM 
 
 In a country where the opportunities of 
 exercising a natural employment, and finding 
 an easy subsistence, were thus laid open to all, 
 the temptations to theft and other violations of 
 property would be very much diminished ; nor 
 could it be thought necessary to restrain such 
 crimes by the unnatural severity of capital 
 punishments. 
 
 In such a country no suspicion could arise, 
 no surmise would be listened to, that the in- 
 vention of machines for facilitating mechanical 
 labour, could ever be pernicious to the common 
 people, or adverse to the prosperity of the State. 
 The plough itself is the first machine against 
 which any imputation of this kind could be 
 admitted, and the time might indeed come 
 when such imputation would be just. 
 
 41. That legislature which is not willing, or 
 must not venture to remove this monopoly from 
 
 the same industry in raising grain, potatoes, and flax, 
 would they not, by increasing the plenty of these necessary 
 commodities, augment the real accommodation of a very 
 numerous class of citizens ? And would not the happi- 
 ness thence arising more than compensate the scarcity 
 of those frivolous refinements which may be required for 
 the gratification of a few ? 
 
 Why should it be necessary to restrain the industry 
 which ministers to luxury ? Because the industry which 
 is productive of essential plenty is restrained. If the 
 cultivation of the fields was laid open on reasonable 
 terms, would not the imposition of taxes on arts and 
 manufactures, subservient to luxury, tend to encourage 
 the increase of useful commodities, fit for general con- 
 sumption ?
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 75 
 
 the lands of the State, owes it in justice and in 
 tenderness to the persons born under its pro- 
 tection, that emigration at least should be free ; 
 or rather, that it should be encouraged and 
 facilitated, to all who desire to remove into 
 countries, less fully settled, in search of their 
 natural rights, and most salutary occupation. 
 This may indeed seem to impair the national 
 strength, by diminution of numbers, and it 
 will undoubtedly affect the interest of the higher 
 ranks ; but by raising the wages of labour, it 
 must increase the prosperity of the lower and 
 more numerous ranks. 1 To increase the pros- 
 perity and the happiness of the greater number 
 is the primary object of government, and the 
 
 1 To a wise and benevolent legislature it can never 
 appear that the free course of emigration could prove 
 detrimental to the community over which that legislature 
 presides. For what are the effects of a free and a brisk 
 emigration ? It operates in two ways, on two different 
 classes of men. It betters the circumstances of all those 
 who derive their subsistence from the produce of their 
 labour. It impairs the circumstances of all those who are 
 supported by a tax or impost, collected from the labour 
 of other people. It betters, therefore, the circumstances 
 of nine millions eight hundred thousand out of ten millions 
 of people ; it impairs the circumstances of one hundred 
 thousand ; and to a hundred thousand persons, who live 
 partly on the produce of their own labour, and partly 
 on a tax collected from others, the effect is indifferent. 
 
 Emigration is part of the plan pursued by nature in 
 peopling the earth ; and laws directed to oppose or 
 restrain it may be suspected of the same absurd and 
 unnatural tendency as laws for restraining population 
 itself.
 
 76 LAND REFORM 
 
 increase of national happiness must be the 
 increase of national strength. Besides that the 
 equilibrium of happiness between the old country 
 and the new would be found, long before any 
 considerable diminution of numbers had taken 
 place in the former. Is it not the duty then, 
 and perhaps also the interest, of every legis- 
 lature in the west of Europe, to promote the 
 emigration of its less opulent subjects, until 
 the condition of the lower classes of men at 
 home be rendered nearly as comfortable as the 
 condition of the same classes in the new settle- 
 ments of North America ? 
 
 42. Perhaps no government can claim to 
 itself the praise of having attended with the same 
 ^mpartial care, to the interests of the lower, as 
 of the higher classes of men. Those who are 
 employed in cultivating the soil are placed below 
 the regard of men in higher stations of public 
 dignity and trust ; nor are their sufferings 
 and wrongs obtruded on every eye, like the 
 misery of the begging poor. They themselves 
 are not much accustomed to reflection ; they 
 submit in most countries to their hard fate, 
 as to the laws of nature, nor are they skilled, 
 when severer oppression has at any time awaked 
 them to a sense of the injustice they suffer, in 
 making known their feelings and their complaints 
 to others. But if the intelligent, and the friends 
 of mankind, will take some pains to inquire 
 into the nature and extent of that oppression,
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 77 
 
 under which the industrious peasants groan in 
 secret, and the force of that exorbitant mono- 
 poly, from whence their grievances proceed ; 
 and if such men will employ the talents which 
 nature hath given them, in explaining these 
 grievances, and the rigour of that monopoly, 
 to the whole world, Europe, enlightened Europe, 
 will not be able to endure it much longer ; and 
 the subversion nay, even the abatement of 
 this monopoly, with the abuses flowing from it, 
 may well deserve to be accounted the best, and 
 most valuable fruit of all her refinements and 
 speculations. 
 
 43. If it be indeed possible to accomplish 
 any great improvement in the state of human 
 affairs, and to unite the essential equality of 
 a rude state, with the order, refinements, and 
 accommodations of cultivated ages, such im- 
 pro.vement is not so likely to be brought about 
 by any means, as by a just and enlightened 
 policy respecting property in land. It is a 
 subject intimately connected with the proper 
 occupation and the comfortable subsistence of 
 men ; that is, with their virtue and their happi- 
 ness. It is of a real substantial nature, on which 
 the regulations - of law may be made to operate 
 with efficacy, and even with precision. 
 
 44. So powerful and salutary might the good 
 effects of such an enlightened policy prove, so 
 beneficial such a restoration of the claims of 
 nature and the general birthrights of mankind,
 
 78 LAND REFORM 
 
 that it might alone suffice to renovate the 
 strength of nations, exhausted by civil war, or 
 by great and unsuccessful enterprises ; and 
 even in the most flourishing states, it might 
 give rise to a new era of prosperity, surpassing 
 all example, and all expectation that may 
 reasonably be founded on any other means of 
 improvement.
 
 PART II 
 
 SECTION I 
 
 Of Circumstances and Occasions favourable to a 
 complete Reformation of the Laws respecting 
 Property in Land, by the sovereign or legis- 
 lative power. 
 
 45. IF, indeed, we consider only how far the 
 present state of property in land, even in the 
 most flourishing and -best governed nations of 
 Europe, is removed from that more equitable 
 and advantageous system, which tends to estab- 
 lish in every country the greatest number of 
 independent freehold cultivators that the ter- 
 ritory of the State can admit, we may almost 
 be led to despair, that any great progress can 
 be made towards so remote an improvement, 
 however justly, and however much it may be 
 desired. On the other hand, the actual system 
 of landed property in the West of Europe is 
 greatly changed, and in some respects greatly 
 improved, from what it has formerly been. It 
 has varied its form, with the prevailing character 
 
 79
 
 80 LAND REFORM 
 
 of successive ages ; * it has been accommodated 
 to the rude simplicity of the more ancient times, 
 to the feudal chivalry of the middle centuries, 
 and to the increasing industry and cultivation 
 of later more tranquil periods : it may now 
 therefore be expected to receive a new modifica- 
 tion, from the genius and maxims of a com- 
 mercial age, to which it is too manifest that the 
 latest establishment of landed property is by no 
 means adapted, and that from this incongruity 
 the most pernicious and most flagrant oppressions 
 arise. 
 
 That free discussion which every subject now 
 receives gives reason to hope that truth and 
 utility will always triumph, however slowly ; 
 
 1 In the progress of the European system of landed 
 property, three stages may be distinguished the domes- 
 tic, the feudal, and the commercial. In the first, the 
 condition of the cultivator was secured from any great 
 oppression, by the affectionate sympathy of the chief of 
 his clan. 
 
 In the second, it was still secured, and almost as 
 effectually secured, by that need which his lord had of 
 attachment, assistance, and support, in the frequent 
 military enterprises and dangers in which he was engaged. 
 
 But in the commercial state there is no natural check 
 which may establish the security of the cultivator ; and 
 his lord has hardly any obvious interest but to squeeze 
 his industry as much as he can. It remains, therefore, 
 for the legislatures of different countries to establish some 
 control for protecting the essential interests of their 
 common people. It is an object which deserves, and will 
 reward, their care. In the dark and disorderly ages the 
 oppression exercised over the cultivators could not be 
 reduced to a system. Their landlords depended on their
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 81 
 
 and various examples may be offered to confirm 
 these hopes. In politics, in agriculture, in com- 
 merce, many errors have been rectified in theory, 
 and even the practice in some, though not in 
 an equal degree, reformed. And shall it be 
 reckoned, then, that in this, the most important 
 of all temporal concerns to the greatest number 
 of mankind, the most pernicious errors will be 
 suffered to remain still unrefuted, or if not 
 unrefuted still unreformed ? It is not permitted 
 to the friends of mankind to despair of aught 
 which may tend to improve the general hap- 
 piness of their species, any more than it is 
 consistent with a magnanimous and genuine 
 patriotism ever to despair of the safety of our 
 country. 
 
 assistance and military services, and would not, therefore, 
 hazard the diminution of their attachment. If at any 
 time the landlord endeavoured to exert more than they 
 were inclined to give, means of concealment and evasion 
 were not wanting, by which his rapacity might be 
 effectually eluded. But in the present times there is no 
 reciprocal dependence, and all means of concealment and 
 evasion are rendered by the order of our laws uncertain, 
 or, indeed, vain. 
 
 In those disorderly times, whatever oppression, or 
 chance of oppression, the cultivators of the field were 
 exposed to, they saw their landlords exposed to others 
 perhaps greater and more frequent ; there was common 
 to both an uncertainty in the possession of their just 
 rights ; and to compensate this, a chance of obtaining 
 by address somewhat beyond these rights. In the present 
 times, these common chances are removed by the pro- 
 tection of established government. The rights of the 
 higher orders are rendered perfectly secure, while those 
 of the cultivators are laid open to their oppressions 
 

 
 82 LAND REFORM 
 
 There have not been wanting in former times, 
 nor will there fail hereafter to arise in the course 
 of human .affairs, occasions, conjunctures, and 
 situations, in which a new and perfect system of 
 property in land might be completely established 
 at once ; other conjunctures, other situations 
 of much more frequent occurrence, are favour- 
 able, in a greater, or a less degree, to partial 
 reformation, and progressive improvement of 
 the ancient system ; and in many cases where 
 public care cannot be effectually applied, the 
 beneficence and even the interest of particular 
 persons, well directed, may be made to produce 
 no inconsiderable effects, and to furnish examples 
 of that which the rulers of mankind ought to 
 aim at producing in a large extent. 
 
 46. Conquering princes, and great revolutions 
 effected by the prevailing force of arms, have 
 not often made their appearance on the theatre 
 of the world in modern times ; but the longer 
 that interval which has elapsed is, the greater 
 probability there seems to be, that some new 
 phenomena of this interesting sort, are about 
 to be presented to the nations of the earth. 
 
 At the head of his victorious army, a con- 
 quering monarch has it in his power, no doubt, 
 to re-establish in the subjected state, the in- 
 herent rights of mankind, and the system of 
 natural justice, with regard to the property of 
 the soil. He may even perceive it to be in all 
 probability the best security of his new acquisi-
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 83 
 
 tions, and certainly the best foundation of his 
 claim to immortal renown. It were an object, 
 and a pretext which might even in the eye of 
 
 (reason and philosophy almost justify the am- 
 bitious desire of conquest in the breast of an 
 heroic prince ; or if it may not avail so far, 
 no other pretext whatever can be*admitted to 
 do so. 1 
 
 In proportion as the true principles of property 
 in land are inquired into, canvassed, and estab- 
 lished in theory, it becomes less improbable 
 that heroes and conquerors, hitherto esteemed 
 the scourges of mankind, may be led to adopt 
 such a salutary reformation of landed property 
 for their object ; and in the same proportion 
 it will become more easy for them to make such 
 magnanimous and benevolent intentions generally 
 understood, and to engage the concurrence and 
 good wishes of all men in their accomplishment. 
 
 1 The illustrious situation of a monarch, placed at the 
 head of victorious armies, might well inspire with generous 
 sentiments any mind not ignobly formed, and waken a 
 magnanimous desire of promoting the general welfare of 
 mankind. In this manner it has operated, even on the 
 breasts of men, numbered with barbarians, whose names 
 and characters can with difficulty be rescued from the 
 obscurity of Gothic annals (see History of the Decline and 
 Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. iii. p. 250). To save from 
 oblivion such authentic examples of true heroism is one 
 of the most pleasing tasks which a historian can have to 
 perform : to record them for the instruction of the great 
 and powerful, in the pages of a work which may be long 
 and often revolved, is one of the most essential services 
 that can be rendered to mankind.
 
 84 LAND REFORM 
 
 47. The establishment of new colonies, sent 
 forth from the civilized and populous nations 
 of Europe, may be supposed frequently to take 
 place hereafter. The practice seems only in its 
 commencement, and the mistakes incident to 
 first trials are not yet corrected. Immense 
 tracts of vacant, or half-peopled countries, both 
 maritime and inland, still invite emigrants and 
 planters from every quarter. The southern 
 regions of Africa and America, the Banks of 
 the River of the Amazons, and the whole Con- 
 tinent of New Holland have scarcely yet received 
 the first settlements of any race of men by 
 whom they may be cultivated and filled. 
 Siberia alone, it is thought, might contain the 
 whole inhabitants of Europe more at ease than 
 in their present habitations. Princes, instead 
 of imprisoning their subjects, may come to 
 perceive that a well-regulated exportation of 
 men, as of any other commodity, tends to secure 
 and to increase the domestic produce. Even 
 Britain will no dojibt find inviting occasions 
 (and just now perhaps has them) of sending 
 forth new colonies, on better digested plans, 
 with happier omens, 
 
 Et qua fuerint minus obvia Graiis. 
 
 In every such settlement there is opportunity 
 of establishing the just and natural system of 
 property in land, in the most advantageous 
 form. The fundamental laws of such a colony
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 85 
 
 ought to ascertain, in precise and explicit terms, 
 the joint property of the whole community in 
 the whole soil a right which in that situation 
 of their affairs will be easily comprehended by 
 all. They ought, further, to ascertain the 
 permanent and indefeasible nature of this right, 
 which no possession of individuals, nor any 
 industry by them applied to any portion of the 
 soil, can ever cancel or impair. 
 
 However extensive the tract of country may 
 then be in proportion to the number of the first 
 settlers, general rules should even then be 
 established, having respect to a future period 
 when the whole territory may be found too 
 scanty for its multiplied inhabitants. By such 
 precautions, occasionally enforced by practical 
 examples, it seems not impossible to prevent 
 the formation of those erroneous opinions of 
 private right, and those habits of possession, 
 which in countries long settled prevent the 
 greater number of citizens from knowing or 
 desiring to claim their natural rights in this 
 most important point, and which would produce 
 the most violent opposition to their just claims, 
 if at any time they were advanced. 
 
 48. Whatever inclination a wise and bene- 
 volent sovereign may have, to communicate to 
 all his subjects that prosperity which the re- 
 formation of property in land seems capable of 
 diffusing, it may appear in most cases too 
 hazardous for the public peace, and the security
 
 86 LAND REFORM 
 
 of his throne, to attempt the establishment of a 
 wise and equitable system at once, and in the 
 whole extent of his dominions ; yet in some 
 instances a fair opportunity is given, of making 
 a complete change in the landed property of 
 certain subordinate states, which, though held 
 in absolute dependence by the sovereign, are 
 not incorporated with, but considered as essen- 
 tially distinct from, the great body of his 
 dominions so distinct, that no innovation in 
 the smaller realm, is likely to give any alarm, 
 or create any jealous discontent in the other. 
 Such is the subjection of Courland to the throne 
 of Russia ; such perhaps the dependence of 
 Milan on the House of Austria ; of Corsica on 
 France, and of Minorca on Britain ; not to 
 mention all those dependent states which Britain 
 and other European nations have brought under 
 their yoke on the Continent of Asia, and in the 
 islands of the East. 
 
 49. Great monarchs sometimes arise, who, 
 having confirmed the authority of an absolute 
 sovereignty by the vigour of their natural talents, 
 and by unremitting application to the cares and 
 occupations of their royal office, have attained 
 such an ascendant over all ranks of their people, 
 that without hazard they might avow themselves 
 the patrons of the multitude, and supporters 
 of natural justice, in opposition to all the con- 
 federated force of the powerful and the rich. 
 Europe sees at least one prince, to whose mag-
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 87 
 
 nanimity and talents a complete and total 
 reformation of the system of landed property 
 in his dominions might be thought no unequal 
 task, and to whose benevolent zeal for the general 
 good of his people the idea of such a reformation 
 might present itself as no chimerical project. 
 In looking back through the records of modern 
 ages, it is difficult to fix on another prince equally 
 capable of conceiving so sublime a scheme, and 
 of prosecuting the measures requisite for carrying 
 it into execution ; unless, perhaps, that father 
 of his people, who wished only to live, that he 
 might convince the French nation how much he 
 loved them as his children, and who hoped to 
 see the day when every householder throughout 
 his dominions should put a fowl into his pot on 
 Sunday. Had the reign of this humane prince, 
 to whom the condition of the lower classes was 
 familiarly known, been prolonged in peace, he 
 might probably have bestowed more particular 
 attention on the means by which his paternal 
 wishes were to be realized ; the talents of his 
 faithful minister would have been exerted in 
 such schemes, with still greater alacrity, and 
 perhaps with greater skill, than in those warlike 
 preparations which busied the last years of his 
 master's reign ; and the effects due to the joint 
 endeavours of such a sovereign and such a 
 minister must have followed. 
 
 Many princes who might succeed perhaps in 
 carrying such schemes into execution, may not
 
 88 LAND REFORM 
 
 be endowed with that magnanimous and com- 
 prehensive turn of mind, without which they 
 cannot be formed ; or are deficient in that 
 courage, without which no trial will be attempted. 
 Yet, if any plan may be concerted, by which 
 it seems not unlikely that the happiness of 
 mankind might be increased two-fold at once, 
 where is the monarch who would not eagerly 
 engage in such attempts, at whatever risk ? 
 Where, indeed, is that monarch who enjoys so 
 much felicity himself in the possession of a 
 throne, that in such a cause, with the hope of 
 accomplishing so great an advantage to his 
 people, and obtaining such distinguished glory 
 for himself, he ought not to risk it all ? 
 
 Mortemque pro laude pacisci
 
 SECTION II 
 
 Of Circumstances and, Occasions favourable to a 
 partial Reformation of the Laws respecting 
 Property in Land, by the sovereign or legis- 
 lative power. 
 
 50. MANY schemes of innovation may be thought 
 of, which, without amounting to a complete 
 change, or the establishment of the best system 
 of property in land, might yet recommend 
 themselves to the attention of absolute monarchs, 
 as being more suddenly, and therefore more 
 safely, to be carried into execution, than any 
 total reformation can be, and productive of very 
 beneficial effects, though not of the best. 
 
 Such as, ist. To fix the rent of every farm 
 for ever, and limit the duration of all leases 
 to a single life of the tenant ; that is, to 
 convert leases into benefices. 
 
 2ndly. To make the duration of every lease 
 perpetual, so long as the tenant may choose 
 to make an addition of one-twelfth, or some 
 other just proportion of the present rent, 
 at the end of every thirty years. 
 89
 
 go LAND REFORM 
 
 3rdly. To make the duration of every lease 
 perpetual, reserving to the landlord a stated 
 proportion of the annual produce, suppose 
 one-fifth to be paid in the staple commodity 
 of the country ; the amount of this produce 
 to be ascertained by a jury, once in thirty 
 years, if the landlord require it, or in twenty, 
 if the tenant chooses. 
 
 4thly. To convert all farms into freeholds, with 
 a reservation of the present rent to the land- 
 lord, transferring at the same time all land 
 taxes and all public burdens whatever, 
 with all their future augmentations from the 
 landlord, to the new freeholders, formerly 
 his tenants. 
 
 5thly. To establish a sort of jubilee, with regard 
 to property in land, by enacting, that at 
 the expiration of fifty years after the last 
 purchase of an estate in land, every farm 
 shall become freehold in the hands of the 
 farmer, with reservation of the average rent 
 of the last seven years to the landlord. 
 
 These are examples only ; many other schemes 
 might be easily devised. 
 
 By the ist, the landlord receives power in 
 exchange for gain, and by the 4th, a lucrative 
 exemption, in place of the uncertain increase 
 of a racked rent. 
 
 By the 3rd, the claims of both parties are 
 compromised in a manner scarcely less favour-
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 91 
 
 able to the landlord, and far less oppressive to 
 the cultivator, than the conditions of leases for 
 a limited time commonly are. 
 
 By the 2nd, the cultivator, and by the 5th, the 
 landlord, would be excited to a diligent improve- 
 ment of the fertility of the soil. 
 
 In all cases, the farms thus converted into 
 freehold should be made subject at the same time 
 to the laws of gavel-kind, until they are sub- 
 divided into allotments of less than forty acres, 
 or whatever other standard may be fixed upon 
 as best suited to the state of the community 
 and the nature of the soil. 
 
 51. It has sometimes happened, though too 
 rarely, that all ranks and orders of men in a 
 state, forgetting for a while their subordinate 
 and particular interests, are disposed with con- 
 curring wishes to seek for, and to adopt what- 
 ever schemes may contribute most effectually 
 to the public good, and may become the founda- 
 tions of lasting order and prosperity. Such 
 seems to have been the prevailing disposition 
 of the Romans, when the laws of the twelve 
 tables were enacted ; such nearly that of Athens, 
 when Solon was intrusted by his fellow citizens 
 to compose a body of laws for their country ; 
 and such that spirit which ought to pervade, 
 and has in general pervaded every community 
 of men, while contending for independence, 
 against the efforts of a more powerful state. 
 
 Should ever any happy concurrence of dis-
 
 92 LAND REFORM 
 
 posing causes produce such a temporary dis- 
 position in any of the Western nations of Europe ; 
 could the legislature, prompted by enlightened 
 zeal for the universal good, set at naught the 
 discontents which might arise in any particular 
 class, and remove with ease all opposition made 
 to their generous purposes ; in this fortunate 
 situation, it might occur to them, perhaps, that 
 a just regulation of property in land is, of all 
 those arrangements which the present moment 
 could give opportunity of establishing, the most 
 essential for diffusing prosperity and indepen- 
 dence among the body of the people. 
 
 Pursuing this idea, biassed by no influence, 
 awed by no faction, they might be led to enact 
 a law, by which every person inclined to employ 
 himself in cultivating the earth for his own 
 subsistence, and that of his family, should be 
 entitled to claim in full property a reasonable 
 share of the soil of his country ; without pre- 
 judice, however, to the just rights of any other 
 persons who may have previously bestowed their 
 industry in cultivating and improving the same 
 spot. 
 
 Such a law might, from the nature of its 
 operation, be not unfitly denominated a pro- 
 gressive Agrarian, and jnight be comprised in 
 the following articles, or others of similar effect : 
 
 I. That every citizen, aged twenty-one years 
 or upwards, may, if not already in
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 93 
 
 possession of land, be entitled to 
 claim from the public a certain por- 
 tion, not exceeding forty acres, to be 
 assigned him in perpetuity, for culti- 
 vation and residence, in the manner and 
 under the conditions hereafter specified. 
 
 II. That the claimant shall have right to 
 
 choose the situation of his allotment, 
 on any farm, freehold, or uncultivated 
 common, within his own parish, if 
 the same be not excepted by the other 
 provisions of this law. If there be 
 no unexcepted land in his own parish, 
 he shall have right to choose in any 
 of the parishes contiguous to his 
 own ; and if in these there be no 
 unexcepted land, he shall have right 
 to choose throughout the whole dis- 
 trict or county. 
 
 III. This allotment shall be set apart, and its 
 
 landmarks fixed by the magistrate, 
 with the aid of an assize, or of arbi- 
 trators chosen by the parties. It 
 shall be marked out, in the manner 
 most convenient to both the old and 
 the new occupiers ; it shall approach 
 to a square, or some other compact 
 form ; one of its sides shall run along 
 the boundary of the old farm ; and 
 it shall have communication with 
 some road already patent. None of
 
 94 LAND REFORM 
 
 these circumstances to be departed 
 from without the consent of both 
 parties. 
 
 IV. The ground thus set apart shall be sub- 
 
 mitted to the cognizance of an assize, 
 or of arbitrators chosen by the parties, 
 who shall determine what reserved 
 perpetual rent the claimant must pay 
 to the landlord, and what temporary 
 rent to the former tenant (if any), in 
 compensation of their rights. 
 
 V. The following farms are to be exempted 
 
 from all such claims. Every farm 
 from which, if the allotment claimed 
 is taken away, less than forty acres 
 will remain to the first tenant. 
 The farm or park belonging to the lord 
 of the manor, the same bearing a 
 regulated proportion only to the extent 
 of his estate. Every farm of whatever 
 extent that has not been fifteen years 
 occupied by the present tenant. 
 Every farm whose arable ground has 
 been diminished one-half by claims 
 founded on this law, shall be exempted 
 for twenty years to come, if the tenant 
 so desire. All farms of barren ground 
 taken for the sake of improvement, 
 under such forms and regulations as 
 may prevent the collusive evasion 
 of this law.
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 95 
 
 VI. The person thus acquiring property in 
 
 land shall continue to reside upon his 
 farm. He shall have right to transmit 
 it to his heirs or assignees in full 
 property, or under a reserved rent, 
 but shall not have, nor transmit the 
 right of alienating it with reversion, 
 that is of letting the whole, or any, 
 part of it in lease. If he sells to 
 another, who shall not reside upon it, 
 but annex it to some other farm, one- 
 tenth part of the price, or of the re- 
 served rent, shall belong to the public. 
 
 VII. The property acquired in these allot- 
 
 ments shall not carry along with it 
 any right of common of any sort in 
 the commons, woodlands, private 
 roads, or other appendages of the 
 manor, excepting only, in the nearest 
 well and watering-pond, and in the 
 bog or common for turf, if that is the 
 fuel of the country ; in which case 
 this right is to be regulated by the 
 usages of the manor, as if the allot- 
 ment had been given off in lease only. 
 Neither shall any use, prescription, 
 or connivance ever in course of time 
 procure to the holder of such allot- 
 ment any right of common, that is 
 not founded on and ascertained by 
 express compact.
 
 9.6 LAND REFORM 
 
 The Agrarian laws of antiquity seem to have 
 failed in producing durable and beneficial effects 
 chiefly from two circumstances : 
 
 (ist) Their operation was sudden, violent, 
 and occasional only, whereas the pro- 
 gressive Agrarian is so constituted as 
 to exert a continual influence, more or 
 less intense, in proportion as the 
 general interests of the community 
 may require. 
 
 (2nd) The ancient Agrarian laws were easily, 
 and thus generally, evaded ; as they 
 opposed the whole body of those who 
 wanted lands, to the whole body of 
 those who possessed more than the 
 legal allotment, without assigning to 
 individuals a specific right in any 
 particular fields or district, a general 
 convulsion of the State must have 
 attended every attempt to call forth 
 the energy of law. To avoid these 
 tumults, all persons soon became dis- 
 posed to connive at various evasions 
 of these laws, and to acquiesce in their 
 falling into desuetude, until some 
 popular leader arose and called anew 
 for their restoration. But the pro- 
 gressive Agrarian assigns particular 
 definite rights to a few men, within 
 every district of moderate extent ;
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 97 
 
 it opposes the natural claims and the 
 indigence of these few men to the 
 exorbitant possessions and the opu- 
 lence of a still smaller number within 
 the same district. The facility of 
 evasion must be much diminished by 
 this regulation. The vigilance of the 
 claimants, being confined to a narrow 
 space, will be more awake and precise ; 
 their limited rights founded on a 
 local claim, and derived from their 
 birth, will be more distinctly con- 
 ceived by themselves, and more readily 
 supported by the concurring senti- 
 ments of all other men. 
 
 52. Without venturing to make openly any 
 alteration in that system of landed property, 
 which, like systems of corrupted religion, is 
 regarded with superstitious reverence in countries 
 where it has long obtained, many occasions will 
 occur, whereof advantage may be taken to 
 introduce under the cover of other objects, and 
 as part of the usual proceedings of the State, 
 such regulations as may tend very effectually, 
 though by remote and indirect influence, to 
 promote the independence of the plough, and 
 the distribution of property in land, in small 
 allotments, among the lowest ranks of the people. 
 
 If, for example, new taxes are to be levied, 
 what subjects of taxation can be more justly 
 
 7
 
 98 LAND REFORM 
 
 liable to the imposition, or more productive, 
 than large farms and short leases ? 1 The 
 landlord, by adopting these plans in the manage- 
 ment of his estate, means to derive advantage 
 to himself, from measures which at once obstruct 
 the increase of population, and diminish the 
 spirit and independence of the common people ; 
 and if his right to make these invasions on the 
 public good cannot be directly attacked, let 
 him at least be obliged to indemnify the public 
 in some degree, by some other mode, more 
 familiar to the minds of men. 
 
 A tax imposed on barren lands, and so regu- 
 lated as to engage the proprietor in their im- 
 mediate cultivation, or oblige him to resign them 
 to the community for general distribution, could 
 
 1 Any tax imposed on extensive farms might from its 
 novelty be regarded as a grievance ; but the servants' 
 tax, which is so justly popular, might be applied to the 
 same purpose, if extended to hired servants employed in 
 agriculture, when more than one are kept in the same 
 family, and to rise to still higher rates in proportion to 
 the numbers kept. 
 
 The popular voice has demanded a heavy tax on the 
 foreign domestics, that are so frequently to be seen in the 
 families of the rich ; but the suggestion ought not to 
 meet with attention. These foreigners are generally 
 employed in frivolous offices in the train of opulence and 
 luxury, and were they proscribed by the imposition of 
 any heavy tax, an equal number of robust Englishmen 
 would be called away from their rustic labours, and other 
 necessary employments, allured by higher wages, to 
 perform more awkwardly the same servile tasks, and to 
 lead the same dissipated lives. The profitable industry 
 of the nation would be diminished in proportion.
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 99 
 
 not be esteemed in the smallest degree unjust. 
 His right to these barren lands is founded solely 
 on occupation ; there is no improved value 
 superadded, no right accruing from labour 
 bestowed, and as he occupies, besides, more than 
 his equal share of the soil, the whole unimproved 
 tracts of his estate belong strictly and entirely 
 to the public ; and no small indulgence is shown 
 in giving him an option to improve or to resign 
 them. 
 
 A tax on all augmentation of rents, even to 
 the extent of one-half the increase, would be at 
 once the most equitable, the most productive, 
 the most easily collected, and the least liable to 
 evasion of all possible taxes, and might with 
 inconceivable advantage disencumber a great 
 nation from all those injudicious imposts by 
 which its commercial exchanges are retarded 
 and restrained, and its domestic manufactures 
 embarrassed. 1 
 
 If the increase of population is to be promoted 
 by encouraging the marriages of the lower ranks, 
 let every farmer be entitled to an addition of 
 five years to the duration of his lease (whatever 
 
 1 An absolute monarch might combine together the 
 increase of his revenue and the encouragement of small 
 farms in the same regulation, by imposing a heavy tax 
 on all future increase of rent, excepting in those farms 
 which did not exceed the extent of one plough, and were 
 granted in lease for a term of not less than fifty years. 
 Such an edict must operate beneficially, either by bringing 
 money into the treasury of the State, or by increasing 
 the number of citizens in the most useful class.
 
 ioo LAND REFORM 
 
 that may be) for the first legitimate child, and 
 of three years for every other. Let every person 
 whatever, not possessed of lands, and having 
 five children, be entitled to the privileges of the 
 Agrarian law, within a certain district. 
 
 If the improvement of agriculture is to be 
 promoted and rewarded, let not the prize held 
 forth to those who excel be, as it has sometimes 
 been in France, the rank of nobility, but rather 
 the full property, under reservation of the present 
 rent, of those farms to which their skill and 
 industry have been applied ; and let an annual 
 prize or prizes of this sort be proposedjiot for 
 the whole extent of a great kingdom, but for every 
 small district and neighbourhood. 
 
 If any changes are to be made in the muni- 
 cipal laws, relative to succession, inheritance, 
 or the transmission of property in any other 
 form, let them not pass unaccompanied by the 
 introduction of some mode of the Agrarian law, 
 extended over the estates of those persons whose 
 interests or caprice are consulted in the intended 
 change. Let no land estate, for example, pass 
 to heirs of entail, nor even to collaterals in the 
 ordinary course of succession, without becoming 
 subject to such a law, even in its utmost extent. 
 
 53. Certain regulations which have formerly 
 taken place, and are like enough to be renewed 
 in flourishing states, are of such a nature, that 
 they ought to be accompanied by the introduc- 
 tion of some branches of the progressive Agrarian
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 101 
 
 law, as an equivalent and compensation in some 
 degree to those orders of men whose interests 
 are encroached on by the change ; and as a 
 very moderate deduction from the advantages 
 of those other orders, for whose advantage 
 chiefly such regulations are intended, two re- 
 markable examples may be pointed out in the 
 reduction of interest, and the corn laws. 
 
 Every reduction of interest throws a great 
 immediate advantage into the hands of the land- 
 holders, who are in general encumbered with 
 debts : the interest of these debts being reduced, 
 their actual income is thereby increased ; besides, 
 this reduction increases the value of their pro- 
 perty in land, if they are obliged to sell off a 
 part, or the whole ; and it tends to enhance the 
 rent of farms, by determining persons who had 
 formerly lived on the mere annual rents of their 
 stock, to betake themselves now to some sort 
 of industry, and to agriculture more than any 
 other, as being that alone which men are sup- 
 posed qualified to undertake, without any 
 particular education to fit them for it. 
 
 All those laws which prohibit the importation 
 of grain into any country, and still more those 
 which give a premium on the exportation, are 
 calculated to bestow great advantages on the 
 farmer and landholder, though chiefly on the 
 latter, at the expense of that far more numerous 
 class of citizens, who till no land for their own 
 behoof, and must purchase all the grain or bread
 
 102 LAND REFORM 
 
 consumed in their families from the landlord 
 and the farmer, or their agents and retailers. 
 
 Commonly one-half of the slender incomes 
 which men of this class enjoy must be expended 
 on this indispensable article, the price of which 
 is, by these laws, kept up one-fourth or more 
 above its natural level. 
 
 Is it not highly reasonable, then, that the 
 industrious poor, who are taxed in this manner, 
 and to this amount, without their consent, for 
 the behoof not of the public, but of other orders 
 of men richer than themselves, should have it at 
 least in their power to pass with ease from that 
 class of people, who must go to market to pur- 
 chase this commodity, to the class of those who 
 raise and have it to sell ? The introduction 
 of a progressive Agrarian law, extending over 
 the demesnes of the crown, waste lands, and 
 farms of too great extent, would produce this 
 effect in no inconsiderable degree, and would 
 at the same time essentially promote the object 
 of all corn laws, if that object be indeed the 
 prosperity and increase of agriculture, and not 
 rather the profitable monopoly of the land- 
 holders. 
 
 54. It is by no means without example that 
 the legislative power of a state, however tender 
 of seeming to meddle with the general system 
 of property in land, should interfere to impose 
 some regulations on the manner of granting 
 leases. Ireland furnishes a recent example of
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 103 
 
 some importance, and the laws of many countries 
 have, on various occasions, interposed their 
 authority to protect the peasants from out- 
 rageous oppressions, from violent and sudden 
 removals, and from the pretensions of a new 
 purchaser, coming in place of their former 
 lord. 1 
 
 In this field, there is great room, without 
 seeming to pass beyond the usual jurisdiction 
 of municipal law, for introducing into most 
 countries new and beneficial regulations, relative 
 to the three essential articles of a lease, the 
 extent, the duration, and the rent to be paid. 
 
 In respect of duration all leases ought to be of 
 considerable length (sufficient at least for the 
 farmer to bring up his family, and settle them 
 around him, without being removed himself), 
 and of uncertain termination, ending with a life. 
 New forms, adapted to the advantage of both 
 parties, might easily be devised ; as, for example, 
 a lease which might be called a lease on alternate 
 lives, beginning with that of the lessee, and ending 
 with the life of that person who shall have come 
 
 1 What is the shortest term of a lease which ought to 
 be given by the landlord or accepted by the cultivator ? 
 In Ireland, that may be exactly determined by the 
 statutes to be not less than thirty-one years. For if any 
 great landholder resolves not to give leases of more than 
 twenty-one years, he determines to treat his Protestant 
 tenantry more unkindly, and more unreasonably than 
 the legislature, actuated by the most violent spirit of 
 persecution, thought it proper or decent that the Roman 
 Catholics should be treated.
 
 104 LAND REFORM 
 
 into the place or right of the lessor, when the 
 first life falls, or when any number of years 
 20, 30, 40, or more from that uncertain date 
 have elapsed. 
 
 That the extent of the farms set in lease should 
 be moderate, is certainly most advantageous to 
 the community in general, and may be so adjusted 
 as to prove not less favourable to the interest 
 of the landlord. The rent to be paid ought 
 always to be fixed at a determined proportion 
 of the real or estimated annual produce of the 
 soil ; and this proportion being determined by 
 the letter of the law, the application of that law 
 to each particular case ought to be committed 
 to a jury from the neighbourhood, if either party 
 so desire. 
 
 Leases on improvement, as they are called, 
 if considered according to the principles of natural 
 equity, must be accounted altogether absurd 
 and unjust ; for they avowedly take from the 
 farmer, as his cultivation advances, a share of 
 that increased produce to which his industry 
 has given rise, in order to bestow it on a landlord 
 who has contributed nothing at all to the im- 
 provement of the soil ; yet, in respect of ex- 
 pedience, they are to be regarded as among the 
 best and most practicable compromises, which, 
 under that establishment of land property which 
 now obtains, can be brought about between 
 the exorbitant rights of the landlord and the 
 reasonable expectations of the farmer. Various
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 105 
 
 beneficial schemes of such leases have been 
 proposed, and some carried into execution ; 
 yet great scope still remains for varying their 
 form, and combining new stipulations in such a 
 manner, as that both parties may be interested 
 in the progressive improvement of the soil. 
 But the interposition of the legislature seems 
 necessary in most countries, to render the land- 
 holders willing to give the preference to leases 
 of this kind. 
 
 55. By the laws of many nations, a right of 
 redemption (jus retractus) belongs to the superior 
 lord, or to the nearest of kin of the landholder, 
 who sells his estate. By this right, they are 
 entitled to redeem the land sold at the agreed 
 price, within a limited time, commonly twelve 
 months after the bargain has been struck ; 
 and so generally is this privilege established on 
 the Continent, that it has been considered as a 
 branch of the law of nations. Much more 
 justice and much more good policy would there 
 be, in conferring such a right on the tenants and 
 cultivators of the lands alienated, if, within a 
 limited time, any number of them, not less 
 than one-third part, could form a scheme, to be 
 approved by the tribunals of justice, for pur- 
 chasing the estate among them, by advancing 
 one-half the price, or any other proportion 
 required by law, and converting the remainder 
 into reserved rents. The public ought even in 
 justice and in policy to come to their assistance
 
 106 LAND REFORM 
 
 in forming such a scheme, and to advance the 
 money wanted, on proper security to have it 
 repaid by gradual instalments, or converted into 
 perpetual reserved rents, which might again be 
 sold, at no great discount of that value which had 
 been given for them. 
 
 56. Various occurrences in the political re- 
 volutions of government have frequently stripped 
 the ancient proprietors of large tracts of land, 
 and thrown the absolute disposal of these lands 
 into the hands of the rulers of the State : such 
 are the forfeitures usually following on success- 
 ful insurrections and conspiracies, the subversion 
 of obnoxious associations, as the Templars and 
 Jesuits ; the dissolution of the monasteries, and 
 the reformation of ecclesiastical establishments 
 in the north of Europe. The courtiers and 
 grandees who have been enriched on these 
 occasions by the profusion of their sovereigns, 
 might have been equally well gratified and 
 attached by the donation of seignorial rights and 
 reserved rents alone, and the property of the 
 soil might have been all at once conferred on the 
 cultivators, or rendered subject to the operation 
 of a progressive Agrarian law ; or indeed both 
 regulations might have been made to take place 
 at the same time ; that is, the property might 
 have been given to the present cultivators, but 
 subject to future claims arising from the Agrarian 
 law. 
 
 Such a disposal of escheated or forfeited lands
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 107 
 
 may, without regard to the encouragement of 
 agriculture and the independence of the plough, 
 be recommended by policy of State alone, as 
 tending to interest the lowest as well as the 
 highest ranks in those innovations, whether 
 justly or unjustly concerted, which the sovereign 
 is desirous of having accomplished. 
 
 Would not, it may be asked, that great trans- 
 fer of property made in Ireland by Cromwell 
 have been almost equally acceptable to his 
 captains and officers at the time, had it been 
 accompanied with a progressive Agrarian law ? 
 And would not the effect of such a law, so 
 applied, have shown itself in the most beneficial 
 manner to Ireland long before the present age ? 
 
 Had the lands left vacant by the expulsion 
 of the Moors been distributed in full property 
 to cultivators only, might not even Spain have 
 recovered in a few generations the effects of 
 that severe wound ?
 
 SECTION III 
 
 Of Circumstances which might induce the Rulers 
 of a State to turn their wishes and endeavours 
 towards the accomplishment of such a Change. 
 
 57. SUCH occasions and incidents, as those before 
 enumerated, might be improved by the sovereign, 
 the legislature, or the real patriots of any country, 
 for introducing by degrees this important in- 
 novation, it being supposed that they are before- 
 hand fully apprized of its great utility, and 
 animated by a warm desire of seeing it effectually 
 established for the advantage of the community. 1 
 Other occurrences and aspects of affairs tend 
 to inspire with such generous desires either the 
 
 1 It seems to have been unfortunate for the Romans, 
 that in the age of the Gracchi the practice of granting 
 leases for any considerable term of years was not familiar, 
 and the alienation of land under a reserved rent wholly 
 unknown. Had Tiberius Gracchus proposed to the 
 Patricians either of these plans for accommodating the- 
 poor citizens with lands, a compromise might probably 
 have taken place, to the great advantage of both. He 
 would not have encountered such determined opposition 
 at first, nor would he have been forced into the violent 
 measures he afterwards adopted. 
 
 'In the history of this illustrious citizen of Rome, those 
 108
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 109 
 
 sovereign or some considerable bodies of men in 
 the State, capable of exerting powerful efforts 
 in so laudable a cause, and with the desire may 
 communicate the hope also of being able to 
 accomplish some salutary changes of greater or 
 of less importance, especially if the object to 
 be aimed at, and the means by which it may 
 be obtained, have been again and again stated 
 to the public in a variety of speculative views, 
 and so rendered familiar to the understandings 
 of men. 
 
 Internal convulsions have arisen in many 
 countries by which the decisive power of the 
 State has been thrown, for a short while at least, 
 into the hands of the collective body of the 
 people. In these junctures they might have 
 obtained a just re-establishment of their natural 
 rights to independence of cultivation and to 
 property in land, had they been themselves 
 aware of their title to such rights, and had there 
 been any leaders prepared to direct them in the 
 mode of stating their just claim, and supporting 
 
 men who may hereafter undertake the patronage of 
 general rights, and of the lower classes of mankind, may 
 find an instructive example, how necessary it is to ad- 
 here to moderation, even in the noblest pursuits, and 
 not to suffer the insolent and unreasonable obstinacy of 
 opponents to provoke any passionate retaliation. Had 
 Gracchus persevered in maintaining his first temperate 
 and liberal proposal, had he not impetuously, it cannot 
 be said unjustly, hurried into the extreme opposite to 
 that which his antagonists held, it cannot be doubted 
 that his great endeavours might have proved fortunate 
 for himself and his country.
 
 no LAND REFORM 
 
 it with necessary firmness and becoming modera- 
 tion. Such was the revolution in 1688, at which 
 time, surely, an article declarative of the natural 
 right of property in land might have been 
 inserted into the Bill of Rights, had the people 
 at large been beforehand taught to understand 
 that they were possessed of any such claim. 
 Such also was the late convulsion in America, 
 the favourable opportunities of which are not 
 yet exhausted ; and whatever party shall here- 
 after in the agitations of any state assume the 
 patronage of the lower classes, in respect of 
 this their most essential privilege, may enter- 
 tain confident hopes of being able by their 
 support to obtain their own particular object 
 of pursuit, while at the same time they establish 
 an arrangement of the highest importance to 
 the general welfare of their fellow-citizens. 
 
 58. Princes sitting on disputed thrones might, 
 among other expedients for giving additional 
 security to their possession, consider whether 
 it would not prove of advantage that the 
 numerous class of cultivators were interested 
 in their cause by some well-regulated com- 
 munication of equal right ; and on the other 
 hand, the expelled candidate might not unwisely 
 seize the same occasion of strengthening his 
 interest and increasing the number of his ad- 
 herents, if it were left not preoccupied by his 
 more fortunate antagonist. 
 
 In such cases as these, when the minds of
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND in 
 
 the vulgar are to be suddenly engaged, it is 
 perhaps more expedient not to propose a refined 
 system, having for its object the greatest good 
 that can be reconciled to the greatest supposed 
 equity, or to the general convenience of all, 
 but to hold forth some striking advantages to 
 great bodies of men, who may feel that they 
 have a common interest, and "are not incapable 
 of being taught to act together in concert, for 
 promoting it ; to promise, for example, that 
 every farm, as presently possessed, shall be 
 converted into a freehold, vested in the farmer 
 and his heirs for ever. 
 
 59. Difference of religious opinions, it may be 
 hoped, will never again be made, as it has too 
 often been, an occasion of disturbing the civil 
 societies of mankind ; but if any respectable 
 body of dissidents find themselves obliged to 
 contend with the rulers of their country for 
 the rights and immunities of a just toleration; 
 if the leaders of the sect shall think proper to 
 avow and inculcate principles of civil policy 
 and justice favourable to the rights of the lower 
 classes, and to the independence of cultivation, 
 they may be well assured of strengthening their 
 party thereby, of inspiring their adherents with 
 more vigour and consistency, and of obtaining 
 in process of time both the one and the other 
 of these just and important objects of pursuit. 
 These objects they will attain the sooner, and 
 with more ease, the more cautiously they guard
 
 H2 LAND REFORM 
 
 against the insinuation of that levelling and 
 fanatic principle which has sometimes brought 
 disgrace in the first place, and final disappoint- 
 ment in the end, on schemes wisely conceived, 
 or bravely undertaken for restoring the rights 
 of mankind. 
 
 It is supposed by many intelligent persons 
 that, partly through the increase of infidelity, 
 and partly from the prevailing moderation of 
 wise men's opinions respecting disputable tenets 
 of religion, the ecclesiastical order have of late 
 lost much of that ascendant which they seem 
 formerly to have possessed over the higher 
 classes of men, so that in almost every country 
 of Europe, under every form of the Christian 
 religion, their establishments are either secretly 
 envied and undermined, or very avowedly 
 attacked ; and it may be apprehended that a 
 crisis of great danger to their temporal rights 
 and privileges cannot be far distant. It might, 
 therefore, be accounted no unnecessary pro- 
 vision for their own safety, and very liberal 
 policy with regard to the general interests of 
 mankind, should this respected order attach 
 themselves more particularly to the inferior 
 and laborious classes of men. These humble 
 ranks are always found docile and obsequious 
 to religious instructors ; and in justice to the 
 simplicity of their native sense and piety, let 
 it be remarked also, that they are more ready 
 to listen with attention to rational and sound
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 113 
 
 doctrines than to the extravagancies of enthusi- 
 asm or superstition, if only the same zeal and 
 assiduity is displayed by the teachers of both. 
 It would not ill become the ministers of any 
 Church to assume the patronage of these men 
 (whose reliance and attachment will not fail 
 to increase in proportion to the attention be- 
 stowed on them), and to stand forth as the 
 advocates of their natural rights and the 
 guardians of their independence in opposition 
 to the opulent, the luxurious, and the idle, who 
 in too many respects domineer over them. It 
 would not be unwise nor improper to connect 
 thoroughly the interests of the ecclesiastical 
 order with those of the laborious poor, who 
 stand perhaps more in need of the direction 
 and guardianship of enlightened superiors than 
 the mendicant poor themselves, whom the 
 Church has in every country taken under her 
 immediate protection. In most cases, the men- 
 dicant poor would be sufficiently provided for 
 by the charity of those very orders of men by 
 whom the far more numerous class of laborious 
 poor are oppressed. 
 
 That sort of correspondence and co-operation 
 which might be denominated an alliance between 
 the Church and the Plough, in subordination 
 to the State, would not only prove equally 
 beneficial to both parties, but seems in the 
 present state of Europe to have become neces- 
 sary for the support of their mutual interests.
 
 H4 LAND REFORM 
 
 60. Great public calamities and disasters may 
 dispose the rulers of a state, however reluctant 
 and averse, to seek for the renovation of national 
 vigour and prosperity by those measures which 
 are to be accounted the only true sources of 
 strength, opulence, and manly virtues ; by 
 cherishing the common people, bettering their 
 condition, and exciting their industry by such 
 cheerful hopes and reasonable expectations as 
 belong to their humble situation, and not by 
 the hard pressure of necessity, so often pre- 
 posterously and inhumanly recommended as 
 the most effectual spur of industry, so often 
 unhappily applied as such. 
 
 Under circumstances of recent public distress 
 and humiliation, such as the unfortunate issue 
 of expensive war, the loss of commerce and of 
 foreign dominion, even the higher and privileged 
 ranks, awed into wisdom and humanity by the 
 impending gloom, may be inclined to acquiesce 
 in those regulations which tend to renovate the 
 whole body of the State, though at the expense 
 of diminishing in some degree the privileges 
 and emoluments of their own order. They will 
 consider that, unless the numbers, the industry, 
 and the manly temper of the body of the people 
 can be kept up, the fortune of the community 
 must fall into continual and accelerated decline, 
 and the privileges of every rank become insecure. 
 But if these essential foundations of public 
 prosperity can be supported, and any increase
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 115 
 
 of them, especially of the last, can be procured, 
 the loss of military glory, of political rank and 
 ascendant, even of territory and establishments, 
 may be regarded with less regret, as the loss 
 of external appendages only, the plumes and 
 trappings of national honour, which may be 
 in due time recovered again by the returning 
 vigour of the community, if such ought to be 
 their endeavour or desire. 
 
 If, in the meantime, commerce is restrained 
 and manufactures decline, let the cultivation 
 of the soil be laid open, on reasonable terms and 
 without delay, to the people thus deprived of 
 their usual employment ; such a resource would 
 indeed convert what they must account a mis- 
 fortune into an opportunity of finding real and 
 natural happiness and ease. 
 
 If colonies are lost, it may seem more par- 
 ticularly requisite to provide some new oppor- 
 tunities of settlement for the usual emigration. 
 If the facility of domestic establishments is 
 presented to their choice, that will not only 
 prevent the turbulence of unsettled, discontented 
 multitudes confined at home, but will apply 
 their numbers, and call forth their industry 
 for the augmentation of the public opulence and 
 strength. 
 
 61. Public dangers, especially, if not sudden 
 and transitory, but continual, as proceeding 
 from the vicinity of powerful and ambitious 
 neighbours, ought to produce in the rulers and
 
 Ii6 LAND REFORM 
 
 the higher ranks of a nation so threatened, a 
 similar disposition of recurring to the genuine 
 sources of public opulence and force. 
 
 What more effectual preparation can be made 
 for the most vigorous defence of national liberty 
 and independence, than to interest every in- 
 dividual citizen more immediately and directly 
 in the welfare of his country, by giving him a 
 share in the property of the soil, and training him 
 to the use of arms for its defence. The former 
 of these means of public security and defence 
 is scarcely less requisite than the latter, the pro- 
 priety of which is so generally understood. 
 
 A great standing army may be sufficient for 
 the purposes of ambition, and for carrying 
 offensive war into foreign states, but if resistance 
 is to be made at home, and a prolonged defence 
 to be maintained against a more powerful 
 invader, the discipline of standing forces, however 
 perfect, must be combined with, and sustained 
 by, the zealous patriotism of a militia. The 
 King of Prussia, beset by hostile powers naturally 
 superior in strength, has set the first example 
 of a military establishment modelled on this 
 plan ; an example which deserves to be imitated, 
 and will not fail to be so by every potentate in 
 the same perilous situation. The time seems to 
 be not very far distant, when Britain herself 
 must trust no longer with entire reliance to her 
 wooden walls, even in time of peace, but must 
 keep in continual array a land army proportioned
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 117 
 
 in some degree to those of the continental 
 powers. Even the greater powers themselves, 
 by the continual augmentation of their standing 
 armies, with an intention of invading others, 
 approach still nearer and nearer to the establish- 
 ment of a disciplined militia, as they continually 
 increase the proportion of soldiers to un warlike 
 citizens ; and when they begin to perceive that 
 they themselves are at last in danger of being 
 invaded in their turn by the powerful con- 
 federacies of neighbours, whom separately they 
 have insulted or held in terror, they will then 
 hasten to adopt the whole plan, in the same 
 manner as these neighbouring powers have 
 already done. Thus, that continual augmenta- 
 tion of disciplined standing armies throughout 
 Europe, which the friends of liberty and of 
 mankind regard with so much anxiety and 
 distrust, seems to tend to an ultimate state of 
 advancement, in which every ploughman will 
 be made a soldier, and almost every soldier 
 remain a ploughman ; a system very favourable, 
 no doubt, to the happiness and virtue of man- 
 kind, and more particularly of the lower class ; 
 a fortunate and desirable effect, which it may be 
 hoped will arise from so very suspicious a cause 
 as the restless ambition of monarchs. When- 
 ever this state of things is brought near to its 
 maturity in any country, there will be wanting 
 only one regulation to realize the fancied virtues 
 and happiness of primeval ages, though without
 
 n8 LAND REFORM 
 
 that supposed perpetual tranquillity which seems 
 not very consistent with the highest felicity 
 of mankind. That regulation is, that every 
 individual thus accustomed to the use of arms, 
 and of the instruments of tillage, should be made 
 proprietor of the field which he cultivates. 
 
 It is of small importance whether, in this 
 progress, the State has begun with the establish- 
 ment of a militia, and afterwards trained that 
 militia to the exact discipline and ready array 
 of standing armies ; or what is more new in 
 practice and may be more willingly adopted by 
 monarchs beginning with a standing army, 
 has proceeded gradually to extend its compass, 
 and the rotation of military services exacted, 
 until, almost all those persons are comprehended 
 who would belong to the plan of a militia estab- 
 lished in the usual form, without however 
 detaching them from their rustic labours, or 
 interrupting that essential industry in any great 
 degree ; still the same union of the military 
 character with that of the peasant might be 
 accomplished in the greater number of the 
 people, in nearly the same course of time ; 
 still the same facility and expediency will arise, 
 of communicating to each of this majority of 
 the citizens a competent share in the real pro- 
 perty of the soil. 
 
 62. The state of a nation overwhelmed with 
 debt furnishes the most urgent motives to 
 induce all classes of men willingly to recur to
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 119 
 
 those measures and schemes by which the 
 amount of the public stock may be most effectu- 
 ally, and most expeditiously increased. Among 
 these schemes, the encouragement of improving 
 agriculture, and the increase of an industrious 
 population by means of independent settle- 
 ments must be allowed to stand foremost. 
 
 It is indeed the landed property of the' nation 
 that is ultimately and solely engaged for all 
 national debts : every other species of property 
 may be concealed, transferred, or withdrawn, 
 when the demand for payment is apprehended. 
 It is therefore to be wished, for the security of 
 public credit, and for facilitating the borrowing 
 of money on good terms, when necessity requires 
 that expedient to be pursued, that property in 
 land were exceedingly divided ; so that every 
 person of the least consideration for property 
 of any other kind, for industry, or for talents, 
 had a share. 
 
 In that state of public affairs which renders 
 the continual accumulation of national debt 
 indispensable, it becomes even the interest of 
 the great landholders, that such a distribution 
 of property in land should take place, and that 
 every member of the society should, if possible, 
 have a share ; that so every member may be 
 rendered responsible for the public debt, and 
 may have, though in an inferior degree, the 
 same sort of interest with regard to it on every 
 emergency which these great landholders have.
 
 120 LAND REFORM 
 
 Such general distribution of property in land, 
 especially if the public creditors were for the 
 most part proprietors of land also, and in some 
 proportion to the property possessed by them 
 in the funds, would tend to unite in a great 
 degree the interests and views of the debtors 
 and creditors ; and so prevent the danger of 
 any sudden great convulsion, and the per- 
 plexities which might attend a temporary stop- 
 page of payment. It would give at the same 
 time the highest facility of employing the whole 
 stock and force of the society in great and useful 
 enterprizes, when such presented themselves, 
 without necessarily entailing oppressive taxes 
 on a future age. 1 
 
 1 The accumulation of a national debt must be acknow- 
 ledged to be a great evil ; yet it is possible that the nature 
 of that evil may be in some degree mistaken, and its 
 distant terrors exaggerated. 
 
 The comparison which offers itself at first between the 
 incumbrances of a nation and those of an individual's 
 fortune, is just only in a few particulars. Money 
 borrowed by a nation is chiefly furnished by its own 
 subjects, into whose hands it is chiefly paid back for 
 services performed ; and the stock of the community, 
 compared with that of its neighbours, is lessened only by 
 the amount of what is borrowed from^ subjects of a 
 foreign State. 
 
 Taxes imposed for defraying the interest of a large 
 debt must, in some degree, endanger the suppression of 
 manufactures, and the loss of foreign commerce. This 
 is, perhaps, the only evil which may not be separated 
 from this accumulation of national debt ; nor ought this 
 to be accounted very formidable by a nation abounding 
 with men, and possessing wide tracts of waste or half 
 cultivated land, in the improvement of which the industry
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 121 
 
 In order to establish, or at least to approach 
 nearer to this the most perfect state of public 
 credit, certain regulations might be introduced 
 with happy effects in a well constituted mon- 
 archy ; and perhaps without exciting discontent, 
 especially if any salutary Agrarian law had been 
 established, or a pretty general distribution of 
 landed property been by any other means 
 previously obtained. It might be enacted, that 
 at fixed periods a certain considerable portion 
 of the national debt should be divided among 
 the landholders, in proportion to their property 
 in land ; not obliging them to pay off their 
 proportion of the debt, but merely to advance 
 the money for paying it off, and so to become 
 themselves the creditors of the public (instead 
 
 of these men may be employed. In such a situation, a 
 nation well informed of its true interests might despise 
 the loss. 
 
 But if it is the established opinion of any people, that 
 the public prosperity depends on the flourishing state of 
 their commerce with other nations, that people ought, in 
 consistency, to avoid the occasions of contracting debt. 
 
 If a nation already encumbered with a great load of 
 debt foresees rather the necessity of augmenting than any 
 possibility of diminishing the load, that nation ought, 
 beforehand, gradually to prepare those resources by which 
 the public opulence and the industry of the subjects may 
 be sustained, when foreign commerce shall have failed. 
 
 Whatever national advantages are aimed at by efforts 
 requiring the accumulation of public debt ; whatever 
 evils are to be guarded against, as proceeding from such 
 accumulation, a minute partition of property in land 
 must be favourable to the measures of the legislature in 
 either pursuit.
 
 122 LAND REFORM 
 
 of being debtors to the public creditors) and to 
 receive the interests which they formerly paid. 
 
 It may be accounted a service which the 
 State is well entitled to require from the pro- 
 prietors of land, in return for their being suffered 
 to engross the whole original value of the soil, 
 that when the public is over-loaded with debts, 
 not imprudently contracted, they should be 
 obliged, not indeed to pay those debts, but 
 to come forward and interpose their private 
 credit in support of that of the public ; and to 
 take their chance of such payment of annual 
 rents or capital as the public may afford to make. 
 Such an occasional partition of the national 
 debt must be acknowledged to be "altogether 
 consonant to justice in those nations where the 
 representatives of the proprietors of land have 
 alone consented to, and authorized, the con- 
 tracting of such incumbrances. 
 
 At least it seems probable that, whatever 
 measures may at any time be adopted for 
 diminishing the public debts of a nation, or for 
 preventing those convulsions which on critical 
 emergencies may arise from the competition 
 between the interests of borrowers and lenders, 
 subjects of the same State, all such measures 
 would be greatly facilitated by the minute 
 partition of property in land, and a general 
 distribution of it among the whole body of the 
 people.
 
 SECTION IV 
 
 Of Public Institutions calculated for promoting a 
 gradual and salutary Change in the state of 
 Property in Land. 
 
 63. As a subsidiary help to all those regulations 
 which might be devised for promoting the 
 prosperity of the lower classes, and, in par- 
 ticular, the independence of the plough, it would 
 not ill become the wisdom of an attentive govern- 
 ment to appoint a special Board, intrusted (under 
 strict account) with the management of con- 
 siderable sums, to be applied for this essential 
 purpose, in the following or any other plan of 
 like effect : 
 
 To purchase such estates exposed to sale, as 
 might be had at a reasonable value (suppose 
 from twenty-five to thirty years' purchase) and 
 to divide them into small farms of a single 
 plough only, to be given off in perpetual property 
 for a full reserved rent. The loss that would 
 be incurred in this transaction might be greatly 
 diminished by selling off these reserved rents, 
 with all the privileges of a landlord, to persons 
 desirous of the best security without the trouble 
 
 123
 
 124 LAND REFORM 
 
 of managing a land estate. The purchaser to 
 have a right of distraining the produce of the 
 soil, together with collateral security on the 
 funds of the Board, and the same facility of 
 transferring his property at any time, and 
 suddenly, by an assignation in their books, 
 which the proprietors of stock in the public 
 funds of Britain now have. With these advan- 
 tages, it may be presumed, that such reserved 
 rents would be purchased eagerly by the timorous 
 and the indolent, and probably sell at an ad- 
 vanced value, so as to reduce the loss on the 
 whole transaction, to two or three years' pur- 
 chase money of the estate. The money thus 
 refunded to be immediately employed in similar 
 purchases ; in making which, estates of a large 
 extent, inhabited by a numerous and poor 
 peasantry, ought to be preferred to others of 
 equal rent-roll. Estates situated in islands, 
 or along the sea coast, might likewise deserve 
 preference ; because, for the sake of navigation 
 and fisheries, it concerns the interests of the 
 community at large, that the common people 
 in insular or maritime situations should be 
 brought into that state which is most favourable 
 to their increase of population, and their thriving. 
 As the operations of such a Board would tend 
 to enhance the value of land when brought to 
 sale, the establishment, it may be thought, 
 would be acceptable enough to the great body 
 of landholders.
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 125 
 
 To such a Board might be committed the 
 office of furnishing to the tenantry of estates 
 exposed to sale such assistance as they might 
 stand in need of to enable them to complete 
 their schemes of a joint purchase, founded on 
 their right of redemption. 
 
 To the same Board might likewise be com- 
 mitted the inspection of all lands devised and 
 assigned to hospitals, universities, and any 
 other public or charitable foundations, with a 
 view to prevent that private abuse and pecula- 
 tion, which too generally take place in the 
 management of such funds, when they are in a 
 flourishing condition, and more than sufficient 
 for carrying into execution the original intention 
 of the founder. In these cases, the Board, 
 having first laid a satisfactory proof of such 
 redundance before the supreme tribunals of 
 justice, should be authorized to interfere, and 
 to turn this superfluity to the greatest advantage 
 of the public, by dividing the lands belonging 
 to such foundations into separate allotments 
 of a single plough each, and giving them away 
 in complete property for a reserved rent. 
 
 The charitable foundations of one age may 
 become superfluous, nay, pernicious, in those 
 that follow, as the numerous hospitals and 
 almsgivings of the Italian cities are justly 
 considered as no small obstruction to the in- 
 dustry of their common people ; and for various 
 reasons, it cannot be unfit that the legislature
 
 126 LAND REFORM 
 
 of every country should exercise a constant 
 and supreme control over all such establish- 
 ments ; yet directed by a scrupulous observance 
 of the original intention of the founder, except- 
 ing where it is no longer fit that these intentions 
 should be fulfilled ; in all which cases, the pro- 
 duce of the funds ought to be religiously applied 
 to those public uses and charitable occasions 
 which, it may be supposed, the munificent spirit 
 of the founders would have disposed them, had 
 they lived in the present times, to patronize 
 and prefer. 
 
 That bill which was brought into the British 
 Parliament some years ago for enabling the 
 governors of hospitals, and the trustees of other 
 charitable foundations, to place in the public 
 funds the estates intrusted to their care, seems 
 to have been meant as a very gentle attempt to 
 apply the redundant opulence of such establish- 
 ments to the support of public credit and the 
 general advantage of the State. It was an 
 attempt entirely consonant to the best prin- 
 ciples of national interest and of legislative 
 superintendence, nor could that vehement dis- 
 like by which the bill was rendered abortive 
 have arisen solely from public considerations, 
 unless inflamed by the patronage of jobbing and 
 secret peculation. 
 
 64. It is not wholly in vain that premiums 
 have been distributed for the encouragement 
 of various improvements in agriculture and the
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 127 
 
 arts. Great effects cannot be expected to result 
 from them, but a general notification at least 
 is made to the public of those things which 
 speculative men of enlarged views conceive to 
 be most advantageous and practicable. Trials 
 made in different places and under a variety of 
 circumstances ensue : and examples are ex- 
 hibited, by which the advantages and disad- 
 vantages of the proposed improvements are 
 subject to general examination, in almost every 
 corner ; and other methods perhaps are sug- 
 gested, more profitable on the whole, or better 
 adapted to particular situations. 
 
 Trials and examples, it is presumed, are alone 
 wanting to recommend the general participation 
 of property in land to the favourable opinion 
 and wishes of all ranks of men. In such 
 examples, the landholders might perceive how 
 small a part of their privileges and emoluments 
 need to be given up, for promoting this, the 
 greatest public good of the community, and 
 what new advantages will spring up in com- 
 pensation for those relinquished. The rulers 
 of nations might perceive how much they are 
 like to increase the numbers, and improve the 
 character and virtues of their people ; and the 
 common people themselves can, from such 
 examples alone, be taught to know what im- 
 provement their humble condition may receive, 
 and with what ardour they ought to endeavour 
 to attain it.
 
 128 LAND REFORM 
 
 With a view to produce such examples in 
 different parts of a wide country, the same 
 plan might be adopted, which in matters of 
 far less importance has been pursued with no 
 inconsiderable success. A great premium, either 
 honorary or lucrative, might be held forth to 
 the nobleman or commoner of a certain ample 
 fortune,- or possessing land estates of a certain 
 great extent, who should within ten years 
 establish the greatest number, not less than 
 two hundred cultivators, settled in farms, from 
 twenty to forty acres, held in freehold ; or by 
 leases of long duration, three or four different 
 forms of which might be proposed, as equally 
 admissible. Less considerable premiums, yet 
 such as only the treasury or the public honours 
 of the community could furnish, might be 
 offered to persons of different inferior degrees 
 of estate for proportional establishments. Since 
 such rewards and such marks of public appro- 
 bation have been held forth for the cultivation 
 of the best sorts of grain, and other profitable 
 crops, why should it be accounted preposterous 
 to appoint suitable premiums, if such can be 
 found, for rearing and increasing the best sort 
 of citizens, that virtuous and laborious class 
 of men, of whom the severe Roman has said 
 with delight that they are viri fortissimi 
 milites strenuissimi & minime male cogitantes ?
 
 SECTION V 
 
 Of such examples and beginnings of Reformation, 
 as might be expected from the generous efforts 
 of private Persons acting singly. 
 
 65. THE private interest of the landholders 
 thoroughly understood, and pursued on enlarged 
 plans, might incline them to adopt the same 
 schemes of small farms, and leases of long 
 duration, which appear to be so eminently 
 favourable to the great interests of the com- 
 munity. This expedience is more particularly 
 apparent in those large estates which are not 
 in hazard of being brought to market every other 
 generation, but may be expected to pass, as 
 they have already done, from one age to another 
 in the possession of the same family. On ^such 
 estates, leases on improvement may be intro- 
 duced still more beneficial to the interests of 
 the proprietor's family than to those of the 
 cultivator's, yet even to them far more eligible 
 than any lease of a less permanent tenure. But 
 if the present proprietor cannot be induced, 
 for the sake of distant advantages to his family, 
 and the general prosperity of those who are 
 
 129 9
 
 130 LAND REFORM 
 
 employed in tilling his estate, to divest himself, 
 or his immediate successors, of all power of 
 renewing leases ; still, great advantage might 
 arise from an arrangement which would keep a 
 certain proportion of the farms, as every third 
 or fourth farm up and down the estate, on leases 
 of very considerable duration ; these, when 
 they fell, to be replaced by others, so that the 
 proportion should be still the same. These 
 permanent^and valuable leases would tend to 
 bring about the accumulation of stock on the 
 estate, and the establishment of wealthy farmers, 
 by whose younger sons, or other relations, it 
 might be expected that advanced rents would 
 be given for the adjoining farms, even on leases 
 of much shorter duration. 
 
 The English landholders seem to deviate more 
 from their own and from the public interest 
 by the preference they give to farms of large 
 extent, than by any unwillingness to grant 
 leases of considerable duration. The saving of 
 expense in repairs seems in general to be their 
 inducement, and that very essential article 
 ought to be regulated, no doubt, and might 
 perhaps without difficulty be regulated in a 
 better manner. Might not the conditions of 
 the lease be so adjusted as to give the tenant an 
 interest in keeping down the expense of repairs, 
 and seeing them well made, and without delay ? 
 Might not the houses on his farm (and these 
 neither too large nor too many) be delivered
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 131 
 
 to him at his entry by appreciation, to be received 
 in the same manner at the expiration of the 
 lease he receiving payment for any increase 
 of value within a stipulated extent ? 
 
 66. The desire of transmitting their estates 
 to a long series of descendants arises very 
 naturally in the minds of men who have enjoyed 
 ample possessions under the protection of a well 
 constituted government ; and may, within cer- 
 tain limitations, deserve to be countenanced and 
 promoted by the wisest legislature. It might 
 be entitled, however, to more praise, as pro- 
 ceeding from a liberal spirit, and to more 
 countenance of the laws, as highly favourable 
 to the general welfare, if, instead of securing 
 superfluous opulence to one favoured line of 
 representatives, the plan of such a settlement 
 in tail had for its object to diffuse a moderate 
 competency among a numerous tribe or family 
 of descendants, and to provide that no one of 
 the whole race shall be reduced to penury, but 
 through their own extravagance, or indolent 
 disposition. Both these intentions might be 
 combined in the same scheme, by securing the 
 present rent of the entailed estate to the lineal 
 heir, at all events, and giving at the same time 
 to all other descendants of the entailer, or of 
 his ancestors, a right, when any lease fell vacant 
 (the leases not exceeding three lives), to claim 
 possession of it in full property, at the last rent ; 
 or at the old rent, with the chance of being
 
 132 LAND REFORM 
 
 exposed to future claims of other descendants, 
 regulated on the principles of the progressive 
 Agrarian law : these claims being to take place 
 only after all the farms of the estate had been 
 given off by the first rule of entail, each to a 
 particular descendant of the entailer or of his 
 ancestors. 
 
 Those persons who having no near relations, 
 or none worthy of their inheritance, are led to 
 bestow their estate on hospitals and other public 
 uses, might obviate the murmurs of their remoter 
 kindred, and the ungenerous insinuations to 
 which the memory of such public benefactors 
 is sometimes exposed, by making such a pro- 
 vision as this, in favour of persons descended 
 from the same ancestors with themselves. 
 
 67. In every opulent society there is gradually 
 produced a considerable fund, which accumulates 
 from time to time in the hands of beneficent 
 and charitable persons, and is ready to be 
 applied, chiefly in the way of legacy and bequest, 
 to the more urgent wants and occasions of the 
 community, and to supply what the revenue of 
 the State cannot be made to reach, or what its 
 attention has overlooked. Churches, monas- 
 teries, universities, bridges, and hospitals of 
 various kinds have successively become the 
 objects of this well intended munificence in 
 Europe, and corresponding foundations have in 
 like manner engrossed it among the nations of 
 the East. In some countries these objects are
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 133 
 
 so fully provided for that the bountiful stream of 
 donations seems almost to have ceased to flow : 
 but the effect is apparent only, not real ; the 
 public wealth continuing the same, the charitable 
 fund will continue the same also, if new and 
 worthy objects are presented to its bounty. 
 Hereafter, perhaps, in enlightened nations, the 
 independence of the plough may be numbered 
 among these objects, as worthy to partake of 
 such beneficent endowments, after the demands 
 of sickness, of declining age, and deserted infancy 
 have been in some reasonable measure provided 
 for. In such a country, he who would have 
 bequeathed his estate to a hospital, had hospitals 
 been wanted, may think of dividing it, in the 
 first place, into freehold allotments of a single 
 plough each, and bequeath the revenue thence 
 arising, to be applied at certain periods, to be 
 portioned out in freehold in the same manner. 
 
 68. Nor ought it to be supposed that some 
 specimen of this equal property in land, some 
 example of what good effects it might produce 
 in a narrow district, is too great an effort to be 
 expected from the ordinary liberality of private 
 men, possessed of ample fortunes. He who 
 possesses six or eight manors cannot be thought 
 to deprive even his remotest posterity of any 
 great share of their inheritance, should he at 
 the present time divide one at least of these 
 manors into small farms of a single plough, 
 assigning each of them in perpetual property
 
 134 LAND REFORM 
 
 to the cultivator for such rent as he would consent 
 to give for this perpetual right. Or were this 
 one manor rendered subject to the options of 
 a progressive Agrarian law, the right of claiming 
 settlements being restricted to persons born on 
 other manors of the estate, such an institution 
 con Id not fail to operate as- a premium in raising 
 the value of the estate. But honour alone, 
 and the conscious satisfaction of having made 
 a public-spirited and laudable attempt, would 
 more than compensate, to men of such ample 
 fortunes, the loss that, may be supposed to 
 arise from some diminution of a rent-roll. 
 
 In certain nations (though not in Britain) 
 the Princes of the blood are possessed of revenues 
 equal to those of sovereign states, without any 
 civil or military establishment to maintain ; 
 and should they even neglect the splendour of 
 their retinue, and of their domestic court, still 
 the public reverence would wait on the dignity 
 of their exalted birth. Among these men, 
 placed in an intermediate situation between 
 sovereigns and subjects, exempted from the 
 claims that are made on the first, and from the 
 family wants of the second, it might be expected 
 that liberal and illustrious schemes, conducive 
 to the good of mankind, might find patrons 
 worthy of them, whom the necessity of a great 
 expense would animate rather than deter. Men 
 of noble minds might rejoice in the occasion 
 of expending their great revenues on some more
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 135 
 
 dignified object than that frivolous luxury in 
 which they are usually wasted ; they might 
 rejoice in the occasions of distinguishing them- 
 selves from the vulgar herd of subordinate 
 princes, whom the sentiments of mankind rate 
 only as a sort of furniture, pertaining to the 
 state apartments of a great monarch's court.
 
 SECTION VI 
 
 Of such examples and beginnings of Reformation 
 as might be produced by the combined en- 
 deavours of private Persons. 
 
 69. THE concurrence of liberal purposes with 
 the power of carrying them into execution, 
 is too rarely to be met with in particular men. 
 It is probable, however, that in proportion as 
 this important object shall be attended to, 
 canvassed, and more generally made known, 
 great numbers in various countries will perceive 
 that they are interested in having it elucidated 
 by experimental trial ; and what the wealth of 
 individuals cannot afford to attempt, the joint 
 contribution of considerable numbers (as in 
 many similar cases) if expended on judicious 
 plans, may accomplish with ease. 1 
 
 1 The outlines of a voluntary subscription scheme for 
 promoting the independence of agriculture, and securing 
 the advantage to the subscribers' families, might be 
 delineated in this manner. 
 
 A hundred subscribers, at 100 each, form a capital 
 to be laid out in the purchase of lands ; these lands, as 
 the leases expire, to be divided into allotments of a single 
 plough each. All descendants of subscribers, males or 
 married females, to be entitled, if they require it, to an 
 
 136
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 137 
 
 70. Many societies are instituted in various 
 parts of Europe for Ihe encouragement of 
 agriculture ; but to promote it, by the most 
 effectual of all means, the independence of the 
 plough, seems far too arduous an undertaking 
 to be pursued by them even in the way of trial 
 and experiment alone, and far beyond the limits 
 of their finances. Yet the hearts of liberal 
 men are apt to expand in proportion to the 
 greatness of the objects which present them- 
 selves ; and the enthusiasm aroused by engaging 
 in schemes of the highest importance, not 
 without difficulty, is likely, above all things, to 
 increase the numbers, the vigour and influence 
 of these very laudable associations. 
 
 allotment at a rent fixed by a jury, and on condition of 
 residence and actual cultivation. 
 
 The produce of these rents to accumulate, and to be 
 expended from time to time in purchasing lands to be 
 divided in like manner. 
 
 Precedence of claims among descendants of equal pro- 
 pinquity to the subscribers to be determined by lots. 
 
 All allotments after 50 years' possession to be subject 
 to claims of smaller allotments of six acres each, if any 
 candidates disappointed of the large allotments choose to 
 settle on so small a patrimony. A jury must in that 
 case determine what rent is to be paid to the fund, and 
 what to the first occupier of the allotments. 
 
 The usual subscription societies are formed to provide 
 for widows or children an annual payment during life, 
 or a sum of money to assist in beginning the world. The 
 object of this one would be to provide for a long and 
 increasing race of descendants an inheritance, if they 
 stood in need of it, and that of the most valuable kind, 
 being a fund on which the most salutary industry may 
 be comfortably exercised,
 
 SECTION VII 
 
 Of a progressive Agrarian Law, which might be 
 made the basis of all partial and occasional 
 Reformation respecting Property in Land. 
 
 71. IF in any nation of Western Europe the 
 sovereign were desirous of introducing a system 
 of property in land, wholly consonant to natural 
 justice, 1 and favourable to the greatest happiness 
 
 1 To all unbiassed reasoners it will probably appear 
 that no right whatever can be better founded than that 
 which every man willing to employ himself in agriculture 
 has, to claim a certain portion of the district in which he 
 happens to be born, he becoming bound to make just 
 compensation to those by whose labour that spot of 
 ground has been fertilised. 
 
 It belongs to the community to establish rules by which 
 this general right may become definite, and to prescribe 
 a method by which the distribution may be made and 
 the compensation ascertained. 
 
 The rules adopted for this purpose may be more or 
 less prudent and equitable, and more or less favourable 
 to the poor or to the rich, without any heavy imputation 
 on the spirit of the laws ; but not to recognise such a 
 right at all, not to have established any rules by which 
 its claims may be ascertained and complied with, ought 
 to be accounted essentially unjust. 
 
 Means may certainly be discovered by which this 
 general right of the community in the property of the 
 soil may be so clearly and practically ascertained that 
 
 138
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 139 
 
 of the greatest number of citizens ; and if in 
 this undertaking he found himself under no 
 necessity of paying respect to the prejudices 
 and interests of the present landholders, or any 
 other body of men whatever, he would take for 
 his leading object to increase the number of 
 independent cultivators, and to bring into that 
 favourable situation as great a number of 
 citizens as the extent of his territory would 
 admit. In the accomplishment of which pur- 
 pose, he might see cause to enact a statute, not 
 very different from the plan delineated in the 
 following articles : 
 
 I. That every citizen aged twenty-one years 
 or upwards may, if not already in 
 
 the private landholder shall have no occasion to be afraid 
 of suffering injury, or material inconvenience, when any 
 share of that public right is claimed. 
 
 The plan of a progressive Agrarian law is an attempt 
 towards the discovery of such means ; but the problem 
 is difficult, and the imperfections of a first attempt may 
 deserve to be excused. 
 
 Numberless are the variations which might be devised 
 for accommodating the principles of a progressive 
 Agrarian to the supposed rights and legal possessions of 
 the body of landholders. 
 
 Suppose it enacted in any country that a progressive 
 Agrarian shall take place, in respect of barren ground at 
 all times, but in respect of cultivated lands only when 
 the leases expire, excepting those farms which exceed a 
 hundred acres in extent. Thus the landholders would 
 have an option given them : if they did not choose to 
 submit to the operation of the Agrarian, they might 
 avoid it by adopting leases of long duration and farms 
 of small extent.
 
 140 LAND REFORM 
 
 possession of land, be entitled to claim 
 from the public a certain portion, 
 not exceeding forty 1 acres, to be 
 assigned him in perpetuity for residence 
 and cultivation, in the manner and 
 under the conditions hereafter speci- 
 fied. 
 
 II. That the claimant shall have right to 
 choose the situation of his allotment 
 on any farm, freehold, or uncultivated 
 common within his own parish, if 
 the same be not excepted by the other 
 provisions of this law. If there be 
 no unexcepted land in his own parish, 
 he shall have right to choose in any 
 of the parishes contiguous to his 
 own ; and if in these there be no 
 unexcepted land, he shall have right 
 
 1 Or such extent of ground as may be cultivated to 
 advantage by one small plough and the ordinary family 
 of a peasant, which may be supposed a husband, wife, 
 and three children of various ages. This may be called 
 the standard farm, and ought to vary in its extent 
 according to the state of the country. In countries little 
 cultivated and thinly inhabited, it ought to be large 
 (which does not exclude small options), to encourage the 
 cultivation of new land by those who are possessed of 
 some considerable stock ; where the country is well 
 stocked with inhabitants, it ought to be small, that each 
 may have a share. Thus two hundred acres may be no 
 improper standard in North America ; from sixty to 
 twenty in Europe ; in Holland, Egypt, and Bengal from 
 six to two, which last is considerably larger than the 
 original standard of ancient Rome.
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 141 
 
 to choose throughout the whole dis- 
 trict or county. 1 
 
 III. This allotment shall be set apart, and 
 
 its landmarks fixed by the magistrate 
 with the aid of an assize, or of ar- 
 bitrators chosen by the parties. It 
 shall be marked out in the manner 
 most convenient for both the old and 
 new occupier : it shall approach to 
 a square, or some other compact 
 form ; one of its sides shall run along 
 the boundary of the old farm ; and it 
 shall have communication with some 
 road already patent. None of these 
 circumstances to be departed from 
 without the consent of both parties. 
 
 IV. The ground thus set apart shall be sub- 
 
 mitted to the cognizance of an assize, 2 
 
 1 If in any parish there have been no claims made for 
 seven years, and yet unexcepted land remain, all persons 
 even from other counties may enter their claims thMp. 
 The tendency of these restrictions is to diffuse the benefits 
 of this law, together with the inconveniences which may 
 attend it, equally over the whole state. Perhaps a better 
 regulation might be that cultivated lands should be open 
 to claims only one year in ten, but uncultivated lands 
 always, and to the claims of all persons within that county, 
 or from any other county in which the uncultivated 
 lands were already appropriated in small allotments. 
 
 2 Perhaps some additional precautions might be 
 requisite in the manner of constituting the assize. It 
 ought to consist wholly of persons versed in agriculture, 
 and if possible one-half landlords, the other claimants, or 
 rather if that could be had (as after some years it easily 
 might) the whole to consist of persons who have already
 
 142 LAND REFORM 
 
 or of arbitrators chosen by the parties, 
 who shall determine what reserved 
 perpetual rent the claimant must pay 
 to the landlord, 1 and what temporary 
 
 got the standard farm and no more. Yet each party 
 might be allowed to demand a reference to arbitrators 
 rather than an assize ; these arbitrators to be chosen 
 by the parties, and paid after a certain handsome fixed 
 rate. This would induce some capable persons in every 
 small district to distinguish themselves for honest and 
 fair dealing in this line of business. 
 
 1 The right of the landlord can only extend to the 
 improved value of the soil ; for. he may still retain a 
 farm of the standard extent, which is to be supposed in 
 all cases at least equal to his natural share of the soil. 
 It might be difficult, however, for an assize or arbitrators 
 to separate the original from the improved value of the 
 allotment to be given off, and if they find an equivalent 
 for both, no great injustice will be done the claimant, 
 provided the landlord remains alone liable to the land 
 tax, with all its additions : an equivalent for both they 
 can easily find, as it must be no other than a reasonable 
 rent for the ground, on a short lease of seven or ten years 
 only ; for that which might be accounted a reasonable 
 rqgt for a longer lease would comprehend an equivalent for 
 some part of the improvable value ; to which, according to 
 the principles assumed, the proprietor can have no right. 
 
 The claimant ought to have his option of paying a 
 reserved rent, or a ready money price. The first will 
 commonly be his choice, but if not, the landlord may not 
 be obliged to receive more than one-half the value in 
 ready money price. The reserved rent ought to be ascer- 
 tained not in money, but in the staple produce of the 
 country, in justice to the landlord, who ought also to 
 have a right of distraining in the most effectual manner 
 for his security. The claimant ought further to show 
 that^he is able to stock his farm in a proper manner, or 
 that he is possessed of three times the reserved rent in 
 goods or in cash.
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 143 
 
 rent to the former tenant (if any) in 
 compensation of their rights. 
 
 V. The following farms are to be exempted 
 
 from all such claims : (i) Every 
 farm from which, if the allotment 
 claimed is taken away, less than 
 forty acres will remain to the first 
 tenant. (2) The farm or park belong- 
 ing to the lord of the manor, the same 
 bearing a regulated proportion only 
 to the extent of his estate. (3) Every 
 farm, of whatever extent, that has 
 not been ten years occupied by the 
 present tenant. (4) Every farm whose 
 arable ground has been diminished 
 one-half by claims founded on this 
 law shall be exempted for twenty years 
 to come, if the tenant so desire. (5) 
 All farms of barren ground taken for 
 the sake of improvement, under such 
 forms and limitations as may prevent 
 the collusive evasion of this law. 
 
 VI. In case the claimant is not contented 
 
 with the rent affixed to his allotment, 
 he shall not be obliged to hold it, 
 but to pay the occupier twice the 
 amount of any expenses incurred by 
 him. If the former occupier is not 
 contented, a new 1 valuation may be 
 
 1 Might not the former occupant or landlord, if he has 
 any personal objection to the claimant as a neighbour,
 
 144 LAND REFORM 
 
 obtained by him, he defraying all 
 the expenses that may attend it. 
 Every such claimant may make four 
 options, and no more. If he has made 
 two within his own parish without 
 holding, he cannot make a third there, 
 but may make his remaining two in 
 the contiguous parishes, or in the 
 district at large, as he shall choose. 1 
 VII. The person thus acquiring property shall 
 continue to reside upon his farm. 
 He shall have right to transmit it 
 to his heirs or assignees in full pro- 
 perty, or under a reserved rent, but 
 shall not have nor transmit the right 
 of alienating it with reversion, i.e., 
 of letting it, or any part of it, in lease. 
 If he sells it to another, who shall not 
 reside upon, but annex it to some other 
 farm, one-tenth part of the price, or 
 of the reserved rent, shall belong to 
 the public. 2 
 
 be entitled to substitute another in his room on the same 
 terms ? In which case this attempt so disappointed 
 ought not to be reckoned as one of the claimant's options. 
 
 1 The number of options is limited chiefly in order to 
 prevent vexation of the landholders in the beginning, 
 when the number of claimants must be very great. But 
 perhaps there is greater danger of the landlords contriving 
 in every stage to defeat the just pretensions of regular 
 claimants. 
 
 * The farm thus annexed shall be exempted from any 
 new claim for forty years. But no person shall accumulate
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 145 
 
 VIII. The lands acquired in this manner 
 
 shall not be transmitted by will, but 
 according to the established rules of 
 succession to landed property, the 
 original lord of the manor being 
 ultimus hares. The father, however, 
 may choose to which of his sons the 
 farm shall devolve. 
 
 IX. No allotment shall be united to another 
 
 by succession. 1 The person who has 
 right to two in this way shall make 
 choice of one of them, and that which 
 he relinquishes shall pass to the next 
 heir.. By marriage they may be 
 united during the lives of the parties, 
 and of the longest liver, but to be 
 separately inherited by two of their 
 heirs. 
 
 X. It shall not be lawful to break down any 
 
 such allotment in order to divide it 
 among children, 2 until in any county 
 the uncultivated lands are wholly 
 exhausted ; at which time, a new 
 standard of farms shall take place, 
 
 more than four such farms, nor shall he who has alienated 
 two farms in this way have right to make any other 
 option at all. 
 
 1 This does not obstruct the increase of estates, by the 
 accumulation of reserved rents, to any extent. 
 
 2 Some doubt may be entertained of this article, as the 
 allotments are not limited by any minimum below which 
 they must not fall. 
 
 10
 
 146 LAND REFORM 
 
 of six or eight acres, suited to the 
 spade culture ; and allotments within 
 that county may then be broken 
 down by will, purchase, or otherwise 
 to that standard. 
 
 XI. The property acquired in these allotments 
 shall not carry along with it any right 
 of common of any sort in the commons, 
 moors, woodlands, private roads, or 
 other appendages of the manor, ex- 
 cepting only in the pearest well and 
 watering pond, and in the bog or 
 common for turf, if that is the fuel 
 of the country : this last right to be 
 regulated by the usages of the manor, 
 as if the allotment had been given 
 off in lease only. Neither shall any 
 use, prescription, or connivance, ever 
 in course of time, procure the holder 
 of such allotment any right of common 
 that is not founded on, and ascertained 
 by, express compact. 1 
 
 1 The acquisition of such rights would render the future 
 assignation of settlements more difficult and complicated ; 
 besides, it ought to be a leading principle in every plan' 
 of reformation respecting property in land, that the 
 present possessions of landholders having been acquired 
 bona fide, under the protection of established laws, ought 
 not to be disturbed or broke in upon, except just so far 
 as natural justice and the greatest good of the whole 
 absolutely require, and no farther : from whence it will 
 follow that the persons, who are by this statute restored 
 to their natural claims, shall not be allowed to claim or
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 147 
 
 XII. Those who are in possession of farms 
 
 at the time of enacting this law shall 
 not be entitled to get any part of 
 their farms converted into freehold 
 by its operation, until by the option 
 of other claimants these farms be 
 reduced to an extent of less than 
 sixty acres. 1 
 
 XIII. All who acquire property by the opera- 
 
 tion of this law shall be obliged to 
 
 possess, even for a time, any more than the precise extent 
 of such natural claims ; while, on the other hand, those 
 who are previously possessed of more than their just and 
 natural right may be permitted to hold it until such time 
 as a special claim, founded in natural justice and ascer- 
 tained by this statute, be set up against their possession. 
 The actual possessions of landholders are in part con- 
 gruous to natural equity, and in part not : even in those 
 parts of their extent which are not congruous to natural 
 equity, no change is to be made until a particular claim 
 founded in that natural equity requires such change to 
 be made. On the other hand, in those parts of their 
 possessions which are congruous to natural equity, viz., 
 the right to improved value, such changes as the general 
 good may require are to be made, in the manner of 
 holding or occupying their possessions ; a just equivalent 
 being, however, given them for their rights and posses- 
 sions themselves. 
 
 1 No injustice is done to the farmers by this restraint. 
 They are already in possession of land on terms which they 
 thought not ineligible : it will prevent their entering into 
 cabals to retard the progress of the law, and to obstruct 
 the breaking down of their farm by such claims ; they 
 will be rather concerned to promote a progress which 
 enables them the sooner to convert into property the 
 most convenient part of their farm that, to wit, which 
 lies nearest to their residence.
 
 148 LAND REFORM 
 
 perform double service in the militia 
 of their country. 
 
 XIV. In every competition that may arise, 
 
 orphans, and those that have served 
 in the army or navy, shall be preferred 
 to all others, and to one another 
 according to the number of years 
 they have served, or the early age 
 at which they have been left orphans. 
 
 XV. Every person who has acquired an 
 
 allotment of land in this manner shall 
 pay to the lord of the manor certain 
 aids and services of a feudal nature, 
 so regulated as to produce that degree 
 of connection and dependence which 
 may be expedient for preserving order 
 and subordination in the country with- 
 out danger of giving rise to op- 
 pression and abuse. 1 
 
 72. Such might be the general outlines of a 
 statute which from the nature of its operation 
 
 1 It is not impossible to devise such regulations, and 
 though not absolutely necessary, they may prove bene- 
 ficial in some degree. Suppose, for example, that on the 
 death of any lord the vassals paid one year's rent to his 
 successor ; that on the death of a vassal, one year's rent 
 was remitted by the lord ; that during the minority of 
 their lord, the vassals paid one-tenth more rent, and 
 during the minority of a vassal one-third was remitted ; 
 that the bachelor vassals paid one-tenth additional rent, 
 and the bachelor lord received one-tenth less ; that the 
 vassal having eight children was exempted from one- 
 tenth of his rent, having twelve from one-fourth.
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 149 
 would not improperly be called a progressive 
 Agrarian law. Other more simple plans might 
 no doubt be adopted by a sovereign having 
 the power and the inclination above supposed. 
 Many such might be proposed, by any of which 
 the present state of landed property in Europe 
 might be very much improved, and rendered 
 more consistent with natural justice and the 
 best interests of the greater number ; yet far 
 less improved than might be expected from the 
 establishment of a progressive Agrarian law, 
 the plan of which seems to comprehend the 
 following advantages over every other Agrarian 
 law that has been attempted or proposed. 1 
 
 (i) It tends to unite the real benefits of that 
 levelling scheme which was the avowed 
 object of the Greek and Roman Agrarian 
 laws, and which the peasants of Europe, 
 in a frenzy excited by oppression, have 
 sometimes seemed to aim at ; with the 
 known advantages of unequal fortunes, 
 and the free accumulation of real pro- 
 perty, excluding at the same time the 
 greater evils that attend on each. 
 
 1 Almost all of Agrarian laws have proceeded on the 
 plan of restricting that extent of landed property which an 
 individual may acquire, and not the nature and the force 
 of that right with which the landholder is invested. 
 Thus endeavouring to establish an equality of fortune, 
 they have been found impracticable, and, could they 
 have been carried into execution, they must have proved 
 detrimental to the progress of industry and of commerce.
 
 150 LAND REFORM 
 
 (2) That its operation must proceed gradually 
 
 and gently, under the regulation of 
 two principles, the one acting as an 
 accelerating force, viz., the demand 
 of the lower ranks for independent 
 settlements, the other acting as a re- 
 tarding or restraining force, viz., the 
 inconvenience which the present occu- 
 piers, at any given period of time, must 
 undergo. The opposite interests of 
 'these two classes of men, this law 
 tends to compromise on a plan the 
 least unjust to the former, and the least 
 incommodious to the latter, according 
 to the circumstances of the country at 
 every successive point of time, with all 
 the variations of which circumstances 
 the operation of this law will, of course, 
 vary. 
 
 (3) That it provides for the easy gratification 
 
 of that propensity so natural to man- 
 kind, to fix their settlements as near 
 as may be to the places of their birth, 
 and to extend themselves de vicino 
 de vicinum, chiefly like the trees of 
 the forest. 
 
 (4) That it reduces no citizen to the alterna- 
 
 tive of renouncing his inclination or 
 his right. If he does not incline to 
 become a cultivator, or a husbandman, 
 he is not therefore deprived of all
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 151 
 
 opportunity of becoming so, when 
 change of circumstances, or of his 
 choice, shall so dispose him ; when 
 that time comes, he has free admission 
 to an equal share of the soil of his 
 country. Provision, however, is made, 
 that whoever in the meantime has 
 occupied that share shall not be dis- 
 possessed of it, with any circumstances 
 of inconvenience, nor without a just 
 compensation for labour bestowed and 
 improvements made. In order to ascer- 
 tain the amount of this compensation, 
 recourse is had to the best expedient 
 which the state of human affairs will 
 permit, an expedient which in similar 
 cases has been employed and found 
 adequate. 
 
 (5) That it may be so adjusted as to confer 
 
 suitable and effectual encouragement 
 on the marriages and increasing pro- 
 geny of the lower classes of men ; not 
 merely honours, exemptions, and prizes, 
 which can fall only to the share of 
 a few, but real establishments pro- 
 portioned to their increasing wants, 
 and consisting of the subject of industry 
 and the means of subsistence. 
 
 (6) That by very easy variations it may be 
 
 accommodated in a great measure to 
 the municipal laws of any country,
 
 152 LAND REFORM 
 
 and the interests of any prevailing 
 order of men, so as that very con- 
 siderable and important branches of 
 it, if not the whole, may be engrafted 
 on the established system, whatever 
 that may be, without any apparent 
 violence or much danger of exciting 
 discontent. 
 
 73. There are three articles with regard to 
 which these variations for adapting the pro- 
 gressive Agrarian to established systems and 
 prevailing interests may require to be made : 
 
 The lands which are made liable to claims of 
 allotment. 
 
 The persons to whom the right of making such 
 claims is given. 
 
 The nature of the right acquired in the allot- 
 ments thus assigned. 
 
 (i) Natural justice and the greatest good of 
 the whole community would require that all 
 lands whatever should be subject to these claims 
 until the whole country were divided into farms 
 not exceeding the established standard. But 
 this not being practicable, except in a few rare 
 cases, and on such occasions as a new settle- 
 ment or an absolute conquest, it might be ex- 
 pedient in most countries to restrain these 
 claims to uncultivated lands alone, or to the 
 forests and demesnes of the crown, either of 
 which would prove of great public utility. This
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 153 
 
 Agrarian law might be established with regard 
 to commons in general, restricting the right of 
 making such claims on each separate common 
 to the children of those who have a right of 
 common in the same a regulation perhaps not 
 impracticable in England. 
 
 In almost every country there are some classes 
 of men who, though they are allowed to possess 
 property in land, are yet not reckoned to s.tand 
 on the same footing with the bulk of the com- 
 munity, nor admitted to any share of govern- 
 ment or legislative power. Such is the situation 
 of Protestants in Roman Catholic, and of Roman 
 Catholics in Protestant, countries. Might not 
 such a statute be enacted in its full extent with 
 regard to the lands of these proprietors ? Might 
 it not be enacted in its full extent with respect 
 to lands whose proprietors are subjects of a 
 foreign state ? of which there are frequent 
 instances on the Continent, and in most cases, 
 these lands are subjected to double taxes, or 
 other burdens, far less equitable than any 
 detriment that might be incurred by the pro- 
 prietor from the operation of this law. 
 
 The estates of absentees of a certain descrip- 
 tion, and still more the lands which at any 
 time devolve by forfeiture to the public, might 
 be made liable to such an Agrarian ; the right 
 of making claims on these estates being confined 
 to natives of the same county or district. 
 
 If great proprietors are allowed to establish
 
 154 LAND REFORM 
 
 perpetual entails, in opposition to the public 
 interest, it ought only to be on condition of 
 rendering their estates subject to such an 
 Agrarian in its whole extent, by which the public 
 detriment arising from the entail would be fully 
 compensated, without defeating the private 
 intention (which is in itself laudable enough) 
 of rendering a great family permanent. 
 
 Even Jews might be permitted, without 
 alarming any prejudice whatever, to purchase 
 lands in any country, subject to the regulations 
 of this Agrarian law in favour of Christian 
 cultivators, and without that sort of dependence 
 which is pointed out in the last article of the 
 plan. 
 
 (2) Natural justice and the greatest good of 
 the community would require that every man, 
 arrived at the years of maturity, should have 
 such a right. It might, however, without 
 detriment, perhaps with advantage, be limited 
 to those who are married, and might perhaps 
 require at its first commencement to be limited 
 to thirty-six or thirty-two years of age, in order 
 to prevent too sudden a diminution of the 
 number of day labourers and hired servants ; 
 this standard age, however, sinking gradually, 
 one year at a time, once in the two years, until 
 reduced to twenty-one. 
 
 However impracticable or inexpedient it may 
 be in most countries to extend this privilege to 
 all persons whatever of the legal age, there are
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 155 
 
 in every country certain useful and privileged 
 classes to whom it might be willingly enough 
 communicated by the legislature, as (i) those 
 who have served a certain time in the army. 
 This regulation might be easily admitted in 
 Prussia, Austria, all over Germany, and indeed 
 Europe in general ; (2) those who have served 
 a certain number of years in the fleets, or on 
 board the trading vessels of their country. The 
 prevailing eagerness for acquiring commerce 
 and maritime power might well recommend 
 such encouragement to this class of men every- 
 where. In most countries they make but a small 
 proportion of the community, and where that 
 proportion is large, there they are most highly 
 valued and cherished by the State ; (3) the sons 
 and sons-in-law of clergymen in Protestant 
 countries might be thought entitled to this 
 privilege, if at any time reduced to the necessity 
 of claiming it ; (4) the peasant who has eight 
 children alive, or six before he is thirty years of 
 age, might be entitled to it in all countries ; (5) 
 and so might those who have been left orphans 
 in their nonage, the daughters, when married, 
 conveying this privilege to their husbands. 
 
 (3) As to the nature of the right acquired in 
 the allotments of land according to natural 
 justice, it ought in all cases to be a perpetual 
 tenure ; but if this may not be obtained in all, 
 it ought at least hardly ever to be departed from 
 when uncultivated lands are allotted to the
 
 156 LAND REFORM 
 
 claimant. If the lands have been already 
 cultivated, a long lease may suffice ; and if they 
 are fertile, that lease may be somewhat shorter, 
 but ought in no case to fall below thirty-one 
 years, with a life. On the expiration of every 
 such lease, the tenant ought to have an option 
 of renewing it again on paying an additional 
 proportion of rent, as one-sixth, or such new rent 
 as an assize may affix ; but if that affixed rent 
 shall not exceed the old one in a certain pro- 
 portion, as one-tenth, the tenant ought in that 
 case to forfeit his right of renewing the lease. 
 
 By such variations may the principles of a 
 progressive Agrarian law be accommodated to 
 the established institutions of various countries ; 
 and justly may it be affirmed that there is no 
 country under the sun which might not derive 
 great increase of prosperity from adopting one 
 or other modification of such a law. Certain 
 forms of this law might indeed be proposed, so 
 simple in themselves, so little inconvenient to 
 the present landholders, and yet so beneficial 
 to the lower classes of men, that no good reason 
 could be assigned why they ought not to be 
 universally established in all parts of the world. 
 Suppose, for example, thai a petition were 
 offered by the parties concerned, to any European 
 legislature, requesting, with due respect, the 
 establishment of the following regulation : 
 That soldiers, sailors, orphans, should be entitled 
 to make claims of uncultivated lands within
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 157 
 
 their parishes and counties, on the boundaries 
 of estates only, without acquiring any right of 
 common, and to be possessed for forty years and 
 a life rent, under such annual payment as an 
 assize or arbitrators should determine to be the 
 present annual value of the soil. What good 
 reason could be offered for refusing so just a 
 requisition ? And were it flatly refused, what 
 reason would there be to hesitate in pronouncing 
 that legislature, whether monarch or senate, 
 tyrannically oppressive, and unfaithful to the 
 first objects of a sovereign's trust ? But as 
 in all parts of Europe the good of the people 
 and the protection of the indigent and deserving, 
 are held forth by governments as the pretexts 
 of that authority which they assume, it could not 
 well happen that so modest, so reasonable a 
 request would be rejected in any country what- 
 ever ; nor could it fail that the introduction of 
 this very circumscribed form of a progressive 
 Agrarian law, by showing an example of its 
 advantages, and making known also the very 
 inconsiderable amount of the inconveniences 
 inseparable from it (which, while unknown, may 
 be dreaded too much), would make way for its 
 reception on a more extensive plan, as communi- 
 cating the right of making options to various 
 other classes of men, and in the cultivated as 
 well as the barren lands of the State. 
 
 74. It would furnish the matter of a very 
 interesting inquiry to examine what particular
 
 158 LAND REFORM 
 
 modifications of such an Agrarian law might be 
 accounted more especially suitable to, and most 
 likely to find ready admittance in, various 
 countries with whose municipal laws we are 
 acquainted, and what peculiar branches of such 
 law might be adapted to various conjunctures 
 which have occurred, or may perhaps occur, in 
 different states. North America has lately en- 
 joyed an opportunity of new modelling the 
 establishment of landed property, even to 
 theoretical perfection. Among the fundamental 
 laws of their new constitutions a well-regulated 
 Agrarian ought to have found a place, and might 
 have remained unrescinded by the articles of any 
 auspicious coalition with the parent state, none 
 of whose pretensions could be supposed to be 
 infringed by the internal arrangements of such 
 a statute. 1 Nor is that opportunity, though 
 not observed in the great crisis of their fortune, 
 wholly lost to countries where almost every 
 citizen is annually admitted to vote for his 
 
 1 In manufactures and commerce nations may be led 
 to think that their interest requires them to rival and 
 obstruct one another ; with respect to the progress of 
 agriculture, it is hardly possible that they can fall into 
 such a mistake. 
 
 It is manifestly the interest of every nation, whose 
 lands are cultivated to the highest degree, or, being 
 encumbered by ancient rights, cannot be brought into 
 that state which is most favourable to the highest cultiva- 
 tion, to wish for and to promote the establishment of 
 independent agriculture among its neighbours ; for the 
 cultivation of that country having become stationary, it 
 must owe any increase of prosperity and population to
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 159 
 
 representative in a legislative assembly, every 
 member of which represents nearly an equal 
 number of the people at large. 
 
 The whole landed property of Bengal and the 
 other provinces which our East India Company 
 has acquired is now absolutely at the disposal of 
 that company and of the British Government. 
 No nobler opportunity, no equal fund for ex- 
 hibiting to mankind the illustrious pattern of a 
 just and equal establishment of landed pro- 
 perty, was ever by any conjuncture thrown into 
 the hands of a set of men very capable of per- 
 ceiving wherein the best use of such an occasion 
 would consist. By making a proper use of it, 
 and by the firm establishment of a beneficial 
 landed property, some reparation might yet 
 be made to that unhappy country for so many 
 wrongs, and some testimony might be borne, 
 amid so many ambiguous appearances, to the 
 ancient honour and equitable disposition of 
 the British nation ; and what may be more 
 directly regarded an additional security might 
 thereby be provided for the permanency of our 
 
 manufactures and foreign commerce ; and the more that 
 other nations are occupied in cultivating their soil, the 
 greater quantities of manufactured commodities will they 
 stand in need of, and the less will they be able to furnish 
 to themselves ; the more, therefore, will they contribute 
 to the prosperity of manufacturing nations near them. 
 
 To Britain, considered as a manufacturing and com- 
 mercial nation, it might prove highly advantageous that 
 regulations of the nature of a progressive Agrarian were 
 established throughout the continent of North America.
 
 160 LAND REFORM 
 
 acquisitions in that part of the world. To estab- 
 lish a just system of landed property, and to 
 secure it by introducing the trial by jury, are 
 perhaps the only innovations which Britain 
 ought to make in the ancient institutions of 
 Hindostan. 1 
 
 The situation of Ireland during the peaceable 
 years of the present reign might perhaps have 
 encouraged the legislature of that country to 
 establish some considerable branches of an 
 
 1 Britain has derived considerable advantage from 
 Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, as states, arid proposes to 
 continue to reap the same, if not greater. 
 
 The advantages and profits arising from trade are 
 earned by the exertions which that trade requires ; they 
 are due to the persons by whom it is carried on, and into 
 whose pockets they immediately enter ; and they may 
 be supposed in some measure reciprocal to both countries. 
 But what right can Britain, as a state, have to increase 
 her own revenue by large sums deducted from a revenue 
 raised on the subjects of Bengal ? How does it become 
 her justice or her magnanimity, to receive such a tribute, 
 unless repaid by the communication of well-ordered laws, 
 and a reformed police ? 
 
 To transfer the whole code of English laws to Bengal 
 is an attempt not much less absurd than to transfer the 
 laws of Bengal to England, though probably some par- 
 ticular institutions of each country might be beneficially 
 transferred to, or copied by, the other. 
 
 But the administration of the English laws, and that 
 happy plan according to which justice is dispensed in 
 this country, by the intervention of a jury, in all cases 
 of any importance, and the privilege of a speedy trial, 
 if the prisoner desires it, may no doubt be adapted to any 
 system of laws that has been established in any country ; 
 it would render the best still more beneficial, and the 
 worst not intolerable to the people living under them.
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 161 
 
 Agrarian law (had it been suggested) in the estates 
 of the Catholics ; these regulations might have 
 been so devised, and so promulgated, as to 
 operate more effectually in attaching the common 
 people of that persuasion, than in disgusting the 
 great proprietors. 1 
 
 1 The distresses of Ireland, whatever they may have 
 been, must be allowed by impartial observers to have 
 arisen far more from the abuses of landed property than 
 from the restrictions of commerce, and to have been 
 aggravated by the want of an establishment for the 
 maintenance of the poor, similar to that which does so 
 much honour to England, and in consequence of which 
 the domestic peace of that country is so easily preserved, 
 without curbing the bold and manly spirit of the common 
 people. 
 
 This establishment the legislature of Ireland will prob- 
 ably soon have occasion to take under consideration ; 
 and some benevolent men seem already to have turned 
 their thoughts on that object. 
 
 It will not become them to be deterred by the errors 
 and embarrassments into which England has fallen from 
 attempting a scheme which justice, humanity, and the 
 tranquillity of their country seem equally to require. It 
 ought rather to animate their generous endeavours that 
 Ireland may hope to be the first nation that shall exhibit 
 this most humane and liberal of all municipal institutions 
 in a state of improvement, which may render it equally 
 beneficial to the rich and to the poor. 
 
 It must be much more difficult for England to reform 
 the abuses of her ancient establishment than it ought to 
 be for Ireland, profiting by the example of her errors, to 
 establish at once a new system of more uniformly bene- 
 ficial effects. 
 
 The vexation of settlement disputes might be avoided 
 by throwing the supernumerary poor of a parish on some 
 county fund, and the supernumerary poor of a county 
 on the general funds of the nation. 
 
 The encouragement of idleness might be prevented by 
 
 II
 
 162 LAND REFORM 
 
 It seems not unlikely that the proprietors of 
 extensive grazings in the south of Ireland might 
 be more easily reconciled to the establishment 
 of such an Agr-arian than the holders of arable 
 estates to the same value may be hoped to be ; 
 as these proprietors of grazings have so few people 
 on their wide domains, they would not be so 
 sensible as other landholders to the loss of 
 
 giving the clergyman of each parish a negative on the 
 disposal of the poor's money ; by the interposition of 
 which he might prevent its being given to the undeserving, 
 or too liberally to any. Nor ought it to be suspected 
 that the ministers of religion would abuse this sort of 
 power. 
 
 After all, to lay open the uncultivated lands of the 
 State to claims made by the industrious poor for the sake 
 of cultivation, will be found the most solid foundation 
 of any new establishment for the maintenance of the 
 poor, and the most effectual expedient for rectifying the 
 abuses of an old system, or moderating the demands for 
 its support. 
 
 The practice of letting estates to intermediate tenants 
 or middlemen is one of those grievances under which the 
 industry of the Irish poor has laboured. That practice 
 will gradually be laid aside ; but the change, it may be 
 apprehended, will not prove equally beneficial to the 
 cultivators and to the landlords, as in all reason it ought 
 to be. 
 
 Such is the influence of habitual modes of thinking 
 that those who exclaim most against the exorbitant profit 
 of the middleman seem not to perceive that it is unjust, 
 because it has been squeezed from the humble industry 
 of the cultivator without any equivalent given for it ; 
 but think that it is so, because it is kept from being paid 
 into the chests of rich and indolent landlords, whose title 
 is not better founded than that of the other. 
 
 Suppose that an estate farmed by a middleman who 
 draws from it a profit equal to the rent he pays had been
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 163 
 
 influence and that degree of dominion over men, 
 which is no doubt one of the principal charms of 
 landed property. Their rents might probably 
 be increased by the innovation, for surely the 
 free produce of the ground might be greater 
 under alternate tillage and grazing than when 
 kept perpetually in grass. Supposing, however, 
 
 kept in the landholder's own management, and the rent 
 raised to the same degree as by the middleman, wherein 
 would there have been any difference in respect of the 
 tenants and cultivators ? Would they have suffered less 
 injustice if deprived of this great share of the produce and 
 just reward of their industry by the landlord, than if 
 deprived of it by the middleman ? What right can the 
 landlord have acquired by purchase, which he cannot 
 transfer to the middleman during his lease ? 
 
 The middleman is described to be one whose business 
 and whose industry consist in hiring great tracts of land 
 as cheap as he can, and reletting them to others as dear 
 as he can. May not the landholder and his ancestors be 
 described as a race of men whose business and whose 
 industry have for successive generations consisted in 
 buying up large tracts of land as cheap as they can, and 
 letting them to others as dear as they can ? 
 
 It must be difficult to say what right the one set of 
 men, more than the other, can have to appropriate any 
 share of the produce of additional industry employed by 
 the cultivator in improving the soil : the injustice and 
 absurdity of the landlord's claim to improvable value 
 may appear in the strongest light when considered in 
 this delegated form. 
 
 Were the Sovereign of Ireland an absolute monarch, 
 and did he interpose when the middleman's lease becomes 
 vacant, to prevent the landlord from exacting more rent 
 than he formerly received, would not that award be made 
 in conformity to natural justice, and the best principles 
 of that public economy, according to which the rewards 
 of industry ought to be distributed ?
 
 164 LAND REFORM 
 
 that their rents were only kept up (which they 
 ought to be at least), they could have little 
 aversion to a few independent settlements on 
 the frontiers of their extensive estates ; or if 
 they had such aversion, they could not appre- 
 hend that in parts of the kingdom so thinly 
 peopled the increase of these settlements would 
 advance very fast. 
 
 In the present doubtful state of that country, 1 
 it is supposed that the volunteer corps, who have 
 taken up arms for obtaining a free trade, are for 
 the most part composed of persons who might 
 derive advantage from equitable regulations of 
 property in land. Should these men come to 
 apprehend their own interest in that point, 
 and should they think of insisting on the establish- 
 ment of any such regulations in favour of them- 
 selves and their posterity, or for the com- 
 munity in general, would not their present as- 
 cendant enable them to accomplish this desire, 
 if not carried to any intemperate extreme ? 
 Would not this be a much more important object, 
 and more worthy of their generous enthusiasm, 
 than that almost nominal independence of Great 
 Britain, which they appear at present so eager 
 to obtain ? Is it not at the same time the interest 
 of Great Britain that their ardour should take 
 this direction, for avoiding the threatened 
 contest, for increasing the common strength 
 in the most effectual manner, for diverting the 
 1 September, 1780.
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 165 
 
 industry of Ireland from an immediate rival- 
 ship in manufactures, which, notwithstanding all 
 suppositions to the contrary, is very justly to 
 be dreaded by Great Britain. Had the minds of 
 men been prepared in any degree for thinking 
 with freedom on the subject of landed property, 
 and could the times have admitted of any 
 hazardous delay, it might have been reckoned 
 very liberal policy in the British Minister to have 
 undertaken the patronage of the Irish common 
 people against their own parliament and land- 
 holders, and then at least, when he promoted the 
 bills relative to freedom of trade, to have annexed 
 to them conditions of regulation for landed 
 property, by which the freedom of agriculture 
 might have been established at the same time. 
 
 It is only in purely democratical govern- 
 ments, of which there are very few, or in un- 
 limited monarchies during the reign of a sovereign 
 endowed with superior wisdom and capacity, 
 that any sudden or effectual reformation of the 
 abuses of landed property can be expected. 1 
 
 1 The more unlimited that power is with which any 
 monarch is invested, the more it seems incumbent on him 
 to attend with peculiar care to the protection of the 
 common people. Other ranks have their privileges, their 
 wealth, and acquisitions of various kinds, to protect and 
 support them ; but the common people have none of 
 these, and not having representatives in any legislative 
 council, as under limited monarchs, the sovereign himself 
 is in fact their representative, and cannot but perceive 
 that he ought to be in a more particular manner the 
 guardian of this helpless class of men.
 
 166 LAND REFORM 
 
 Of all the absolute princes who have reigned 
 in Europe for many ages, none has appeared 
 so well qualified as the present King of Prussia 
 for conceiving and carrying into execution, in 
 the best and most genuine form, any great and 
 singular project of this nature. Had the idea 
 of reforming the constitution of landed property 
 presented itself to his mind, in the earlier part 
 of his reign, or had it been suggested by any 
 of the philosophers whom he called around his 
 throne, that penetration with which he discerns, 
 and that royal patriotism with which he steadily 
 pursues the real advantage and strength of his 
 state, together with the native generosity' of his 
 sentiments, must without doubt have attached 
 him very strongly to a scheme so magnificent 
 
 Perhaps even the oppression of the taille, if it must not 
 be removed, might in some degree be alleviated, by com- 
 municating to the cultivators a more permanent right in 
 the soil which they cultivate. 
 
 The condition of Metayers, who pay a certain propor- 
 tion, generally one-half of the produce of their farm, 
 might receive a very great improvement, attended with 
 great increase of profit to the landlords themselves, if 
 that payment was to be regulated by valuations of the 
 produce made at considerable intervals. 
 
 It is not probable that the narrow views of the land- 
 holders will permit them to embrace such a general plan. 
 Could the sovereign authority be employed to compel 
 them, it would be a very glorious and beneficial exertion 
 of absolute power. 
 
 It may be received as a general maxim of very important 
 application, that if any rent, tax, taille, or tithe is to be 
 levied from the produce of cultivation, and to bear pro- 
 portion to the increase of that produce, the interest of
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 167 
 
 and so beneficial. And however difficult the 
 execution might have proved to other princes, 
 it is plain that no material obstacle would have 
 presented itself to that high authority wherewith 
 this monarch is accustomed to regulate and to 
 change the most respected establishments of 
 his kingdom. It may be deemed no slight con- 
 firmation of the preceding speculations that this 
 sagacious prince, although it does not appear 
 that he has ever entered into any theoretical 
 investigation concerning the nature and just 
 extent of the right of landed property, has in 
 fact practically adopted some of those maxims 
 which such investigations tend to establish. 
 No object is said to engage his attention more 
 than the protection of peasants from the power 
 of their lords. Amid the rigour of a military 
 
 the cultivators, and of the persons having right to the 
 tax, will be most effectually combined, not by an annual 
 variation of its amount, nor by a rate fixed for ever, but 
 by a periodical valuation, returning after fixed and con- 
 siderable intervals. 
 
 Unlimited monarchs themselves, in resuming and regu- 
 lating the improvident grants which their ancestors have 
 made of Crown lands, forests, and domains, find it 
 requisite to use much tenderness, and to take many 
 precautions for avoiding odium, when these resumptions 
 are to be made for the advantage of the treasury alone 
 (see Compte rendu au Roi, par M. Necker). But if the 
 leading object of such resumptions was understood to be 
 a desire of accommodating the industrious poor of the 
 neighbouring districts with small independent settlements 
 in full property, such a benevolent measure, while it 
 might be made to promote the increase of the revenue 
 very much, could not fail to meet with the national 
 applause.
 
 168 LAND REFORM 
 
 discipline by which his armies are rendered 
 superior to any that the world has seen else- 
 where, every native Prussian soldier is accus- 
 tomed to the domestic engagements of a citizen 
 and the industrious economy of a farmer or 
 artisan ; and during peace, one-half or two- 
 thirds of them are dismissed to the cultivation 
 of the fields, or other industrious occupations, 
 for nine or ten months in the year. 
 
 Posterity will probably applaud this happy 
 combination, and the very simple plan by which 
 it is accomplished, above all those manoeuvres 
 of the parade and of the field which his con- 
 temporaries are so proud to imitate. As for 
 the landholders, so little is he influenced by 
 partiality to them, or any apprehensions of 
 their discontents, that he actually levies a tax 
 of thirty-three per cent, (and in the case of noble 
 tenures more) on the real, not the supposed, rents 
 of their estates. Is not this treating them (in 
 conformity to that idea of their just rights for- 
 merly suggested) as merely trustees or bankers 
 for the public, to the full amount of the original 
 value of the soil ? 
 
 75. Still, it must be acknowledged that after 
 setting aside all objections arising from the 
 interest of landholders, and the prejudices 
 of established opinion, there are not wanting 
 others of a general nature which may be opposed, 
 and not without some appearance of foundation, 
 to the establishment of a progressive Agrarian
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 169 
 
 law. That uncertain and fluctuating state into 
 which all possession of land beyond the standard 
 farm will be thrown, may be apprehended to 
 prove extremely unfavourable to any spirited 
 and vigorous cultivation, which is chiefly to 
 be looked for in extensive farms. In the plan of 
 a progressive Agrarian, more than one clause is 
 calculated to moderate this fluctuation ; greater 
 force may be given to these, and new clauses of 
 corresponding effect may be added. It might be 
 provided, for example, that none but barren and 
 uncultivated lands should be open to claimants, 
 at all times'; cultivated lands only one year 
 in seven, or any longer period that may be 
 thought requisite for the security of cultivation ; 
 neither indeed ought uncertainty of possession 
 to damp very much the spirit of improvement, 
 while the improver is still secure of an adequate 
 reward for the pains he may have taken ; and 
 that reward is to be assigned him by the verdict 
 of an assize ; at the worst, in proportion as the 
 spirit of improvement may be damped in exten- 
 sive farms, it will be encouraged and excited in 
 the smaller, where possession and full property 
 is rendered secure ; and in these, improvements 
 being carried on under the immediate continual 
 inspection, and almost by the hands of the 
 improver himself, they will be accomplished with 
 more economy, that is, with more advantage to 
 the public and to individuals than commonly 
 happens in extensive undertakings of this sort.
 
 170 LAND REFORM 
 
 The discouragement of established manufac- 
 tures and the increase of litigious contention are 
 in like manner objections which must be ad- 
 mitted to a certain extent, yet not to that degree 
 as to be accounted national calamities, or to 
 equiponderate the obvious and great advantages 
 likely to arise from a due regulation of landed 
 property. 
 
 It cannot be supposed that any great number 
 of men, educated to manufactures and accus- 
 tomed to the practice of mechanic arts, will be 
 withdrawn from their respective trades, even by 
 the free opportunities of engaging in independent 
 agriculture ; but a competition will take place 
 with respect to the rising progeny of the present 
 race, and if the greater number shall attach 
 themselves to agriculture, it need not be regarded 
 as any detriment to the public, since, the number 
 of citizens remaining the same, they will be 
 employed in a way which they themselves prefer, 
 and probably to the advantage of their health 
 and of their manners. 1 
 
 1 Even in Great Britain, although the whole legislative 
 power rests in the hands of the landholders, it is not too 
 sanguine to hope that time and favourable occasions, and 
 general views of public good, which, in this fortunate 
 country, have sometimes triumphed in part over the 
 strongest partial interests, may give rise to some innova- 
 tions favourable to the independent settlements of the 
 labouring poor. 
 
 At the conclusion of this or some future war, may not 
 the indulgence granted to disbanded soldiers be extended 
 so far as to enable them to make small settlements after
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 171 
 
 With whatever violence the increase of litiga- 
 tion may break forth in consequence of regula- 
 tions so new, so important, and not a little 
 .complicated, the duration of that evil cannot be 
 very lasting. In a few years doubtful cases 
 will be cleared up, and precedents of extensive 
 application will be established, and whilst the 
 attention of judicatories and of clients is engaged 
 in settling these new points, the influence of 
 other causes by which litigation is commonly 
 produced will be in some degree suspended. 
 
 As for the beneficial effects of such a statute, 
 the candid and intelligent are requested to 
 
 the manner of the progressive Agrarian law in the un- 
 cultivated lands of their respective parishes or counties. 
 
 May not the present method of dividing and enclosing 
 commons, which, though favourable to cultivation, is 
 known to curtail very much the independent rights and 
 comfortable circumstances of the lower orders of the poor, 
 be exchanged for some plan more allied in its aim to the 
 provisions of a progressive Agrarian. 
 
 If the present system of division is still retained, might 
 not the common so enclosed be made liable to options 
 similar to those of a progressive Agrarian law, to com- 
 mence after it has been fully improved, or fifty years 
 after the division ? 
 
 Might not persons possessing land in right of the 
 Church be enabled, under proper limitations, to grant 
 leases of very considerable duration on farms of a certain 
 small extent ? Might not some plan be devised by which 
 the interest of the Church, of the present incumbents, and 
 of the industrious poor, might be consulted at the same 
 time ? 
 
 If ever England or Ireland should set to the other 
 nations of Europe an example of the highest prudence 
 and advantage by establishing a periodical valuation of
 
 172 LAND REFORM 
 
 estimate in their own thoughts what these might 
 prove in the district with which they are most 
 particularly acquainted, and to consider whether 
 it would not very much improve the condition, 
 and the prospects of the day labourer, the hired 
 servant, and the working manufacturer, with- 
 out imposing on the established farmer or the 
 landlord any unjust or even any considerable 
 inconvenience ? Whether it would not lessen 
 the number of the indigent and the idle, and so 
 reduce the rate of that tax by which the rich 
 are obliged to maintain them ? Whether it 
 would not tend to promote cultivation and the 
 
 tithes, it may be hoped that some provisions allied to 
 those of the progressive Agrarian may be made to enter 
 into that plan, for the sake of increasing the amount of 
 that gross produce whose value is to be periodically 
 ascertained. 
 
 If ever any plan shall be carried into execution for a 
 sale of Crown lands and forests, it may be hoped that so 
 favourable an occasion of consulting the independence of 
 agriculture, by providing for the labouring poor oppor- 
 tunities of permanent settlements in small farms, will not 
 be neglected ; and that even the consideration of a little 
 more increase of the revenue which might arise from 
 pursuing other measures will not be put into comparison 
 with it. 
 
 Ought not every estate which descends to heirs in tail 
 to become subject ipso facto to some branches of a pro- 
 gressive Agrarian ? 
 
 Might not the heir of such an estate be enabled to 
 make void the entail over one-third or fourth part of the 
 estate, and to alienate it at pleasure, provided it is broken 
 down into small farms of a single plough each, on leases 
 of 300 years, or made subject to the options of a pro- 
 gressive Agrarian law, before this .alienation takes place ?
 
 RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND 173 
 
 fertility of the soil, to favour the increase of 
 population, and to improve the manners and 
 virtues of the great body of the people ? After 
 having made this estimate, let them consider 
 what might have been the present state of that 
 district had such a progressive Agrarian law or 
 any capital branch of that statute been estab- 
 lished there one hundred or even fifty years ago. 1 
 
 1 The wisest and most beneficial schemes are in some 
 men's opinions effectually turned into ridicule, when it 
 is shown, or even asserted, that they cannot be carried 
 into execution. The consideration of such plans may, 
 however, put to shame the abuses of those which are 
 established, by showing how widely they differ from what 
 is beneficial or wise. If the exhibition of such a contrast 
 cannot remove pernicious abuses, it may in some degree 
 restrain the rapidity of their increase. 
 
 Various objects have engaged the enthusiasm and 
 excited the efforts of mankind in successive ages : schemes 
 of conquest and settlement in one age ; plans of civil and 
 religious liberty in another ; manufactures and commerce 
 have now their turn ; and perhaps in some not very 
 distant age the independence of cultivation, established 
 on a just regulation of property in land, may become the 
 favourite pursuit of nations, and the chief object of public 
 spirited endeavours. The present tendency of men's 
 opinions and inquiries, promoted by the actual state of 
 the most enlightened nations, seems to lead towards it. 
 
 " Sic poscere fata, 
 
 " Et reor, et si quid veri mens augurat, opto."
 
 AGRARIAN JUSTICE 
 
 BY THOMAS PAINE
 
 AGRARIAN JUSTICE 
 
 OPPOSED TO 
 
 AND TO 
 
 AGRARIAN MONOPOLY ; 
 
 BEING A PLAN FOR 
 
 MELIORATING THE CONDITION OF MAN, 
 
 BY CREATING IN EVERY NATION A 
 
 NATIONAL FUND, 
 
 To pay to every Person, when arrived at the Age of Twenty-one 
 Years, the sum of Fifteen Pounds Sterling, to enable him, 
 or her, to begin the World ; 
 
 Ten Pounds Sterling per Annum during Life to every Person 
 now living, of the Age of Fifty Years, and to all Others 
 when they shall arrive at that Age, to enable them to live 
 in Old Age without Wretchedness, and go decently out of 
 the World. 
 
 BY THOMAS PAINE.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE following little piece was written in the 
 winter of 1795 and 96 ; and, as I had not deter- 
 mined whether to publish it during the present 
 war, or to wait till the commencement of a 
 peace, it has lain by me, without addition, from 
 the time it was written. 
 
 What has determined me to publish it now is, 
 a Sermon, preached by Watson, Bishop of 
 Landaff. Some of my readers will recollect, 
 that this Bishop wrote a book, entitled " An 
 Apology for the Bible," in answer to my " Second 
 Part of the Age of Reason." I procured a copy 
 of his book, and he may depend upon hearing 
 from me on that subject. 
 
 At the end of the Bishop's book is a list of the 
 works he has written, among which is the Sermon 
 alluded to ; it is entitled " The Wisdom and 
 Goodness of God in having made both rich and 
 poor ; with an Appendix containing Reflections 
 on the present State of England and France." 
 
 The error contained in the title of this Sermon, 
 determined me to publish my Agrarian Justice, 
 It is wrong to say that God made Rich and Poor ; 
 179
 
 i8o LAND REFORM 
 
 he made only Male and Female ; and he gave 
 them the earth for their inheritance. 
 
 Instead of preaching to encourage one part 
 of mankind in insolence * * * it 
 would be better that the Priests employed their 
 time to render the condition of man less miserable 
 than it is. Practical Religion consists in doing 
 good ; and the only way of serving God is, that 
 of endeavouring to make his creation happy. 
 All preaching that has not this for its object is 
 nonsense and hypocrisy. 
 
 THOMAS PAINE. 
 
 Considerable pains have been taken to procure a 
 perfect copy of this pamphlet, but it does not appear 
 that any such thing was ever printed in England. The 
 publisher is therefore reluctantly compelled to insert the 
 asterisks as in the former edition.
 
 AGRARIAN JUSTICE 
 
 To preserve the benefits of what is called civilized 
 life, and to remedy, at the same time, the evils 
 it has produced, ought to be considered as one 
 of the first objects of reformed legislation. 
 
 Whether that state that is proudly, perhaps 
 erroneously, called civilization, has most pro- 
 moted or most injured the general happiness of 
 man, is a question that may be strongly con- 
 tested. On one side the spectator is dazzled by 
 splendid appearances ; on the other he is shocked 
 by extremes of wretchedness ; both of which he 
 has created. The most affluent and the most 
 miserable of the human race are to be found in 
 the countries that are called civilized. 
 
 To understand what the state of society ought 
 to be, it is necessary to have some idea of the 
 natural and primitive state of man ; such as 
 it is at this day among the Indians of North 
 America. There is not, in that state, any of 
 those spectacles of human misery which poverty 
 and want present to our eyes in all the towns 
 and streets in Europe. Poverty, therefore, is a 
 thing created by that which is called civilized 
 life. It exists not in the natural state. On the 
 
 181
 
 182 LAND REFORM 
 
 other hand, the natural state is without those 
 advantages which flow from Agriculture, Arts, 
 Sciences, and Manufactures. 
 
 The life of an Indian is a continual holiday, 
 compared with the poor of Europe ; and on the 
 other hand, it appears to be abject when com- 
 pared to the rich. Civilization, therefore, or 
 that which is so called, has operated two ways, 
 to make one part of society more affluent, and 
 the other part more wretched than would have 
 been the lot of either in a natural state. 
 
 It is always possible to go from the natural to 
 the civilized state, but it is never possible to go 
 from the civilized to the natural state. The 
 reason is, that man, in a natural state, subsisting 
 by hunting, requires ten times the quantity of 
 land to range over to procure himself sustenance, 
 than would support him in a civilized state, 
 where the earth is cultivated. When, therefore, 
 a country becomes populous by the additional 
 aids of cultivation, arts, and science, there is 
 a necessity of preserving things in that state ; 
 without it, there cannot be sustenance for more, 
 perhaps, than a tenth part of its inhabitants. 
 The thing, therefore, now to be done is, to remedy 
 the evils, and preserve the benefits that have 
 arisen to society, by passing from the natural to 
 that which is called the civilized state. 
 
 Taking then the matter upon this ground, the 
 first principle of civilization ought to have been, 
 and ought still to be, that the condition of every
 
 AGRARIAN JUSTICE 183 
 
 person born into the world, after a state of 
 civilization commences, ought not to be worse 
 than if he had been born before that period. But 
 the fact is, that the condition of millions, in every 
 country in Europe, is far worse than if they had 
 been born before civilization began, or had been 
 born among the Indians of North America of 
 the present day. I will show how this fact has 
 happened. 
 
 It is a position not to be controverted, that the 
 earth, in its natural uncultivated state, was, and 
 ever would have continued to be, the COMMON 
 
 PROPERTY OF THE HUMAN RACE. In that state 
 
 every man would have been born to property. 
 He would have been a joint life-proprietor with 
 the rest in the property of the soil, and in all its 
 natural productions, vegetable and animal. 
 
 But the earth in its natural state, as before 
 said, is capable of supporting but a small number 
 of inhabitants compared with what it is capable 
 of doing in a cultivated state. And as it is 
 impossible to separate the improvement made by 
 cultivation, from the earth itself, upon which 
 that improvement is made, the idea of landed 
 property arose from that inseparable connection ; 
 but it is nevertheless true, that it is the value of 
 the improvement only, and not the earth itself, 
 that is individual property. Every proprietor, 
 therefore, of cultivated land, owes to the com- 
 munity a ground-rent, for I know no better 
 term to express the idea by, for the land which
 
 184 LAND REFORM 
 
 he holds ; and it is from this ground-rent that 
 the fund proposed in this plan is to issue. 
 
 It is deducible, as well fyom the nature of the 
 thing, as from all the histories transmitted to us, 
 that the idea of landed property commenced 
 with cultivation, and that there was no such 
 thing as landed property before that time. It 
 could not exist in the first state of man, that of 
 hunters ; it did not exist in the second state, 
 that of shepherds : neither Abraham, Isaac, 
 Jacob, or Job, so far as the history of the Bible 
 may be credited in probable things, were owners 
 of land. Their property consisted, as is always 
 enumerated, in flocks and herds, and they 
 travelled with them from place to place. The 
 frequent contentions at that time about the use 
 of a well in the dry country of Arabia, where 
 those people lived, show also there was no 
 landed property. It was not admitted that land 
 could be located as property. 
 
 There could be no such things as landed 
 property originally. Man did not make the 
 earth, and, though he had a natural right to 
 occupy it, he had no right to locate as Ms property 
 in perpetuity any part of it ; neither did the 
 Creator of the earth open a land-office, from 
 whence the first title-deeds should issue. From 
 whence then arose the idea of landed property ? 
 I answer as before, that when cultivation began, 
 the idea of landed property began with it ; from 
 the impossibility of separating the improvement
 
 AGRARIAN JUSTICE 185 
 
 made by cultivation from the earth itself upon 
 which that improvement was made. The value 
 of the improvement so far exceeded the value of 
 the natural earth, at that time, as to absorb it ; 
 till, in the end, the common right of all became 
 confounded into the cultivated right of the indi- 
 vidual. But they are nevertheless distinct species 
 of rights, and will continue to be so as long as 
 the world endures. 
 
 It is only by tracing things to their origin, that 
 we can gain rightful ideas of them ; and it is by 
 gaining such ideas that we discover the boundary 
 that divides right from wrong, and which teaches 
 every man to know his own. I have entitled 
 this tract Agrarian Justice, to distinguish it from 
 Agrarian Law. Nothing could be more unjust 
 than Agrarian Law in a country improved by 
 cultivation ; for though every man, as an in- 
 habitant of the earth, is a joint proprietor of it 
 in its natural state, it does not follow that he is 
 a joint proprietor of cultivated earth. The 
 additional value made by cultivation, after the 
 system was admitted, became the property of 
 those who did it, or who inherited it from them, 
 or who purchased it. It had originally an owner. 
 Whilst, therefore, I advocate the right, and 
 interest myself in the hard case of all those who 
 have been thrown out of their natural inherit- 
 ance by the introduction of the system of landed 
 property, I equally defend the right of the pos- 
 sessor to the part which is his.
 
 186 LAND REFORM 
 
 Cultivation is, at least, one of the greatest 
 natural improvements ever made by human 
 invention. It has given to created earth a ten- 
 fold value. But the landed monopoly, that 
 began with it, has produced the greatest evil. 
 It has dispossessed more than half the inhabitants 
 of every nation of their natural inheritance, 
 without providing for them, as ought to have 
 been done, an indemnification for that loss ; and 
 has thereby created a species of poverty and 
 wretchedness that did not exist before. 
 
 In advocating the case of the persons thus 
 dispossessed, it is a right and not a charity that 
 I am pleading for. But it is that kind of right 
 which, being neglected at first, could not be 
 brought forward afterwards, till heaven had 
 opened the way by a revolution in the system of 
 government. Let us then do honour to revolu- 
 tions by justice, and give currency to their 
 principles by blessings. 
 
 Having thus, in a few words, opened the merits 
 of the case, I proceed to the plan I have to 
 propose, which is, 
 
 To create a National Fund, out of which there 
 shall be paid to every person, when arrived at 
 the age of twenty-one years, the sum of Fifteen 
 Pounds sterling, as a compensation in part for 
 the loss of his or her natural inheritance by the 
 introduction of the system of landed property ; 
 and also the sum of Ten Pounds per annum,
 
 AGRARIAN JUSTICE 187 
 
 during life, to every person now living of the age 
 of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive 
 at that age. 
 
 MEANS BY WHICH THE FUND is TO BE CREATED. 
 
 I have already established the principle, 
 namely, that the earth, in its natural uncultivated 
 state, was, and ever would have continued to be, 
 
 the COMMON PROPERTY OF THE HUMAN RACE 
 
 that in that state every person would have been 
 born to property and that the system of landed 
 property, by its inseparable connection with 
 cultivation, and with what is called civilized 
 life, has absorbed the property of all those whom 
 it dispossessed, without providing, as ought to 
 have been done, an indemnification for that 
 loss. 
 
 The fault, however, is not in the present 
 possessors. No complaint is intended, or ought 
 to be alleged against them, unless they adopt 
 the crime by opposing justice. The fault is in 
 the system, and it has stolen imperceptibly upon 
 the world, aided afterwards by the Agrarian law 
 of the sword. But the fault can be made to 
 reform itself by successive generations, without 
 diminishing or deranging the property of any of 
 the present possessors, and yet the operation of 
 the fund can commence, and be in full activity 
 the first year of its establishment, or soon after, 
 as I shall show.
 
 i88 LAND REFORM 
 
 It is proposed that the payments, as already 
 stated, be made to every person, rich or poor. 
 It is best to make it so, to prevent invidious dis- 
 tinctions. It is also right it should be so, 
 because it is in lieu of the natural inheritance, 
 which, as a right, belongs to every man, over and 
 above the property he may have created or in- 
 herited from those who did. Such persons as do 
 not choose to receive it, can throw it into the 
 common fund. 
 
 Taking it then for granted, that no person 
 ought to be in a worse condition when born 
 under what is called a state of civilization, than 
 he would have been, had he been born in a state 
 of nature, and that civilization ought to have 
 made, and ought still to make, provision for that 
 purpose, it can only be done by subtracting from 
 property a portion equal in value to the natural 
 inheritance it has absorbed. 
 
 Various methods may be proposed for this 
 purpose, but that which appears to be the best, 
 not only because it will operate without de- 
 ranging any present possessions, or without inter- 
 fering with the collection of taxes, or emprunts 
 necessary for the purpose of Government and 
 the Revolution, but because it will be the least 
 troublesome and the most effectual, and also 
 because the subtraction will be made at a time 
 that best admits it, which is, at the moment that 
 property is passing by the death of one person to 
 the possession of another. In this case, the
 
 AGRARIAN JUSTICE 189 
 
 bequeather gives nothing ; the receiver pays 
 nothing. The only matter to him is, that the 
 monopoly of natural inheritance, to which there 
 never was a right, begins to cease in his person. 
 A generous man would wish it not to continue, 
 and a just man will rejoice to see it abolished. 
 
 My state of health prevents my making 
 sufficient inquiries with respect to the doctrine 
 of probabilities, whereon to found calculations 
 with such degrees of certainty as they are cap- 
 able of. What, therefore, I offer on this head is 
 more the result of observation and reflection, 
 than of received information ; but I believe it 
 will be found to agree sufficiently enough with 
 fact. 
 
 In the first place, taking twenty-one years as 
 the epoch of maturity, all the property of a 
 Nation, real and personal, is always in the 
 possession of persons above that age. It is then 
 necessary to know as a datum of calculation, the 
 average of years which persons above that age 
 will live. I take this average to be about thirty 
 years, for though many persons will live forty, 
 fifty, or sixty years after the age of twenty-one 
 years, others will die much sooner, and some in 
 every year of that time. 
 
 Taking, then, thirty years as the average of 
 time, it will give without any material variation, 
 one way or other, the average of time in which 
 the whole property or capital of a Nation, or a 
 sum equal thereto, will have passed through one
 
 LAND REFORM 
 
 entire revolution in descent, that is, will have 
 gone by deaths to new possessors ; for though, 
 in many instances, some parts of this capital will 
 remain forty, fifty, or sixty years in the posses- 
 sion of one person, other parts will have revolved 
 two or three times before that thirty years expire, 
 which will bring it to that average ; for were one- 
 half the capital of a Nation to revolve twice in 
 thirty years, it would produce the same fund as 
 if the whole revolved once. 
 
 Taking, then, thirty years as the average of 
 time in which the whole capital of a Nation, or 
 a sum equal thereto, will revolve once, the 
 thirtieth part thereof will be the sum that will 
 revolve every year, that is, will go by deaths to 
 new possessors ; and this last sum being thus 
 known, and the ratio per cent, to be subtracted 
 from it being determined, will give the annual 
 amount or income of the proposed fund, to be 
 applied as already mentioned. 
 
 In looking over the discourse of the English 
 Minister, Pitt, in his opening of what is called in 
 England the budget (the scheme of finance for the 
 year 1796), I find an estimate of the national 
 capital of that country. As this estimate of a 
 national capital is prepared ready to my hand, I 
 take it as a datum to act upon. When a calcu- 
 lation is made upon the known capital of any 
 Nation combined with its population, it will serve 
 as a scale for any other nation, in proportion as 
 its capital and population be more or less. I am
 
 AGRARIAN JUSTICE 191 
 
 the more disposed to take this estimate of Mr 
 Pitt, for the purpose of showing to that Minister, 
 upon his own calculation, how much better money 
 may be employed, than in wasting it, as he has 
 done, on the wild project of setting up Bourbon 
 kings. What, in the name of Heaven, are 
 Bourbon kings to the people of England ? It is 
 better that the people of England have bread. 
 
 Mr Pitt states the national capital of England, 
 real and personal, to be one thousand three 
 hundred millions sterling, which is about one- 
 fourth part of the national capital of France, 
 including Belgia. The event of the last harvest 
 in each country proves that the soil of France is 
 more productive than that of England, and that 
 it can better support twenty-four or twenty-five 
 millions of inhabitants than that of England can 
 seven, or seven and an J^alf . 
 
 The thirtiethpartof this capital of 1,300, 000,000 
 is 43>333>333> which is the part that will revolve 
 every year by deaths in that country to new 
 possessors ; and the sum that will annually 
 revolve in France in the proportion of four to one, 
 will be about one hundred and seventy-three 
 millions sterling. From this sum of 43, 333, 333 
 annually revolving, is to be subtracted the value 
 of the natural inheritance absorbed in it, which 
 perhaps, in fair justice, cannot be taken at less, 
 and ought not to be taken at more, than a tenth 
 part. 
 
 It will always happen, that of the property
 
 192 LAND REFORM 
 
 thus revolving by deaths every year, part will 
 descend in a direct line to sons and daughters, 
 and the other part collaterally, and the propor- 
 tion will be found to be about three to one ; that 
 is, about thirty millions of the above sum will 
 descend to direct heirs, and the remaining sum 
 f I 3>333,333 to more distant relations and part 
 to strangers. 
 
 Considering then that man is always related to 
 society, that relationship will become compara- 
 tively greater in proportion as the next of kin is 
 more distant. It is therefore consistent with 
 civilization, to say, that where there are no 
 direct heirs, society shall be heir to a part over 
 and above the tenth part due to society. If this 
 additional part be from five to ten or twelve per 
 cent, in proportion as the next of kin be nearer 
 or more remote, so as to average with the escheats 
 that may fall, which ought always to go to 
 society and not to the Government, an addition 
 of ten per cent, more, the produce from the 
 annual sum of 43,333333 wil1 be , 
 From 30,000,000 at 10 per cent. 3,000,000 
 From 13,333,333 a t I0 P er cent, with 
 addition 10 per 
 more 2,666,666 
 
 43,333,333 5,666,666 
 
 Having thus arrived at the annual amount of 
 the proposed fund, I come, in the next place, to
 
 AGRARIAN JUSTICE 193 
 
 speak of the population proportioned to this fund, 
 and to compare it with the uses to which the 
 fund is to be applied. 
 
 The population (I mean that of England) does 
 not exceed seven millions and a half, and the 
 number of persons, above the age of fifty will, in 
 that case, be about four hundred thousand. 
 There would not, however, be more than that 
 number that would accept the proposed ten 
 pounds sterling per annum, though they would 
 be entitled to it. I have no idea it would be 
 accepted by many persons who had a yearly 
 income of two or three hundred pounds sterling. 
 But as we often see instances of rich people 
 falling into sudden poverty, even at the age of 
 sixty, they would always have the right of 
 drawing all the arrears due to them. Four 
 millions, therefore, of the above annual sum of 
 5,666,666 will be required for four hundred 
 thousand aged persons, at ten pounds sterling 
 each. 
 
 I come now to speak of the persons annually 
 arriving at twenty-one years of age. If all the 
 persons who died were above the age of twenty- 
 one years, the number of persons annually arriv- 
 ing at that age, must be equal to the annual 
 number of deaths to keep the population sta- 
 tionary. But the greater part die under the age 
 of twenty-one, and therefore the number of 
 persons annually arriving at twenty-one, will be 
 less than half the number of deaths. The whole 
 
 13
 
 194 LAND REFORM 
 
 number of deaths upon a population of seven 
 millions and a half, will be about 220,000 annually. 
 The number at twenty-one years of age will be 
 about 100,000. The whole number of these will 
 not receive the proposed fifteen pounds, for the 
 reasons already mentioned, though, as in the 
 former case, they would be entitled to it. Ad- 
 mitting, then, that a tenth part declined receiv- 
 ing it, the amount would stand thus : 
 
 Fund annually .... 5,666,666 
 To 400,000 aged persons, 
 
 at 10 each . . 4,000,000^ 
 
 To 90,000 persons of 
 
 - 5,350,000 
 twenty-one years, 
 
 15 sterling each 1,350,000 
 
 Remains 316,666 
 
 There are in every country a number of blind 
 and lame persons, totally incapable of earning 
 a livelihood. But as it will happen that the 
 greater number of blind persons will be among 
 those who are above the age of fifty years, 
 they will be provided for in that class. The 
 remaining sum of 316,666, will provide for the 
 lame and blind under that age, at the same rate 
 of 10 annually for each person. 
 
 Having now gone through all the necessary 
 calculations, and stated the particulars of the 
 plan, I shall conclude with some observations. 
 
 It is not charity but a right not bounty but
 
 AGRARIAN JUSTICE 195 
 
 justice, that I am pleading for. The present 
 state of what is called civilization is * * *. It 
 is the reverse of what it ought to be, and * * *. 
 The contrast of affluence and wretchedness con- 
 tinually meeting and offending the eye, is like 
 dead and living bodies chained together. Though 
 I care as little about riches as any man, I am a 
 friend to riches, because they are capable of 
 good. I care not how affluent some may be, 
 provided that none be miserable in consequence 
 of it. But it is impossible to enjoy affluence 
 with the felicity it is capable of being enjoyed, 
 whilst so much misery is mingled in the scene. 
 The sight of the misery, and the unpleasant 
 sensations it suggests, which though they may 
 be suffocated cannot be extinguished, are a 
 greater drawback upon the felicity of affluence 
 than the proposed ten per cent, upon property 
 is worth. He that would not give the one to 
 get rid of the other, has no charity, even for 
 himself. 
 
 There are in every country some magnificent 
 charities established by individuals. It is, how- 
 ever, but little that any individual can do when 
 the whole extent of the misery to be relieved is 
 considered. He may satisfy his conscience, but 
 not his heart. He may give all that he has, and 
 that all will relieve but little. It is only by 
 organising civilization upon such principles as to 
 act like a system of pullies, that the whole weight 
 of misery can be removed.
 
 196 LAND REFORM 
 
 The plan here proposed will reach the whole. 
 It will immediately relieve and take out of view 
 three classes of wretchedness : the blind, the 
 lame, and the aged poor. It will furnish the rising 
 generation with means to prevent their becoming 
 poor ; and it will do this, without deranging or 
 interfering with any national measures. 
 
 To show that this will be the case, it is sufficient 
 to observe, that the operation and effect of the 
 plan will, in all cases, be the same, as if every 
 individual was voluntarily to make his will, and 
 dispose of his property, in the manner here 
 proposed. 
 
 But it is justice, and not charity, that is the 
 principle of the plan. In all great cases it is 
 necessary to have a principle more universally 
 active than charity ; and with respect to justice, 
 it ought not to be left to the choice of detached 
 individuals, whether they will do justice or not. 
 Considering, then, the plan on the ground of 
 justice, it ought to be the act of the whole, 
 growing spontaneously out of the principles of 
 the revolution, and the reputation of it to be 
 national, and not individual. 
 
 A plan upon this principle would benefit the 
 revolution by the energy that springs from the 
 consciousness of justice. It would multiply also 
 the national resources ; for property, like vege- 
 tation, increases by off-sets. When a young 
 couple begin the world, the difference is ex- 
 ceedingly great, whether they begin with nothing
 
 AGRARIAN JUSTICE 197 
 
 or with fifteen pounds apiece. With this aid 
 they could buy a cow, and implements to culti- 
 vate a few acres of land ; and instead of becoming 
 burthens upon society, which is always the case, 
 where children are produced faster than they can 
 be fed, they would be put in the way of becoming 
 useful and profitable citizens. The national 
 domains also would sell the better, if pecuniary 
 aids were provided to cultivate them in small 
 lots. 
 
 It is the practice of what has unjustly obtained 
 the name of civilization (and the practice merits 
 not to be called either charity or policy) to 
 make some provision for persons becoming poor 
 and wretched, only at the time they become 
 so. Would it not, even as a matter of economy, 
 be far better to devise means to prevent their 
 becoming poor ? This can best be done by 
 making every person, when arrived at the age of 
 twenty-one years, an inheritor of something to 
 begin with. The rugged face of society, chec- 
 quered with the extremes of affluence and of 
 want, proves that some extraordinary violence 
 has been committed upon it, and calls on justice 
 for redress. The great mass of the poor, in all 
 countries, are become an hereditary race, and it 
 is next to impossible for them to get out of that 
 state of themselves. It ought also to be observed, 
 that this mass increases in all the countries that 
 are called civilized. More persons fall annually 
 into it, than get out of it.
 
 198 LAND REFORM 
 
 Though in a plan in which justice and humanity 
 are the foundation principles, interest ought not 
 to be admitted into the calculation, yet it is 
 always of advantage to the establishment of 
 any plan, to show that it is beneficial as a 
 matter of interest. The success of any pro- 
 posed plan, submitted to public consideration, 
 must finally depend on the numbers interested 
 in supporting it, united with the justice of its 
 principles. 
 
 The plan here proposed will benefit all without 
 injuring any. It will consolidate the interest of 
 the republic with that of the individual. To the 
 numerous class dispossessed of their natural 
 inheritance by the system of landed property, 
 it will be an act of national justice. To persons 
 dying possessed of moderate fortunes, it will 
 operate as a tontine to their children, more 
 beneficial than the sum of money paid into the 
 fund ; and it will give to the accumulation of 
 riches a degree of security that none of the old 
 Governments of Europe, now tottering on their 
 foundation, can give. 
 
 I do not suppose, that more than one family 
 in ten, in any of the countries of Europe, has, 
 when the head of the family dies, a clear property 
 left of five hundred pounds sterling. To all such 
 the plan is advantageous. That property would 
 pay fifty pounds into the fund, and if there were 
 only two children under age, they would receive 
 fifteen pounds each (thirty pounds) on coming
 
 AGRARIAN JUSTICE 199 
 
 of age, and be entitled to ten pounds a year 
 after fifty. It is from the overgrown acquisition 
 of property that the fund will support itself ; 
 and I know that the possessors of such property 
 in England, though they would eventually be 
 benefited by the protection of nine-tenths of it, 
 will exclaim against the plan. But, without 
 entering into any inquiry how they came by that 
 property, let them recollect, that they have been 
 the advocates of this war, and that Mr Pitt has 
 already laid on more new taxes to be raised 
 annually upon the People of England, and that 
 for supporting the despotism of Austria and the 
 Bourbons, against the liberties of France, than 
 would annually pay all the sums proposed in 
 this plan. 
 
 I have made the calculations, stated in this 
 plan, upon what is called personal, as well as 
 upon landed property. The reason for making 
 it upon land is already explained ; and the 
 reason for taking personal property into the cal- 
 culation, is equally well founded, though on a 
 different principle. Land, as before said, is the 
 free gift of the Creator in common to the human 
 race. Personal property is the effect of Society ; 
 and it is as impossible for an individual to 
 acquire personal property without the aid of 
 Society, as it is for him to make land originally. 
 Separate an individual from society, and give 
 him an island or a continent to possess, and he 
 cannot acquire personal property. He cannot
 
 200 LAND REFORM 
 
 become rich. So inseparably are the means 
 connected with the end, in all cases, that where 
 the former do not exist, the latter cannot be 
 obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of per- 
 sonal property, beyond what a man's own hands 
 produce, is derived to him by living in society ; 
 and he owes, on every principle of justice, of 
 gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that 
 accumulation back again to society from whence 
 the whole came. This is putting the matter on 
 a general principle, and perhaps it is best to do 
 so ; for if we examine the case minutely, it will 
 be found, that the accumulation of personal 
 property is, in many instances, the effects of 
 paying too little for the labour that produced 
 it ; the consequence of which is, that the work- 
 ing hand perishes in old age, and the employer 
 abounds in affluence. It is, perhaps, impossible, 
 to proportion exactly the price of labour to the 
 profits it produces ; and it will also be said, as 
 an apology for injustice, that were a workman to 
 receive an increase of wages daily, he would not 
 save it against old age, nor be much the better 
 for it in the interim. Make, then, Society the 
 treasurer to guard it for him in a common fund ; 
 for it is no reason that because he might not 
 make a good use of it for himself, that another 
 shall take it. 
 
 The state of civilization that has prevailed 
 throughout Europe, is as unjust in its principle, 
 as it is horrid in its effects ; and it is the con-
 
 AGRARIAN JUSTICE 201 
 
 sciousness of this, and the apprehension that 
 such a state cannot continue when once investiga- 
 tion begins in any country, that makes the 
 possessors dread every idea of a revolution. It 
 is the hazard, and not the principles of a revolu- 
 tion, that retards their progress. This being the 
 case, it is necessary, as well for the protection of 
 property, as for the sake of justice and humanity, 
 to form a system, that whilst it preserves one 
 part of society from wretchedness, shall secure 
 the other from depredation. 
 
 The superstitious awe, the enslaving reverence, 
 that formerly surrounded affluence, is passing 
 away in all countries, and leaving the possessor 
 of property to the convulsion of accidents. 
 When wealth and splendour, instead of fasci- 
 nating the multitude, excite emotions of disgust ; 
 when, instead of drawing forth admiration, it is 
 beheld as an insult upon wretchedness ; when the 
 ostentatious appearance it makes serves to call 
 the right of it in question, the case of property 
 becomes critical, and it is only in a system of 
 justice that the possessor can contemplate 
 security. 
 
 To remove the danger, it is necessary to remove 
 the antipathies, and this can only be done by 
 making property productive of a national bless- 
 ing, extending to every individual. When the 
 riches of one man above another shall increase 
 the national fund in the same proportion ; when 
 it shall be seen that the prosperity of that fund
 
 202 LAND REFORM 
 
 depends on the prosperity of individuals ; when 
 the more riches a man acquires, the better it 
 shall be for the general mass ; it is then that 
 antipathies will cease, and property be placed 
 on the permanent basis of natural interest and 
 protection. 
 
 I have no property in France to become sub- 
 ject to the plan I propose. What I have, which 
 is not much, is in the United States of America. 
 But I will pay one hundred pounds sterling 
 towards this fund in France, the instant it 
 shall be established ; and I will pay the same 
 sum in England, whenever a similar establish- 
 ment shall take place in that country. 
 
 A revolution in the state of civilization is the 
 necessary companion of revolutions in the system 
 of government. If a revolution in any country 
 be from bad to good, or from good to bad, the 
 state of what is called civilization in that country, 
 must be made conformable thereto, to give that 
 revolution effect. Despotic Government sup- 
 ports itself by abject civilization, in which 
 debasement of the human mind, and wretched- 
 ness in the mass of the people, are the chief 
 criterions. Such Governments consider man 
 merely as an animal ; that the exercise of 
 intellectual faculty is not his privilege ; that he 
 has nothing to do with the laws, but to obey them ; J 
 and they politically depend more upon breaking 
 
 1 Expression of Horsley, an English Bishop, in the 
 English Parliament.
 
 AGRARIAN JUSTICE 203 
 
 the spirit of the people by poverty, than they 
 fear enraging it by desperation. 
 
 It is a revolution in the state of civilization, 
 that will give perfection to the revolution of 
 France. Already the conviction that Govern- 
 ment by representation, is the true system of 
 Government, is spreading itself fast in the world. 
 The reasonableness of it can be seen by all. 
 The justness of it makes itself felt even by its 
 opposers. But when a system of civilization, 
 growing out of that system of government, shall 
 be so organized, that not a man or woman born 
 in the Republic, but shall inherit some means of 
 beginning the world, and see before them the 
 certainty of escaping the miseries, that under 
 other Governments accompany old age, the re- 
 volution of France will have an advocate and an 
 ally in the heart of all nations. 
 
 An army of principles will penetrate where an 
 army of soldiers cannot It will succeed where 
 diplomatic management would fail It is neither 
 the Rhine, the Channel, nor the Ocean, that can 
 arrest its progress It will march on the horizon 
 of the world, and it will conquer. 
 
 THOMAS PAINE.
 
 204 LAND REFORM 
 
 MEANS FOR CARRYING THE PROPOSED PLAN INTO 
 EXECUTION, AND TO RENDER IT AT THE 
 SAME TIME CONDUCIVE TO THE PUBLIC 
 INTEREST. 
 
 I. Each canton shall elect in its primary 
 assemblies, three persons, as commissions for 
 that canton, who shall take cognizance, and keep 
 a register of all matters happening in that 
 canton, conformable to the charter that shall be 
 established by law, for carrying this plan into 
 execution. 
 
 II. The law shall fix the manner in which the 
 property of deceased persons shall be ascertained. 
 
 III. When the amount of the property of any 
 deceased person shall be ascertained, the princi- 
 pal heir to that property, or the eldest of the co- 
 heirs, if of lawful age, or if under age, the person 
 authorized by the will of the deceased to repre- 
 sent him, or them, shall give bond to the com- 
 missioners of the canton, to pay the said tenth 
 part thereof, within the space of one year, in 
 four equal quarterly payments, or sooner, at the 
 choice of the payers. One-half of the whole 
 property shall remain as security until the bond 
 be paid off. 
 
 IV. The bonds shall be registered in the office 
 of the commissioners of the canton, and the 
 original bonds shall be deposited in the national 
 bank at Paris. The bank shall publish every 
 quarter of a year the amount of the bonds in
 
 AGRARIAN JUSTICE 205 
 
 its possession, and also the bonds that shall have 
 been paid off, or what parts thereof, since the 
 last quarterly publication. 
 
 V. The national bank shall issue bank notes 
 upon the security of the bonds in its possession. 
 The notes so issued shall be applied to pay the 
 pensions of aged persons, and the compensation 
 of persons arriving at twenty-one years of age. 
 It is both reasonable and generous to suppose, 
 that persons not under immediate necessity, will 
 suspend their right of drawing on the fund, 
 until it acquire, as it will do, a greater degree of 
 ability. In this case, it is proposed, that an 
 honorary register be kept in each canton, of the 
 names of the persons thus suspending that right, 
 at least during the present war. 
 
 VI. As the inheritors of the property must 
 always take up their bonds in four quarterly 
 payments, or sooner if they choose, there will 
 always be numeraire arriving at the bank after 
 the expiration of the first quarter, to exchange 
 for the bank notes that shall be brought in. 
 
 VII. The bank notes being thus got into circula- 
 tion, upon the best of all possible security, that 
 of actual property to more than four times the 
 amount of the bonds upon which the notes are 
 issued, and with numeraire continually arriving 
 at the bank to exchange or pay them off when- 
 ever they shall be presented for that purpose, 
 they will acquire a permanent value in all parts 
 of the republic. They can therefore be received
 
 206 LAND REFORM 
 
 in payment of taxes or emprunts, equal to 
 numeraire, because the Government can always 
 receive numeraire for them at the bank. 
 
 VIII. It will be necessary that the payments of 
 the ten per cent, be made in numeraire for the 
 first year, from the establishment of the plan. 
 But after the expiration of the first year, the 
 inheritors of property may pay the ten per cent. 
 either in bank notes issued upon the fund, or in 
 numeraire. It will lie as a deposit at the bank ; 
 to be exchanged for a quantity of notes equal to 
 that amount ; and if in notes issued upon the 
 fund, it will cause a demand upon the fund 
 equal thereto ; and thus the operation of the 
 plan will create means to carry itself into 
 execution.
 
 CHIEF WORKS OF THOMAS PAINE 
 
 CASE OF THE OFFICERS OF EXCISE. Written 1772. Published 
 
 London, 1773. 
 COMMON-SENSE. Addressed to the Inhabitants of America. 8vo. 
 
 Philadelphia, 1776. (Reprinted London, 1776.) 
 
 LETTER TO RAYNOL ON AFFAIRS OF AMERICA. Philadelphia, 1782. 
 THE CRISIS. 15 Nos. 1776-1783. 
 
 THE RIGHTS OF MAN : Being an Answer to Burke on the French 
 Revolution. 2 parts. 8vo. 1791-2. 
 
 THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ENGLISH SYSTEM OK FINANCE. 
 8vo. Paris, 1796. 
 
 LETTER TO GEORGE WASHINGTON. 8vo. 1797. 
 
 LETTER TO THE ADDRESSERS ON THE LATE PROCLAMATION. 8vo. 
 1792. 
 
 AGRARIAN JUSTICE OPPOSED TO AGRARIAN LAW AND MONOPOLY. 
 
 1797- 
 
 AGE OF REASON. Parti., 1794; Part II., 1.795; Part III., 1807. 
 POLITICAL WORKS. 2 vols. 8vo. 1817. 
 THEOLOGICAL WORKS. 4 parts. 8vo. 1819. 
 WORKS. 8vo. 1792. 
 
 WRITINGS. Edited by M. D. CONWAY. 4 vols. 8vo. New York, 
 1894-6. 
 
 CHALMERS (G.). (ps. F. OLDYS.) LIFE OF PAINE. 1791. 
 CHEETHAM (J.). LIFE OF PAINE. 1817. 
 RICKMAN (T.) "CLIO.") LIFE OF PAINE. 1819. 
 
 CONWAY (M. D.). LIFE OF PAINE ; to which is added a Sketch of 
 Paine by W. Cobbett. New York, 1892.
 
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 NEILI, AND CO. , LTD., 
 
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