Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/356

342 In Ireland confiscation is justified by the appeal to wrongs inflicted a century ago; in England the theorems of "absolute political ethics" are in danger of being employed to make this generation of land-owners responsible for the misdeeds of William the Conqueror and his followers.

To the Editor of "The Times":

Mr. Frederick Greenwood's letter, and the leading article in "The Times" of to-day, on Mr. Herbert Spencer's recent letter upon this subject, leave little more to be said on several aspects of the question, but there are one or two points upon which I should be glad of an opportunity of adding a few remarks.

The passage in the "Political Institutions" quoted by Mr. Herbert Spencer has been long familiar to the students of his writings, and to some of them, who, like myself, are among his sincere admirers, has always been a subject of surprise and regret.

The whole extract should be read, but to save your space I confine myself to the concluding sentences, which are enough for my purpose:

There is reason to suspect that while private possession of things produced by labor will grow even more definite and sacred than at present, the inhabited area, which can not be produced by labor, will eventually be distinguished as something which may not be privately possessed. As the individual, primitively owner of himself, partially or wholly loses ownership of himself during the militant régime, but gradually resumes it as the industrial régime develops; so, possibly, the communal proprietorship of land, partially or wholly merged in the ownership of dominant men during evolution of the militant type, will be resumed as the industrial type becomes fully evolved.

The analogy here suggested between the ownership of man by other men, or slavery, and the private ownership of land, with the inference drawn from it, that as the first has been abolished in civilized countries the second may possibly share its fate, has always appeared to me essentially fallacious.

The principle of private property, so far as the term is applicable to human beings, has not in their case been abolished—on the contrary, it has been signally vindicated.

The destruction of slavery asserted the right of every man to property in himself, while prohibiting the ownership of man by other men, both individually and collectively. It was the restitution of a right of property from a wrongful to a rightful owner. In order to render Mr. Spencer's analogy applicable, it seems to me that the right of ownership in one man by another, instead of being abolished altogether, should have been transferred, as it is