Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/357

Rh proposed to do in the case of land, from the individual to the State.

But, however this may be, it seems clear that the principle which excludes the ownership of one man by another, rests upon the same grounds as that which includes private property in land—viz., that the general interests of society are best promoted by personal freedom.

There seems to be sufficient evidence that compulsory labor is less productive than free labor; and if this is so we may conclude, even setting aside all considerations of humanity or morality, that the interests of society are better promoted by free labor or property in one's self, than by slavery or property in others.

This is usually admitted, but it is necessary to insist upon what is always forgotten by those who declaim against private property in land—that this last institution also is an essential condition of personal freedom, as by no other means short of coercion can a due relation be maintained between demand and supply.

Whoever holds the land holds that which, being limited in extent (the only assumption on which the question arises), imposes on its possessor the function and duty, which he is bound in the interest of society, no less than his own, to perform, of restricting an undue pressure on the soil, whether for agricultural or urban purposes, whether for food or shelter, by the increasing wants of the population.

If the family is the economic unit, this object may be effected by the exercise of the personal responsibility and authority of its head in regulating supply, and by a gradual augmentation of price and rent in restraining demand. When the limits of production or supply are reached, any additional population must migrate or be supported, if possible, by charity.

But whenever the economic unit is extended so as to include a whole community, this personal responsibility, and with it personal liberty, disappears. In a small district (a village or canton) where the conditions approximate to family or patriarchal life the evil is mitigated; but in a large and complex society, to vest the property of the soil in the State—i. e., in a central Government, removed, as it must be, from all personal contact with individuals—is to throw upon it the paramount obligation of either regulating the increase of population or of providing food and shelter for increasing numbers by progressive inroads upon the accumulated capital of the country—in short, upon the net product, which is the only source of a progressive civilization. The first of these alternatives can not be better described than in the words of Bastiat: