Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/363

Rh their rights to the use of the earth is to commit a crime inferior only in wickedness to the crime of taking away their lives or personal liberties.

10. The right of each man to the use of the earth, limited only by the like rights of his fellow-men, is immediately deducible from the law of equal freedom. The maintenance of this right necessarily forbids private property in land. The theory of the co-heirship of all men to the soil is consistent with the highest civilization, and, however difficult it may be to embody that theory in fact, equity sternly commands it to be done.

In the foregoing digest, beyond one or two connecting words, the language is that of Mr. Herbert Spencer himself. Does it not constitute an unanswerable argument in favor of the nationalization of the land? If the author would permit it to be reprinted, what an admirable tract the ninth chapter of "Social Statics" would be for the propagation of Socialistic principles! But he now seems to repudiate the offspring of his own genius! We have, however, a right to ask that, instead of a vague repudiation in general terms, Mr. Herbert Spencer should tell us specifically what deductions he has abandoned and why he has abandoned them. We might then endeavor to answer his answers to his own propositions.



HE fall in the rate of interest is one of the most striking facts in the financial history of this generation. At times the price of money has risen, and investors have hoped that the good old rates were to be a permanency; but interest has soon declined again, vibrating about a point a little lower than the center of its former seesaw.

Last April, the city of New York, in purchasing certain up-town parks, sold stock bearing 2 per cent per annum, maturing in twenty years, and exempt from city and county taxation. The stock, $7,457,000 in amount, brought on an average 100. High as the credit of the metropolis stands with investors, still higher stands the credit of the United States. Its bonds last April netted a return at current market prices of but 2·07 per cent. During the decade ending with January, 1889, the average rate realized on a United States Government bond was 2·72 per cent; during the preceding ten years it was 4·06 per cent, very nearly one half more. Comparing the nine years and nine months ending 