Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/507

Rh the title is subverted at once. So, too, if a special assessment, or a mere water rate, is not paid, the land is sold, and a new title delivered to the purchaser, and this happens even if the non-payment is the result of accident. Personal property is liable to seizure and sale in like manner, and this is right, because the state must have the means of existence. All persons have had notice that such are the conditions of civilized life, the alternative to which is the feudal system, or the worse condition that went before it.

When we are told that the state could not divest itself of the right to resume possession of the land, we reply that it never has done so. It has only divested itself of the right to take it without just compensation. If any casuist puts himself back of the contract, and says it was wrong in the beginning and void ab initio, he has before him the immense task of turning the world over without a fulcrum; for the world, after an incalculable deal of shifting and balancing, has settled down to the belief that agreements made in writing should be kept.

Suppose we admit that there are two sides to the question, and that it is submitted to a jury from the moon. A holds that private property in land is a disadvantage to society, and should therefore be abolished without compensation to owners. B holds that it is an advantage to society, independently of constitutions and laws, and he shows in addition that a solemn agreement has been made that it shall not be abolished without compensation. Both advance such arguments as they may. A says (using the words of Mr. George in his speech at Brighton Beach, July 28, 1889):

“So monstrous is private ownership of land, so unjust is it—so ridiculous even is it, that a few men should be the owners of the element on which and from which a whole people must live—so clear is it that all men have by nature equal rights to the use of the land—that private property in land as we know it can only long continue where from the force of habit it is acquiesced in and never questioned. When it is thought about, when it is talked about, even when it is defended, it is doomed.”

B replies that “force of habit” is another name for human experience, and that it has stronger presumptions in its favor than anybody's inner consciousness; that the usefulness of land resides in its cultivation, and that no man can show from inner consciousness that better, or as good, cultivation would result from the abolition of private ownership; and that, if worse cultivation should follow, the whole human race would be sufferers. Would not the men from the moon say: “Gentlemen, your arguments are somewhat confusing. We perceive that private ownership of land, like most of your institutions, has advantages and disadvantages; but there is one fact about which no confusion exists,