Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/527

Rh every day—see the yearly returns of land-sales) became possessed in old days of their land by force. But if an act of ancient force is sufficient cause to disinherit these holders of land, it must, I fear, also disinherit the whole nation, for we all came here by force. Celt, as far as we know, Anglo-Saxon, and Norman came by force, and the nation that is rather strangely asked to show its horror of past force by carrying out anew another wholesale act of force, is itself out of court for the very same offense as that under which it is proposed to condemn the land-owners.

4. All the articles of use and commerce—if we except those taken from water—are drawn in the marvelous laboratory of nature from or under the soil, or from the soil and air combined. Every tree, every crop of corn or roots, every fleece, contains in itself positively and actually so much of the soil where it was raised. Where, then, is the logic of declaring that certain particles—and these the very best—when taken from the soil may be private property, while the other particles—which are generally of lesser value—left lying in the field are, by some abstract right, the property of an unknown and unstated portion of the people—called a majority who have never yet set eyes upon their property, and could not distinguish it if they did? My coat is now my private property; but years ago, before the grass grew which fed the sheep, the larger part was public property. What a marvelous transformation, and what inextricable confusion both of theory and of fact! How a thing which, as a matter of abstract right, once belonged to everybody, can rightly become my private property, I am utterly unable to understand. Perhaps Mr. George or Mr. Laidler could help me.

Then for the expediency. Is the race to deprive itself, for the sake of a theory that can not hold what is put into it better than a sieve can hold water, of the immense happiness and comfort that may come to thousands and thousands of families from the permanency of possession? If the land belongs to the majority, can there be this permanency? How can you let A and A's family retain forever the possession of the holding which he has industriously acquired, when B and C are waiting for their turn of what, without any industry or acquisitive virtue on their part, is declared to belong to them? That A is better fitted—naturally selected—to fill the holding, to use it happily and profitably for himself and for society, must count as nothing in face of the fact that B and C have taken the trouble to be born the owners of it. Then, too, comes in all the trouble and confusion about improvements, where property is split into this double ownership between the abstract state and the concrete holder. Improvements, we are told, can only realize their full value if there be a free sale and fixed rents. Do any persons in their sober senses imagine that