Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/535

Rh into the foundations of ethics and the truth of history which the scientific plodders give themselves.

Now, I do not propose to discuss the ethical assumptions set forth by Mr. Laidler. Let it be granted, for the moment, that "equity does not permit property in land," and that "men are equally entitled to the use of the earth." Well, starting from those axioms, I fail to see by what logical process one gets at State ownership. If "equity does not permit property in land" how does it contrive to permit State ownership? The State is only a name for a body of men; and, if "all men are equally entitled to the use of the earth," why have Englishmen any more.right of property in the soil of England than Frenchmen or Germans, or, for the matter of that, the natives of Timbuctoo, have?

Thus it is the logical consequence of the doctrine of the Rousseauites that nations are as much usurpers as individuals, and that there can be no valid title to land until the whole surface of the habitable globe has been thrown into hotchpot, and that share which every man may enjoy the use of, without damage to his neighbors, determined by a cosmopolitan plébiscite.

Thus, if we are to appeal to logical consequences, those of the principles adopted by Mr. Laidler's authorities are just as startling as those of the principles of the advocates of the "absolute" rights of private property. And I would put it to Mr. Laidler, as a man conversant with the practical side of life, whether this does not suggest to his mind that modes of reasoning which lead to obvious absurdities must be fundamentally vicious?

Now let us turn to the historical assumptions of Mr. Laidler's authorities. They affirm that several ownership of land originated in force and fraud—whereby the nation, in whom the ownership was previously vested, was robbed of its rights. And from these data they argue that the nation is justified in "resuming" its "rights to the soil."

Now, this is an assertion as to a matter of historical fact which can be tested. In the course of the last thirty years a vast amount of evidence has been obtained respecting the manner in which land is and has been held by people in an early stage of civilization all over the world. And resting on this foundation of laboriously ascertained truth, is the conclusion that the tenure of land by communities is that which most extensively prevailed in remote antiquity. What this exactly means will perhaps be best made plain by the supposition that the land in every parish in England was owned, not by one or more private individuals, but by the males of one or more resident families, forming a corporation in which the ownership vested. The land of the community, in fact, resembled an entailed estate, which