Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/536

520 should be inherited by all the males of a family collectively, they being forbidden to alienate any portion of it.

This "joint family" or "village community" system, therefore, so far from denying the right of several property in land, is founded upon that right. Assuredly, our ancestors did not trouble themselves much about the philosophical foundations of property. But I am well assured that if any one had tried to persuade a village community that all mankind had as much right as they to their land, that missionary of "absolute political ethics" would have been short-lived.

It may be said that I have been talking about the archaic existence of "several" property in land, while the question is about "personal" property. But is that so? Are the land reformers going to exempt corporate several ownerships in land, when they abolish personal ownerships? If so will they explain why corporate several ownership is less an infringement of the rights of mankind in general than personal ownership? But if corporate several ownership is not "permitted by equity" any more than personal property—if the archaic communities had no more valid title than the squires who have succeeded them—whence comes the evidence that those rights of "mankind at large" to the use of the soil, which we are told they are to "resume," ever existed?

Let us, then, clear our minds of all the cant of "history after the manner of Rousseau." Genuine history shows that, as far back as the constitution of settled society can be safely traced, several property in land was recognized and acted upon. It also affords much ground for the belief that individual property was recognized in the case of the clearer of forest land; that either individual or family several property was recognized in the case of the plot of land in which the house was situated; and that, in bringing about the change from collective to individual severalty, industrialism has been just as important a factor as militarism. State ownership may be right or wrong, but those who suppose it to be a resumption by the people of a right they ever exercised, or even claimed, are at variance with the plainest teachings of history.

P. S.—Mr. Spencer, in the letter which you publish to-day, says that he learns from me that "the principles of physiology, as at present known, are of no use whatever for guidance in practice." I think that Mr. Spencer must have achieved this feat of learning by his favorite a priori method, for nothing of the kind is discoverable by mere observation and deduction in what I have said. No phrase of mine is inconsistent with my belief that the principles of physiology, like those of ethics, are of great use, so