Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/663

Rh Necessity gave to the occupant more than a mere transient interest. Necessity gave a species of property in the soil, and, in order to insure that property, recourse was had to social organization, to laws, and punishments for violation of laws.

Now, when man enters into civil society and partakes of its benefits, he must surrender some of his absolute personal rights, or exchange them, as it were, for such relative rights as are incident to men as factors of society. This is no loss or hardship, for he gains by exchange that security of person and property which it is the object of civil government to insure; whereas, in the natural state, every other man being possessed of the same absolute rights of person and property, there would be no security either of person or property. The rights, then, belonging to a man in civil society, which we will call his civil rights, are the absolute right belonging to him by nature, so far restrained by civil law as is necessary and expedient for the general advantage of the community.

It being evidently natural that man should acquire a right of property in the soil, the next inquiry is, how property became actually vested. As occupancy gave the right to temporary use, so occupancy also gave the original right of property in the thing used. The same law of nature would suggest that the first occupant who had by his industry and thrift added to the utility of the soil—in fact, developed by labor the only value therein—should become the owner. The product of a man's labor, the work of his hands, is his. "Whatever he removes out of the condition that nature has left it in, he has mixed his labor with and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby acquires a property in the thing itself. Necessity, arising from insecurity of person and property, being assigned as the first and primary reason for private ownership in land, the right of a man to the product of his labor may be cited as a secondary reason.

Although by theory of civil law as well as by usage, ripening into universal sanction, the ownership of land is deemed to be in private individuals, can it be said, after all, honestly and rationally, that the individual has an ownership of the soil as absolute as in the case of personal property? His interest is rather possessory for the time being, the manner of his enjoyment usufructuary: he can not move the land or carry it with him from place to place; he can not change the nature of it; he can merely draw from its substance for the time being, to the exclusion of all others from such use. In such exclusive use he is as much supported and upheld by natural justice and moral right as in the case of personal property. His labor and capital have improved it, beautified it, rendered it more productive, and enhanced its utility; and, so far as value is concerned, it will be argued hereafter that