Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/664

646 land has no value except as labor has made one for it. So I suggest the possessory and usufructuary interest of the individual in land is not the absolute ownership and proprietorship of the soil.

Let us see if anything more than occupation, by successive individuals, is contemplated by social law, or by statute law in England or America. In England the proprietary ownership of all land is by common law in the people as represented by the king, the trustee under the social system of all their common interests, rights, and properties. In the United States it is vested directly in the people. By the Constitution and statute of New York State, "the people of the State in their right of sovereignty are deemed to possess the original and ultimate property in and to all lands within the jurisdiction of the State." This I understand to signify precisely what the common law of England and the universal law of nature are: namely, that all property in land was originally vested in the people in common; and if there ever happens a time when no person is in occupation of any portion thereof, the tenancy in common of the whole community immediately goes on again just the same as when, after the first occupant or squatter had relinquished his temporary occupancy, the whole community was again in possession, every man having the right to occupy it, but all in common. So I assert that private ownership, so called, is not a proprietary quality. It extends to and includes only the use; the absolute ownership of all land being, in fact, in the community composed of all individuals.

Suppose that every new-born offspring of that community by virtue of natural right becomes a tenant in common with all individuals then existing, should he share in the possessory right or use of a particular piece of land already in occupation of an individual? By being debarred from such possession, it may be that he is deprived of a natural right, but he becomes a member of the society into which he is born, governed by its laws for the time being, surrendering some portion of his natural and absolute rights for the protection guaranteed by the existing social laws, and participates in all the advantages now existing as well as in the advancement and social improvement of all previous time. Is he, then, defrauded?

The possession of land remains in the occupant by right and justice till such time as he does some act indicating his intention to abandon it, whereupon it becomes common property, and liable to be again appropriated by the next comer. Sale and delivery of possession to a purchaser are forms for the convenience of social government, and instituted with a view, I apprehend, of preserving the quiet and security of social order. By means thereof the present occupant indicates his intention to abandon the land appropriated. The deed of conveyance is an evidence of