Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/665

Rh that intention; and the purchaser, being the first acquainted with such intention, steps in and seizes the vacant possession. Thus the act of abandonment gives the new taker a right against the first, acting by what is known in law as an estoppel, and possession or occupancy is by natural law good against all the world besides. The most effectual way of abandonment is by death of the occupant, when both the possession and intention of keeping possession ceasing, the right of occupancy by natural law also ceases, and the land is open to the next taker. The custom, which has ripened into statute law, that the next of blood take on decease of the occupant, has its foundation in natural law instead of mere civil right. A man's children, those of his blood, his nearest relatives, are usually about him on his death-bed, and are presumably the first witnesses of his decease. They become, therefore, presumably and by natural law, the next occupants, until in process of time this frequent usage ripened into social law.

I have gone to this length in discussing the origin of so-called private property in land to ascertain on what support of natural justice and moral right it rests. This consideration is the foundation upon which stands the whole superstructure of proposed single taxation; for, "if private property in land be just, then is the remedy proposed a false one." If the individual has no such property, or the tenure by which he holds occupancy is supported by natural law, and his use of the land is consistent with natural justice, even though it works a wrong to another, the fault is not due to "maladministration of social laws," in this particular at least.

Investigation leads me to assert that the occupant of to-day holds by a tenure as much supported by natural justice and moral right as did the first taker; and more so, because he has, by exchange of his capital, the product of his labor, purchased the improvements added by every occupant preceding him.

Land has no absolute value. In a natural state and unoccupied by man it produces no wealth. It is only as capital and labor are applied to it that it becomes a factor in wealth, and hence acquires a commercial value. I agree to the proposition that what a man makes or produces is his own to enjoy, to use, to exchange, or to give; that no one else can rightfully claim it, and his exclusive right to it involves no wrong to any one else. So, if by his labor and capital man in occupation of land removes it from the state in which Nature has left it, improves it, renders it more productive, or if he acquires by exchange the improvements already made therein by another, he has joined to it something that is his own, and has created a value in it that did not exist before. Admitting the proposition that government, representing in the social state the common rights of the community, may