Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/794

774 From Rousseau's point of view, this is, in fact, the only rational conclusion from the premises. The attempt to draw a distinction between land, as a limited commodity, and other things as unlimited, is an obvious fallacy. For, according to him, the total habitable surface of the earth is the property of the whole human race in common. Undoubtedly, the habitable and cultivable land amounts to a definite number of square miles, which, by no effort of human ingenuity, at present known or suspected, can be sensibly increased beyond the area of that part of the globe which is not covered by water; and therefore its quantity is limited. But if the land is limited, so is the quantity of the trees that will grow on it; of the cattle that can be pastured on it; of the crops that can be raised from it; of the minerals that can be dug from it; of the wind; and of the water-power, afforded by the limited streams which flow from the limited heights. And, if the human race were to go on increasing in number at its present rate, a time would come when there would not be standing-ground for any more; if it were not that, long before that time, they would have eaten up the limited quantity of food-stuffs and died like the locusts that have consumed everything eatable in an oasis of the desert. The attempt to draw a distinction between land as limited in quantity, in the sense, I suppose, that it is something that can not be imported—and other things as unlimited, because they can be imported—has arisen from the fact that Rousseau's modern followers entertain the delusion that, consistently with their principles, it is possible to suppose that a nation has right of ownership in the land it occupies. If the island of Great Britain is the property of the British nation, then, of course, it is true that they can not have more than somewhere about ninety thousand square miles of land, while the quantity of other things they can import is (for the present, at any rate), practically, if not strictly, unlimited. But how is the assumption that the Britons own Britain, to be reconciled with the great dictum of Rousseau, that a man can not rightfully appropriate any part of this limited commodity, land, without the unanimous consent of all his fellow-men? My strong impression is that if a party-colored plébiscite of Europeans, Chinese, Hindoos, negroes, red Indians, Maoris, and all the other inhabitants of the terrestrial globe were to decree us to be usurpers, not a soul would budge; and that, if it came to fighting, Mr. Morley's late "hecklers" might be safely depended upon to hold their native soil against all intruders, and in the teeth of the most absolute of ethical politicians, even though he should prove from Rousseau

 Exceedingly well That such conduct was quite atrocious.