Page:The Chartist Movement.djvu/83

 William Ogilvie (1736–1819) comes chronologically next after Spence. His work, An Essay on the Right of Property in Land, was published in 1782. He stands, however, far above Spence both in depth of thought and in his influence upon later generations. He was a Professor of Humanity at Aberdeen, an excellent scholar and a man of intellectual eminence. He was also a Scottish laird and well versed in agriculture and estate management. Ogilvie conceived agriculture to be the most suitable and profitable occupation for mankind. The higher virtues would inevitably fail amongst a people who lived wholly by manufacture and industry. Ogilvie was thus the earliest foe of the modern industrial society.

Starting, like Spence, with a declaration of the common right of mankind to the land, Ogilvie plunges into an analysis of the greatest importance. Land, he declares, has three values, the original value, the improved value, and the improvable value, corresponding to the value of the land in its natural uncultivated state, the value of the improvement due to cultivation, and the value of the possible improvement of which it is capable. This statement at once puts the discussion upon a higher plane than Spence's dogmatic assertion of natural rights to land, and the analysis is worthy of a countryman of Adam Smith and David Hume. Probably Ogilvie was stimulated by the reading of Smith's great work. In an estate worth £1500 a year Ogilvie suggests £200, £800, and £500 as the original, improved, and improvable value. The first and third cannot belong to the landowner, but the second is undoubtedly private property, as it arises from the labour already applied to it. Ogilvie would recover the original value by a tax upon land, and the improvable or accessory value by a tax upon unearned increment or "the augmentation of rents." Apart from this he is the enemy of large estates, which he desires to break up. He calculates that there is sufficient land in Great Britain to give 10 acres to every citizen. Every landowner who has more than that quantity of land must surrender the surplus. Of the 10 acres remaining the landowner will have a right to all the three values. From the surplus fund of land a parcel of 40 acres will be granted to every adult male who applies. He will cultivate it for his lifetime and be subject to quasi-feudal obligations. Failing such measures Ogilvie advocates a Board of Land Purchase to multiply small holdings. Measures ought to be taken to discourage the growth of