Page:The Complete Works of Henry George Volume 3.djvu/167

 THE " REDUCTION TO INIQUITY." 49

of the United States is now granting are of no greater moral validity than the land titles of the British Isles, which rest historically upon the forcible spoliation of the masses.

How ownership of land was acquired in the past can have no bearing upon the question of how we should treat land now ; yet the inquiry is interesting, as showing the nature of the institution. The Duke of Argyll has written a great deal about the rights of landowners, but has never, I think, told us anything of the historical derivation of these rights. He has spoken of his own estates, but has nowhere told us how they came to be his estates. This, I know, is a delicate question, and on that account I will not press it. But while a man ought not to be taunted with the sins of his ancestors, neither ought he to profit by them. And the general fact is, that the exclusive ownership of land has everywhere had its beginnings in force and fraud, in selfish greed and unscrupulous cun- ning. It originated, as all evil institutions originate, in the bad passions of men, not in their perceptions of what is right or their experience of what is wise. " Human laws," the Duke tells us, "are evolved out of human instincts, and in direct proportion as the accepted ideas on which they rest are really universal, in that same pro- portion have they a claim to be regarded as really natural, and as the legitimate expression of fundamental truths." If he would thus found on the wide-spread existence of exclusive property in land an argument for its righteous- ness, what, may I ask him, will he say to the much stronger argument that might thus be made for the righteousness of polygamy or chattel slavery ? But it is a fact, of which I need hardly more than remind him, though less well- informed people may be ignorant of it, that the treatment of land as individual property is comparatively recent, and by at least nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every

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