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owner's privacy against invasion. The pretension of two Dukes to shut up a part of the Highlands, and exclude the rest of mankind from many square miles of mountain scenery to prevent disturbance to wild animals, is an abuse; it exceeds the legitimate bounds of the right of landed property. When land is not intended to be cultivated, no good reason can in general be given for its being private property at all; and if any one is permitted to call it his, he ought to know that he holds it by sufferance of the community, and on an implied condition that his ownership, since it cannot possibly do them any good, at least shall not deprive them of any, which they could have derived from the land if it had been unappropriated. Even in the case of cultivated land, a man whom, though only one among millions, the law permits to hold thousands of acres as his single share, is not entitled to think that

this is given to him to use and abuse, and deal with as if it concerned nobody but himself. The rents or profits which he can obtain from it are at his sole disposal; but with regard to the land, in everything which he does with it, and in everything which he abstains from doing, ng, he is morally bound, and should whenever the case admits be legally compelled, to make his interest and pleasure consistent with the public d. The species at large still retains, of its original claim to the soil of the planet which it inhabits, as much as is compatible with the purposes for which it has parted with the remainder.

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§ 7. Besides property in the produce of labour, and property in land, there are other things which are or have been subjects jects of property, in property which proprietary rights ought no exist at all. But as the civilized world das in general made up its mind on most of these, there is no necessity for dwelling on them in this place. At the head of them, is property in human beings. It is almost superfluous to observe, that this institution can have no place in any society even pretending to be founded on justice, or on fellowship between human creatures. But,

iniquitous as it is, yet when the state has expressly legalized it, and human beings, for generations, have been bought, sold, and inherited under sanction of law, it is another wrong, in abolishing the property, not to make full compensation. This wrong was avoided by the great measure of justice in 1833, one of the most virtuous acts, as well as the most practically beneficent, ever done collectively by a nation. Other examples of property which ought not to have been created, are properties in public trusts// such as judicial offices under the old French régime, and the heritable jurisdictions which, in countries not wholly emerged from feudality, pass with the land. Our own country affords, as cases in point, that of a commission in the army, and of an advowson, or right of nomination to an ecclesiastical benefice. A property is also sometimes created in a a right of taxing the public; in a monopoly, for instance, or other exclusive privilege These abuses prevail most in semibarbarous countries; but are not without example in the most civilized. In France there are several important trades and professions, including notaries, attorneys, brokers, appraisers, printers, and (until lately) bakers and butchers, of which the numbers are limited by law. brevet or privilege of one of the permitted number consequently brings a high price in the market. When this is the case, compensation probably could not with justice be refused, on the abolition of the privilege. There are other cases in which this would be more doubtful. The question would turn upon what, in the peculiar cir cumstances, was sufficient to constitute prescription; and whether the legal Pecognition which the abuse had ot tained, was sufficient to constitute it an institution, or amounted only to an occasional licence. It would be absurd to claim compensation for losses caused by changes in & tariff, a thing confes sedly variable from year to year; or for monopolies like those granted to indivi duals by the Tudors, favours of a despo tic authority, which the power that gave was competent at any time to recall.

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So much on the institution of property, a subject of which, for the purposes of political economy, it was indispensable to treat, but on which we could not usefully confine ourselves to economical considerations. We

have now to inquire on what principles and with what results the distribution of the produce of land and labour is effected, under the relations which this institution creates among the different members of the community

CHAPTER III.

OF THE CLASSES AMONG WHOM THE PRODUCE IS DISTRIBUTED.

§ 1. PRIVATE property being assumed as a fact, we have next to enumerate the different classes of persons to whom it gives rise; whose concurrence, or at least whose permission, is necessary to production, and who are therefore able to stipulate for a share of the produce. We have to inquire, according to what laws the produce distributes itself among these classes, by the spontaneous action of the interests of those concerned: after which, a further question will be, what effects are or might be produced by laws, institutions, and measures of government, in superseding or modifying that spontaneous distribution.

The three requisites of production, as has been so often repeated, are labour, capital, and land: understanding by capital, the means and appliances which are the accumulated results of previous labour, and by land, the materials and instruments supplied by nature, whether contained in the interior of the earth or constituting its surface. Since each of these elements of production may be separately appropriated, the industrial community may be considered as divided into landowners, capitalists, and productive labourers. Each of these classes, as such, obtains a share of the produce: no other person or class obtains anything, except by concession from them. The remainder of the community is, in fact, supported at their expense, giving, if any equivalent, one consisting of unproductive services. These three classes, therefore, are considered

Ρ.Χ.

in political economy as making up the whole community.

§ 2. But although these three sometimes exist as separate classes, dividing the produce among them, they do not necessarily or always so exist. The fact is so much otherwise, that there are only one or two communities in which the complete separation of these classes is the general rule. England and Scotland, with parts of Bel. gium and Holland, are almost the only countries in the world where the land, capital, and labour employed in agriculture, are generally the property of separate owners. The ordinary case is, that the same person owns either two of these requisites, or all three.

The case in which the same person owns all three, embraces the two extremes of existing society, in respect to the independence and dignity of the labouring class. First, when the labourer himself is the proprietor. This is the commonest case in the Northern States of the American Union; one of the commonest in France, Switzerland, the three Scandinavian kingdoms, and parts of Germany; and a common case in parts

* "The Norwegian veturn" (say the Commissioners of Poor Law Enquiry, to whom information was furnished from nearly every country in Europe and America by that at the last census in 1825, out of a population of 1,051,318 persons, there were 59,464 freeholders. As by 59,464 freeholders must

ambassadors and consuls there) "states

be meant 59,464 heads of families, or about 300,000 individuals; the freenolders must form more than one-fourth of the whole popu

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of Italy and in Belgium. In all these | (if they may be so called), the ma

countries there are, no doubt, large landed properties, and a still greater number which, without being large, require the occasional or constant aid of hired labourers. Much, however, of the land is owned in portions too small to require any other labour than that of the peasant and his family, or fully to occupy even that. The capital employed is not always that of the peasant proprietor, many of these small properties being mortgaged to obtain the means of cultivating; but the capital is invested at the peasant's risk, and though he pays interest for it, it gives to no one any right of interference, except perhaps eventually to take possession of the land, if the interest ceases to be paid.

The other case in which the land, labour, and capital, belong to the same person, is the case of slave countries, in which the labourers themselves are owned by the landowner. Our West India colonies before emancipation, and the sugar colonies of the nations by whom a similar act of justice is still unperformed, are examples of large establishments for agricultural and manufacturing labour (the production of sugar and rum is a combination of both) in which the land, the factories

lation. Mr. Macgregor states that in Denmark (by which Zealand and the adjoining islands are probably meant) out of a population of 926,110, the number of landed prietors and farmers is 415,110, or nearly

one-half. In Sleswick-Holstein, out of a population of 604,085, it is 196,017, or about one-third. The proportion of proprietors

and farmers to the whole population is not given in Sweden; but the Stockholm return estimates the average quantity of land annexed to a labourer's habitation at from one

to five acres; and though the Gottenburg

return gives a lower estimate, it adds, that the peasants possess much of the land. In Wurtemburg we are told that more than two-thirds of the labouring population are

the proprietors of their own habitations,

and that almost all own at least

from three-quarters of an acre to an acre

and a half." In some of these statements, proprietors and farmers are not discriminated; but "all the returns concur in stating the number of day-labourers to be very small."- (Preface to Foreign Communications, p, xxxviii.) As the general status of the labouring people, the condition of a workman for hire is almost peculiar to Great Britain.

chinery, and the degraded labourers, are all the property of a capitalist. In this case, as well as in its extreme opposite, the case of the peasant pro prietor, there is no division of the produce.

§ 3. When the three requisites are not all owned by the same person, it often happens that two of them are so. Sometimes the same person owns the capital and the land, but not the labour. The landlord makes his engagement directly with the labourer, and supplies the whole or part of the stock neces sary for cultivation. This system is the usual one in those parts of Continental Europe, in which the labourer are neither serfs on the one hand, nor proprietors on the other. It was very common in France before the Revolution, and is still much practised in some parts of that country, when the land is not the property of the cultivator. It prevails generally in the level districts of Italy, except those principally pastoral, such as the MBremma of Tuscany and the Campagna of Rome. On this system the division of the produce is between two classes, the landowner and the labourer.

In other cases again the labourer does not own the land, but owns the little stock employed on it, the landlord not being in the habit of supplying any. This system generally prevails in Ireland. It is nearly universal in India, and in most countries of the EBst; whether the government retains, as it generally does, the ownership of the soil, or allows portions to become, either absolutely or in a qualified sense, the property of individuals. In India, however, things are so far better than in Ireland, that the owner of land is in the habit of making advances to the cultivators, if they cannot cultivate

without them. For these advances the native landed proprietor usually demands high interest; but the prin cipal landowner, the government, makes them gratuitously, recovering the advance after the harvest, together with the rent. The produce is here divided, as before between the same

two classes, the landowner and the labourer.

These are the principal variations in the classification of those among whom the produce of agricultural labour is distributed. In the case of manufacturing industry there never are more than two classes, the labourers and the capitalists. The original artisans in all countries were either slaves, or the women of the family In the manufacturing establishments of the ancients, whether on a large or on a small scale, the labourers were usually the property of the capitalist. In general, if any manual labour was thought compatible with the dignity of a freeman, it was only agricultural labour. The converse system, in which the capital was owned by the labourer, was coeval with free labour, and under it the first great advances of manufacturing industry were achieved. The artisan owned the loom or the few tools he used, and

worked on his own account; or at least ended by doing so, though he usually worked for another, first as apprentice and next as journeyman, for a certain number of years before he could be admitted a master. But the status of a permanent journeyman, all his life a hired labourer and nothing more, had no place in the crafts and guilds of the Middle Ages. In country villages, where a carpenter or a blacksmith cannot live and support hired labourers on the returns of his business, he is even now his own workman; and shopkeepers in similar circumstances are their own shopmen, or shopwomen. But wherever the extent of the market admits of it, the distinction is now fully established between the class of capitalists, or employers of labour, and the class of labourers; the capitalists, in general, contributing no other labour than that of direction and superin. tendence.

CHAPTER IV.

OF COMPETITION AND CUSTом.

§ 1. UNDER the rule of individual | petition has political economy any property, the division of the produce is the result of two determining agencies: Competition, and Custom. It is important to ascertain the amount of influence which belongs to each of these causes, and in what manner the operation of one is modified by the other.

Political economists generally, and English political economists above others, have been accustomed to lay almost exclusive stress upon the first of these agencies; to exaggerate the effect of competition, and to take into little account the other and conflicting principle. They are apt to express themselves as if they thought that competition actually does, in all cases, whatever it can be shown to be the tendency of competition to do. This is partly intelligible, if we consider that only through the principle of com

pretension to the character of a science. So far as rents, profits, wages, prices, are determined by competition, laws may be assigned for them. Assume competition to be their exclusive regulator, and principles of broad generality and scientific precision may be laid down, according to which they will be regulated. The political economist justly deems this his proper business: and, as an abstract or hypothetical science, political economy cannot be required to do, and indeed cannot do, anything more. But it would be a great misconception of the actual course of human affairs, to suppose that competition exercises in fact this unlimited sway. I am not speaking of monopolies, either natural or artificial, or of any interferences of authority with the liberty of production or exchanga Such disturbing causes have always been allowed for by political economists. I speak of cases in which there is no thing to restrain competition: no hindrance to it either in the nature of the case or in artificial obstacles; yet in which the result is not determined by competition, but by custom or usage; competition either not taking place at all, or producing its effect in quite a different manner from that which is ordinarily assumed to be natural to it.

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considered to have a right to retain his holding, while he fulfils the customary requirements; and has thus become, in a certain sense, a co-proprietor of the soil. Even where the holder has not acquired this fixity of tenure, the terms of occupation have often been fixed and invariable.

In India, for example, and other Asiatic communities similarly constituted, the ryots, or peasant-farmers, are not regarded as tenants at will, nor even as tenants by virtue of a lease. § 2. Competition, in fact, has only In most villages there are indeed some become in any considerable degree the ryots on this pre precarious footing, congoverning principle of contracts, at sisting of those, or the descendants of comparatively modern period. The those, who have settled in the place at farther we look back into history, the a known and comparatively recent more we see all transactions and en- period: but all who are looked upon gagements under the influence of fixed as descendants or representatives of customs. The reason is evident. Cus- the original inhabitants, and even tom is the most powerful protector of many mere tenants of ancient date, the weak against the strong; their sole are thought entitled to retain their protector where there are no laws or land, as long as they pay the customary government adequate to the purpose. rents. What these customary rents Custom is a barrier which, even in the are, or ought to be, has indeed, in most most oppressed condition of mankind, cases, become a matter of obscurity; tyranny is forced in some degree to usurpation, tyranny, and foreign conrespect. To the industrious population quest having to a great degree obliin a turbulent military community, terated the evidences of them. But freedom of competition is a vain phrase; when an old and purely Hindoo printhey are never in a condition to make cipality falls under the dominion of the terms for themselves by it: there is British Government, or the managealways a master who throws his sword ment of its officers, and when the into the scale, and the terms are such details of the revenue system come to as he imposes. But though the law be inquired into, it is usually found of the strongest decides, it is not the that though the demands of the great interest nor in general the practice of landholder, the State, have been swelled the strongest to strain that law to the by fiscal rapacity until all limit is utmost, and every relaxation of it has practically lost sight of, it has yet been a tendency to become a custom, and thought necessary to have a distinct every custom to become a right. Rights name and a separate pretext for each thus originating, and not competition increase of exaction; so that the dein any shape, determine, in a rude state mand has sometimes come to consist of society, the share of the produce en- of thirty or forty different items, in adioyed by those who produce it. The dition to the nominal rent. This cirrelations, more especially, between the cuitous mode of increasing the paylandowner and the cultivator, and the ments assuredly would not have been payments made by the latter to the resorted to, if there had been an acformer, are, in all states of society but knowledged right in the landlord to the most modern, determined by the increase the rent. Its adoption is a usage of the country. Never until late proof that there was once an effective times have the conditions of the occu- limitation, a real customary rent; and pancy of land been (as a general rule) that the understood right of the ryot an affair of competition. The occupier to the land, so long as he paid rent for the time has very commonly been | according to custom, was at some time

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