William Ogilvie, The Right of Property in Land, 1781.
SECTION III
Of the Abuses and Pernicious Effects of that Exorbitant Right of Property in Land which the Municipal Laws of Europe have established.27. The means by which a state may attain or approach near to this consummate prosperity cannot be thought to exceed the compass of human wisdom duly applied; yet if we consider the nature and the effects of that system of property in land, which has superseded all others in the enlightened nations of Europe, and against which hardly any complaint has arisen, we shall find them very different from what might be expected of any system, in which even the smallest attention was paid to the natural rights, or the attainable happiness of the great body of the people.
Of a million of acres, scarcely twenty thousand are cultivated by proprietors.
Of a thousand citizens, masters of families, scarcely five hundred are employed in cultivating the soil for their own account, while four hundred and fifty of the remainder would prefer (or at the time of choosing their employment for life would have preferred) that to their present occupation, could they procure on reasonable terms the opportunity of exercising it.
Of five hundred cultivators, not more than twenty are proprietors, or have any permanent tenure of the soil which they cultivate.
Of ten thousand acres, scarcely ten are raised to that highest degree of fertility which experience has shown that the common soil of the country may be brought to, by the judicious culture of occupiers, to whom the remotest advantages of that improvement are secured.
Of one thousand people, not five can be thought to be endowed with that degree of strength and comeliness, which nature seems to have intended for the human race.
28. All these untoward circumstances, which take place in most countries in Europe, in a higher degree than what is here specified, may be traced up, as to their cause, to that exclusive right to the improvable value of the soil which a few men, never in any country exceeding one-hundredth part of the community, are permitted to engross -- a most oppressive privilege, by the operation of which the happiness of mankind has been for ages more invaded and restrained, than by all the tyranny of kings, the imposture of priests, and the chicane of lawyers taken together, though these are supposed to be the greatest evils that afflict the societies of human kind.
29. The silent but pervading energy of this oppression comes home to the bosoms and to the firesides of the lowest orders of men, who are thereby rendered mean-spirited and servile. It begets in them also, for their own defence, so much cunning, fraud, hypocrisy, and malignant envy towards those who enjoy affluence, that by its wide and continual operation the virtue of mankind is more corrupted, and their minds more debased, than by all the luxury and ostentatious meanness of courts, together with the debauched indigence and riotous profusion of great cities.
30. Whatever good reasons may be given for restraining money-holders from taking too high interest, may with still greater force be applied to restraining proprietors of land from an abuse of their right. By exacting exorbitant rents, they exercise a most pernicious usury, and deprive industry that is actually exerted of its due reward. By granting only short leases, they stifle and prevent the exertion of that industry which is ready at all times to spring up, were the cultivation of the soil laid open upon equitable terms.1
31. It is of more importance to the community, that regulations should be imposed on the proprietors of land, than on the proprietors of money; for land is the principal stock of every nation, the principal subject of industry, and that the use of which is most necessary for the happiness and due employment of every individual.
32. Nor is it less practicable to adapt regulations to the use of land than to the use of money, were the legislative body equally well inclined to impose salutary restrictions on both. The glaring abuses of the one might be as effectually prevented as those of the other; although the total exclusion of all manner of abuse from either, is not to be looked for. But that class of men in whom the strength of every government resides, and the right of making or the power of influencing and controlling those who possess the right of making laws, have generally been borrowers of money and proprietors of land.
33. Simple rustics are naturally averse to quit their native soil, and the narrow circuit of that neighbourhood in which their youth has been spent. Hence the unlimited right of property in land becomes a monopoly in the hands of the proprietors of every district: a monopoly which tends not less to the starving of their fellow-citizens, than a monopoly of bakers without any control or inspection of the magistrate would do. It will not produce its effects very suddenly indeed: it is only a lingering piecemeal famine, under which the individual languishes, and the race becomes dwarfish, debilitated, and deformed.2
34. What other cause than this pernicious monopoly can be assigned, why population has been so long at a stand in Europe, and does not advance with nearly the same rapidity as in America; since so much land remains in every country that may be cultivated, or improved, at little more, perhaps equal, or less expense, than the forests of the new world can be cleared? Vicinity would compensate some difference in expense, but the persons who would be inclined to bestow their labour on these European wastes, cannot hope to obtain property in them on reasonable terms.3
35. What other reason can be given, than the influence of this monopoly, why in countries, for many ages not thinly inhabited, nor unacquainted with the arts of agriculture, so great a proportion of the soil should still remain barren, or at least far below that state of fertility, to which the judicious cultivation of independent occupiers could bring it? If in any country this monopoly were abated or removed, population and agriculture would advance together gradually, perhaps rapidly; nor would they find any limit to their progress, until every two acres of dry land, the ridges of mountains excepted, were rendered capable of maintaining a man; and until the population of that country, if it does not already exceed the mean population of Europe, were increased perhaps five-fold.4
36. While the cultivable lands remain locked up, as it were, under the present monopoly, any considerable increase of population in a particular state, though it seems to add to the public strength, must have a pernicious influence on the relative interests of society, and the happiness of the greater number. By diminishing the wages of labour, it favours the rich, fosters their luxury, their vanity, their arrogance; while on the other hand, it deprives the poor of some share of their just reward and necessary subsistence. While this monopoly subsists, the celibacy of the Roman Catholic clergy is far less detrimental in a political light, than it has been supposed to be. Justly might that order retort on the landholders the accusation of retarding the population of the State.
37. When mention is made in political reasonings of the interest of any nation, and those circumstances, by which it is supposed to be injured or promoted, are canvassed, it is generally the interest of the landholders that is kept in view: nor would there be any mistake in this, if all men were admitted to claim, if they chose it, their natural share of the soil. . The prevalence of this manner of speaking and reasoning may well be construed to indicate, amid all the artificial establishments of society, a secret though confused perception of this original right.
38. Regarding the whole wealth of the community, as belonging of right to themselves, landholders stand foremost in opposing the imposition of exorbitant taxes by the State, forgetting the exorbitancy of that taxation which they themselves impose on the cultivators of the soil, and which the sovereign may in justice, and in the way of retaliation ought to, regulate and restrain. They clamour aloud against pensions and sinecure places, bestowed by the sovereign, not adverting that their own large incomes are indeed pensions, and salaries of sinecure offices, which they derive from the partiality of municipal law in favour of that order of men by whom its regulations are virtually enacted. The injury done to the community at large is the same, whether such unjust distribution be made by the chief magistrate, or by the system of laws itself. The injustice proceeding from the latter will always be more permanent, and more extensive. Against the tithes of the clergy, landholders have been accustomed to complain bitterly, as the bane of agriculture, as an usurpation on their own most evident rights, as wages exacted for which little or no duty is performed. But, while the bad effects of a tithe right must be acknowledged, in checking improvement, and robbing humble industry of its due reward; the right of the landholder must be allowed to operate in the same manner, with more unlimited force. The foundation of both rights, notwithstanding prejudices on either side, is precisely the same, viz., the improvident regulations of municipal law. And if any pretensions to a higher original are advanced, those in favour of the tithe right are no doubt most plausible. If considered as the reward of duties, to be performed to the public, the incomes of the clergy, after admitting all that spleen has advanced against that order of men, must appear by far better earned. How slight indeed in themselves, and how negligently performed, are those duties which the State seems to expect at the hands of landholders, in return for their affluence?
39. The public good requires that every individual should be excited to employ his industry in increasing the public stock, or to exert his talents in the public service, by the certainty of a due reward. Whoever enjoys any revenue, not proportioned to such industry or exertion of his own, or of his ancestors, is a freebooter, who has found means to cheat or to rob the public, and more especially the indigent of that district in which he lives. But the hereditary revenue of a great landholder is wholly independent of his industry, and secure from every danger that does not threaten the whole State. It increases also without any effort of his, and in proportion to the industry of those who cultivate the soil. In respect of their industry, therefore, it is a tattle or progressive tax of the most pernicious nature, and in respect of the landholder himself, it is a premium given to idleness, an inducement to refrain from any active useful employment, and to withhold his talents, whatever they are, from the service of his country. If the circumstances in which he finds himself placed stimulate to any exertion at all, it is that insidious vigilance by which he himself is debased, and his dependents at once corrupted and oppressed.5
40. The indirect and remote influences of this monopoly are productive of many unnatural situations and many pernicious effects, which ] the skill of legislature is frequently employed j in vain to redress. Were this monopoly anywhere removed, and the cultivation of the soil laid open upon reasonable terms, the lowest classes of men would not be destitute of wherewithal to maintain their decayed and infirm relations and neighbours.6 These charitable attentions, prompted by private affection, would be better discharged, than when they devolve on the public; and all that encouragement to idleness, that waste, and mismanagement, inseparable from poor rates, and other public institutions of this sort, would be spared. In any country were this monopoly abolished, sumptuary laws, which might have the most salutary effects on the manners, and character, and even on the prosperity of a people, would not be politically absurd and pernicious, as in the present state of Europe they must be confessed to be.7
In a country where the opportunities of exercising a natural employment, and finding an easy subsistence, were thus laid open to all, the temptations to theft and other violations of property would be very much diminished; nor could it be thought necessary to restrain such crimes by the unnatural severity of capital punishments.
In such a country no suspicion could arise, no surmise would be listened to, that the invention of machines for facilitating mechanical labour, could ever be pernicious to the common people, or adverse to the prosperity of the State. The plough itself is the first machine against which any imputation of this kind could be admitted, and the time might indeed come when such imputation would be just.
41. That legislature which is not willing, or must not venture to remove this monopoly from the lands of the State, owes it in justice and in tenderness to the persons born under its protection, that emigration at least should be free; or rather, that it should be encouraged and facilitated, to all who desire to remove into countries, less fully settled, in search of their natural rights, and most salutary occupation. This may indeed seem to impair the national strength, by diminution of numbers, and it will undoubtedly affect the interest of the higher ranks; but by raising the wages of labour, it must increase the prosperity of the lower and more numerous ranks.8 To increase the prosperity and the happiness of the greater number is the primary object of government, and the increase of national happiness must be the increase of national strength. Besides that the equilibrium of happiness between the old country and the new would be found, long before any considerable diminution of numbers had taken place in the former. Is it not the duty then, and perhaps also the interest, of every legislature in the west of Europe, to promote the emigration of its less opulent subjects, until the condition of the lower classes of men at home be rendered nearly as comfortable as the condition of the same classes in the new settlements of North America?
42. Perhaps no government can claim to itself the praise of having attended with the same impartial care, to the interests of the lower, as of the higher classes of men. Those who are employed in cultivating the soil are placed below the regard of men in higher stations of public dignity and trust; nor are their sufferings and wrongs obtruded on every eye, like the misery of the begging poor. They themselves are not much accustomed to reflection; they submit in most countries to their hard fate, as to the laws of nature, nor are they skilled, when severer oppression has at any time awaked them to a sense of the injustice they suffer, in making known their feelings and their complaints to others. But if the intelligent, and the friends of mankind, will take some pains to inquire into the nature and extent of that oppression, under which the industrious peasants groan in secret, and the force of that exorbitant monopoly, from whence their grievances proceed; and if such men will employ the talents which nature hath given them, in explaining these grievances, and the rigour of that monopoly, to the whole world, -- Europe, enlightened Europe, will not be able to endure it much longer; and the subversion -- nay, even the abatement -- of this monopoly, with the abuses flowing from it, may well deserve to be accounted the best, and most valuable fruit of all her refinements and speculations.
43. If it be indeed possible to accomplish any great improvement in the state of human affairs, and to unite the essential equality of a rude state, with the order, refinements, and accommodations of cultivated ages, such improvement is not so likely to be brought about by any means, as by a just and enlightened policy respecting property in land. It is a subject intimately connected with the proper occupation and the comfortable subsistence of men; that is, with their virtue and their happiness. It is of a real substantial nature, on which the regulations of law may be made to operate with efficacy, and even with precision.
44. So powerful and salutary might the good effects of such an enlightened policy prove, so beneficial such a restoration of the claims of nature and the general birthrights of mankind, that it might alone suffice to renovate the strength of nations, exhausted by civil war, or by great and unsuccessful enterprises; and even in the most flourishing states, it might give rise to a new era of prosperity, surpassing all example, and all expectation that may reasonably be founded on any other means of improvement.