1. The necessity of the return of landed property to the collective domain of mankind, has been exhaustively treated by M. leBaron de Colins in his numerous writings, and amongst others in his book, L'Economie politique source des révolutions ; byhis disciple M. Agathon de Potter in his Economie Sociale , 1874, and in the Revue de la Philosophie de l'avenir , 1876,butthe theory of the natural, individual right of property and appropriation is not sufficiently illustrated on juridical grounds.
2. The great German philosopher Fichte has expressed the same idea: "The mission of the State is to keep every one inpossession of what belongs to hint to secure him bin property and to guarantee the same to him. The end of human activityis to live, and every individual is entitled to be put into a position to support life. The distribution ought to be effected in-such a way as that every due may live by his labour. If any one is in want of the necessaries of life, it should be theconsequence of his own fault and not of the acts of others. The portion which ought to come to every one for this purposebelongs to him of right; and if be is not yet in possession of it, he should have the means of obtaining it. In a State, regulatedby reason ( Vernunftstaat ), he will obtain it. In a distribution effected by force and chance, before the awakening of reason,all have not attained to it, because some have taken more than in due to them. To say, everything will settle itself, every onewill always find labour and bread, and to trust in this way to chance, is to act contrary to the demands of justice andright."Fichte, Der geschlossene Handelstaat , B.I., K.I, s. 399, 402,K.7, s. 446.
3. Certain German jurists, such as the eminent Professor Zachariae, condemn the right of exclusive property in the soil ineven stronger terms than Herbert Spencer does:" The rent of land," says Zachariae in his work, Büchern vom Staat , "is areduction of the wages which might belong entirely to the labourer, if the soil were not the object of an absolute monopoly.
All the sufferings, against which civilized nations have to struggle, may be referred to the exclusive right of property in thesoil as their source." ( Alle die Leiden, mit welchen civilisirte Völker zu kämpfen haben, lassen sich auf dasSondereigenthum are Grund und Boden als ihre Ursache zurückführen .) The philosopher Krause ( System derRechtsphilosophie , herausgg. von Karl Röder, 1874), and his eminent disciple, Professor H. Ahrens ( Naturrecht ), regardproperty as a natural right and as a necessary condition of man's liberty and individual development. Krause advocated areturn to the old German law which sanctions this right.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE THEORY OF PROPERTY.
A study of the primitive forms of property is essential in order to form a solid foundation for the theory of property. Withoutunderstanding the real facts, the majority of jurists and economists have based property on hypotheses which arecontradicted by history, or on arguments which lead to a conclusion quite opposite to what they `wished to establish. Theystrove to shew the justice of quiritary property, such as the Roman law has bequeathed to us; and they succeeded in provingquite another thing,that natural property, such as it was established among primitive nations, was alone in accordance withjustice.
To shew the necessity of absolute and perpetual property in land, jurists invoked universal custom, quod ab omnibus, quodubique, quod semper . "Universal consent is an infallible sign of the necessity and consequently of the justice of aninstitution," says M. Leon Faucher. (1) If this is true, as the universal custom has been the collective ownership of laud, wemust conclude that such ownership is alone just, or alone conformable to natural law.
Dalloz in his Répertoire , at the word Propriété , and Portalis, in his Exposé des motifs du Code civil , assert that without theperpetual ownership of land the soil could not be cultivated; and, consequently, civilization, which rests on agriculture,would be impossible. History shews that this assertion is not true. Full ownership, as applied to the soil, is an institution ofquite recent creation. It was always the exception; and cultivation executed by the proprietor himself has been still moreexceptional. Agriculture commenced and was developed under the system of common ownership and periodic partition. Inthe provinces of the Roman empire the soil was only occupied by title of usufruct. " In solo provinciali ," says Gaius, II. 7," dominium populi Romani est vel Caesaris, nos autem possessionem tantum et usufructum habere videmur ." In the middleages, the free-allod was the exception; the precarium , and the beneficium , the fief,that is, a sort of hereditary usufruct,wasthe rule; and agricultural labour was executed by " mainmortables " serfs, who, so far from being owners of the soil theycultivated, were not even owners of their own moveables, for the right of succession was denied them. Even now, inEngland, houses are commonly built on land held by a mere temporary lease; and the soil is cultivated, as in most othercountries, by lessees, whose occupancy is only secured for a few years, and by tenants at will. For man to plough and sow, itneeds but to secure him the fruit of his labour; and for this, possession for a year is, in strictness, sufficient. This we see mJava, and even nearer home, in the Belgian and French Ardennes, or in the wastes of Westphalia. For the execution oflasting improvements, and even for the introduction of intensive, scientific cultivation, there is no necessity for more than alease of from nine to eighteen years. We see this everywhere. In short, the cultivation of the soil has nearly always beenaccomplished by the temporary possessor, hardly ever by the perpetual proprietor.
