4. National sovereignty implies control of all the moral and
material resources of the nation.
I have insisted upon the spiritual fact of nationality; I have insisted
upon the necessity of physical freedom in order to the continued
preservation of that spiritual fact in a living people; I now insist
upon the necessity of complete control of the material resources of the
nation in order to the completeness of that physical freedom. And here I
think I give what has been called “the material basis of freedom” its
proper place and importance. A nation’s material resources are not the
nation, any more than a man’s food is the man; but the material
resources are as necessary to the nation’s life as the man’s food to the
man’s life.
And I claim that the nation’s sovereignty over the nation’s material
resources is absolute; but that obviously such sovereignty must be
exercised for the good of the nation and without prejudice to the rights
of other nations, since national sovereignty, like everything else on
earth, is subject to the laws of morality.
Now, the good of the nation means ultimately the good of the individual
men and women who compose the nation. Physically considered, what does a
nation consist of? It consists of its men and women; of all its men and
women, without any exceptions. Every man and every woman within the
nation has normally equal rights, but a man or a woman may forfeit his
or her rights by turning recreant to the nation. No class in the nation
has rights superior to those of any other class. No class in the nation
is entitled to privileges beyond any other class except with the consent
of the nation. The right and privilege to make laws or to administer
laws does not reside in any class within the nation; it resides in the
whole nation, that is, in the whole people, and can be lawfully
exercised only by those to whom it is delegated by the whole people. The
right to the control of the material resources of a nation does not
reside in any individual or in any class of individuals; it resides in
the whole people and can be lawfully exercised only by those to whom it
is delegated by the whole people, and in the manner in which the whole
people ordains. Once more, no individual right is good as against the
right of the whole people; but the people, in exercising its sovereign
rights, is morally bound to consider individual rights, to do equity
between itself and each of the individuals that compose it as well as to
see that equity is done between individual and individual.
To insist upon the sovereign control of the nation over all the property
within the nation is not to disallow the right to private property. It
is for the nation to determine to what extent private property may be
held by its members, and in what items of the nation’s material
resources private property shall be allowed. A nation may, for instance,
determine, as the free Irish nation determined and enforced for many
centuries, that private ownership shall not exist in land; that the
whole of a nation’s soil is the public property of the nation. A nation
may determine, as many modern nations have determined, that all the
means of transport within a nation, all its railways and waterways, are
the public property of the nation to be administered by the nation for
the general benefit. A nation may go further and determine that all
sources of wealth whatsoever are the property of the nation, that each
individual shall give his service for the nation’s good, and shall be
adequately provided for by the nation, and that all surplus wealth shall
go to the national treasury to be expended on national purposes, rather
than be accumulated by private persons. There is nothing divine or
sacrosanct in any of these arrangements; they are matters of purely
human concern, matters for discussion and adjustment between the members
of a nation, matters to be decided upon finally by the nation as a
whole; and matters in which the nation as a whole can revise or reverse
its decision whenever it seems good in the common interests to do so. I
do not disallow the right to private property; but I insist that all
property is held subject to the national sanction.
And I come back again to this: that the people are the nation; the whole
people, all its men and women; and that laws made or acts done by
anybody purporting to represent the people but not really authorised by
the people, either expressly or impliedly, to represent them and to act
for them do not bind the people; are a usurpation, an impertinence, a
nullity. For instance, a Government of capitalists, or a Government of
clerics, or a Government of lawyers, or a Government of tinkers, or a
Government of red-headed men, or a Government of men born on a Tuesday,
does not represent the people, and cannot bind the people, unless it is
expressly or impliedly chosen and accepted by the people to represent
and act for them; and in that case it becomes the lawful government of
the people, and continues such until the people withdraw their mandate.
Now, the people, if wise, will not choose the makers and administrators
of their laws on such arbitrary and fantastic grounds as the possession
of capital, or the possession of red heads, or the having been born on a
Tuesday; a Government chosen in such a manner, or preponderatingly
representing (even if not so deliberately chosen) capitalists,
red-headed men, or men born on a Tuesday will inevitably legislate and
govern in the interests of capitalists, red-headed men, or men born on a
Tuesday, as the case may be. The people, if wise, will choose as the
makers and administrators of their laws men and women actually and fully
representative of all the men and women of the nation, the men and women
of no property equally with the men and women of property; they will
regard such an accident as the possession of “property,” “capital,”
“wealth” in any shape, the possession of what is called “a stake in the
country,” as conferring no more right to represent the people than would
the accident of possessing a red head or the accident of having been
born on a Tuesday. And in order that the people may be able to choose as
a legislation and as a government men and women really and fully
representative of themselves, they will keep the choice actually or
virtually in the hands of the whole people; in other words, while, in
the exercise of their sovereign rights they may, if they will, delegate
the actual choice to some body among them, _i.e._, adopt a “restricted
franchise,” they will, if wise, adopt the widest possible
franchise--give a vote to every adult man and woman of sound mind. To
restrict the franchise in any respect is to prepare the way for some
future usurpation of the rights of the sovereign people. The people,
that is, the whole people, must remain sovereign not only in theory, but
in fact.
I assert, then, the divine right of the people, “God’s grant to Adam and
his poor children for ever,” to have and to hold this good green earth.
And I assert the sovereignty and the sanctity of the nations, which are
the people embodied and organised. The nation is a natural division, as
natural as the family, and as inevitable. That is one reason why a
nation is holy and why an empire is not holy. A nation is knit together
by natural ties, ties mystic and spiritual, and ties human and kindly;
an empire is at best held together by ties of mutual interest, and at
worst by brute force. The nation is the family in large; an empire is a
commercial corporation in large. The nation is of God; the empire is of
man--if it be not of the devil.