NATIONAL LANDS AND CREDIT FOR THE USE OF THE PEOPLE.
Unjust Laws to enable the Few to deprive the Working Class
of their Earnings--Private Property in Land the Basis of
Wages-Slavery--Raw Materials of Wealth belong to all--Land and
Money Lords govern the World--Right of Working Class to the Use of
Credit--Surplus of Earnings of Working Class beyond Consumption
the Source of all Capital.
To provide a full, adequate, and permanent remedy for the manifold and
all-pervading ills that are the consequence of land-monopoly and usury,
the people must reclaim their right to the National Territory, which
has been gradually and surreptitiously usurped by private and sinister
interests; the enactment of laws to secure for all, co-ordinately
therewith, the mighty engine of Credit, which must be utilized for the
industrious orders of society, who are the strength and mainstay of the
nation, and therefore the most entitled to its benefits.
The fourth and fifth resolutions of the League run as follows:--
“The gradual resumption by the State (on the acknowledged principle
of equitable compensation to existing holders or their heirs) of its
ancient, undoubted, inalienable dominion and sole proprietorship
over all the lands, mines, turbaries, fisheries, &c., of the United
Kingdom and our Colonies, the same to be held by the State, as trustee
in perpetuity for the entire people, and rented out to them in such
quantities as the law and local circumstances may determine; because
the land, being the gift of the Creator to ALL, can never become the
exclusive property of individuals; because the monopoly of the land
in private hands is a palpable invasion of the rights of the excluded
parties, rendering them, more or less, the slaves of landlords and
capitalists, and tending to circumscribe or annul their other rights
and liberties; because a monopoly of the earth by a portion of mankind
is no more justifiable than would be the monopoly of the air, light,
heat, or water; and because the rental of the land (which justly
belongs to the whole people) would form a national fund adequate to
defray all charges of the public service, execute all needful public
works, and educate the population, without the necessity of any
taxation.
“That as it is the recognised duty of the State to support all those of
its subjects who, from incapacity or misfortune, are unable to procure
their own subsistence--and as the nationalisation of landed property
would open up new sources of occupation for the now surplus industry
of the people (a surplus which is daily augmented by the accumulation
of machinery in the hands of the capitalists)--the same principle
which now sanctions a public provision for the destitute poor should
be extended to providing a sound system of National Credit, through
which any man might, under certain conditions, procure an advance from
the national funds arising out of the proceeds of public property,
and thereby be enabled to rent and cultivate land on his own account,
instead of being subjected, as now, to the injustice and tyranny of
wages-slavery (through which capitalists and profitmongers are enabled
to defraud him of his fair recompense), or being induced to become a
hired slaughterer of his fellow-creatures at the bidding of godless
diplomatists, enabling them to foment and prosecute international
wars, and trample on popular rights, for the exclusive advantage of
aristocratic and ‘vested interests.’ The same privilege of obtaining a
share in the national credit to be applicable to the requirements of
individuals, companies, and communities in all other branches of useful
industry, as well as in agriculture.”
What is it that creates poverty--the mother of slavery, ignorance, and
misery--but unjust laws, by which the many are robbed for the benefit
of the few? A poverty-stricken people can never be a free, a happy,
a religious, or an educated people. No reform that will not give the
people the means of acquiring property by honest industry--which will
not enable them to be independent of wages-slavery--which will not
enable them to live in houses of their own, and allow them free access
to the soil of their country, is worth their serious attention.
We defy all the genius and statesmanship in the world to save a
population from being the slaves of middle-class vampires so long as
land is private property. We defy all the learning and ability in the
United Kingdom to show me how we can be extricated from poverty and
premature death in this country without a radical reform of our land
and money laws. It is assumed that land, mines, rivers, &c., are fit
and proper subjects of private property, like bales of cloth, pottery
wares, or any other product of man’s skill and industry; and that,
accordingly, the works of God’s creation may be bought and sold in the
market, the same as if they were the works of human hands. This is a
principle so utterly abhorrent to common sense and reason--it is, on
the face of it, so gross a perversion of natural justice, that the
rights of property cannot possibly be reconciled with it, nor coexist a
moment in presence of it. Once allow the soil of a country, which God
made for all its inhabitants, and for all generations born upon it, to
be bought up, or otherwise monopolized or usurped by any particular
section of any one generation (be that section large or small), and
that moment your community is divided into tyrants and slaves--into
knaves who will work for nobody, and into drudges who will have to work
for anybody or everybody but themselves. No subsequent legislation--no
possible tinkering or patchwork in the way of remedial measures--can
sensibly affect a system based upon so hideous a foundation. You may
talk of forms of government, or of reforms of parliament; but we
hesitate not to say that no reform of parliament, no reconstruction
of the government, can be of the slightest avail towards amelioration
whilst that glaring and gigantic injustice constitutes the basis of
private property; and for this simple reason, because the rights of
labour and the rights of property, which ought to be really one and the
same, are utterly irreconcilable under such a system. As long therefore
as it shall prevail, so long must the rich be insecure, and the mass
miserable, whatever may be the form of government, from monarchy to
democracy the most pure and unlimited.
No man, not a fool or a knave, will deny that the _raw materials_ of
all wealth belong to all men alike in their natural state: to assert
the contrary, would be to assert that God, like a capricious human
despot, dispenses His favours regardless of justice or of the wants
of His creatures. The only question is this--Can the lands, mines,
turbaries, collieries, fisheries, &c., containing all materials of
wealth in every country, be restored to its inhabitants without
injustice or undue suffering to the present possessors, whoever they
may be? If this could not be done, there might be some excuse for
the present monstrous system. But no government need have the least
difficulty on this point. Our own government, for instance, has only to
do, in respect of landed property, for the benefit of the nation, what
it does every day to promote the speculative interests of individuals
and private companies. Owners of real estate are compellable now, by
existing laws, to exchange such property for a money-compensation
when the public interest requires such change. Does anybody consider
that a wrong is done to the owners of such property so long as the
money-compensation to them is sufficient to satisfy the public
conscience represented by a sheriff’s jury? Now, if it be right to do
this for the sake of a company or a few speculating individuals, how
much more justifiable is it to do it for the just benefit of millions,
and to produce thereby such a reformation, materially and morally,
as no pen nor tongue could adequately describe? Indeed, in order to
restore its land gradually to the nation, it would not be necessary
to go so far in expropriation or forcible dispossession as existing
laws authorise in favour of companies chartered by parliament to make
railways, canals, docks, barracks, or any other public works. There
would be no need to dispossess any proprietor during his lifetime,
nor even his successors, without their own consent; it would be quite
sufficient for all useful national ends and purposes to buy up the
land as it comes into the market in the ordinary course, either by the
voluntary act of the seller or by due legal process, such as a decree
of the Court of Chancery, &c., and then make the land so bought with
the public money the inalienable property of the nation ever after, as
it by right should be.
Unquestionably, land-usurpers and money-changers, taking both terms
in their widest sense, must _in foro conscientiæ_ be distinguished
from all other sinners. We know of no great social evil in civilized
life that is not clearly traceable, directly or indirectly, to these
two classes. It is they that govern the world everywhere, and that
have always governed it since the first dawn of civilisation; it is
they that make all revolutions and counter-revolutions, all false
systems of religion and education, all State-Church establishments,
all standing armies of soldiers, constables, priests, and lawyers, and
that impose on all peoples the burdens requisite for the maintenance
of those armies; in a word, it is landlords and profitmongers that
have everywhere organised society as we find it, and that uphold this
organisation for their own advantage, at the cost of more wrong and
wretchedness to mankind than tongue or pen ever did or ever will be
able to describe. And amongst the greatest of their crimes against
humanity is this, that, in addition to the machinery of brute force
they keep in pay to uphold their domination, they have rendered an
effectual exposure of their system next to impossible through the
legions of venal journalists, mercenary orators, and unprincipled
_littérateurs_ they subsidise to corrupt public opinion and to mystify
the people on every subject that bears upon their weal or woe, as also
to hunt down by calumny, and to destroy by private persecution, any and
every man that shall dare to lift the veil that hides from the millions
their horrible policy.
We must _live_ somewhere; and we must have the _needful things_ to live
on. But landlords and profitmongers claim to own every rood of ground
in the kingdom, and every house on the land; and we cannot procure
the commonest necessaries of life except through some profitmonger.
We must therefore either go without homes and without meat and drink
altogether, or we must have them from the landlord and profitmonger
on their own arbitrary terms. To have them on _any_ terms, too many
persons are often obliged, in times of difficulty and danger, to
connive at and even laud what they abhor. Again, the wrongs done by
ordinary criminals are in general superficial and ephemeral in their
effects. The man who steals my watch, or robs my house, does me only
as much wrong as I may repair at the cost of earning the price of
another watch or of the goods stolen from my house. But they who rob a
people of their territory rob them of a priceless possession, for which
all the labour and labour’s worth in the world would be no adequate
compensation. It is not only a robbery of the existing generation, but
a robbery of all generations to come; for it is depriving the whole
posterity of the disinherited of their fair legitimate share of the
_raw materials_ of wealth, which God made equally for the use of all,
in order that the descendants of the wrong-doers, so far as human
laws can determine it, may be able to grow richer and richer in every
succeeding age, by letting out for rents that raw material which is by
natural right the inheritance of all.
Perhaps the most extortionate system of legal robbery, in connection
with private property in the soil, is found in what are called _ground
rentals_. By virtue of this system, a man like the Duke of Westminster
is enabled to realise an income greater than the queen gets for her
services (and she does something for her money, but the duke does
absolutely nothing for his), merely because the land on which certain
houses are built is _said_, by a fiction in law, to belong to him;
and, after a certain number of years, the houses themselves become his
property, and he forthwith proceeds to grant fresh leases of them at
increased rents.
As to the right of _occupation_ of the land, we should make it the
same for all, giving the tenancy to those who would pay most rent to
the State, only taking care that no man held more than one farm, or a
larger one than he could cultivate himself whilst there were others in
want of small ones. As a matter of course, we should guard against too
great a subdivision as well.
Another false principle at the root of our politico-commercial system
is, that Credit should exist only for the rich, and not at all for the
poor. This is a most atrocious principle, both in theory and practice.
As between citizen and citizen, or between subject and subject, the
principle might be defensible enough on prudential grounds; but as
between the citizen and his country it is wholly unjustifiable, and
calculated to keep subordinates subordinate, and to fatten tyrants
and usurers with the sweat and blood of slaves. If the _rents_ of
the country were public property, as they ought to be, no honest,
industrious man should be refused a temporary advance or loan from them
for productive purposes; and it is not in the power of man to conceive
a better security for the repayment of the same than the skilled
labour of an industrious, sober freeman protected by laws made with
his own consent. There is no other security _now_ for the repayment
of loans, public or private, than the known capacity of working men
to produce a _surplus_ over and above their own consumption. If
they could not, or did not, do this, there would be no interest for
fundholders, mortgagees, or money-lenders of any sort. Indeed, there
is no other source than the said surplus for the payment of rents,
taxes, dividends, premiums on insurance policies, and the interest of
upwards of two thousand millions of private debts. Out of the same
source, and no other, comes also the enormous income annually received
by capitalists and traders under the name of Profits. Upstarts, who
have made fortunes in trade, invariably make the worst landlords--the
least social and hospitable, the most grinding and exacting. This is
exemplified in every country in Europe, where rents are continually
becoming heavier, and small farms more difficult of attainment by the
poor, in proportion as the mercantile body and master-manufacturers
increase in numbers and in wealth. In all such countries, national or
public debts, provincial debts, and corporation debts are never-failing
concomitants of increased commerce and manufactures, as are also
banking and other joint-stock companies, which absorb so much of the
produce of the soil for profits, discounts, dividends, and interest
of money, that there would be nothing left for the landlords and
cultivators, if it were not that the working-classes are dispossessed
altogether both of their _proprietary_ and their _occupancy_ rights in
the soil, and turned into mere drudges or wages-slaves to the landlords
and tenant-farmers, who work them harder, and feed them worse, than
their cattle. The difference between what the labourers and mechanics
actually produce in value and the miserable pittance allowed to them
is the plunder-fund out of which are kept in comparative ease and
luxury the worthless classes that enslave and prey upon them. Yes,
the whole and sole security for all is the labourer’s capability to
produce a surplus over and above what he consumes during the period
of production. It were strange, then--passing strange, indeed--if
that surplus, which is now sufficient security for everybody else,
should not be as good a security for himself, when the very object of
the advance or loan is neither more nor less than to furnish him with
the means of repayment, by at once enabling him to produce, and by
making him the master of his own products. Yet, in the teeth of this
well-known capability on his part, the man whose surplus productions
enable others to get loans, and repay both capital and interest, is the
only man who can get no loan for himself, because, by our atrocious
system, the Credit as well as the Land of the country is hermetically
sealed against him. To support the system of the landlords and the
profitmongers, it is absolutely necessary to place millions of the
population in positions and situations wherein they cannot possibly
earn their bread without breaking one or other of the Ten Commandments
and running counter to the injunctions of the Gospel.
Partington tells us, in his Encyclopædia, that the history of every
country in Europe goes back to the time when its land was public
property. Did that state of things obtain now, all the mines, as
well as all the land that covers them, would be the property of the
public, agreeably to the old law maxim, “Cujus est solum, ejusdem sunt
omnia quæ infra sunt, ad imam terram, et omnia quæ supra sunt, usque
ad cœlum,”--“Whoever owns the soil, to the same belongs all that is
beneath the soil, down to the bottom of the earth, and all that is
overhead, even up to the sky.” If this maxim prevailed now-a-days, the
rents of mines would go to public uses only. After due examination
and survey by public authority, they would be let out to companies of
actual workers by public tender, and all they realised above the rent
to the State would go only to those who risked their lives in working
them. There would be few accidents, we suspect, under such arrangement;
and if there were any, the workers alone would be to blame for their
greed in not sinking more shafts and taking the other necessary
precautions for their safe working.
In the manufacturing districts of England it has been ascertained
that half the children born to the artisans die before they complete
their fifth year, and that the average duration of human life amongst
the working classes is only some 17 or 18 years, while it averages
38 years amongst the “better classes,” _i.e._, amongst the landlords
and profitmongers who reap the best fruits of their toil. This is an
arbitrary confiscation or squandering of human life not to be found,
even in time of war, in any other country not manufacturing, mining,
and commercial. The men composing the master-class in these callings
are, with hardly an exception, open and even avowed enemies of the
political and social rights of the working classes. They have literally
expelled the people from every institution in the State. They and
their accomplices, the landlords and tenant-farmers, have usurped and
absorbed all the prerogatives of the Crown and all the rights of the
people. They have turned the producers out of parliament, out of the
corporations, out of the vestries, out of the juries, out of the
magistracy, out of the church, out of the public press, out of all
the public boards--in a word, out of every department of the State,
and left them without a single legislator, magistrate, administrator,
common-councilman, vestryman, or public organ of any kind to represent
or protect their interests. But it is not simply of what are called
their organic or political rights that these tyrants have despoiled
the working classes; they have also robbed them of all _proprietary_
and _occupancy_ rights in the soil, combining for that purpose
with the landlords and the tenant-farmers, to whom the sight of an
agricultural labourer putting a spade or a plough into the land on his
own account, or in any other capacity than that of a wages-slave to
some bull-frog farmer, is the horror of horrors. Just as farmers in the
rural districts will take vacant farms they do not want, and at rents
by which they know they must be losers, merely to keep out labourers
or exclude from occupancy the men they want for slaves, so will these
mining and manufacturing tyrants rent on long leases, or actually
buy up outright, lands in the neighbourhood of the towns where their
factories are, to prevent their toiling slaves from having the chance
of renting them, or any portion of them, however small, lest they
might be able to escape the slavery of the mill through comparative
independence.
We doubt if there be a single recorded instance in the whole history
of civilized society of any king, ruler, statesman, legislator,
prophet, philosopher, orator, or other public man, seeking honestly,
and with probabilities of success, the reign of justice, humanity, and
fraternity for his fellow-countrymen, that was not overwhelmed with
calumny, overpowered by faction, and ultimately either put to death or
forced to fly for his life and bury himself in poverty and obscurity
to escape the malice of the oppressors of his country. But who were
those oppressors? The same everywhere--the same now as ever--the idle
rich, who prey on their industrious fellow-creatures through the
inventions of rents, profits, interest of money, dividends, taxes,
and so forth--all arising out of usurpations of the soil, and making
money grow money. The ancient prophets and apostles suffered for causes
not essentially different from those which destroyed the Gracchi
at Rome and Agis and Cleomenes of Sparta. Romulus and Julius Cæsar
were victims of the same spirit that beheaded Paul and sawed Isaiah
asunder. Heraclides and Hippo of Sicily perished through landlordism
and profitmongering, in no other sense than did John the Baptist under
Herod; St. Stephen, by the Jewish rabble, let loose upon him by the
middle-class Pharisees; and Socrates, by the hypocritical “property”
classes of Athens; nay, the Saviour himself, whose crucifixion was
perpetrated by like influences on behalf of like interests. All
honest reformers, spiritual or temporal, must necessarily be foes to
landlordism and usury, though not to the persons of landlords and
usurers. The latter, however, have ever considered attacks upon their
system to be attacks upon themselves: and, accordingly, they have
crushed or murdered every honest reformer whose influence has hitherto
threatened to supplant their own with the millions. And so it ever will
be--until the millions shall become wise enough, and moral enough, to
be able to dispose summarily of landlordism and usury without further
preaching or teaching. Any one who will take the trouble to read over
a list of the laws proposed by Julius Cæsar, in any book of Roman
antiquities (say Adams’s “Antiquities”), will see by their titles that
they were all essentially popular, and designed to protect the citizens
from the cupidity of land-monopolists, usurers, and dilapidators of
the public revenue. In this we have the true _secret_ of his murder by
the patrician conspirators, headed by Brutus, who, with all the stoic
virtues attributed to him, was a rank aristocrat in grain, and a usurer
to boot; for, according to the testimony of his friend Cicero, he used
to charge interest for his money at the rate of 48 per cent., and
gather it in, too, with the sabre’s edge when necessary.
In a well-ordered state of society there would be neither land-usurpers
nor money-changers; that is, no persons living by letting out land as
_private_ property (since all land would be public property solely,
the rents going to the public for public uses only), and no persons
living upon what Lord Bacon called “the bastard use of money,” that
is, upon profits, usury, dividends, &c. In other words, the whole
people would be sole landlord, every individual of the people having
the same _proprietary_ and the same _occupancy_ rights as every
other individual; and with respect to money, it would be a mere
_representative_ of wealth or value, which would disappear altogether
when the wealth or value it represented disappeared; money would not
grow money, as it does now. In a just and rational state of society,
all the money in the world could not purchase an acre of land, nor
would it enable the owner to add one pound more to his heap, unless he
earned it by producing a pound’s worth of wealth, or doing a pound’s
worth of service for society, such as society would recognise. To speak
downright, plain English, landlords and money-changers have no right
to be in the world at all. Instead of governing society absolutely, as
they do now, they have no right to form a recognised part of society at
all, no more than wolves and crocodiles have to invite themselves to
our Christmas parties that they may devour our children, or than wens,
tumours, ulcers, cancers, running sores, or deformities of any sort
have to constitute themselves parts of our natural bodies, and to claim
to invade, overrun, and subject our whole systems to their pestilential
domination. All the talent and all the sophistry in the world could not
show any legitimate use for landlords or profitmongers _as such_, or
anything they do for society that could not be better done without them
than with them, and at less than a hundredth part of their cost.