OF THE JUST TENURE OF LANDS: AND THE PROPER FUNCTIONS OF HIGH PUBLIC
OFFICERS.
_20th April, 1867._
146. I must repeat to you, once more, before I proceed, that I only
enter on this part of our inquiry to complete the sequence of its
system, and explain fully the bearing of former conclusions, and not
for any immediately practicable good to be got out of the
investigation. Whatever I have hitherto urged upon you, it is in the
power of all men quietly to promote, and finally to secure, by the
patient resolution of personal conduct; but no action could be taken
in re-distribution of land or in limitation of the incomes of the
upper classes, without grave and prolonged civil disturbance.
Such disturbance, however, is only too likely to take place, if the
existing theories of political economy are allowed credence much
longer. In the writings of the vulgar economists, nothing more excites
my indignation than the subterfuges by which they endeavor to
accommodate their pseudoscience to the existing abuses of wealth, by
disguising the true nature of rent. I will not waste time in exposing
their fallacies, but will put the truth for you into as clear a shape
as I can.
147. Rent, of whatever kind, is, briefly, the price continuously paid
for the loan of the property of another person. It may be too little,
or it may be just or exorbitant or altogether unjustifiable, according
to circumstances. Exorbitant rents can only be exacted from ignorant
or necessitous rent-payers: and it is one of the most necessary
conditions of state economy that there should be clear laws to prevent
such exaction.
148. I may interrupt myself for a moment to give you an instance of
what I mean. The most wretched houses of the poor in London often pay
ten or fifteen per cent. to the landlord; and I have known an instance
of sanitary legislation being hindered, to the loss of many hundreds
of lives, in order that the rents of a nobleman, derived from the
necessities of the poor, might not be diminished. And it is a curious
thing to me to see Mr. J. S. Mill foaming at the mouth, and really
afflicted conscientiously, because he supposes one man to have been
unjustly hanged, while by his own failure, (I believe, _wilful_
failure)[A] in stating clearly to the public one of the first
elementary truths of the science he professes, he is aiding and
abetting the commission of the cruelest possible form of murder on
many thousands of persons yearly, for the sake simply of putting money
into the pockets of the landlords. I felt this evil so strongly that I
bought, in the worst part of London, one freehold and one leasehold
property, consisting of houses inhabited by the lowest poor; in order
to try what change in their comfort and habits I could effect by
taking only a just rent, but that firmly. The houses of the leasehold
pay me five per cent.; the families that used to have one room in them
have now two; and are more orderly and hopeful besides; and there is a
surplus still on the rents they pay after I have taken my five per
cent., with which, if all goes well, they will eventually be able to
buy twelve years of the lease from me. The freehold pays three per
cent., with similar results in the comfort of the tenant. This is
merely an example of what might be done by firm State action in such
matters.
[A] See Sec. 156.
149. Next, of wholly unjustifiable rents. These are for things which
are not, and which it is criminal to consider as, personal or
exchangeable property. Bodies of men, land, water, and air, are the
principal of these things.
Parenthetically, may I ask you to observe, that though a fearless
defender of some forms of slavery, I am no defender of the slave
_trade_. It is by a blundering confusion of ideas between _governing_
men, and _trading in_ men, and by consequent interference with the
restraint, instead of only with the sale, that most of the great
errors in action have been caused among the emancipation men. I am
prepared, if the need be clear to my own mind, and if the power is in
my hands, to throw men into prison, or any other captivity--to bind
them or to beat them--and force them, for such periods as I may judge
necessary, to any kind of irksome labor: and on occasion of desperate
resistance, to hang or shoot them. But I will not _sell_ them.
150. Bodies of men, or women, then (and much more, as I said before,
their souls), must not be bought or sold. Neither must land, nor
water, nor air, these being the necessary sustenance of men's bodies
and souls.
Yet all these may, on certain terms, be bound, or secured in
possession, to particular persons under certain conditions. For
instance, it may be proper, at a certain time, to give a man
permission to possess land, as you give him permission to marry; and
farther, if he wishes it and works for it, to secure to him the land
needful for his life; as you secure his wife to him; and make both
utterly his own, without in the least admitting his right to buy other
people's wives, or fields, or to sell his own.
151. And the right action of a State respecting its land is, indeed,
to secure it in various portions to those of its citizens who deserve
to be trusted with it, according to their respective desires and
proved capacities; and after having so secured it to each, to exercise
only such vigilance over his treatment of it as the State must give
also to his treatment of his wife and servants; for the most part
leaving him free, but interfering in cases of gross mismanagement or
abuse of power. And in the case of great old families, which always
ought to be, and in some measure, however decadent, still truly are,
the noblest monumental architecture of the kingdom, living temples of
sacred tradition and hero's religion, so much land ought to be granted
to them in perpetuity as may enable them to live thereon with all
circumstances of state and outward nobleness; _but their income must
in no wise be derived from the rents of it_, nor must they be occupied
(even in the most distant or subordinately administered methods), in
the exaction of rents. That is not noblemen's work. Their income must
be fixed, and paid them by the State, as the King's is.
152. So far from their land being to them a source of income, it
should be, on the whole, costly to them, great part of it being kept
in conditions of natural grace, which return no rent but their
loveliness; and the rest made, at whatever cost, exemplary in
perfection of such agriculture as develops the happiest peasant
life;[A] agriculture which, as I will show you hereafter, must reject
the aid of all mechanism except that of instruments guided solely by
the human hand, or by animal, or directly natural forces; and which,
therefore, cannot compete for profitableness with agriculture carried
on by aid of machinery.
[A] Compare 'Fors Clavigera,' Letter XXI., page 22.
And now for the occupation of this body of men, maintained at fixed
perennial cost of the State.
153. You know I said I should want no soldiers of special skill or
pugnacity, for all my boys would be soldiers. But I assuredly want
_captains_ of soldiers, of special skill and pugnacity. And also, I
said I should strongly object to the appearance of any lawyers in my
territory; meaning, however, by lawyers, people who live by arguing
about law,--not people appointed to administer law; and people who
live by eloquently misrepresenting facts--not people appointed to
discover and plainly represent them.
Therefore, the youth of this landed aristocracy would be trained, in
my schools, to these two great callings, not _by_ which, but _in_
which, they are to live.
They would be trained, all of them, in perfect science of war, and in
perfect science of essential law. And from their body should be chosen
the captains and the judges of England, its advocates, and generally
its State officers, all such functions being held for fixed pay (as
already our officers of the Church and army are paid), and no function
connected with the administration of law ever paid by casual fee. And
the head of such family should, in his own right, having passed due
(and high) examination in the science of law, and not otherwise, be a
judge, law-ward or Lord, having jurisdiction both in civil and
criminal cases, such as our present judges have, after such case shall
have been fully represented before, and received verdict from, a jury,
composed exclusively of the middle or lower orders, and in which no
member of the aristocracy should sit. But from the decision of these
juries, or from the Lord's sentence, there should be a final appeal to
a tribunal, the highest in the land, held solely in the King's name,
and over which, in the capital, the King himself should preside, and
therein give judgment on a fixed number of days in each year;--and, in
other places and at other times, judges appointed by election (under
certain conditions) out of any order of men in the State (the election
being national, not provincial): and all causes brought before these
judges should be decided, without appeal, by their own authority; not
by juries. This, then, recasting it for you into brief view, would be
the entire scheme of state authorities:--
154. (1) The King: exercising, as part both of his prerogative and his
duty, the office of a supreme judge at stated times in the central
court of appeal of his kingdom.
(2) Supreme judges appointed by national election; exercising sole
authority in courts of final appeal.
(3) Ordinary judges, holding the office hereditarily under conditions;
and with power to add to their number (and liable to have it increased
if necessary by the King's appointment); the office of such judges
being to administer the national laws under the decision of juries.
(4) State officers charged with the direction of public agency in
matters of public utility.
(5) Bishops, charged with offices of supervision and aid, to family by
family, and person by person.
(6) The officers of war, of various ranks.
(7) The officers of public instruction, of various ranks.
I have sketched out this scheme for you somewhat prematurely, for I
would rather have conducted you to it step by step, and as I brought
forward the reasons for the several parts of it; but it is, on other
grounds, desirable that you should have it to refer to, as I go on.
155. Without depending anywise upon nomenclature, yet holding it
important as a sign and record of the meanings of things, I may tell
you further that I should call the elected supreme judges, "Princes";
the hereditary judges, "Lords"; and the officers of public guidance,
"Dukes"; and that the social rank of these persons would be very
closely correspondent to that implied by such titles under our present
constitution; only much more real and useful. And in conclusion of
this letter, I will but add, that if you, or other readers, think it
idle of me to write or dream of such things; as if any of them were in
our power, or within possibility of any near realization, and above
all, vain to write of them to a workman at Sunderland: you are to
remember what I told you at the beginning, that I go on with this part
of my subject in some fulfilment of my long-conceived plan, too large
to receive at present any deliberate execution from my failing
strength; (being the body of the work to which 'Munera Pulveris' was
intended merely as an introduction;) and that I address it to you
because I know that the working men of England must, for some time,
be the only body to which we can look for resistance to the deadly
influence of moneyed power.
I intend, however, to write to you at this moment one more letter,
partly explanatory of minor details necessarily omitted in this, and
chiefly of the proper office of the soldier; and then I must delay the
completion of even this poor task until after the days have turned,
for I have quite other work to do in the brightness of the full-opened
spring.
156. P.S.--As I have used somewhat strong language, both here and
elsewhere, of the equivocations of the economists on the subject of
rent, I had better refer you to one characteristic example. You will
find in paragraph 5th and 6th of Book II., chap. 2, of Mr. Mill's
'Principles,' that the right to tenure of land is based, by his
admission, only on the proprietor's being its improver.
Without pausing to dwell on the objection that land cannot be improved
beyond a certain point, and that, at the reaching of that point,
farther claim to tenure would cease, on Mr. Mill's principle--take
even this admission, with its proper subsequent conclusion, that "in
no sound theory of private property was it ever contemplated that the
proprietor of land should be merely a sinecurist quartered on it."
Now, had that conclusion been farther followed, it would have
compelled the admission that all rent was unjustifiable which normally
maintained any person in idleness; which is indeed the whole truth of
the matter. But Mr. Mill instantly retreats from this perilous
admission; and after three or four pages of discussion (quite accurate
for _its_ part) of the limits of power in management of the land
itself (which apply just as strictly to the peasant proprietor as to
the cottier's landlord), he begs the whole question at issue in one
brief sentence, slipped cunningly into the middle of a long one which
appears to be telling all the other way, and in which the fatal
assertion (of the right to rent) nestles itself, as if it had been
already proved,--thus--I italicize the unproved assertion in which the
venom of the entire falsehood is concentrated.
"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 all is given to him to use
and abuse, and deal with it as if it concerned nobody but himself.
_The rents or profits which he can obtain from it are his, and his
only_; but with regard to the land, in everything which he abstains
from doing, he is morally bound, and should, whenever the case admits,
be legally compelled to make his interest and pleasure consistent with
the public good."
157. I say, this sentence in italics is slipped _cunningly_ into the
long sentence, as if it were of no great consequence; and above I have
expressed my belief that Mr. Mill's equivocations on this subject are
wilful. It is a grave accusation; but I cannot, by any stretch of
charity, attribute these misrepresentations to absolute dulness and
bluntness of brain, either in Mr. Mill or his follower, Mr. Fawcett.
Mr. Mill is capable of immense involuntary error; but his involuntary
errors are usually owing to his seeing only one or two of the many
sides of a thing; not to obscure sight of the side he _does_ see. Thus
his 'Essay on Liberty' only takes cognizance of facts that make for
liberty, and of none that make for restraint. But in its statement of
all that can be said for liberty, it is so clear and keen, that I have
myself quoted it before now as the best authority on that side. And,
if arguing in favor of Rent, absolutely, and with clear explanation of
what it was, he had then defended it with all his might, I should have
attributed to him only the honest shortsightedness of partisanship;
but when I find his defining sentences full of subtle entanglement and
reserve--and that reserve held throughout his treatment of this
particular subject,--I cannot, whether I utter the suspicion or not,
keep the sense of wilfulness in the misrepresentation from remaining
in my mind. And if there be indeed ground for this blame, and Mr.
Mill, for fear of fostering political agitation,[A] _has_ disguised
what he knows to be the facts about rent, I would ask him as one of
the leading members of the Jamaica Committee, which is the greater
crime, boldly to sign warrant for the sudden death of one man, known
to be an agitator, in the immediate outbreak of such agitation, or, by
equivocation in a scientific work, to sign warrants for the deaths of
thousands of men in slow misery, for _fear_ of an agitation which has
not begun; and if begun, would be carried on by debate, not by the
sword?
[A] With at last the natural consequences of
cowardice,--nitro-glycerine and fire-balls! Let the upper
classes speak the truth about themselves boldly, and they
will know how to defend themselves fearlessly. It is
equivocation in principle, and dereliction from duty, which
melt at last into tears in a mob's presence.--(Dec. 16th,
1867.)