UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
AT LOS ANGELES
Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a ribbon to stick in his coat-
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others she lets us devote.
Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,
One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,
One more triumph for devils, and sorrow for angels.
One wrong more to man, one more insult to God !
Robert Browning.
Ji*/
IV .
i'St<ri<*fjty'rti/i/i /it ficrA
T
', \,;..'.'/rt.
THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF HENRY GEORGE
A PERPLEXED
PHILOSOPHER
BEING
AN EXAMINATION OF MR. HERBERT
SPENCER'S VARIOUS UTTERANCES ON
THE LAND QUESTION, WITH SOME
INCIDENTAL REFERENCE TO HIS
SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY
NEW YORK: DOUBLEDAY
PAGE & COMPANY 3 1904
Copyright, 1892, by
HENRY GEORGE.
HS
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
THE REASON FOB THIS EXAMINATION xi
PART I. DECLARATION.
CHAPTER I. "SOCIAL STATICS" THE EIGHT TO LAND . . 1
II. THE INCONGRUOUS PASSAGE 13
III. "SOCIAL STATICS" THE EIGHT OP PROPERTY . 17
IV. MR. SPENCER'S CONFUSION AS TO EIGHTS ... 26
V. MR. SPENCER'S CONFUSION AS TO VALUE ... 34
VL FROM "SOCIAL STATICS" TO "POLITICAL INSTI-
TUTIONS" 43
PART II. REPUDIATION.
CHAPTER I. LETTER TO THE ST. JAMES'S GAZETTE .... 53
n. "THE MAN VERSUS THE STATE" 65
III. LETTER TO THE TIMES 72
IV. THIS APOLOGY EXAMINED 78
V. SECOND LETTER TO THE TIMES 93
VI. MORE LETTERS 100
PART III. RECANTATION.
CHAPTER I. THE FATE OF "SOCIAL STATICS". ..... 105
n. THE PLACE OF "JUSTICE" IN THE SYNTHETIC
PHILOSOPHY 109
m. THE SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY 112
IV. THE IDEA OF JUSTICE IN THE SYNTHETIC PHI-
LOSOPHY 137
V. MR. SPENCER'S TASK .".... 144
255954
viii CONTENTS.
PACK
CHAPTER VI. " THE RIGHTS TO THE USES OP NATURAL MEDIA " 150
VII. "JUSTICE" ON THE RIGHT TO LIGHT AND AIR. 162
VIII. "JUSTICE" ON THE RIGHT TO LAND .... 171
IX. "JUSTICE" THE RIGHT OP PROPERTY . . . 192
X. THE RIGHT OP PROPERTY AND THE RIGHT OP
TAXATION 207
XI. COMPENSATION 218
XII. "JUSTICE" "THE LAND QUESTION" .... 244
Xni. PRINCIPAL BROWN 259
CONCLUSION.
THE MORAL OP THIS EXAMINATION 269
INTRODUCTION.
THE REASON FOR THIS EXAMINATION.
No consecrated absurdity would have stood
its ground in this world if the man had not
silenced the objection of the child. Michelet.
INTRODUCTION.
THE REASON FOR THIS EXAMINATION.
ALTHOUGH he stands for much that is yet in dispute,
J\. there can be no question that at the present time
1892 Herbert Spencer, of all his contemporaries, holds
the foremost place in the intellectual world, and through
a wider circle than any man now living, and perhaps
than any man of our century, is regarded as a profound,
original and authoritative thinker by many indeed as
the greatest thinker the world has ever yet seen.
So large is the field over which Mr. Spencer's writings
have ranged, so many are the special branches of know-
ledge he has laid under contribution, so difficult to the
ordinary mind are the abstractions in which he has dealt
and the terminology in which they are couched, that this
great reputation is with the large majority of the intelli-
gent men who accept it more a matter of faith than of
reason. But this rather adds to than detracts from the
popular estimate ; for what to us is vague often seems on
that account the greater, and what we have no means of
measuring, all the more profound. Nor does Mr. Spen-
cer's standing as one of the greatest, to many the very
greatest, of philosophers, lack substantial basis in the
opinions of those deemed competent to gage intellectual
power.
xii INTRODUCTION.
John Stuart Mill styled him " one of the acutest meta-
physicians of recent times, one of the most vigorous as
well as the boldest thinker that English speculation has
yet produced." Professor Ray Lankester spoke of him
as "an acute observer and experimentalist versed in
physics and chemistry, but above all, thoroughly
instructed in scientific methods." Richard A. Proctor
characterized him as the "clearest of thinkers." Gr. H.
Lewes said "it is questionable whether any thinker of
finer caliber has appeared in our century," and that "he
alone of all British thinkers has organized a philosophy."
Professor David Masson deemed him " the one of all our
thinkers who has founded for himself the largest new
scheme of a systematic philosophy." Dr. McCosh, who
fundamentally differed from him, said " his bold generali-
zations are always instructive, and some of them may in
the end be established as the profoundest laws of the
knowable universe." St. George Mivart, who as a
Catholic is also at variance in important matters, says
"we cannot deny the title of philosopher to such a
thinker as Mr. Spencer, who does genuinely bind
together different and hitherto alien subjects, and that
by a clear and wide though neither an all-comprehensive
nor a spiritual hypothesis, the principle of evolution."
Professor Tyndall calls him "the apostle of the under-
standing." His "profound and vigorous writings" have
been likened by Professor Huxley to "the embodiment
of the spirit of Descartes in the knowledge of our own
day." Darwin spoke of him as " our great philosopher,"
greeted him as " the great expounder of the principle of
evolution," and wrote to him that "every one with eyes
to see and ears to hear ought to bow their knee to you."
Professor Stanley Jevons ranked his work with the
"Principia" of Newton. John Fiske, representing
unquestionably the opinion of large numbers of intelli-
INTRODUCTION. xffi
gent and influential men, declares it to be of the caliber
of that of Aristotle and Newton, but "as far surpassing
their work in its vastness of performance as the railway
surpasses the sedan-chair or as the telegraph surpasses
the carrier-pigeon." President Barnard in the same
strain said, "his philosophy is the only philosophy that
satisfies an earnestly inquiring mind/ 7 adding that "we
have in Herbert Spencer not only the profoundest
thinker of our time, but the most capacious and powerful
intellect of all time. Aristotle and his master were not
more beyond the pygmies who preceded them than he is
beyond Aristotle. Kant, Hegel, Fichte and Schelling
are gropers in the dark by the side of him."
Such estimates are not unquestioned, and opinions of
a different kind might be cited from men of high stand-
ing. But the current of general thought, swelled by the
wonderful scientific achievements of our time, has run
powerfully, almost irresistibly, in favor of ideas with
which Mr. Spencer is identified, absorbing, intimidating
and driving back opposition even where it seemed most
firmly intrenched, until to question them has come
largely to be looked upon as evidence not merely of
unscientific beliefs, but of ignorance and superstition.
Whatever may be the verdict of the future, the man
who is regarded as the great philosopher of evolution
has within his own time won an acceptance and renown
such as no preceding philosopher ever personally enjoyed.
Thus, these estimates represent the view that has had the
largest currency and produced the greatest effect, and
that gives the weight of high authority to any declara-
tion of Mr. Spencer's on a subject that has engaged his
attention. Such a declaration, made with the utmost de-
liberation, in his latest, and as he and his admirers deem,
his ripest and most important work, I propose in what
follows to examine.
XIV
INTRODUCTION.
I do not propose to discuss Mr. Spencer's philosophy
or review his writings, except as embraced in or related
to his teachings on one subject. That, while a subject
of the first practical importance, is one where no special
knowledge, no familiarity with metaphysical terminology,
no wrestling with abstractions, is needed, and one where
the validity of the reasoning may be judged for himself
by any one of ordinary powers and acquirements.
My primary object is to defend and advance a prin-
ciple in which I see the only possible relief from much
that enthralls and degrades and distorts, turning light
to darkness and good to evil, rather than to gage a
philosopher or weigh a philosophy. Yet the examination
I propose must lead to a decisive judgment upon both.
As Mr. Spencer's treatment of this principle began with
his first book and ends with his last, we have in it a
cross-section of his teachings, traversing the open plain
of obvious facts and common perceptions, in which we
who have no more than ordinary knowledge and powers
may test for ourselves his intellectual ability, and, what
is even more important, his intellectual honesty. For to
whatever extent we may elsewhere separate ability and
honesty, respecting the talent while distrusting the man,
such separation cannot be made in the field of philoso-
phy. Since philosophy is the search for truth, the phi-
losopher who in his teachings is swerved by favor or by
fear forfeits all esteem as a philosopher.
Nor is the connection between the practical problems
that are forcing themselves on our civilization and the
deepest questions with which speculative philosophy
deals, merely personal or accidental. It belongs to the
nature of the human mind, to our relations to the uni-
verse in which we awake to consciousness. And just as
in "Progress and Poverty" the connection that developed
as I went along carried me from an inquiry into eco-
INTRODUCTION. xv
nomic phenomena to considerations that traversed Mr.
Spencer's theory of social evolution and raised such
supreme questions as the existence of God and the
immortality of man, so now I find a similar connection
asserting itself between Mr. Spencer's utterances on the
most important of social questions and the views on
wider and deeper subjects that have given him such a
great reputation.
It is this that a question of the utmost practical
importance thus leads to questions beside which in our
deeper moments the practical sinks into insignificance;
that the philosopher whose authority is now invoked to
deny to the masses any right to the physical basis of life
in this world is also the philosopher whose authority
darkens to many all hope of life hereafter that has
made it seem to me worth while to enter into an exami-
nation which in its form must be personal, and that will
lead me to treat at greater length than I would otherwise
be inclined to those utterances of Mr. Spencer which I
propose to discuss.
I shall not ask the reader to accept anything from me.
All I ask of him is to judge for himself Mr. Spencer's
own public declarations. The respect for authority, the
presumption in favor of those who have won intellectual
reputation, is within reasonable limits, both prudent and
becoming. But it should not be carried too far, and
there are some things especially as to which it behooves
us all to use our own judgment and to maintain free
minds. For not only does the history of the world show
that undue deference to authority has been the potent
agency through which errors have been enthroned and
superstitions perpetuated, but there are regions of
thought in which the largest powers and the greatest
acquirements cannot guard against aberrations or assure
deeper insight. One may stand on a box and look over
xvi INTRODUCTION.
the heads of his fellows, but he no better sees the stars.
The telescope and the microscope reveal depths which
to the unassisted vision are closed. Yet not merely do
they bring us no nearer to the cause of suns and animal-
cula, but in looking through them the observer must
shut his eyes to what lies about him. That intension is
at the expense of extension is seen in the mental as in
the physical sphere. A man of special learning may be
a fool as to common relations. And that he who passes
for an intellectual prince may be a moral pauper there are
examples enough to show.
As we must go to the shoemaker if we would be well
shod and to the tailor if we would be well clad, so as to
special branches of knowledge must we rely on those
who have studied them. But while yielding to reputa-
tion the presumption in its favor, and to authority the
respect that is its due, let us not too much underrate our
own powers in what is concerned with common facts and
general relations. While we may not be scientists or
philosophers, we too are men. Let us remember that
there is no religious superstition that has not been
taught by professed teachers of religious truth; that
there is no vulgar economic fallacy that may not be
found in the writings of professors; no social vagary
current among "the ignorant" whose roots may not be
discovered among "the educated and cultured." The
power to reason correctly on general subjects is not to
be learned in schools, nor does it come with special
knowledge. It results from care in separating, from
caution in combining, from the habit of asking ourselves
the meaning of the words we use and making sure of
one step before building another on it and above all,
from loyalty to truth.
Giving to Mr. Spencer, therefore, the presumption that
is due to his great reputation, but at the same time
INTRODUCTION. xvii
using his own reason, let the reader consider the matter
I shall lay before him.
Herbert Spencer's last volume, "Justice," contains his
latest word on the land question the question in which,
as I believe, lies the only solution of all the vexed and
threatening social and political problems of our time.
Accompanied, as it has been, by the withdrawal of earlier
utterances, it places him definitely on the side of those
who contend that the treatment of land as private prop-
erty cannot equitably be interfered with, a position the
reverse of that he once ably asserted.
While the opinions of a man of such wide reputation
and large influence, on a question already passing into
the domain of practical politics and soon to become the
burning question of the time, are most worthy of atten-
tion, they derive additional importance from the fact of
this change. For a change from a clearly reasoned
opinion to its opposite carries the implication of fair and
full consideration. And if the reasons for such a change
be sufficient and there be no suspicion of ulterior motive,
the fact that a man now condemns opinions he once held
adds to the admiration that previously we may have
entertained for him the additional admiration we must
feel for one who has shown that he would rather be right
than be consistent.
What gives additional interest to the matter is that
Mr. Spencer makes no change in his premises, but only
in his conclusion, and now, in sustaining private prop-
erty in land, asserts the same principle of equal liberty
from which he originally deduced its condemnation.
How he has been led to this change becomes, therefore,
a most interesting inquiry, not merely from the great
importance of the subject itself, but from the light it must
throw on the logical processes of so eminent a philosopher.
xviii INTRODUCTION.
Since no one else has attempted it, it seems incumbent
on me to examine this change and its grounds. For not
only do I hold the opinions which Mr. Spencer now con-
troverts, but I have been directly and indirectly instru-
mental in giving to his earlier conclusions a much greater
circulation than his own books would have given them.
It is due, therefore, that I should make his rejection of
these conclusions as widely known as I can, and thus
correct the mistake of those who couple us together as
holding views he now opposes.
To weigh fairly Mr. Spencer's present opinion on the
land question, and to comprehend his reasons for the
change, it is necessary to understand his previous posi-
tion. Beginning, therefore, with his first declaration, I
propose to trace his public expressions on this subject to
the present time, and, that no injustice may be done him,
to print them in full. In what follows the reader will
find what Mr. Spencer has published on the land question
from 1850 to 1892, and, by the difference in type, may
readily distinguish his utterances from my comments.
PAET L
DECLARATION.
I. "SOCIAL STATICS" THE RIGHT TO LAND.
n. THE INCONGRUOUS PASSAGE.
HI. "SOCIAL STATICS" THE EIGHT OP PROPERTY.
IV. MR. SPENCER'S CONFUSION AS TO EIGHTS.
V. MR. SPENCER'S CONTUSION AS TO VALUE.
VI. FROM "SOCIAL STATICS" TO "POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS."
Our social edifice may be constructed with all
possible labor and ingenuity, and be strongly
cramped together with cunningly devised enact-
ments, but if there be no rectitude in its compo-
nent parts, if it is not built on upright principles, it
will assuredly tumble to pieces. . . . Not as
adventitious, therefore, will the wise man regard
the faith that is in him, not as something which
may be slighted, and made subordinate to calcula-
tions of policy; but as the supreme authority to
which all his actions should bend. The highest
truth conceivable by him he will fearlessly utter j
and will endeavor to get embodied in fact his
purest idealisms: knowing that, let what may
come of it, he is thus playing his appointed part
in the world knowing that, if he can get done the
thing he aims at well : if not well also ; though
not so well. Herbert Spencer, 1850.
A PERPLEXED PHILOSOPHER.
CHAPTER I.
"SOCIAL STATICS" THE RIGHT TO LAND.
IN his first book, " Social Statics," published in 1850,
Mr. Spencer essayed to discover some fixed principle
that might serve as a starting-point in political ethics
and afford a surer guide than shifting notions of expedi-
ency or the vague formula of the greatest good to the
greatest number. He found it in the principle that
" every man may claim the fullest liberty to exercise his
faculties compatible with the possession of like liberty
by every other man." Or, as he otherwise puts it, that
" every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided
he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man."
The first deduction he makes from this "first prin-
ciple " is the equal right to life and personal liberty, and
the second, the equal right to the use of the earth.
This first deduction he treats briefly in Chapter VIII.,
"The Rights of Life and Personal Liberty," saying,
" These are such evident corollaries from our first prin-
ciple as scarcely to need a separate statement."
The second deduction, only next in importance to the
rights to life and personal liberty, and indeed involved in
2 DECLARATION.
them, he treats at length in a chapter which I give in
full:
CHAPTER IX. THE EIGHT TO THE USE OP THE EARTH.
$ 1. Given a race of beings having like claims to pursue the
objects of their desires given a world adapted to the gratification
of those desires a world into which such beings are similarly born,
and it unavoidably follows that they have equal rights to the use of
this world. For if each of them "has freedom to do all that he
wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other,"
then each of them is free to use the earth for the satisfaction of his
wants, provided he allows all others the same liberty. And con-
versely, it is manifest that no one, or part of them, may use the
earth in such a way as to prevent the rest from similarly using it ;
seeing that to do this is to assume greater freedom than the rest,
and consequently to break the law.
$ 2. Equity, therefore, does not permit property in land. For if
one portion of the earth's surface may justly become the possession
of an individual, and may be held by him for his sole use and bene-
fit, as a thing to which he has an exclusive right, then other portions
of the earth's surface may be so held ; and eventually the whole of
the earth's surface may be so held ; and our planet may thus lapse
altogether into private hands. Observe now the dilemma to which
this leads. Supposing the entire habitable globe to be so inclosed,
it follows that if the landowners have a valid right to its surface,
all who are not landowners have no right at all to its surface.
Hence, such can exist on the earth by sufferance only. They are
all trespassers. Save by the permission of the lords of the soil, they
can have no room for the soles of their feet. Nay, should the
others think fit to deny them a resting-place, these landless men
might equitably be expelled from the earth altogether. If, then,
the assumption that land can be held as property, involves that the
whole globe may become the private domain of a part of its inhabi-
tants ; and if, by consequence, the rest of its inhabitants can then
exercise their faculties can then exist even only by consent of
the landowners ; it is manifest, that an exclusive possession of the
sil necessitates an infringement of the law of equal freedom. For,
men who cannot "live and move and have their being" without the
leave of others, cannot be equally free with those others.
"SOCIAL STATICS "-THE BIGHT TO LAND. 3
$ 3. Passing from the consideration of the possible to that of the
actual, we find yet further reason to deny the rectitude of property
in land. It can never be pretended that the existing titles to such
property are legitimate. Should any one think so, let him look
in the chronicles. Violence, fraud, the prerogative of force, the
claims of superior cunning these are the sources to which those
titles may be traced. The original deeds were written with the
sword, rather than with the pen : not lawyers, but soldiers, were
the conveyancers : blows were the current coin given in payment ;
and for seals, blood was used in preference to wax. Could valid
claims be thus constituted? Hardly. And if not, what becomes of
the pretensions of all subsequent holders of estates so obtained?
Does sale or bequest generate a right where it did not previously
exist? Would the original claimants be nonsuited at the bar of
reason, because the thing stolen from them had changed hands?
Certainly not. And if one act of transfer can give no title, can
many? No: though nothing be multiplied forever, it will not pro-
duce one. Even the law recognizes this principle. An existing
holder must, if called upon, substantiate the claims of those from
whom he purchased or inherited his property ; and any flaw in the
original parchment, even though the property should have had a
score intermediate owners, quashes his right.
"But Time," say some, "is a great legalizer. Immemorial pos-
session must be taken to constitute a legitimate claim. That which
has been held from age to age as private property, and has been
bought and sold as such, must now be considered as irrevocably
belonging to individuals." To which proposition a willing assent
shall be given when its propounders can assign it a definite mean-
ing. To do this, however, they must find satisfactory answers to
such questions as, How long does it take for what was originally a
wrong to grow into a riglitf At what rate per annum do invalid
claims become valid? If a title gets perfect in a thousand years,
how much more than perfect will it be in two thousand years ? and so
forth. For the solution of which they will require a new calculus.
Whether it may be expedient to admit claims of a certain stand-
ing, is not the point. We have here nothing to do with considera-
tions of conventional privilege or legislative convenience. We have
simply to inquire what is the verdict given by pure equity in the
matter. And this verdict enjoins a protest against every existing
pretension to the individual possession of the soil ; and dictates the
assertion, that the right of mankind at large to the earth's surface
is still valid ; all deeds, customs, and laws notwithstanding.
4 DECLARATION.
$ 4. Not only have present land tenures an indefensible origin,
but it is impossible to discover any mode in which land can become
private property. Cultivation is commonly considered to give a
legitimate title. He who has reclaimed a tract of ground from its
primitive wildness, is supposed to have thereby made it his own.
But if his right is disputed, by what system of logic can he vindi-
cate itf Let us listen a moment to his pleadings.
" Hallo, you Sir," cries the cosmopolite to some backwoodsman,
smoking at the door of his shanty, "by what authority do you take
possession of these acres that you have cleared ; round which you
have put up a snake-fence, and on which you have built this log
house ? "
"By what authority? I squatted here because there was no one
to say nay because I was as much at liberty to do so as any other
man. Besides, now that I have cut down the wood, and plowed
and cropped the ground, this farm is more mine than yours, or any-
body's ; and I mean to keep it."
"Aye, so you all say. But I do not yet see how you have sub-
stantiated your claim. When you came here you found the land
producing trees sugar-maples, perhaps ; or maybe it was covered
with prairie-grass and wild strawberries. Well, instead of these
you made it yield wheat, or maize, or tobacco. Now I want to
understand how, by exterminating one set of plants, and making
the soil bear another set in their place, you'have constituted your-
self lord of this soil for all succeeding time."
" Oh, those natural products which I destroyed were of little or
no use ; whereas I caused the earth to bring forth things good for
food things that help to give life and happiness."
"Still you have not shown why such a process makes the portion
of earth you have so modified yours. What is it that you have
done f You have turned over the soil to a few inches in depth with
a spade or a plow ; you have scattered over this prepared surface a
few seeds ; and you have gathered the fruits which the sun, rain,
and air helped the soil to produce. Just tell me, if you please, by
what magic have these acts made you sole owner of that vast mass
of matter, having for its base the surface of your estate, and for its
apex the center of the globe? all of which it appears you would
monopolize to yourself and your descendants forever."
"Well, if it isn't mine, whose is it? I have dispossessed nobody.
When I crossed the Mississippi yonder, I found nothing but the
silent woods. If some one else had settled here, and made this
clearing, he would have had as good a right to the location as I
"SOCIAL STATICS "-THE EIGHT TO LAND. 5
have. I have done nothing but what any other person was at
liberty to do had he come before me. Whilst they were unre-
claimed, these lands belonged to all men as much to one as to
another and they are now mine simply because I was the first to
discover and improve them."
"You say truly, when you say that 'whilst they were unre-
claimed these lands belonged to all men.' And it is my duty to tell
you that they belong to all men still ; and that your 'improvements'
as you call them, cannot vitiate the claim of all men. You may
plow and harrow, and sow and reap ; you may turn over the soil as
often as you like ; but all your manipulations will fail to make that
soil yours, which was not yours to begin with. Let me put a case.
Suppose now that in the course of your wanderings you come upon
an empty house, which in spite of its dilapidated state takes your
fancy ; suppose that with the intention of making it your abode you
expend much time and trouble in repairing it that you paint and
paper, and whitewash, and at considerable cost bring it into a
habitable state. Suppose further, that on some fatal day a
stranger is announced, who turns out to be the heir to whom this
house has been bequeathed; and that this professed heir is pre-
pared with all the necessary proofs of his identity ; what becomes
of your improvements? Do they give you a valid title to the house?
Do they quash the title of the original claimant t"
"No."
"Neither then do your pioneering operations give you a valid
title to this land. Neither do they quash the title of its original
claimants the human race. The world is God's bequest to man-
kind. All men are joint heirs to it; you amongst the number.
And because you have taken up your residence on a certain part of
it, and have subdued, cultivated, beautified that part improved it
as you say, you are not therefore warranted in appropriating it as
entirely private property. At least if you do so, you may at any
moment be justly expelled by the lawful owner Society."
" Well, but surely you would not eject me without making some
recompense for the great additional value I have given to this
tract, by reducing what was a wilderness into fertile fields. You
would not turn me adrift and deprive me of all the benefit of those
years of toil it has cost me to bring this spot into its present
state."
"Of course not : just as in the case of the house, you would have
an equitable title to compensation from the proprietor for repairs
and new fittings, so the community cannot justly take possession of
6 DECLARATION.
this estate, without paying for all that you have done to it. This
extra worth which your labor has imparted to it is fairly yours ; and
although you have, without leave, busied yourself in bettering what
belongs to the community, yet no doubt the community will duly
discharge your claim. But admitting this, is quite a different thing
from recognizing your right to the land itself. It may be true that
you are entitled to compensation for the improvements this inclo-
sure has received at your hands ; and at the same time it may be
equally true that no act, form, proceeding, or ceremony, can make
this inelosure your private property."
$ 5. It does indeed at first sight seem possible for the earth to
become the exclusive possession of individuals by some process of
equitable distribution. "Why," it may be asked, "should not men
agree to a fair sub-division T If all are co-heirs, why may not the
estate be equally apportioned, and each be afterwards perfect
master of his own share?"
To this question it may in the first place be replied, that such a
division is vetoed by the difficulty of fixing the values of respective
tracts of land. Variations in productiveness, different degrees of
accessibility, advantages of climate, proximity to the centers of
civilization these, and other such considerations, remove the prob-
lem out of the sphere of mere mensuration into the region of impos-
sibility.
But, waiving this, let us inquire who are to be the allottees.
Shall adult males, and all who have reached twenty-one on a
specified day, be the fortunate individuals f If so, what is to be
done with those who come of age on the morrow? Is it proposed
that each man, woman, and child, shall have a section? If so, what
becomes of all who are to be born next year? And what will be
the fate of those whose fathers sell their estates and squander the
proceeds ? These portionless ones must constitute a class already
described as having no right to a resting-place on earth as living
by the sufferance of their fellow-men as being practically serfs.
And the existence of such a class is wholly at variance with the law
of equal freedom.
Until, therefore, we can produce a valid commission authorizing
us to make this distribution until it can be proved that God has
given one charter of privileges to one generation, and another to
the next until we can demonstrate that men born after a certain
date are doomed to slavery, we must consider that no such allot-
ment is permissible.
"SOCIAL STATICS "-THE RIGHT TO LAND. 7
$ 6. Probably some will regard the difficulties inseparable from
individual ownership of the soil, as caused by pushing to excess a
doctrine applicable only within rational limits. This is a very
favorite style of thinking with some. There are people who hate
anything in the shape of exact conclusions ; and these are of them.
According to such, the right is never in either extreme, but always
half-way between the extremes. They are continually trying to
reconcile Yes and No. Ifs and buts, and excepts, are their delight.
They have so great a faith in " the judicious mean " that they would
scarcely believe an oracle, if it uttered a full-length principle.
Were you to inquire of them whether the earth turns on its axis
from East to West, or from West to East, you might almost expect
the reply " A little of both," or' " Not exactly either." It is doubt-
ful whether they would assent to the axiom that the whole is greater
than its part, without making some qualification. They have a
passion for compromises. To meet their taste, Truth must always
be spiced with a little Error. They cannot conceive of a pure,
definite, entire, and unlimited law. And hence, in discussions like
the present, they are constantly petitioning for limitations always
wishing to abate, and modify, and moderate ever protesting
against doctrines being pursued to their ultimate consequences.
But it behooves such to recollect, that ethical truth is as exact
and as peremptory as physical truth ; and that in this matter of
land tenure, the verdict of morality must be distinctly yea or nay.
Either men have a right to make the soil private property, or they
have not. There is no medium. We must choose one of the two
positions. There can be no half-and-half opinion. In the nature
of things the fact must be either one way or the other.
If men have not such a right, we are at once delivered from the
several predicaments already pointed out. If they have such a
right, then is that right absolute, sacred, not on any pretense to be
violated. If they have such a< right, then is his Grace of Leeds
justified in warning off tourists from Ben Mac Dhui, the Duke of
Atholl in closing Glen Tilt, the Duke of Buccleuch in denying sites
to the Free Church, and the Duke of Sutherland in banishing the
Highlanders to make room for sheep-walks. If they have such a
right, then it would be proper for the sole proprietor of any king-
doma Jersey or Guernsey, for example to impose just what
regulations he might choose on its inhabitants to tell them that
they should not live on his property, unless they professed a certain
religion, spoke a particular language, paid him a specified reverence,
adopted an authorized dress, and conformed to all other conditions
8 DECLARATION.
he might see fit to make. If they have such a right, then is there
truth in that tenet of the ultra-Tory school, that the landowners
are the only legitimate rulers of a country that the people at large
remain in it only by the landowners' permission, and ought con-
sequently to submit to the landowners' rule, and respect whatever
institutions the landowners set up. There is no escape from these
inferences. They are necessary corollaries to the theory that the
earth can become individual property. And they can only be
repudiated by denying that theory.
$ 7. After all, nobody does implicitly believe in landlordism.
We hear of estates being held under the king, that is, the state ; or
of their being kept in trust for the public benefit ; and not that they
are the inalienable possessions of their nominal owners. Moreover,
we daily deny landlordism by our legislation. Is a canal, a rail-
way, or a turnpike road to be made T we do not scruple to seize just
as many acres as may be requisite ; allowing the holders compensa-
tion for the capital invested. We do not wait for consent. An Act
of Parliament supersedes the authority of title-deeds, and serves
proprietor's with notices to quit, whether they will or not. Either
this is equitable, or it is not. Either the public are free to resume
as much of the earth's surface as they think fit, or the titles of the
landowners must be considered absolute, and all national works
must be postponed until lords and squires please to part with the
requisite slices of their estates. If we decide that the claims of
individual ownership must give way, then we imply that the right
of the nation at large to the soil is supreme that the right of
private possession only exists by general consent that general
consent being withdrawn it ceases or, in other words, that it is
no right at all.
$ 8. "But to what does this doctrine, that men are equally
entitled to the use of the earth, leadT Must we return to the times
of uninclosed wilds, and subsist on roots, berries, and game? Or
are we to be left to the management of Messrs. Fourier, Owen,
Louis Blanc, and Co. ? n
Neither. Such a doctrine is consistent with the highest state of
civilization ; may be carried out without involving a community of
goods ; and need cause no very serious revolution in existing
arrangements. The change required would simply be a change of
landlords. Separate ownerships would merge into the joint-stock
ownership of the public. Instead of being in the possession of indi-
"SOCIAL STATICS "-THE RIGHT TO LAND. 9
viduals, the country would be held by the great corporate body-
Society. Instead of leasing his acres from an isolated proprietor,
the farmer would lease them from the nation. Instead of paying
his rent to the agent of Sir John or his Grace, he would pay it to an
agent or deputy agent of the community. Stewards would be
public officials instead of private ones ; and tenancy the only land
tenure.
A state of things so ordered would be in perfect harmony with
the moral law. Under it all men would be equally landlords ; all
men would be alike free to become tenants. A, B, C, and the rest,
might compete for a vacant farm as now, and one of them might
take that farm, without in any way violating the principles of pure
equity. All would be equally free to bid ; all would be equally free
to refrain. And when the farm had been let to A, B, or C, all
parties would have done that which they willed the one in choos-
ing to pay a given sum to his fellow-men for the use of certain lands
the others in refusing to pay that sum. Clearly, therefore, on
such a system, the earth might be inclosed, occupied, and culti-
vated, in entire subordination to the law of equal freedom.
9. No doubt great difficulties must attend the resumption, by
mankind at large, of their rights to the soil. The question of com-
pensation to existing proprietors is a complicated one one that
perhaps cannot be settled in a strictly equitable manner. Had we
to deal with the parties who originally robbed the human race of its
heritage, we might make short work of the matter. But, unfortu-
nately, most of our present landowners are men who have, either
mediately or immediately either by their own acts, or by the acts
of their ancestors given for their estates equivalents of honestly
earned wealth, believing that they were investing their savings in
a legitimate manner. To justly estimate and liquidate the claims
of such, is one of the most intricate problems society will one day
have to solve. But with this perplexity and our extrication from
it, abstract morality has no concern. Men having got themselves
into the dilemma by disobedience to the law, must get out of it as
well as they can ; and with as little injury to the landed class as
may be.
Meanwhile, we shall do well to recollect, that there are others
besides the landed class to be considered. In our tender regard for
the vested interests of the few, let us not forget that the rights of
the many are in abeyance; and must remain so, as long as the
earth is monopolized by individuals. Let us remember, too, that
10 DECLARATION.
the injustice thus inflicted on the mass of mankind, is an injustice
of the gravest nature. The fact that it is not so regarded, proves
nothing. In early phases of civilization even homicide is thought
lightly of. The suttees of India, together with the practice else-
where followed of sacrificing a hecatomb of human victims at the
burial of a chief, shows this ; and probably cannibals consider the
slaughter of those whom "the fortune of war" has made their
prisoners, perfectly justifiable. It was once also universally sup-
posed that slavery was a natural and quite legitimate institution a
condition into which some were born, and to which they ought to
submit as to a Divine ordination ; nay, indeed, a great proportion
of mankind hold this opinion still. A higher social development,
however, has generated in us a better faith, and we now to a con-
siderable extent recognize the claims of humanity. But our civili-
zation is only partial. It may by and by be perceived, that Equity
utters dictates to which we have not yet listened; and men may
then learn, that to deprive others of their rights to the use of the
earth, is to commit a crime inferior only in wickedness to the crime
of taking away their lives or personal liberties.
10. Briefly reviewing the argument, we see that the right of
each man to the use of the earth, limited only by the like rights of
his fellow-men, is immediately deducible from the law of equal
freedom. We see that the maintenance of this right necessarily
forbids private property in land. On examination all existing titles
to such property turn out to be invalid ; those founded on reclama-
tion inclusive. It appears that not even an equal apportionment of
the earth amongst its inhabitants could generate a legitimate pro-
prietorship. We find that if pushed to its ultimate consequences, a
claim to exclusive possession of the soil involves a landowning
despotism. We further find that such a claim is constantly denied
by the enactments of our legislature. And we find lastly, that the
theory of the co-heirship of all men to the soil, is consistent with
the highest civilization; and that, however difficult it may be to
embody that theory in fact, Equity sternly commands it to be
done.
Briefly stated, the argument of this chapter is
1. The equal right of all men to the use of land springs
from the fact of their existence in a world adapted to
their needs, and into which they are similarly born.
"SOCIAL STATICS "-THE EIGHT TO LAND. 11
2. Equity, therefore, does not permit private property
in land, since that would involve the right of some to
deny to others the use of land.
3. Private property in land, as at present existing, can
show no original title valid in justice, and such validity
cannot be gained either by sale or bequest, or by peace-
able possession during any length of time.
4. Nor is there any mode by which land can justly
become private property. Cultivation and improvement
can give title only to their results, not to the land itself.
5. Nor could an equitable division of land with the
consent of all, even if it were not impossible that such a
division could be made, give valid title to private prop-
erty in land. For the equal right to the use of land
would attach to all those thereafter born, irrespective of
any agreement made by their predecessors.
6. There can be no modification of this dictate of
equity. Either all men have equal rights to the use of
the land, or some men have the just right to enslave
others and deprive them of life.
7. As a matter of fact, nobody does really believe in
private property in land. An Act of Parliament, even
now, supersedes title-deeds. That is to say, the right of
private ownership in land exists only by general consent ;
that being withdrawn, it ceases.
8. But the doctrine that all men are equally entitled to
the use of land does not involve communism or socialism,
and need cause no serious change in existing arrange-
ments. It is not necessary that the state should manage
land : it is only necessary that rent, instead of going,
as now, to individuals, should be taken by society for
common purposes.
9. There may be difficulty in justly liquidating the
claims of existing landowners, but men having got
themselves into a dilemma must get out of it as well as
12 DECLARATION.
they can. The landed class are not alone to be con-
sidered. So long as the treatment of land as private
property continues, the masses suffer from an injustice
only inferior in wickedness to depriving them of life or
personal liberty.
10. However difficult it may be to embody in fact the
theory of the co-heirship of all men to the soil, equity
sternly demands it to be done.
CHAPTER H.
THE INCONGRUOUS PASSAGE.
ALTHOUGH this chapter shows that Mr. Spencer had
X\_ not fully thought out the question, and saw no way
to secure equality in the use of land, save the clumsy one
of having the state formally resume land and let it out
in lots to suit, the argument is clear and logical, except
in one place. This one weak and confusing spot is the
beginning of Section 9 :
No doubt great difficulties must attend the resumption, by mankind
at large, of their rights to the soil. The question of compensation
to existing proprietors is a complicated one one that perhaps
cannot be settled in a strictly equitable manner. Had we to deal
with the parties who originally robbed the human race of its heri-
tage, we might make short work of the matter. But, unfortunately,
most of our present landowners are men who have, either mediately
or immediately either by their own acts, or by the acts of their
ancestors given for their estates equivalents of honestly earned
wealth, believing that they were investing their savings in a legiti-
mate manner. To justly estimate and liquidate the claims of such, is
one of the most intricate problems society will one day have to solve.
Taken by itself, this passage seems to admit that exist-
ing landowners should be compensated for the land they
hold whenever society shall resume land for the benefit
of all. Though this is diametrically opposed to all that
has gone before and all that follows after, it is the sense
in which it has been generally understood. It is the
14 DECLARATION.
sense in which I understood it when, in quoting from
"Social Statics" in "Progress and Poverty," I spoke of
it as a careless concession, which Mr. Spencer on reflec-
tion would undoubtedly reconsider. For after even such
a man as John Stuart Mill could say, " The land of every
country belongs to the people of that country ; the indi-
viduals called landowners have no right in morality and
justice to anything but the rent, or compensation for its
salable value," the English writers had seemed to me
afflicted with a sort of color-blindness on the subject of
compensation. And that this affliction had suddenly
befallen Mr. Spencer also was the only explanation of
this passage that then occurred to me. Nor, if it means
compensation for land, is there any other explanation;
for all along Mr. Spencer has been insisting on the
natural, inalienable and equal right of all men to the use
of land. He has not only denied the validity of all exist-
ing claims to the private ownership of land, but has
declared that there is no possible way in which land can
become private property. He has mercilessly and scorn-
fully exposed the fallacy on which the notion of compen-
sation to landowners is based the idea that change of
hands and lapse of time can turn wrong into right, make
valid claims originally invalid, and deprive the human
race of what in the nature of things is, not at any one
time, but at all times, their inalienable heritage. No-
thing but moral color-blindness can explain how a writer
who has just asserted all this can in the same breath
propose to compensate landlords.
But a more careful reading of this chapter leads me
now to think that the apparent inconsistency of these
sentences may arise from careless statement, and that
what Mr. Spencer was really thinking of was the com-
pensation of landowners, not for their land, but for their
improvements.
THE INCONGRUOUS PASSAGE. 15
In the context Mr. Spencer has scouted the idea of
force, or acquiescence, or voluntary partition, or unop-
posed appropriation, or cultivation, or improvement, or
sale or bequest, or lapse of time, giving any title to pri-
vate property in land. But he realizes, as we all do (see
especially the last two paragraphs of Section 4), that
should the community resume for all the inalienable
right to the use of land, there would remain to holders
of improvements made in good faith an equitable claim
for those improvements.
It is evident throughout " Social Statics " that no idea of
the possibility of securing equal rights to land in any other
way than that of the state taking possession of the land
and renting it out had dawned on Mr. Spencer. And since
in all settled countries the land thus taken possession of
by the state would be land to which in large part
improvements of various kinds had in good faith been
inseparably attached, the matter of determining what
equitable compensation should be paid to owners on
account of these improvements naturally seemed to him
a delicate and difficult task one, in fact, incapable of
more than an approximation to justice.
Keeping this in mind, it is clear that a few interpola-
tions, justified by the context, and indeed made necessary
by it, will remove all difficulty. Let nle print these
sentences again with such interpolations, which I will
distinguish by italics:
The question of compensation to existing proprietors for their
improvements is a complicated one one that perhaps cannot "be
settled in a strictly equitable manner. Had we to deal with the
parties who originally robbed the human race of its heritage, we
might make short work of the matter, for (heir improvements we should
be under no obligation to regard. But, unfortunately, most of our pres-
ent landowners are men who have, either mediately or immediately
either by their own acts, or by the acts of their ancestors given for
their estates, which include many inseparable improvements, equiva-
16 DECLARATION.
lents of honestly earned wealth, believing that they were investing
their savings in a legitimate manner. To justly estimate and
liquidate the claims of such for these improvements, is one of the most
intricate problems society will one day have to solve.
Thus understood, these sentences become coherent
with their context. And that this was what Mr. Spencer
had in mind is supported by his more recent utterances ;
for while he has allowed these sentences to be understood
as meaning compensation to landowners for their land,
yet in the only places where he has stated in terms what
the compensation he has proposed is to be for, he has, as
will hereafter be seen, spoken of it as " compensation for
the artificial value given by cultivation," or by some
similar phrase showed that what was in his mind was
merely compensation for improvements. I therefore
gladly make what honorable amend I can for having so
misunderstood him as to imagine that in " Social Statics "
he intended to give any countenance to the idea that it
was incumbent on men, when taking possession of their
heritage, to pay any compensation to existing land-
owners for the value of that heritage.
CHAPTER III.
"SOCIAL STATICS" THE RIGHT OP PROPERTY
THE chapter of "Social Statics" on "The Right to
the Use of the Earth" is followed by a chapter on
"The Right of Property." For the reason that Mr.
Spencer has since referred to this chapter as to be taken
in connection with what was said in the preceding one, it
is also worth while to reprint it in full :
CHAPTER X. THE EIGHT OF PROPERTY.
1. The moral law, being the law of the social state, is obliged
wholly to ignore the ante-social state. Constituting, as the princi-
ples of pure morality do, a code of conduct for the perfect man,
they cannot be made to adapt themselves to the actions of the
uncivilized man, even under the most ingenious hypothetical con-
ditions cannot be made even to recognize those actions so as to
pass any definite sentence upon them. Overlooking this fact,
thinkers, in their attempts to prove some of the first theorems of
ethics, have commonly fallen into the error of referring back to an
imaginary state of savage wildness, instead of referring forward to
an ideal civilization, as they should have done ; and have, in con-
sequence, entangled themselves in difficulties arising out of the
discordance between ethical principles and the assumed premises.
To this circumstance is attributable that vagueness by which the
arguments used to establish the right of property in a logical man-
ner, are characterized. Whilst possessed of a certain plausibility,
they yet cannot be considered conclusive ; inasmuch as they suggest
18 DECLABATION.
questions and objections that admit of no satisfactory answers. Let
us take a sample of these arguments, and examine its defects.
"Though the earth and all inferior creatures," says Locke, "be
common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own
person : this nobody has a right to but himself. The labor of his
body, and the work of his hands, we may say are properly his.
Whatever then he removes out of the state that nature hath pro-
vided and left it in, he hath mixed his labor with, and joined to it
something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It
being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it
in, it hath by this labor something annexed to it that excludes the
common right of other men. For this labor being the unquestion-
able property of the laborer, no man but he can have a right to
what that is once joined to, at least when there is enough and as
good left in common for others."
If inclined to cavil, one might in reply to this observe, that as,
according to the premises, "the earth and all inferior creatures"
all things, in fact, that the earth produces are "common to all
men," the consent of all men must be obtained before any article
can be equitably "removed from the common state nature hath
placed it in." It might be argued that the real question is over-
looked, when it is said, that, by gathering any natural product, a
man "hath mixed his labor with it, and joined to it something that
is his own, and thereby made it his property ; " for that the point to
be debated is, whether he had any right to gather, or mix his labor
with that, which, by the hypothesis, previously belonged to man-
kind at large. The reasoning used in the last chapter to prove that
no amount of labor, bestowed by an individual upon a part of the
earth's surface, can nullify the title of society to that part, might
be similarly employed to show that no one can, by the mere act of
appropriating to himself any wild unclaimed animal or fruit, super-
sede the joint claims of other men to it. It may be quite true that
the labor a man expends in catching or gathering, gives him a
better right to the thing caught or gathered, than any one other
man ; but the question at issue is, whether by labor so expended,
he has made his right to the thing caught or gathered, greater than
the preexisting rights of all other men put together. And unless
he can prove that he has done this, his title to possession cannot be
admitted as a matter of right, but can be conceded only on the
ground of convenience.
Further difficulties are suggested by the qualification, that the
claim to any article of property thus obtained, is valid only " when
"SOCIAL STATICS "-THE EIGHT OF PEOPEETY. 19
there is enough and as good left in common for others." A condi-
tion like this gives birth to such a host of queries, doubts, and
limitations, as practically to neutralize the general proposition
entirely. It may be asked, for example How is it to be known
that enough is " left in common for others " ? Who can determine
whether what remains is "as good" as what is taken? How if the
remnant is less accessible? If there is not enough "left in common
for others," how must the right of appropriation be exercised?
Why, in such case, does the mixing of labor with the acquired
object, cease to " exclude the common right of other men " ? Sup-
posing enough to be attainable, but not all equally good, by what
rule must each man choose? Out of which inquisition it seems
impossible to liberate the alleged right, without such mutilations
as to render it, in an ethical point of view, entirely valueless.
Thus, as already hinted, we find, that the circumstances of
savage life render the principles of abstract morality inapplicable ;
for it is impossible, under ante-social conditions, to determine the
Tightness or wrongness of certain actions by an exact measurement
of the amount of freedom assumed by the parties concerned. We
must not expect, therefore, that the right of property can be satis-
factorily based upon the premises afforded by such a state of exis-
tence.
2. But, under the system of land tenure pointed out in the last
chapter, as the only one that is consistent with the equal claims of
all men to the use of the earth, these difficulties disappear ; and the
right of property obtains a legitimate foundation. We have seen
that, without any infraction of the law of equal freedom, an indi-
vidual may lease from society a given surface of soil, by agreeing
to pay in return a stated amount of the produce he obtains from
that soil. We found that, in doing this, he does no more than
what every other man is equally free with himself to do that each
has the same power with himself to become the tenant and that
the rent he pays accrues alike to all. Having thus hired a tract of
land from his fellow-men, for a given period, for understood pur-
poses, and on specified terms having thus obtained, for a time, the
exclusive use of that land by a definite agreement with its owners,
it is manifest that an individual may, without any infringement of
the rights of others, appropriate to himself that portion of produce
which remains after he has paid to mankind the promised rent. He
has now, to use Locke's expression, "mixed his labor with" certain
products of the earth ; and his claim to them is in this case valid,
20 DECLARATION.
because he obtained the consent of society before 'so expending his
labor ; and having fulfilled the condition which society imposed in
giving that consent the payment of rent society, to fulfil its part
of the agreement, must acknowledge his title to that surplus which
remains after the rent has been paid. "Provided you deliver to us
a stated share of the produce which by cultivation you can obtain
from this piece of land, we give you the exclusive use of the
remainder of that produce : " these are the words of the contract ;
and in virtue of this contract, the tenant may equitably claim the
supplementary share as his private property : may so claim it with-
out any disobedience to the law of equal freedom ; and has therefore
a right so to claim it.
Any doubt that may be felt as to the fact that this is a logical
deduction from our first principle, that every man has freedom to
do all that he wills provided he infringes not the equal freedom of
any other man, may be readily cleared up by comparing the respec-
tive degrees of freedom assumed in such a case by the occupier and
the members of society with whom he bargains. As was shown in
the preceding chapter, if the public altogether deprive any indi-
vidual of the use of the earth, they allow him less liberty than they
themselves claim ; and by so breaking the law of equal freedom,
commit a wrong. If, conversely, an individual usurps a given
portion of the earth, to which, as we have seen, all other men have
as good a title as himself, lie breaks the law by assuming more
liberty than the rest. But when an individual holds land as a
tenant of society, a balance is maintained between these extremes,
and the claims of both parties are respected. A price is paid by
the one, for a certain privilege granted by the other. By the fact
of the agreement being made, it is shown that such price and privi-
lege are considered to be equivalents. The lessor and the lessee
have both, within the prescribed limits, done that which they
willed : the one in letting a certain holding for a specified sum ; the
other in agreeing to give that sum. And so long as this contract
remains intact, the law of equal freedom is duly observed. If,
however, any of the prescribed conditions be not fulfilled, the law
is necessarily broken, and the parties are involved in one of the
predicaments above named. If the tenant refuses to pay the rent,
then he tacitly lays claim to the exclusive use and benefit of the
land he occupies practically asserts that he is the sole owner of its
produce ; and consequently violates the law, by assuming a greater
share of freedom than the rest of mankind. If, on the other hand,
society take from the tenant that portion of the fruits obtained
"SOCIAL STATICS "-THE EIGHT OF PROPERTY. 21
by the culture of his farm which remains with him after the pay-
ment of rent, they virtually deny him the use of the earth entirely
(for by the use of the earth we mean the use of its products), and
in so doing, claim for themselves a greater share of liberty than
they allow him. Clearly, therefore, this surplus produce equitably
remains with the tenant : society cannot take it without trespassing
upon his freedom ; he can take it without trespassing on the free-
dom of society. And as, according to the law, he is free to do all
that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any
other, he is free to take possession of such surplus as his property.
3. The doctrine that all men have equal rights to the use of
the earth, does indeed, at first sight, seem to countenance a species
of social organization at variance with that from which the right of
property has just been deduced ; an organization, namely, in which
the public, instead of letting out the land to individual members of
their body, shall retain it in their own hands ; cultivate it by joint-
stock agency; and share the produce: in fact, what is usually
termed Socialism or Communism.
Plausible though it may be, such a scheme is not capable of
realization in strict conformity with the moral law. Of the two
forms under which it may be presented, the one is ethically imper-
fect ; and the other, although correct in theory, is impracticable.
Thus, if an equal portion of the earth's produce is awarded to
every man, irrespective of the amount or quality of the labor he has
contributed toward the obtainment of that produce, a breach of
equity is committed. Our first principle requires, not that all shall
have like shares of the things which minister to the gratification of
the faculties, but that all shall have like freedom to pursue those
things shall have like scope. It is one thing to give to each an
opportunity of acquiring the objects he desires ; it is another, and
quite a different thing, to give the objects themselves, no matter
whether due endeavor has or has not been made to obtain them.
The one we have seen to be the primary law of the Divine scheme ;
the other, by interfering with the ordained connection between
desire and gratification, shows its disagreement with that scheme.
Nay more, it necessitates an absolute violation of the principle of
equal freedom. For when we assert the entire liberty of each,
bounded only by the like liberty of all, we assert that each is free
to do whatever his desires dictate, within the prescribed limits
that each is free, therefore, to claim for himself all those gratifica-
tions, and sources of gratification, attainable by him within those
22 DECLARATION.
limits all those gratifications, and sources of gratification, which
he can procure without trespassing upon the spheres of action of
his neighbors. If, therefore, out of many starting with like fields
of activity, one obtains, by his greater strength, greater ingenuity,
or greater application, more gratification and sources of gratifica-
tion than the rest, and does this without in any way trenching
upon the equal freedom of the rest, the moral law assigns him an
exclusive right to all those extra gratifications and sources of grati-
fication ; nor can the rest take from him without claiming for them-
selves greater liberty of action than he claims, and thereby violating
that law. Whence it follows, that an equal apportionment of the
fruits of the earth amongst all, is not consistent with pure justice.
If, on the other hand, each is to have allotted to him a share of
produce proportionate to the degree in which he has aided produc-
tion, the proposal, whilst it is abstractedly just, is no longer prac-
ticable. Were all men cultivators of the soil, it would perhaps be
possible to form an approximate estimate of their several claims.
But to ascertain the respective amounts of help given by different
kinds of mental and bodily laborers, toward procuring the general
stock of the necessaries of life, is an utter impossibility. We have
no means of making such a division save that afforded by the law
of supply and demand, and this means the hypothesis excludes.*
$ 4. An argument fatal to the communist theory, is suggested by
the fact, that a desire for property is one of the elements of our
nature. Repeated allusion has been made to the admitted truth,
that acquisitiveness is an unreasoning impulse quite distinct from
the desires whose gratifications property secures an impulse that
is often obeyed at the expense of those desires. And if a pro-
pensity to personal acquisition be really a component of man's
constitution, then that cannot be a right form of society which
affords it no scope. Socialists do indeed allege that private appro-
priation is an abuse of this propensity, whose normal function,
they say, is to impel us to accumulate for the benefit of the public
at large. But in thus attempting to escape from one difficulty,
they do but entangle themselves in another. Such an explanation
overlooks the fact that the use and abuse of a faculty (whatever the
etymology of the words may imply) differ only in degree', whereas
* These inferences do not at all militate against joint-stock sys-
tems of production and living, which are in all probability what
Socialism prophesies.
"SOCIAL STATICS "-THE EIGHT OF PEOPERTY. 23
their assumption is, that they differ in kind. Gluttony is an abuse
of the desire for food ; timidity, an abuse of the feeling which in
moderation produces prudence ; servility, an abuse of the sentiment
that generates respect; obstinacy, of that from which firmness
springs : in all of which cases we find that the legitimate manifes-
tations differ from the illegitimate ones, merely in quantity, and
not in quality. So also with the instinct of accumulation. It may
be quite true that its dictates have been, and still are, followed to
an absurd excess ; but it is also true that no change in the state of
society will alter its nature and its office. To whatever extent
moderated, it must still be a desire for personal acquisition.
Whence it follows that a system affording opportunity for its
exercise must ever be retained; which means, that the system of
private property must be retained ; and this presupposes a right of
private property, for by right we mean that which harmonizes with
the human constitution as divinely ordained.
5. There is, however, a still more awkward dilemma into
which M. Proudhon and his party betray themselves. For if, as
they assert, "all property is robbery" if no one can equitably
become the exclusive possessor of any article or as we say, obtain
a right to it, then, amongst other consequences, it follows, that a
man can have no right to the things he consumes for food. And if
these are not his before eating them, how can they become his at
all? As Locke asks, "when do they begin to be his? when he
digests? or when he eats? or when he boils? or when he brings
them home?" If no previous acts can make them his property,
neither can any process of assimilation do it; not even their
absorption into the tissues. Wherefore, pursuing the idea, we
arrive at the curious conclusion, that as the whole of his bones,
muscles, skin, etc., have been thus built up from nutriment not
belonging to him, a man has no property in his own flesh and blood
can have no valid title to himself has no more claim to his own
limbs than he has to the limbs of another and has as good a right
to his neighbor's body as to his own ! Did we exist after the same
fashion as those compound polyps, in which a number of individ-
uals are based upon a living trunk common to them all, such a
theory would be rational enough. But until Communism can be
carried to that extent, it will be best to stand by the old doctrine.
6. Further argument appears to be unnecessary. We have
seen that the right of property is deducible from the law of equal
24 DECLARATION.
freedom that it is presupposed by the human constitution and
that its denial involves absurdities.
Were it not that we shall frequently have to refer to the fact
hereafter, it would be scarcely needful to show that the taking
away another's property is an infringement of the law of equal
freedom, and is therefore wrong. If A appropriates to himself
something belonging to B, one of two things must take place:
either B does the like to A, or he does not. If A has no property,
or if his property is inaccessible to B, B has evidently no opportu-
nity of exercising equal freedom with A, by claiming from him
something of like value; and A has therefore assumed a greater
share of freedom than he allows B, and has broken the law. If
again, A's property is open to B, and A permits B to use like free-
dom with himself by taking an equivalent, there is no violation of
the law ; and the affair practically becomes one of barter. But such
a transaction will never take place save in theory; for A has no
motive to appropriate B's property with the intention of letting B
take an equivalent : seeing that if he really means to let B have
what B thinks an equivalent, he will prefer to make the exchange
by consent in the ordinary way. The only case simulating this, is
one in which A takes from B a thing that B does not wish to part
with ; that is, a thing for which A can give B nothing that B thinks
an equivalent ; and as the amount of gratification which B has in
the possession of this thing, is the measure of its value to him, it
follows that if A cannot give B a thing which affords B equal grati-
fication, or in other words what he thinks an equivalent, then A
has taken from B what affords A satisfaction, but does not return
to B what affords B satisfaction ; and has therefore broken the law
by assuming the greater share of freedom. Wherefore we find it to
be a logical deduction from the law of equal freedom, that no man
can rightfully take property from another against his will.
There is in this, it will be observed, no modification
whatever of the strenuous assertion in Chapter IX. of
the equal, natural and inalienable right of all men to the
use of land. On the contrary, so strongly, so uncom-
promisingly, does Mr. Spencer insist on the ethical inva-
lidity of private property in land that he makes the
formal consent of the community and the payment of
rent to it a condition precedent to the individual right
"SOCIAL STATICS "-THE RIGHT OF PROPEETY. 25
of property in things produced by labor. And, since no
formal consent of this kind can be given until society
has been well organized, he even goes to the length of
denying that there can be any full right of property, or,
indeed, any application of the principles of abstract
morality, in any social condition lower than the civilized.
In brief, the argument of this chapter is
1. That the right of the individual to his labor does
not give individual property in the product of labor, be-
cause labor can produce only by using land, which does
not belong to any individual, but to all.
2. But under the system of land tenure previously set
forth as the only just one, in which the organized society
assigns the use of a portion of land to an individual and
collects rent from him for it, the conditions of the equal
liberty of all are complied with, and the individual
acquires a right of property in what remains of the
product of his labor after paying rent.
3. This system, under which the social organization
would let land to individuals and collect rent from them,
does not countenance the system under which it would
carry on production and divide, the product among its
members, since, the powers and application of men being
different, this would give to some more than they are
entitled to, and to others less.
4. This communistic or socialistic system is also con-
demned by the natural desire to acquire individual
property.
5. The denial of individual property may be brought
into the awkward dilemma of a denial of the right of the
individual to himself.
6. The right of property having thus been established,
the appropriation by one of property belonging to
another is a denial of the law of equal freedom.
CHAPTER IV.
MB. SPENCER'S CONFUSION AS TO RIGHTS.
MY purpose in quoting Chapter X. is to show what
were the views on the land question expressed by
Mr. Spencer in "Social Statics." It may, however, be
worth while, in passing, to clear up the confusion in
which he here entangles the right to the products of
labor with the right to land. This confusion he has not
yet escaped from, as it is still to be seen in his latest
book, "Justice," where, though evidently anxious to
minimize the land question, he still assumes that to
justify the right of property in things produced from
nature the consent of all men must be obtained or
inferred.
Nor is it the right of property alone that is thus con-
fused. Mr. Spencer really puts himself in the same
dilemma that, in Section 5, he proposes to Proudhon;
for if, as in this chapter he asserts, no one can equitably
become the exclusive possessor of any natural substance
or product until the joint rights of all the rest of man-
kind have been made over to him by some species of quit-
claim-
Then, amongst other consequences, it follows, that a man can
have no right to the things he consumes for food. And if these are
not his before eating them, how can they become his at all? As
Locke asks, "when do they begin to be his? when he digests? or
when he eats? or when he boils? or when he brings them home?"
ME. SPENCER'S CONFUSION AS TO EIGHTS. 27
If no previous acts can make them his property, neither can any
process of assimilation do it; not even their absorption into the
tissues. Wherefore, pursuing the idea, we arrive at the curious
conclusion, that as the whole of his bones, muscles, skin, etc.,
have been thus built up from nutriment not belonging to him, a
man has no property in his own flesh and blood can have no valid
title to himself has no more claim to his own limbs than he has to
the limbs of another and has as good a right to his neighbor's body
as to his own !
The fact is, that without noticing the change, Mr.
Spencer has dropped the idea of equal rights to land,
and taken up in its stead a different idea that of joint
rights to land. That there is a difference may be seen at
once. For joint rights may be and often are unequal
rights.
The matter is an important one, as it is the source of
a great deal of popular confusion. Let me, therefore,
explain it fully.
When men have equal rights to a thing, as for
instance, to the rooms and appurtenances of a club of
which they are members, each has a right to use all or
any part of the thing that no other one of them is using.
It is only where there is use or some indication of use
by one of the others that even politeness dictates such a
phrase as " Allow me ! " or " If you please ! "
But where men have joint rights to a thing, as for
instance, to a sum of money held to their joint credit,
then the consent of all the others is required for the use
of the thing or of any part of it, by any one of them.
Now, the rights of men to the use of land are not joint
rights : they are equal rights.
Were there only one man on earth, he would have a
right to the use of the whole earth or any part of the
earth.
When there is more than one man on earth, the right
to the use of land that any one of them would have, were
28 DECLARATION.
he alone, is not abrogated : it is only limited. The right
of each to the use of land is still a direct, original right,
which he holds of himself, and not by the gift or consent
of the others ; but it has become limited by the similar
rights of the others, and is therefore an equal right. His
right to use the earth still continues ; but it has become,
by reason of this limitation, not an absolute right to use
any part of the earth, but (1) an absolute right to use
any part of the earth as to which his use does not con-
flict with the equal rights of others (i.e., which no one
else wants to use at the same time), and (2) a coequal
right to the use of any part of the earth which he and
others may want to use at the same time.
It is, thus, only where two or more men want to use
the same land at the same time that equal rights to the
use of land come in conflict, and the adjustment of
society becomes necessary.
If we keep this idea of equal rights in mind the idea,
namely, that the rights are the first thing, and the
equality merely their limitation we shall have no diffi-
culty. It is through forgetting this that Mr. Spencer
has been led into confusion.
In Chapter IX., " The Right to the Use of the Earth,"
he correctly apprehends and states the right to the use of
land as an equal right. He says :
Each of them is free to use the earth for the satisfaction of his
wants,
Provided he allows all others the same liberty.
Here, in the first clause, is the primary right ; in the
second clause, the proviso or limitation.
But in the next chapter, " The Right of Property," he
has, seemingly without noticing it himself, substituted
for the idea of equal rights to land the idea of joint
rights to land. He says (Section 1):
ME. SPENCER'S CONFUSION AS TO EIGHTS. 29
No amount of labor, bestowed by an individual upon a part of the
earth's surface, can nullify the title of society to that part, ... no
one can, by the mere act of appropriating to himself any wild
unclaimed animal or fruit, supersede the joint claims of other men
to it. It may be quite true that the labor a man expends in catch-
ing or gathering, gives him a better right to the thing caught or
gathered, than any one other man; but the question at issue is,
whether by labor so expended, he has made his right to the thing
caught or gathered, greater than the preexisting rights of all other
men put together. And unless he can prove that he has done this,
his title to possession cannot be admitted as a matter of right, but
can be conceded only on the ground of convenience.
Here the primary right the right by which "each
of them is free to use the earth for the satisfaction of
his wants" has been dropped out of sight, and the mere
proviso has been swelled into the importance of the
primary right, and has taken its place.
What Mr. Spencer here asserts, without noticing his
change of position, is not that the rights of men to the
use of land are equal rights, but that they are joint
rights. And, from this careless shifting of ground, he
is led, not only into hypercritical questioning of Locke's
derivation of the right of property, but into the assump-
tion that a man can have no right to the wild berries he
has gathered on an untrodden prairie, unless he can
prove the consent of all other men to his taking them.
This reductio ad dbsurdum is a deduction from the idea of
joint rights to land, whereas the deduction from the
equality of rights to land would be that under such cir-
cumstances a man would have a right to take all the
berries he wanted, and that all other men together would
have no right to forbid him. Indeed, so great is Mr.
Spencer's confusion, and so utterly unable does he
become to assume a clear and indisputable right of
property, that he has to cut the knot into which he has
tangled the subject, and finds no escape but in the
30 DECLARATION.
preposterous declaration that the dictates of ethics have
no application to, and do not exist in, any social state
except that of the highest civilization.
Locke was not in error. The right of property in
things produced by labor and this is the only true right
of property springs directly from the right of the
individual to himself, or as Locke expresses it, from his
" property in his own person." It is as clear and has as
fully the sanction of equity in any savage state as in the
most elaborate civilization. Labor can, of course, produce
nothing without land ; but the right to the use of land is
a primary individual right, not springing from society,
or depending on the consent of society, either expressed
or implied, but inhering in the individual, and resulting
from his presence in the world. Men must have rights
before they can have equal rights. Each man has a
right to use the world because he is here and wants to
use the world. The equality of this right is merely a limi-
tation arising from the presence of others with like rights.
Society, in other words, does not grant, and cannot
equitably withhold from any individual, the right to the
use of land. That right exists before society and inde-
pendently of society, belonging at birth to each indi-
vidual, and ceasing only with his death. Society itself
has no original right to the use of land. What right it
has with regard to the use of land is simply that which is
derived from and is necessary to the determination of
the rights of the individuals who compose it. That is to
say, the function of society with regard to the use of
land only begins where individual rights clash, and is
to secure equality between these clashing rights of indi-
viduals.
What Locke meant, or at least the expression that will
give full and practical form to his idea, is simply this :
That the equal right to life involves the equal right to
ME. SPENCER'S CONFUSION AS TO EIGHTS. 31
the use of natural materials ; that, consequently, any one
has a right to the use of such natural opportunities as
may not be wanted by any one else ; and that the result
of his labor, so expended, does of right become his indi-
vidual property against all the world. For, where one
man wants to use a natural opportunity that no one else
wants to use, he has a right to do so, which springs from
and is attested by the fact of his existence. This is an
absolute, unlimited right, so long and in so far as no one
else wants to use the same natural opportunity. Then,
but not till then, it becomes limited by the similar rights
of others. Thus no question of the right of any one to
use any natural opportunity can arise until more than
one man wants to use the same natural opportunity. It
is only then that any question of this right, any need
for the action of society in the adjustment of equal
rights to land, can come up.
Thus, instead of there being no right of property until
society has so far developed that all land has been prop-
erly appraised and rented for terms of years, an absolute
right of property in the things produced by labor exists
from the beginning is coeval with the existence of
man.
In the right of each man to himself, and his right to
use the world, lies the sure basis of the right of property.
This Locke saw just as the first man must have seen it.
But Mr. Spencer, confused by a careless substitution of
terms, has lost his grasp on the right of property and
has never since recovered it.
Getting rid of the idea of joint rights we see that the
task of securing, in an advanced and complex civiliza-
tion, the equal rights of all to the use of land is much
simpler and easier than Mr. Spencer and the land nation-
alizationists suppose ; that it is not necessary for society to
take land and rent it out. For so long as only one man
32 DECLARATION.
wants to use a natural opportunity it has no value ; but
as soon as two or more want to use the same natural
opportunity, a value arises. Hence, any question as to
the adjustment of equal rights to the use of land occurs
only as to valuable land ; that is to say, land that has a
value irrespective of the value of any improvements in or
on it. As to land that has no value, or, to use the eco-
nomic phrase, bears no rent, whoever may choose to use
it has not only an equitable title to all that his labor may
produce from it, but society cannot justly call on him
for any payment for the use of it. As to land that has a
value, or, to use the economic phrase in the economic
meaning, bears rent, the principle of equal freedom
requires only that this value, or economic rent, be turned
over to the community. Hence the formal appropriation
and renting out of land by the community is not neces-
sary: it is only necessary that the holder of valuable
land should pay to the community an equivalent of the
ground value, or economic rent ; and this can be assured
by the simple means of collecting an assessment in the
form of a tax on the value of land, irrespective of
improvements in or on it.
In this way all members of the community are placed
on equal terms with regard to natural opportunities that
offer greater advantages than those any one member of
the community is free to use, and are consequently
sought by more than one of those having equal rights to
use the land. And, since the value of land arises from
competition and is constantly fixed by competition, the
question of who shall use this superior land desired by
more than one is virtually decided by competition, which
settles clashing individual desires by determining at
once both who shall be accorded the use of the superior
land, and who will make the most productive use of it.
In this way all, including the user of the superior natural
MR. SPENCER'S CONFUSION AS TO RIGHTS. 33
opportunity, obtain their equal shares of the superiority,
by the taking of its value for their common uses ; while
all the difficulties of state rental of land and of determin-
ing and settling for the value of improvements are
avoided. This is the single-tax system.
CHAPTER V.
MB. SPENCER'S CONFUSION AS TO VALUE.
IT seems strange that a man who has touched on so
many branches of knowledge, and written so largely
on sociology, should even to this time have neglected the
primary principles of political economy. But the failure
to distinguish between equal rights and joint rights,
which has so confused Mr. Spencer, is allied with a
failure to comprehend the nature of rent. In "Social
Statics" he assumes that all land ought to pay rent to
the state, and on this assumption, joined with and
perhaps giving rise to his transmutation of equal rights
into joint rights, he bases important conclusions as to
the right of property. In his latest book, " Justice," he is
not only no clearer in this but shows plainly what in
"Social Statics" is only to be surmised his failure to
appreciate the nature of the fundamental economic con-
ceptvalue.
Thus, in the chapter in "Justice" entitled "The Right
of Property," he speaks (Section 55) of weapons, instru-
ments, dress and decorations as "things in which the
value given by labor bears a specially large relation to
the value of the raw material," and thus continues :
When with such articles we join huts, which, however, being
commonly made by the help of fellow-men who receive reciprocal
aid, are thus less distinctly products of an individual's labor, we
ME. SPENCER'S CONFUSION AS TO VALUE. 35
have named about all the things in which, at first, the worth given
by effort is great in comparison with the inherent worth ; for the
inherent worth of the wild food gathered or caught is more obvious
than the worth of the effort spent in obtaining it. And this is
doubtless the reason why, in the rudest societies, the right of prop-
erty is more definite in respect of personal belongings than in
respect of other things.
Passing the queer notion that things made by two or
more men are less distinctly products of an individual's
labor than things made by one man, we have here the
idea that there is an inherent value in the materials and
spontaneous products of nature i.e., land in the eco-
nomic category a value underived from labor and
independent of it. The slightest acquaintance with
economic literature, the slightest attempt to analyze the
meaning of the term, would have shown Mr. Spencer the
preposterousness of this idea.
The word "value" in English speech has two mean-
ings. One is that of usefulness or utility, as when we
speak of the value of the ocean to man, the value of
fresh air, the value of the compass in navigation, the
value of the stethoscope in the diagnosis of disease, the
value of the antiseptic treatment in surgery; or, when
having in mind the intrinsic merits of the mental produc-
tion itself, its quality of usefulness to the reader or to
the public, we speak of the value of a book. In this
sense of utility there is inherent worth or intrinsic value
a quality or qualities belonging to the thing itself,
which give it usefulness to man.
The other sense of the word "value" the sense in
which Mr. Spencer uses it when he says that the value
given by labor bears a specially large ratio to the value
of the raw materials, or when, later on, he substitutes
the word "worth" as synonymous in such use for
" value "is that of exchangeability. In this sense value
36 DECLARATION.
or worth means not utility, not any quality inhering in
the thing itself, but a quality which gives to the posses-
sion of a thing the power of obtaining other things in
return for it or for its use. Thus we speak of the value
of gold as greater than that of iron ; of a book bound in
cloth as being more valuable than a book bound in
paper; of the value of a copyright or a patent; of the
lessening in the value of steel by the Bessemer process,
or in that of aluminium by the improvements in extrac-
tion now going on.
Value in this sense the usual sense is purely rela-
tive. It exists from and is measured by the power of
obtaining things for things by exchanging them. It is
therefore absurd to speak in this sense of inherent
worth or intrinsic value. Air has the intrinsic quality of
utility, or value in use, to the very highest degree; for
without an abundant supply of it we could not live a
minute. But air has no value whatever in the sense of
value in exchange. We speak of a man of worth, or a
worthy man, when we mean a man whose inherent
qualities entitle him to esteem ; but, when we speak of a
man who is worth so and so much, or of a wealthy man,
we speak of him in certain external relations, purely
relative, which give him the power of obtaining things
by exchange. A worthy man may retain his worthiness
through all changes of external conditions; but a
wealthy man is in this the creature of external condi-
tions : the same man, in nothing changed, may through
external circumstances be wealthy to-day and poverty-
stricken to-morrow.
Now, what gives to anything the quality of exchange-
ability for other things the quality of worth in ex-
change, or value ? for, having explained the other sense
of the word " value," I will in subsequent use confine it
to its common and proper sense, that of value in exchange.
MR. SPENCER'S CONFUSION AS TO VALUE. 37
That a thing has value, and may be exchanged for
other things, is not because of its weight, or color, or
divisibility, or any other quality inherent in the thing
itself. Nor yet is it because of its utility to man. Util-
ity is necessary to value, for nothing can be valuable
unless it has the quality of gratifying some physical or
mental desire of man, though it be but a fancy or whim.
But utility of itself does not give value. Air, which has
the highest utility, has no value, while diamonds, which
have very little utility, have great value.
If we ask ourselves the reason of such variations in
the quality of value ; if we inquire what is the attribute
or condition concurring with the presence, absence or
degree of value attaching to anything we see that
things having some form of utility or desirability, are
valuable or not valuable, as they are hard or easy to get.
And, if we ask further, we may see that with most of the
things that have value this difficulty or ease of getting
them, which determines value, depends on the amount of
labor which must be expended in producing them; i.e.,
bringing them into the place, form and condition in
which they are desired. Thus air, which is of the
highest utility, since it is at every instant necessary to
our existence, can be had without labor. It is the sub-
stance of that ocean, enveloping the surface of the globe,
in which we are constantly immersed. So far from
requiring labor to get it, it forces itself upon us, requir-
ing labor, when we are so disposed, to keep it away.
Hence air, in spite of its high utility, has no value.
Large and pure diamonds, on the contrary, since they
are found only in few places and require much search
and toil to get, can be had only with great labor.
Hence, although they have very low utility, since they
gratify only the sense of beauty and the desire for osten-
tation, they have very high value. Thus gold, weight
38 DECLAEATION.
for weight, is more valuable than silver, and much more
valuable than iron, simply because it requires on the
average more labor to get a given quantity of gold than
to get the same quantity of silver, and much more than
to get the same quantity of iron.
That as to such things as these the quality of value is
derived from the labor required to produce them; and
that, consequently, as to them at least, there is no such
thing as inherent value becomes clearer still when we
consider how their value is affected by the increase or
decrease of the requirement for labor.
Iron as compared with gold used to be much more valu-
able than it is now. Why ? Because improved processes
in smelting have lessened the labor of producing it. A
few years since aluminium was more valuable than gold,
because it took more labor to get it. Labor-saving
improvements have already lowered the value of alumin-
ium to less than that of silver, and little more than that
of copper; and it is altogether likely that continued
improvement will ere long bring it to that of iron. So
the value of steel has been greatly lessened by the intro-
duction of the Bessemer and other processes. So the
value of beaver-skins, of whalebone, of ivory, etc., has
been increased by the growing scarcity of the animals
from which they are derived, and the greater labor
needed to obtain them. So, too, the improvement in
transportation has lessened the value of things where it
was a considerable item in the labor required for their
production. And so, too, customs duties and other
indirect taxes add to the value of things on which they
fall, because their effect is to increase the amount of
labor required to get such things.
It is thus seen, with regard at least to the greater
number of valuable things, that there cannot be inherent
or intrinsic value ; and that value is simply an expres-
MR. SPENCER'S CONFUSION AS TO VALUE. 39
sion of the labor required for the production of such a
thing. But there are some things as to which this is not
so clear. Land is not produced by labor ; yet land, irre-
spective of any improvements that labor has made on it,
often has value. And so value frequently attaches to the
forms of the economic term "land" that we commonly
speak of as natural products, such as trees in their natural
state, ore in the vein, stone or marble in the quarry, or
sand or gravel in the bed.
Yet a little examination will show that such facts are
but exemplifications of the general principle, just as the
rise of a balloon and the fall of a stone both exemplify the
universal law of gravitation.
To illustrate: Let us suppose a man accidentally to
stumble on a diamond. Without the expenditure of labor,
for his effort has been merely that of stooping down to
pick it up, an action in itself a gratification of curiosity,
he has here a great value. But what causes this value ?
Clearly, it springs from the fact that, as a rule, to get such
a diamond will require much expenditure of labor. If
any one could pick up diamonds as easily as in this case,
diamonds would have no value.
Or, here is a grove of natural trees, which, as they stand,
and before the touch of labor, have a considerable value,
so that a lumberman will gladly pay for the privilege of
cutting them. But has not this value the same cause as
in the case of the diamond the fact that to get such lum-
ber ordinarily (or to speak exactly, to get the last amount
of such lumber that the existing demand requires) the
lumberman must go so far that the cost of transportation
will equal what he is willing to pay for these trees ?
In the naturally wooded sections of the United States
trees had at first not merely no value, but were deemed
an encumbrance, to get rid of which the settler had to
incur the labor of felling and burning. Then lumber
40 DECLARATION.
had no value except the cost of working it up after it had
been felled j for the work of felling had for object the
getting rid of the tree. But soon, as clearing proceeded,
the desire to get rid of trees so far slackened, as compared
with the desire to get lumber, that trees were felled sim-
ply for the purpose of getting the lumber. Then the
value of lumber increased, for the labor of felling trees
had to be added to it ; but trees themselves had as yet no
value. As clearing still proceeded and the demand for
lumber grew with growing population, it became neces-
sary to go farther and farther to get trees. Then trans-
portation began to be a perceptible element in the labor
of getting lumber, and trees that had been left standing
began to have a value, since by using them the labor of
transportation would be saved. And, as the require-
ment for lumber has compelled the lumbermen to go
farther and farther, the value of the trees remaining has
increased. But this value is not inherent in the trees:
it is a value having its basis in labor, and representing a
saving of labor that must otherwise be incurred. The
reason that the tree at such place has a value is, that ob-
taining it there secures the same result as would the
labor of transporting a similar amount of lumber from
the greater distance to which resort must be made to
satisfy the demand for lumber.
And so with the value which attaches to ore or sand
or gravel. Such value is always relative to the labor
required to obtain such things from points of greater
distance or of less abundant deposits, to which in the
existing demand resort is necessary.
We thus see the cause and nature of land values, or, to
use the economic term, of rent. No matter how fertile it
may be, no matter what other desirable quality it may
have, land has no value until, whether by reason of
quality or location, the relation between it and the most
MR. SPENCER'S CONFUSION AS TO VALUE. 41
advantageous land to which labor may have free access
gives to its use an advantage equivalent to the saving of
labor. Or, to state in another way that accepted theory
which is sometimes styled Ricardo's theory of rent, and
which John Stuart Mill called the pans asinorum of politi-
cal economy : it is, that the rent of land is determined by
the excess of the produce it will yield over that which the
same application can obtain from the least productive
land in use.
To grasp this principle is to see that land has no
inherent value ; that value can never attach to all land,
but only to some land, and may arise on particular land
either by reason of production being extended to inferior
land, or by reason of the development of superior pro-
ductiveness in special localities.
Thus the phenomena of value are at bottom illustra-
tions of one principle. The value of everything pro-
duced by labor, from a pound of chalk or a paper of pins
to the elaborate structure and appurtenances of a first-
class ocean steamer, is resolvable on analysis into an
equivalent of the labor required to reproduce such a thing
in form and place; while the value of things not pro-
duced by labor, but nevertheless susceptible of owner-
ship, is, in the same way, resolvable into an equivalent of
the labor which the ownership of such a thing enables
the owner to obtain or save.
The reason why in rude societies value attaches mainly
or wholly to things produced by labor, and there is little
or no value to land or, to use Mr. Spencer's phrase,
"the reason why, in the rudest societies, the right of
property is more definite in respect of personal belong-
ings than in respect of other things" is not, as he puts
it, that weapons, implements, dress, decorations and huts
are "about all the things in which, at first, the worth
given by effort is great in comparison with the inherent
42 DECLARATION.
worth ; for the inherent worth of the wild food gathered
or caught is more obvious than the worth of the effort
spent in obtaining it." It is that labor products always
cost effort, and hence have value from the first; while
land costs no effort, and in such societies the growth of
population and the development of the arts have as yet
attached little or no special advantages to the use of par-
ticular pieces of land, which at a later stage are equiva-
lent to a saving of effort. Thus, in the absence of the
artificial scarcity produced by monopoly, land of practi-
cally like quality is easy to obtain and has no value.
For in a sparse population and a rude state of the arts,
those differences in productiveness between particular
pieces of land, which are so marked in our great cities
that land on one side of a street may have twice the
value of land on the other side, do not exist. Even
differences in the original qualities of land, that with us
give rise to enormous differences in value, would, with
the hunter or herdsman, or even with the agriculturist, be
of no moment. Who, until production had passed even
the agricultural stage, could have imagined that in the
soil of Western Pennsylvania lurked differences that
would sometime give to one spot a value hundreds of
thousands times greater than that of seemingly the same
kind of land around it ; or that a narrow strip in Nevada
might be worth millions, while the land about it was
worth nothing at all?
It is this confusion of Mr. Spencer as to rent and
value that has led him into confusion as to the right of
property ; and that, at first at least, prevented him from
seeing that to secure the equal rights of men to land, it is
not necessary that society should take formal possession
of land and let it out, and, consequently, that the diffi-
culties he anticipated in taking possession of improved
land were imaginary.
CHAPTER VI.
FROM " SOCIAL STATICS " TO " POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS."
BUT the crudities and seeds of error in Mr. Spencer's
treatment of the land question in " Social Statics "
were of little moment beside its sterling merit. It was a
clear, and, if we except or explain the one incongruous
passage, an unfaltering assertion of a moral truth of the
first importance a truth at that time ignored. If Mr.
Spencer had not mastered all the details of its applica-
tion, he had at least seen and stated the fundamental
principle that all men have natural, equal and inalienable
rights to the use of land ; that the right of ownership
which justly attaches to things produced by labor can-
not attach to land; that neither force, nor fraud, nor
consent, nor transfer, nor prescription can give validity
to private property in land ; and that equal rights to land
are still valid, "all deeds, customs, and laws notwith-
standing," and must remain valid "until it can be dem-
onstrated that God has given one charter of privileges to
one generation and another to the next."
He had, moreover, shown that the practical recog-
nition of these equal rights, even in the rude way he
proposed, involved no community of goods and nothing
like socialism or communism ; but that it may be carried
out in a way that " need cause no very serious revolution
in existing arrangements," and would be "consistent
with the highest civilization."
44 DECLARATION.
And this was in England, where the whole structure
of society social, political and industrial was based on
and embedded in private ownership of land, and in the
year 1850, when, except by a few "dreamers," no one
thought of making any distinction between property in
land and property in other things, and by the vast major-
ity of men of all classes and conditions private property in
land was looked on as something that always had existed,
and, in the nature of things, always must exist.
But beyond the warnings that this was no way to suc-
cess, which he doubtless received from friends, there is
no reason to think that this revolutionary utterance of
Mr. Spencer in " Social Statics " brought him the slightest
unpleasant remonstrance at the time or for years after.
If "Sir John and his Grace" by which phrase Mr.
Spencer had personified British landed interests ever
heard of the book, it was to snore, rather than to swear.
So long as they feel secure, vested wrongs are tolerant of
mere academic questioning; for those who profit by
them, being the class of leisure and wealth, are also the
class of liberal education and tastes, and often find a
pleasing piquancy in radicalism that does not go beyond
their own circles. A clever sophist might freely declaim
in praise of liberty at the table of a Roman emperor.
Voltaire, Rousseau and the encyclopedists were the fash-
ionable fad in the drawing-rooms of the French aristoc-
racy. And at the beginning of this century, and for
years afterwards, a theoretical abolitionist, provided he
did not talk in the hearing of the servants, might freely
express his opinion of slavery among the cultured slave-
holders of our Southern States. Thomas Jefferson
declared his detestation of slavery, and, despite amend-
ment, "writ large" his condemnation of it in the Dec-
laration of Independence itself. Yet that declaration
was signed by slaveholders and read annually by slave-
"SOCIAL STATICS" TO "POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS." 45
holders, and Jefferson himself never became unpopular
with slaveholders. But* when the "underground rail-
way" got into operation; when Garrison and his col-
leagues came with their demand for immediate, uncon-
ditional emancipation, then the feeling changed, and the
climate of the South began to grow hot for any one even
suspected of doubting the justice of the " peculiar insti-
tution."
So it was with private property in land for over thirty
years after "Social Statics" was written. One of the
first to congratulate me on "Progress and Poverty,"
when only an author's edition of a few hundred copies
had been printed, and it seemed unlikely to those who
knew the small demand for works on economic questions
that there would ever be any more, was a very large
landowner. He told me that he had been able freely to
enjoy what he was pleased to term the clear logic and
graceful style of my book, because he knew that it would
be read only by a few philosophers, and could never reach
the masses or " do any harm."
For a long time this was the fate of Mr. Spencer's dec-
laration against private property in land. It doubtless
did good work, finding here and there a mind where it
bore fruit. But the question had not passed beyond, and
Mr. Spencer's book did not bring it beyond, the point of
extremely limited academic discussion.
Though it brought Mr. Spencer the appreciation of a
narrow circle, and thus proved the beginning of his liter-
ary career, "Social Statics" had but a small and slow
circulation. The first and only English edition, as is
usual with books for which no large sale is expected, was
printed directly from type, without making stereotype
plates. As Mr. Spencer tells us in the preface of his
recent " revision and abridgment," it took some ten years
to sell that, after which, the sale not being enough to
46 DECLABATION.
justify republication, which, in the absence of stereotype
plates, would have involved the cost of setting up the
type again, the book went out of print in England, with-
out having attracted any general attention. This was but
in the nature of things ; for the class that profits by any
wrong which affects the distribution of wealth must be
the wealthy class, and consequently the class whose views
dominate the existing organs of opinion. And until
recently private property in land has been the sacred
white elephant of English respectability, not even to be
named without a salaam. The conspiracy of silence was
therefore all that such a book could expect until it began
to make way among the masses, and that neither the
style of "Social Statics" nor the price at which it was
published was calculated for. A similar fate to that
which " Social Statics " met in England befell a very simi-
lar book, covering much the same ground" The Theory
of Human Progression," by Patrick Edward Dove, pub-
lished a little before "Social Statics," but in the same,
year, and also asserting the equal right to the use of
land. While Dove is not so elaborate as Spencer, he is
clearer in distinctly disclaiming the idea of compensa-
tion, and in proposing to take ground-rent for public
purposes by taxation, abolishing all other taxes. His
book must have done some good work on the minds it
reached, but it passed out of print and was practically
forgotten.
" Social Statics," however, had a happier fate in pass-
ing over to the United States. Among those early
attracted by Mr. Spencer's writings was the late Pro-
fessor E. L. Youmans, who in 1861-62 sought his
acquaintance and entered into correspondence with him.
Professor Youmans's tireless energy, backed by the
resources of the strong publishing house of D. Appleton
& Co. of New York, with which he was connected, was
"SOCIAL STATICS" TO "POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS." 47
thenceforward devoted to the task of popularizing Mr.
Spencer and his teachings in the United States. Through
the efforts of Professor Youmans, D. Appleton & Co.
arranged with Mr. Spencer for the publication of his
books, and in 1864, making stereotype plates, they reis-
sued " Social Statics," and from that time forward kept it
in print ; and as may be seen, both from the preface of
1877 in their edition of "Social Statics" and from the
preface to the abridgment of 1892, such English demand
as existed was supplied by the sending over of sheets
printed by them* a more economical arrangement than
that of printing a book of small circulation on both sides
of the Atlantic. Thus in a larger sphere it continued to
circulate, mainly in the United States (where Mr. Spen-
cer's reputation, aided by the active work of Professor
Youmans, grew first in popular estimation), and to some
small extent at least in Great Britain. But the radical
utterances on the land question that it contained gave
no evidence of attracting active interest or passing for
more than an academic opinion.
Between 1850 and 1882, during the greater part of
which time Mr. Spencer was engaged in developing his
evolution philosophy, nothing more that I am aware of
was heard from him on the land question. But " Social
Statics," in the United States at least, increased in circu-
lation as Mr. Spencer's reputation grew, and its declara-
tions continued to stand for his opinions without even a
suggestion of change. Several prefaces, or notes, were
* "A number of years passed some ten, I think before the
edition was exhausted ; and as the demand seemed not great enough
to warrant the setting up of type for a new edition, it was decided
to import an edition from America, where the work had been stereo-
typed. After this had been disposed of a third edition was similarly
imported." Preface to " Social Statics, Abridged and Revised," 1892.
48 DECLABATION.
from time to time added, but none indicating any modifi-
cation of views with regard to the land question. The
last of these was dated January 17, 1877. In this, certain
changes in Mr. Spencer's opinions as to teleological im-
plications, the political status of women, the useful effects
of war, etc., are noted, but there is no modification of the
radical utterances as to the tenure of land. On the con-
trary, he says :
To the fundamental ethical principle expressing in its abstract
form what we know as justice I still adhere. I adhere also to the
derivative principles formulated in what are commonly called per-
sonal rights, of this or that special kind.
In " Political Institutions," which, after some magazine
publications of chapters, was finally published in book
form in the early part of 1882, Mr. Spencer again spoke
of the tenure of land, and in a way that would lead any
one acquainted with his previous fuller treatment of the
subject to understand that he still adhered to all that he
had said in " Social Statics."
"Political Institutions," like the other divisions of
the "Principles of Sociology" to which it belongs, is "in
part a retrospect and in part a prospect." First explain-
ing in accordance with his general theory how social
institutions have been evolved, Mr. Spencer proceeds to
indicate what he thinks will be the course of their further
evolution. In the chapter on "Property," after some
pages of examination he says (Section 539) :
Induction and deduction uniting to show as they do that at first
land is common property, there presents itself the question How
did the possession of it become individualized? There can be little
doubt of the general nature of the answer. Force, in one form or
other, is the sole cause adequate to make the members of a society
yield up their joint claim to the area they inhabit. Such force may
be that of an external aggressor or that of an internal aggressor :
but in either case it implies militant activity.
"SOCIAL STATICS" TO "POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS." 49
Having thus repeated in a form adapted to the charac-
ter of the book the declaration of " Social Statics " that
the original deeds to private property in land were writ-
ten with the sword, he proceeds to develop it, showing by
the way a comprehension of the fact that the feudal ten-
ures did not recognize the private property in land which
has grown up since, or, as he phrases it, that " the private
landownership established by militancy is an incomplete
one," being qualified by the claims of serfs and other
dependents, and by obligations to the crown or state, and
saying :
In our own case the definite ending of these tenures took place
in 1660 ; when for feudal obligations (a burden on landowners) was
substituted a beer-excise (a burden on the community).
From this, in a passage which will hereafter appear,*
he proceeds to consider what is likely to be the future
evolution of land tenure. Saying that "ownership
established by force does not stand on the same footing
as ownership established by contract," he likens individ-
ual property in land to property in slaves, and intimates
that as the one has disappeared so the other will doubt-
less disappear, to make place for landholding " by virtue
of agreements between individuals as tenants and the
community as landowner, . . . after making full allow-
ance for the accumulated value artificially given."
This is a restatement of what was said in Chapter IX.,
Section 9, of " Social Statics," where, speaking of the once
universal assumption that slavery was natural and right
and the better faith that had been generated, he adds :
It may by and by be perceived, that Equity utters dictates to
which we have not yet listened ; and men may then learn, that to
deprive others of their rights to the use of the earth, is to commit a
crime inferior only in wickedness to the crime of taking away their
lives or personal liberties.
* See Mr. Spencer's letter to the Times, pp. 98-99.
60 DECLARATION.
Thus, in so far as was consistent with the very different
scope and character of the book, Mr. Spencer repeated in
March, 1882, the views on the land question that he had
set forth in 1850. And in this connection the words I
have italicized are noteworthy as showing what was
really meant in that incongruous passage in "Social
Statics" previously discussed.
With this reassertion in "Political Institutions" of
the views on the land question set forth in "Social
Statics" we must draw a line in our review.
PAKT II.
REPUDIATION.
I. LETTER TO THE ST. JAMES'S GAZETTE.
n. "THE MAN VERSUS THE STATE."
HI. LETTER TO THE TIMES.
IV. THIS APOLOGY EXAMINED.
V. SECOND LETTER TO THE TIMES.
VI. MORE LETTERS.
There are people who hate anything in the
shape of exact conclusions ; and these are of them.
According to such, the right is never in either
extreme, but always half-way between the
extremes. They are continually trying to recon-
cile Tes and No. Ifs and buts, and excepts, are
their delight. They have so great a faith in "the
judicious mean " that they would scarcely believe
an oracle, if it uttered a full-length principle.
Were you to inquire of them whether the earth
turns on its axis from East to West, or from West
to East, you might almost expect the reply "A
little of both," or "Not exactly either." It is
doubtful whether they would assent to the axiom
that the whole is greater than its part, without
making some qualification. Herbert Spencer, 1850.
CHAPTER I.
LETTER TO THE ST. JAMES'S GAZETTE.
WITH the early years of the last decade a marked
change in common thought began to show itself ;
and the doctrine of natural, inalienable and equal rights
to land, which Mr. Spencer had avowed as it were in
academic groves, began to stir in the hearts and minds of
common men, and to make way among the great disin-
herited. Vaguely and blindly, the land question had
come to the front in Ireland, and in this form forced its
way into British politics. And " Progress and Poverty,"
first published in the United States in 1879, had begun,
by the close of 1882, to circulate in Great Britain as no
economic work had ever circulated before, reinforcing
what Herbert Spencer had said of the ethical injustice of
private property in land with the weight of political
economy and the proposal of a practical measure for
restoring equal rights. Everywhere, in short, that the
English language is spoken, the idea of natural rights to
the use of land, that in 1850 seemed dead, was beginning
to revive with a power and in a form that showed that
the struggle for its recognition had at last begun.
Believing in Mr. Spencer's good faith, deeming him
not a mere prater about justice, but one who ardently
desired to carry it into practice, we who sought to pro-
mote what he himself had said that equity sternly com-
manded naturally looked for some word of sympathy and
64 REPUDIATION.
aid from him, the more so as the years had brought him
position and influence, the ability to command attention,
and the power to affect a large body of admirers who
regard him as their intellectual leader.
But we looked in vain. When the Justice that in the
academic cloister he had so boldly invoked came forth
into the streets and market-places, to raise her standard
and call her lovers, Mr. Spencer, instead of hastening to
greet her, did his best to get out of her way, like the
young wife in the old story, who charmed the bystanders
with her invocations to Death to take her rather than her
elderly husband, but who, when Death rapped at the door
and asked, "Who calls me?" quickly replied, "The
gentleman in the next room ! "
In March, 1882, when Mr. Spencer issued " Political
Institutions," and even in August of the same year, when
he left England for a visit to the United States, there
was on the surface of English society nothing to indicate
that such views as he had expressed in " Social Statics "
were any nearer attracting popular attention and arous-
ing feeling than in 1850, for the Irish land movement
was considered what it indeed was in the main, not an
attack on private property in land, but an effort of Irish
tenants to become landowners or to get better terms.
But when Mr. Spencer returned, toward the close of
November, it was to find that the days of contemptuous
tolerance on the part of Sir John and his Grace had
gone, and that all that was deemed "respectable" in
English society had become roused to the wickedness of
those who denied the validity of private property in land.
To explain the change that had taken place in this
brief interval I must refer to my own books.
" Progress and Poverty n was received by the English
press, as all such books are at first, in silence or with
brief derision. Messrs. Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., who
LETTER TO THE ST. JAMES'S GAZETTE. 55
first published it in England, in sheets brought from the
United States, were on publication able to sell only
twenty copies in all the three kingdoms. But ere long it
began to make its way, and when, toward the close of
August, 1882, a sixpenny edition was issued, it began to
sell in tens and scores of thousands, " in the alleys and
back streets of England," the Quarterly Review said
" audibly welcomed there as a glorious gospel of justice."
Hardly was this cheap edition out and beginning to
circulate, when, conjoining with it my pamphlet on " The
Irish Land Question,"* which had also been published
in England in cheap form, the Times, on September 11,
1882, gave to " Progress and Poverty " a long and fair
review. At once the silence of the press was broken, and
from the quarterlies to the comic papers the British jour-
nals began to teem with notices and references, most of
them naturally of a kind that made the Duke of Argyll
seem mild when he called me "such a preacher of
unrighteousness as the world has never seen," and spoke
of my " immoral doctrines " and " profligate conclusions,"
the "unutterable meanness of the gigantic villainy" I
advocated, and so on.
And from being regarded in this way in the very
society in which as a great philosopher he had come to be
an honored member, it was evident that Mr. Spencer
could not escape if he adhered to his views. For although
"Social Statics" was little known in England, the quota-
tions I had made from it, both in "Progress and Pov-
erty " and in " The Irish Land Question," were bringing
those views into sharp prominence.
This was the situation as Mr. Spencer found it on his
return from the United States. The burning question a
* Now published under the name of " The Land Question," since
its effort is to show that the Irish Land Question is simply the uni-
versal land question.
66 REPUDIATION.
question beside which that of chattel slavery was almost
small had been raised in England. And he must either
stand for the truth he had seen, and endure social ostra-
cism for it, or he must deny it.
" Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and perse-
cute you, and say all manner of evil against you ! " For
this to the man who has striven to uproot a great wrong
a wrong that by the fact of its hitherto unquestioned
existence has necessarily enlisted on its side all the pow-
erful influences that dominate the organs of opinion and
rule society is the sure sign that the day he has hoped
for is at hand.
When, in 1850, Mr. Spencer had said that the rent of
land could be collected by an agent or deputy agent of
the community, quite as well as by an agent of Sir John
or his Grace, he must have known that if ever his propo-
sition attracted the attention of the interests he thus per-
sonified he would be denounced in all the established
organs of opinion, and in " polite society " regarded as a
robber. Then, I am inclined to think he would have
hailed with joy such indications of the progress of
thought. But in 1882, he no sooner found that Sir
John and his Grace had been aroused by such a proposi-
tion and were likely to hear that he had made it, than he
hastened to get the evidence out of their sight, and as far
as he could to deny it. At once, it seems from what he
tells us in 1892, he "resolved not again to import a sup-
ply " of " Social Statics," * and took the first opportunity
to write a letter.
The Edinburgh Review, for January, 1883, in an article
entitled "The Nationalization of the Land," reviewed
* " Ten years ago, after all copies of the third edition had been
sold, I resolved not again to import a supply to meet the still con-
tinued demand." Preface to "Social Statics, Abridged and Revised,"
1892.
LETTER TO THE ST. JAMES'S GAZETTE. 57
"Progress and Poverty" as fairly, it seemed to me, as
could be expected, but of course adversely. In doing so
it referred to what Mr. Spencer had said on the land ques-
tion in " Social Statics," giving him credit for proposing
to indemnify landowners, and quoting with that inter-
pretation the incongruous sentences in Section 9. In
concluding it said:
Writers like Mr. George and Mr. Herbert Spencer are at war not
only with the first principles of political economy and of law, of
social order and domestic life, but with the elements of human
nature. ... To attack the rights of private property in land is to
attack property in its most concrete form. If landed property is
not secure, no property can be protected by law, and the transmis-
sion of wealth, be it large or small, is extinguished. With it
expires the perpetuity of family life, and that future which cheers
and ennobles the labor of the present with the hopes of the future.
These are the doctrines of communism, fatal alike to the welfare of
society and to the moral character of man.
This brought out from Mr. Spencer a letter to the
St. James's Gazette of London, an able Tory journal.
Since he was writing on the subject, here was an oppor-
tunity for Mr. Spencer to correct the misapprehension (as
I now think it to be) that he had in " Social Statics " pro-
posed to compensate landowners for their land. And, if
he wished to defend himself against the charge of attack-
ing property rights and upholding the doctrines of com-
munism, here was an opportunity for him to show, for all
of us as well as for himself, that the denial of the justice
of private property in land involves no denial of true
property rights. Or if he chose to do so, here was a
chance for him straightforwardly to recant, to apologize
to landowners, and to plead that he was young and fool-
ish when he asserted, as quoted by the Edinburgh, that
" equity does not permit property in land, and that the
right of mankind to the earth's surface is still valid, all
deeds, customs, and laws notwithstanding."
58 REPUDIATION.
But, instead of manfully defending the truth he had
uttered, or straightforwardly recanting it, Mr. Spencer
sought to shelter himself behind ifs and buts, perhapses
and it-may-bes, and the implication of untruths. Here is
his letter :
To the Editor of the St. James's Gazette :
During my absence in America, there appeared in the St. James's
Gazette (27th of October, 1882) an article entitled "Mr. Herbert
Spencer's Political Theories." Though, when it was pointed out to
me after my return, I felt prompted to say something in explana-
tion of my views, I should probably have let the matter pass had I
not found that elsewhere such serious misapprehensions of them
are being diffused that rectification seems imperative.
Before commenting on the statements of your contributor, I must
devote a paragraph to certain more recent statements which have
far less justification. In old days among the Persians, the subordi-
nation of subject to ruler was so extreme that, even when punished,
the subject thanked the ruler for taking notice of him. With like
humility I suppose that now, when after I have been publishing
books for a third of a century "the leading critical organ" has
recognized my existence, I ought to feel thankful, even though the
recognition draws forth nothing save blame. But such elation as I
might otherwise be expected to feel is checked by two facts. One
is that the Edinburgh Review has not itself discovered me, but has
had its attention drawn to me by quotations in the work of Mr.
Henry George a work which I closed after a few minutes on
finding how visionary were its ideas. The other is that, though
there has been thus made known to the reviewer a book of mine
published thirty-two years ago, which I have withdrawn from cir-
culation in England, and of which I have interdicted translations,
he is apparently unconscious that I have written other books,
sundry of them political ; and especially he seems not to know that
the last of them, "Political Institutions," contains passages con-
cerning the question he discusses. Writers in critical journals
which have reputations to lose usually seek out the latest version of
an author's views ; and the more conscientious among them take the
trouble to ascertain whether the constructions they put on detached
passages are warranted or not by other passages. Had the Edin-
burgh reviewer read even the next chapter to the one from which
he quotes, he would have seen that, so far from attacking the right
LETTER TO THE ST. JAMES'S GAZETTE. 59
of private property, as he represents, my aim is to put that right
upon an unquestionable basis, the basis alleged by Locke being
unsatisfactory. He would have further seen that, so far from giv-
ing any countenance to communistic doctrines, I have devoted four
sections of that chapter to the refutation of them. Had he dipped
into the latter part of the work, or had he consulted the more
recently published "Study of Sociology" and "Political Institu-
tions," he would not have recklessly coupled me with Mr. George
as upholding " the doctrines of communism, fatal alike to the wel-
fare of society and to 1e moral character of man ; " for he would
have discovered the fact (familiar to many, though unknown to
him) that much current legislation is regarded by me as commu-
nistic, and is for this reason condemned as socially injurious and
individually degrading.
The writer of the article in the St. James's Gazette does not repre-
sent the facts correctly when he says that the view concerning
ownership of land in " Social Statics " is again expounded in
"Political Institutions" "not so fully, but with as much confi-
dence as ever." In this last work I have said that, "though indus-
trialism has thus far tended to individualize possession of land,
while individualizing all other possession, it may be doubted whether
the final stage is at present reached." Further on I have said that
"at a stage still more advanced, it may be that private ownership
of land will disappear ; " and that " it seems possible that the primi-
tive ownership of land by the community . . . will be revived."
And yet again I have said that "perhaps the right of the commu-
nity to the land, thus tacitly asserted, will, in time to come, be
overtly asserted." Now it seems to me that the words I have
italicized imply no great " confidence." Contrariwise, I think they
show quite clearly that the opinion conveyed is a tentative one.
The fact is, that I have here expressed myself in a way much more
qualified than is usual with me ; because I do not see how certain
tendencies, which are apparently conflicting, will eventually work
out. The purely ethical view of the matter does not obviously
harmonize with the political and the politico-economical views ;
some of the apparent incongruities being of the kind indicated by
your contributor. This is not the place to repeat my reasons for
thinking that the present system will not be the ultimate system.
Nor do I propose to consider the obstacles, doubtless great, which
stand in the way of change. All which I wish here to point out is
that my opinion is by no means a positive one ; and, further, that I
regard the question as one to be dealt with in the future rather
60 REPUDIATION.
than at present. These two things the quotations I have given
above prove conclusively. I am, etc.,
HERBERT SPENCER.
Mr. Spencer has had much to say of the unfairness of
his critics. But this reply is not merely unfair ; it is dis-
honest, and that in a way that makes flat falsehood seem
manly.
From this letter the casual reader would understand
that the Edinburgh reviewer, on the strength of detached
passages, had charged Mr. Spencer with attacking the
right of private property and upholding socialism, in a
sense unwarranted by the context and disproved by the
next chapter ; and that the passage quoted from " Politi-
cal Institutions" covers the same ground and disproves
the constructions put on " Social Statics."
The fact is, that the Edinburgh Review had not charged
either Mr. Spencer or myself with more than attacking
private property in land. This we had both unques-
tionably done, not only in the passages it had quoted,
but in many others. It had made no misconstruction
whatever. What it had said of "attacking the right
of private property" and "upholding the doctrines of
communism" was a mere rhetorical flourish, made as
an inference from, and by way of reply to, our denial of
the right of private property in land. Mr. Spencer
ignores the real charge and assumes the mere inference
to be the charge. Thus, changing the issue, he cites the
next chapter as if it disproved the Edinburgh's charge.
This chapter (Chapter X., "The Right of Property"),
which has been given in full, contains nothing to lessen
the force of the attack on private property in land made
in the preceding chapter. On the contrary, in this chap-
ter he reiterates his attack on private property in land,
and seeks a basis for property by carrying the idea that the
community should control land to the length of absurdity.
LETTER TO THE ST. JAMES'S GAZETTE. 61
Nor was the writer in the St. James's unjustified in
taking the reference to land in "Political Institutions"
to be a briefer indorsement of the views more fully set
forth in "Social Statics;" for "Political Institutions"
refers to private property in land as established by force,
says that it does not stand on the same basis as owner-
ship established by contract, likens it to slavery and pre-
dicts its abolition expressions which, in the absence of
any modification of the views elaborately asserted in
" Social Statics," could be taken in no other way than as
indorsing them. The passages Mr. Spencer quotes no
more modify the view of landownership set forth in
" Social Statics" than Lord Lytton's " Coming Race" con-
troverts Adam Smith's " Wealth of Nations." In " Social
Statics " Mr. Spencer declares what ought to be done ; in
the passage he quotes from " Political Institutions " he is
prognosticating as to what it is likely mil be done. By
now substituting prognostication for declaration of right,
Mr. Spencer seeks to convey the false impression that the
Edinburgh reviewer has been guilty of carelessness, and
the writer in the St. James's of misrepresentation, and
that he himself has never gone further than to express
the guarded opinion that at some time, a great way off,
men may substitute a common ownership of land for pri-
vate ownership.
Mr. Spencer is more than unfair, too, in assuming that
the charge of upholding communism, etc., is applicable
to me, though not to him. For, although my book was
too visionary for him to read, he had at least read the
Edinburgh's article, and knew that the charge against me
had no other ground than that against him the denial
of the moral validity of private property in land.
Even what he says about such a plain matter of fact
as the withdrawal of " Social Statics " from circulation in
England conveys untruth.
62 REPUDIATION.
The grievance that Mr. Spencer here alleges is that
the Edinburgh Review had commented on a book "pub-
lished thirty-two years ago, which I have withdrawn from
circulation in England, and of which I have interdicted
translations." What is to be understood from this, and
what Mr. Spencer evidently intended to have understood,
is that he had, presumably years before, withdrawn
" Social Statics " from circulation not in the mere terri-
tory of England, as distinguished from Scotland, Ireland
or the United States, but in English. To make sure of
this understanding, he adds that he has interdicted trans-
lationswhich means, not in other places, but in other
languages than English. Now the truth is, that at the
time he thus wrote, that book was being published by
his arrangement in the United States, as it had been for
years before, and continued to be for years afterwards ;
and that up to this very time he had been importing it
into England, and circulating it there. The only fila-
ment of truth in this statement, which though made inci-
dentally is of prime importance to his purpose, is, as we
now discover from his own utterance in 1892, that at this
very time, or possibly a few weeks previous, he had resolved
not again to import any more copies of " Social Statics "
into England from the United States, though still keep-
ing the book in circulation there, to be bought by whom-
soever would buy !
As for the rest of this letter, the admirers of Mr. Spen-
cer may decide for themselves what kind of ethical views
they are that will not harmonize with political economy,
and what kind of political economy it is that will not har-
monize with ethics, and what they think of an ethical
teacher who, on a question that involves the health and
happiness, nay, the very life and death of great bodies of
men, shelters himself behind such phrases as, " it may be
doubted," " it may be," " it seems possible," and so on, and
LETTER TO THE ST. JAMES'S GAZETTE. 63
endeavors to make them show that he regards the matter
of right as one to deal with in the future and not at
present.
This letter is not a withdrawal or a recantation of
what Mr. Spencer had said against private property in
land. It does not rise to that dignity. It is merely an
attempt to avoid responsibility and to placate by subter-
fuge the powerful landed interests now aroused to anger.
But it does indicate that a moral change had come over
Mr. Spencer since he wrote " Social Statics."
In several places in that book occurs the strong, idio-
matic phrase, "a straight man." This letter to the St.
James's is not the letter of a straight man.
But as hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue, so
the very crookedness of this letter indicates Mr. Spencer's
reluctance flatly to deny the truth to which he had borne
witness. He no more wanted to deny it than Simon
Peter to deny his Lord. But the times had changed
since he wrote " Social Statics." From an unknown man,
printing with difficulty an unsalable book, he had become
a popular philosopher, to whom all gratifications of sense,
as of intellect, were open.* He had tasted the sweets of
London society, and in the United States, from which he
had just returned, had been hailed as a thinker beside
whom Newton and Aristotle were to be mentioned only to
point his superiority. And, while the fire in the hall of
* "His recreations have been systematic concerts, operas,
theaters, billiards, salmon-fishing, yachting, city rambles, and
country excursions ; and it has been his fixed rule, when work grew
burdensome, to strike his tasks abruptly and go away for pleasure
and amuse himself till work itself again became attractive and
enjoyable." Preface, by Professor E. L. Toumans, to "Herbert
Spencer on the Americans and the Americans on Herbert Spencer,
being a full report of his interview and of the proceedings at the Fare-
well Banquet of Nov. 9, 1882. n New York : D. Appleton $ Co.
64 REPUDIATION.
the High Priest was warm and pleasant, "society" had
become suddenly aroused to rage against those who ques-
tioned private property in land. So when the St. James's
and the Edinburgh, both of them chosen organs of Sir
John and his Grace, accused Herbert Spencer of being
one of these, it was to him like the voices of the accusing
damsels to Peter. Fearing, too, that he might be thrust
out in the cold, he, too, sought refuge in an alibi.
CHAPTER n.
"THE MAN VERSUS THE STATE."
MR. SPENCER'S letter to the St. James's Gazette
seems to have produced the effect he intended, and
though in the United States, D. Appleton & Co. continued
to advertise and sell " Social Statics," and to send to Mr.
Spencer his royalties upon it ;* in England, Sir John and
his Grace were satisfied that he had been much maligned
by garbled extracts from an early work that he had since
suppressed.
But Mr. Spencer himself seems to have felt that to
make his position among the adherents of the House of
Have quite comfortable, he must do something positive as
well as negative. Se we find his next work to be one
which the Liberty and Property Defense League, a
society formed in London for defending private property
in land, have ever since been active in pushing.
In 1884 Mr. Spencer issued four magazine articles,
"The New Toryism," "The Coming Slavery," "The Sins
of Legislators," and "The Great Political Superstition,"
* " The American people have returned the compliment by pur-
chasing more than a hundred thousand of his books reprinted in,
this country, and upon every volume of which he has been paid as
if he had been an American author." PROFESSOR E. L. YOUMANS,
Herbert Spencer on the Americans and the Americans on Herbert
Spencer.
66 REPUDIATION.
which were then published in a volume entitled "The
Man versus the State," and have since been used (1892) to
fill out the revised edition of " Social Statics."
These essays are strongly individualistic, condemning
even bitterly any use of governmental powers or funds
to regulate the conditions of labor or alleviate the evils of
poverty. In this Mr. Spencer was continuing and accen-
tuating a line begun in " Social Statics," and, in the view
of those who think as I do, was in the main right ; for
governmental interferences and regulations and bonuses
are in their nature restrictions on freedom, and cannot
cure evils that primarily flow from denials of freedom.
But what in these essays marks a new departure, what
makes their individualism as short-sighted as socialism,
and brutal as well, is that they assume that nothing at all
is needed, in the nature either of palliative or remedy ;
that they utterly ignore the primary wrong from which
proceed the evilp that socialism blindly protests against.
In them Mr. Spencer is like one who might insist that
each should swim for himself in crossing a river, ignor-
ing the fact that some had been artificially provided with
corks and others artificially loaded with lead. He is like
the preachers who thundered to slaves, "Thou shalt not
steal ! " but had no whisper against the theft involved in
their enslavement.
The burden of these essays is, " If any would not work,
neither should he eat ! " This is declared to be a tenet
of the Christian religion, justified by science, as indeed,
though much ignored by Christians and by scientists,
it is.
To whom does Mr. Spencer refer as the idlers who yet
eat?
" Why, of course," the reader of " Social Statics " would
say, "he refers to Sir John and his Grace, and to the
landholding dukes to whom in 'Social Statics' he refers
"THE MAN VERSUS THE STATE." 67
by name to them and their class, preeminently. For
they never work, and take pride that their fathers and
grandfathers and great-grandfathers never worked. Yet
they eat, whoever else goes hungry, and that of the bets."
But the reader of "Social Statics" would be wrong.
Mr. Spencer does not refer to them, nor allude to them,
nor seem to think of them. The people on whom he
would enforce the command "If any would not work,
neither should he eat!" are not the fashionable idlers,
whose only occupation is to kill time and " get an appe-
tite," but the poor idlers who say they have no work.
" Say, rather, that they either refuse work or quickly turn
themselves out of it ! " cries the indignant philosopher,
regardless now of what he once insisted on that these
men are disinherited; robbed by unjust law of their
birthright, of their rightful share in the element without
which no man can work ; dependent, therefore, on others
for leave to work, and often not getting that leave.
In 1850, while condemning the socialistic palliatives for
poverty, Mr. Spencer at the same time recognized the
truth that prompts them. He was not content to show
the futility of such attempts to assuage the evils of
undeserved poverty without pointing out the giant wrong
from which undeserved poverty springs. He began his
enumeration of the evils of over-government, not as now,
by merely denouncing what is done in kindly though
misplaced efforts to help the downtrodden, but by recog-
nizing the primary wrong. Beginning this enumeration
(page 293, " Social Statics ") he says :
As the first item on the list there stands that gigantic injustice
inflicted on nineteen-twentieths of the community by the usurpa-
tion of the soil by the breach of their rights to the use of the
earth. For this the civil power is responsible has itself been a
party to the aggression has made it legal, and still defends it as
right.
68 KEPUDIATION.
And of the moral truth involved in theories that in
" The Man versus the State " he unreservedly denounces,
he says (" Social Statics," pp. 345-346) :
Erroneous as are these poor-law and communist theories these
assertions of a man's right to a maintenance and of his right to
have work provided for him they are, nevertheless, nearly related
to a truth. They are unsuccessful efforts to express the fact, that
whoso is born on this planet of ours thereby obtains some interest in
it may not be summarily dismissed again may not have his exis-
tence ignored by those in possession. In other words, they are
attempts to embody that thought which finds its legitimate utter-
ance in the law all men have equal rights to the use of the Earth.
The prevalence of these crude ideas is natural enough. A vague
perception that there is something wrong about the relationship in
which the great mass of mankind stand to the soil and to life, was
sure eventually to grow up. After getting from under the grosser
injustice of slavery men could not help beginning, in course of time,
to feel what a monstrous thing it was that nine people out of ten
should live in the world on sufferance, not having even standing-
room, save by allowance of those who claimed the earth's surface.
Could it be right that all these human beings should not only be
without claim to the necessaries of life should not only be denied
the use of those elements from which such necessaries are obtain-
ablebut should further be unable to exchange their labor for such
necessaries, except by leave of their more fortunate fellows? Could
it be that the majority had thus no better title to existence than
one based upon the good will or convenience of the minority?
Could it be that these landless men had "been mis-sent to this
earth, where all the seats were already taken"? Surely not. And
if not, how ought matters to stand? To all which questions, now
forced upon men's minds in more or less definite shapes, there
come, amongst other answers, these theories of a right to a main-
tenance and a right of labor. Whilst, therefore, they must be
rejected as untenable, we may still recognize in them the imperfect
utterance of the moral sense in its efforts to express equity.
The wrong done to the people at large, by robbing them of their
birthright their heritage in the earth is, indeed, thought by some
a sufficient excuse for a poor-law, which is regarded by such as an
instrumentality for distributing compensation. There is much
plausibility in this construction of the matter. But . . . why
organize a diseased state? Sometime or other this morbid constitu-
"THE MAN VESSUS THE STATE." 69
tion of things, under which the greater part of the body politic is
cut off from direct access to the source of life, must be changed.
Of anything like this there is in " The Man versus the
State " no word. Mr. Spencer again takes up his parable
against government interference ; but he takes it up with
every reference to the gigantic injustice inflicted upon
nineteen-twentieths of his countrymen omitted; with
everything excluded that might be offensive to the rich
and powerful.
Nor does he shrink from misrepresenting those who
stand for the truth he has now virtually, though not
openly, abandoned. In his letter to the St. James's
Gazette he declared that he had not read my work ; but in
11 The Coming Slavery " occurs this :
Communistic theories, partially indorsed by one Act of Parlia-
ment after another, and tacitly if not avowedly favored by numer-
ous public men seeking supporters, are being advocated more and
more vociferously by popular leaders, and urged on by organized
societies. There is the movement for land nationalization which,
aiming at a system of land tenure, equitable in the abstract, is, as
all the world knows, pressed by Mr. George and his friends with
avowed disregard for the just claims of existing owners, and as the
basis of a scheme going more than half-way to state socialism.
And in " The Sins of Legislators" this :
And now this doctrine [that society as a whole has an absolute
right over the possessions of each member], which has been tacitly
assumed, is being openly proclaimed. Mr. George and his friends,
Mr. Hyndman and his supporters, are pushing the theory to its
logical issue. They have been instructed by examples, yearly
increasing in number, that the individual has no rights but what
the community may equitably override ; and they are now saying
"It shall go hard, but we will better the instruction, and abolish
individual rights altogether."
Charity requires the assumption that when Mr. Spencer
wrote these passages he had not read anything I had
70 REPUDIATION.
written; and that up to the present time when he has
again reprinted them he has not done so.
For in nothing I have ever written or spoken is there
any justification for such a characterization. I am not
even a land nationalizationist, as the English and German
and Australian land nationalizationists well know. I
have never advocated the taking of land by the state or
the holding of land by the state, further than needed for
public use ; still less the working of land by the state.
From my first word on the subject I have advocated what
has come to be widely known as " the single tax ; " i.e.,
the raising of public revenues by taxation on the value of
land irrespective of the improvements on it taxation
which, as fast as possible and as far as practicable, should
be made to absorb economic rent and take the place of
all other taxes. And among the reasons I have always
urged for this has been the simplification of government
and the doing away of the injustice of which govern-
ments are guilty in taking from individuals property that
rightfully belongs to the individual. I have not gone so
far as Mr. Spencer in limiting the functions of govern-
ment, for I believe that whatever becomes a necessary
monopoly becomes a function of the state ; and that the
sphere of government begins where the freedom of com-
petition ends, since in no other way can equal liberty be
assured. But within this line I have always opposed
governmental interference. I have been an active, con-
sistent and absolute free trader, and an opponent of all
schemes that would limit the freedom of the individual.
I have been a stancher denier of the assumption of the
right of society to the possessions of each member, and a
clearer and more resolute upholder of the rights of prop-
erty than has Mr. Spencer. I have opposed every propo-
sition to help the poor at the expense of the rich. I have
always insisted that no man should be taxed because of
"THE MAN rUBSUS THE STATE." 71
his wealth, and that no matter how many millions a man
might rightfully get, society should leave to him every
penny of them.
All this would have been evident to Mr. Spencer if he
had read any one of my books before writing about me. \
But he evidently prefers the easier method which Parson
Wilbur, in Lowell's " Biglow Papers," was accustomed to
take with "a print called the Liberator, whose heresies,"
he said, " I take every proper opportunity of combating,
and of which, I thank God, I have never read a single J
line."
To do him justice, I do not think Mr. Spencer had any
desire to misrepresent me. He was prompted to it by
the impulse that always drives men to abuse those who
adhere to a cause they have betrayed, as the readiest way
of assuring Sir John and his Grace that no proposal to
disturb their rentals would in the future come from him.
Another thing, however, is to be noticed here the
admission that the movement for land nationalization is
"aiming at a system of land tenure equitable in the
abstract." Mr. Spencer has not reached the point of
utterly denying the truth he had seen. The abolition of
private property in land he still admits is equitable in the
abstract.
Now, what is meant by equitable in the abstract ? Let
" Social Statics," page 64, tell us :
For what does a man really mean by saying of a thing that it is
"theoretically just," or "true in principle," or "abstractedly
right " ? Simply that it accords with what he, in some way or
other, perceives to be the established arrangements of Divine rule.
When he admits that an act is "theoretically just," he admits it to
be that which, in strict duty, should be done. By "true in prin-
ciple," he means in harmony with the conduct decreed for us. The
course which he calls "abstractedly right," he believes to be the
appointed way to human happiness. There is no escape. The
expressions mean this, or they mean nothing.
CHAPTER
LETTER TO THE TIMES.
NO one can boldly utter a great truth, and then, when
the times have become ripe for it, and his utterance
voices what is burning in hearts and consciences, whisper
it away. So despite his apology to landlords in the St.
James's Gazette, and the pains he had taken to make his
peace with them in " The Man versus the State," what he
had said on the land question in "Social Statics" came
up again to trouble Mr. Spencer.
But for a long time his position on the land question
was almost as dual as that of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
In his personal circle it was doubtless assumed that he
was a stanch supporter of private property in land, and
if his earlier opinions were known there it was under-
stood that he was sorry for them. And he had become,
if not an active member, at least a valued ally of the Lib-
erty and Property Defense League. But in a wider circle
what he had written against private property in land was
telling with increasing force. For to this wider circle his
St. James's apology had hardly reached, and even when
known was not deemed a recantation of the opinions
deliberately expressed in " Social Statics," which he still,
through D. Appleton & Co., continued to publish, without
any modification whatever. The steady growth of the
movement that began with the publication of " Progress
LETTER TO THE TIMES. 73
and Poverty" everywhere enlisted active men in the
propagation of the idea of the equality of rights to land
and called wide attention to what he had said on that
subject. They naturally seized on the argument against
the justice of private property in land in Chapter IX. of
" Social Statics," and spread it broadcast, as the utterance
of one now widely esteemed the greatest of philosophers.
Of all else that Mr. Spencer has written, there is nothing
that has had such a circulation as has thus been given to
this chapter. It was printed and is still being printed by
many American newspapers,* and was issued in tract
form for free distribution in the United States, Canada
and Australia; editions of hundreds of thousands being
issued at a time,t many of which must have reached
Great Britain, even if it was not reprinted there.
This wide circulation of his condemnation of private
property in land did not, it is probable, much trouble Mr.
Spencer, since it did not reach his London circle. But in
November, 1889 six years after his letter to the St.
James's Gazette some echoes of it made their way into
the Times, the very journalistic center of high English
respectability.
The matter thus got into the Times: Mr. John Morley,
Member of Parliament for Newpastle, being in that city,
was interviewed by some of his constituents, representing
a labor organization. Among other questions land nation-
alization was brought up ; Mr. John Laidler, a bricklayer,
* Even as I write I am constantly receiving, especially from the
West, copies of papers which contain Chapter IX. of "Social
Statics," and which in ignorance of all he has since said, continue
to speak of Mr. Spencer as an advocate of equal rights to land.
t About the time I ran for Mayor of New York (1886) on a plat-
form which attracted great attention to the idea of equal rights to
land, one enthusiastic advocate of the idea, Mr. W. J. Atkinson,
himself printed some 500,000 copies.
74 REPUDIATION.
speaking for it. Mr. Morley expressing dissent, Mr.
Laidler cited the authority of Mr. Spencer in support of
the ideas that land had been made private property by
force and fraud, and should be appropriated by the com-
munity for the benefit of all. The Times of November 5,
contained a report of this interview.
This report in the Times aroused Mr. Spencer at once.
For although he had no objection to the circulation of his
radical utterances in America, where through D. Apple-
ton & Co. he was still publishing and advertising " Social
Statics," it was evidently quite a different matter to him
that they should be known in the pleasant circle wherein
with Sir John and his Grace and the peers and judges of
the Liberty and Property Defense League he was person-
ally dwelling. He promptly sent this letter to the Times.
It appeared on the 7th.
To the Editor of the Times.
SIR : During the interview between Mr. Morley and some of his
constituents, reported in your issue of the 5th inst., I was referred
to as having set forth certain opinions respecting landownership.
Fearing that, if I remain silent, many will suppose I have said
things which I have not said, I find it needful to say something in
explanation.
Already within these few years I have twice pointed out that
these opinions (made to appear by those who have circulated them
widely different from what they really are, by the omission of
accompanying opinions) were set forth in my first work, published
forty years ago ; and that, for the last twelve or fifteen years, I
have refrained from issuing new editions of that work and have
interdicted translations, because, though I still adhere to its general
principles, I dissent from some of the deductions.
The work referred to "Social Statics" was intended to be a
system of political ethics absolute political ethics, or that which
ought to be, as distinguished from relative political ethics, or that
which is at present the nearest practicable approach to it. The
conclusion reached concerning landownership was reached while
seeking a valid basis for the right of property, the basis assigned
by Locke appearing to me invalid. It was argued that a satisfac-
LETTER TO THE TIMES. 75
tory ethical warrant for private ownership could arise only by con-
tract between the community, as original owner of the inhabited
area, and individual members, who became tenants, agreeing to
pay certain portions of the produce, or its equivalent in money, in
consideration of recognized claims to the rest. And in the course
of the argument it was pointed out that such a view of landowner-
ship is congruous with existing legal theory and practice ; since in
law every landowner is held to be a tenant of the Crown that is,
of the community, and since, in practice, the supreme right of the
community is asserted by every Act of Parliament which, with a
view to public advantage, directly or by proxy takes possession of
land after making due compensation.
All this was said in the belief that the questions raised were not
likely to come to the front in our time or for many generations ;
but, assuming that they would sometime come to the front, it was
said that, supposing the community should assert overtly the
supreme right which is now tacitly asserted, the business of com-
pensation of landowners would be a complicated one
"One that perhaps cannot be settled in a strictly equitable
manner. . . . Most of our present landowners are men who have,
either mediately or immediately, either by their own acts or by the
acts of their ancestors, given for their estates equivalents of
honestly earned wealth, believing that they were investing their
savings in a legitimate manner. To justly estimate and liquidate
the claims of such is one of the most intricate problems society
will one day have to solve."
To make the position I then took quite clear, it is needful to add
that, as shown in a succeeding chapter, the insistence on this
doctrine, in virtue of which "the right of property obtains a legiti-
mate foundation," had for one of its motives the exclusion of
Socialism and Communism, to which I was then as profoundly
averse as I am now.
Investigations made during recent years into the various forms
of social organization, while writing the " Principles of Sociology,"
have in part confirmed and in part changed the views published in
1850. Perhaps I may be allowed space for quoting from "Political
Institutions " a paragraph showing the revised conclusions arrived at :
"At first sight it seems fairly inferable that the absolute owner-
ship of land by private persons must be the ultimate state which
industrialism brings about. But though industrialism has thus far
tended to individualize possession of land while individualizing all
other possession, it may be doubted whether the final stage is at
76 REPUDIATION.
present reached. Ownership established by force does not stand
on the same footing as ownership established by contract; and
though multiplied sales and purchases, treating the two ownerships
in the same way, have tacitly assimilated them, the assimilation
may eventually be denied. The analogy furnished by assumed
rights of possession over human beings helps us to recognize this
possibility. For, while prisoners of war, taken by force and held
as property in a vague way (being at first much on a footing with
other members of a household), were reduced more definitely to
the form of property when the buying and selling of slaves became
general; and, while it might centuries ago have been thence
inferred that the ownership of man by man was an ownership in
course of being permanently established, yet we see that a later
stage of civilization, reversing this process, has destroyed owner-
ship of man by man. Similarly, at a stage still more advanced, it
may be that private ownership of land will disappear. As that
primitive freedom of the individual which existed before war
established coercive institutions and personal slavery comes to be
reestablished as militancy declines, so it seems possible that the
primitive ownership of land by the community, which, with the
development of coercive institutions, lapsed in large measure or
wholly into private ownership, will be revived as industrialism
further develops. The regime of contract, at present so far
extended that the right of property in movables is recognized only
as having arisen by exchange of services or products under agree-
ments, or by gift from those who had acquired it under such agree-
ments, may be further extended so far that the products of the soil
will be recognized as property only by virtue of agreements between
individuals as tenants and the community as landowner. Even
now, among ourselves, private ownership of land is not absolute.
In legal theory landowners are directly or indirectly tenants of the
Crown (which in our day is equivalent to the state, or, in other
words, the community) ; and the community from time to time
resumes possession after making due compensation. Perhaps the
right of the community to the land, thus tacitly asserted, will in
time to come be overtly asserted and acted upon after making full
allowance for the accumulated value artificially given. . . . There
is reason to suspect that, while private possession of things pro-
duced by labor will grow even more definite and sacred than at
present, the inhabited area, which cannot be produced by labor,
will eventually be distinguished as something which may not be
privately possessed. As the individual, primitively owner of him-
LETTER TO THE TIMES. 77
self, partially or wholly loses ownership of himself during the
militant regime, but gradually resumes it as the industrial regime
develops, so possibly the communal proprietorship of land, par-
tially or wholly merged in the ownership of dominant men during
evolution of the militant type, will be resumed as the industrial
type becomes fully evolved" (pp. 643-646).
The use of the words "possible," "possibly," and "perhaps," in
the above extracts shows that I have no positive opinion as to what
may hereafter take place. The reason for this state of hesitancy is
that I cannot see my way toward reconciliation of the ethical
requirements with the politico-economical requirements. On the
one hand, a condition of things under which the owner of, say, the
Scilly Isles might make tenancy of his land conditional upon pro-
fessing a certain creed or adopting prescribed habits of life, giving
notice to quit to any who did not submit, is ethically indefensible.
On the other hand, "nationalization of the land," effected after
compensation for the artificial value given by cultivation, amount-
ing to the greater part of its value, would entail, in the shape of
interest on the required purchase money, as great a sum as is now
paid in rent, and indeed a greater, considering the respective rates
of interest on landed property and other property. Add to which,
there is no reason to think that the substituted form of administra-
tion would be better than the existing form of administration.
The belief that land would be better managed by public officials
than it is by private owners is a very wild belief.
What the remote future may bring forth there is no saying ; but
with a humanity anything like that we now know, the implied
reorganization would be disastrous. I am, etc.,
HEEBEBT SPENCER.
ATHEKSUM CLUB, Nov. 6.
CHAPTER IV.
THIS APOLOGY EXAMINED.
TO drop into one of Mr. Spencer's favorite methods of
illustration :
" I am told," said the respectable grandmother, with a
big stick in her hand, " that you are the boy who broke
down my fence and told all the other boys that they were
at liberty to go into my orchard and take my apples."
" It is not true," replied the trembling small boy ; " I
didn't do it. And I didn't mean to do it. And when
I did it I was only trying to mend your fence, which I
found was weak. And the reason I did it was to keep
bad boys out. And I have always said you ought to be
paid for your apples. And I won't do it again ! And I
am certain your apples would give boys stomach-ache."
This letter to the Times repeats the same line of excuse
made six years before in the St. James's Gazette. Embold-
ened by the success of that apology, for no one seems to
have thought it worth while to point out its misstate-
ments, Mr. Spencer undertakes to face down the New-
castle bricklayer in the same way, and with even bolder
crookedness.
The question in issue is a question of fact whether, as
asserted by Mr. Laidler, Mr. Spencer had in "Social
Statics " advocated land nationalization, and incidentally,
whether he had declared that the land had been made
THIS APOLOGY EXAMINED. 79
private property by force and fraud. Without venturing
specifically to deny this, Mr. Spencer denies it by implica-
tion, and gives an impression thus expressed editorially
by the Times on the 9th of November :
So without denying that he did once say something of the sort,
he [Mr. Spencer] explains that it was forty years ago, and that for
the last fifteen years he has been doing all that he can to suppress
the book in which he said it, and that he never meant his words to
have any bearing upon practical questions.
Put into straightforward English, what Mr. Spencer
says in this letter to the Times is
That he had not favored land nationalization.
That he had been made to appear to have done so by
quotations from " Social Statics " divested of their qual-
ifying context.
That for the last twelve or fifteen years he had stopped
the publication of that work.
That "Social Statics" was not intended to suggest
practical political action.
That what was said therein of landownership was said
in the effort to find a valid basis for the right of prop-
erty, and to exclude socialism and communism; that it
involved no departure from the existing legal theory and
practice; was said in the belief that the land question
would not come to the front for many generations, and
admitted the right of the landowners to compensation.
That his present conclusions are, that while possibly
the community may sometime resume land after due
compensation to landowners, he has no positive opinion
as to whether it will or not.
That as to this he cannot harmonize ethics with politi-
cal economy, for while a condition may be imagined
under which private landownership might be injurious,
its abolition would require the payment to landowners of
80 REPUDIATION.
as great and indeed a greater sum than is now paid in
rent; would involve the management of land by public
officials, and that with humanity anything like that we
now know, this would be disastrous.
All this, so far as it relates to the question in issue, is
simply not true.
Mr. Spencer, in " Social Statics," did condemn private
property in land, did advocate the resumption of land by
the community, did unequivocally and unreservedly, and
with all his force, declare for what is now called land
nationalization. That he did so does not rest on any
forcing of words, any wresting of sentences from their
context. It is the burden of all he says on the subject,
and of the most vital part of the book. In the whole
volume there is no word in modification of the opinions
so strongly and clearly expressed in the full quotations I
have made.
Nor is it true that the conclusion of " Social Statics "
concerning landownership "was reached while seeking
a valid basis for the right of property." It was reached
as a primary corollary of the first principle : the freedom
of every man to do all that he wills provided he infringes
not the equal freedom of any other man, and was deduced
directly from the facts of human existence :
Given a race of beings having like claims to pursue the objects
of their desires given a world adapted to the gratification of those
desires a world into which such beings are similarly born, and it
unavoidably follows that they have equal rights to the use of this
world.
Mr. Spencer's questioning of Locke's derivation of the
right of property, so far from being the cause of his
denial of the validity of private property in land, grows,
as we have seen, out of his idea that the only right to
land is that of the community. What he has to say
THIS APOLOGY EXAMINED. 81
against socialism and communism, instead of being a
motive for his advocacy of land nationalization, is brought
in to strengthen land nationalization by showing that it
does not involve either. And so, what Mr. Spencer gives
the Times to understand as to the congruity of the view of
landownership taken in " Social Statics " with existing
legal theory and practice, is so flagrantly untrue that one
wonders at its audacity.
As to what Mr. Spencer says of the intent of " Social
Statics," the only intelligible meaning that can be put on
it is that which the editor of the Times put, " That he
never meant his words to have any bearing upon practi-
cal questions."
The exact phraseology is
The work referred to "Social Statics" was intended to be a
system of political ethics absolute political ethics, or that which
ought to be, as distinguished from relative political ethics, or that
which is at present the nearest practicable approach to it.
If this means anything, it means that "Social Statics"
was written to set forth a system of political ethics that
cannot be carried into conduct now, and that no one is
under any obligation to try to carry into conduct.
The applications of ethics, like the applications of
mechanics, or chemistry, or any other science or body of
laws, must always be relative, in the sense that one prin-
ciple or law is to be taken in consideration with other
principles or laws : so that conduct that would have the
sanction of ethics where one is beset by robbers or mur-
derers might be very different from the conduct that
ethics would sanction under normal and peaceful condi-
tions. In " The Data of Ethics," one of the more recent
of the works which set forth the Spencerian philosophy,
written long after "Social Statics," this distinction
between pure ethics and applied ethics is, by one of the
82 REPUDIATION.
confusions that in that philosophy pass for definitions,
converted into a distinction between absolute ethics and
relative ethics. Yet, if there be any sort of ethics that
has no relation to conduct here and now, the best term
for it is Pickwickian ethics.
But the question here is not a question of definition.
It is a question of fact.
Now, however Mr. Spencer's opinions and wishes may
have changed since "Social Statics" was written, that
book still shows that, when he wrote it, his intention in
exposing the iniquity of private property in land was to
arouse public opinion to demand its abolition. In " Social
Statics " he denounced not only private property in land :
he denounced slavery, then in the United States and other
countries, a still-living thing ; he denounced protection ;
he denounced restrictions on the right of free speech, the
denial to women of equal rights, the coercive education
of children, the then existing restrictions on the fran-
chise, the cost and delays of legal proceedings, the main-
tenance of poor laws, the establishment of state schools,
government colonization, etc. Were all these pleas for
reforms, some of which Mr. Spencer has lived to see
accomplished, and others of which he is still advocating,
Pickwickian also?
If Mr. Spencer, in what he had to say on the land ques-
tion in " Social Statics," was talking mere abstract politi-
cal ethics something totally different from practical
ethics what did he mean by declaring that " Equity does
not permit property in land " ? What did he mean by
saying that pure equity " enjoins a protest against every
existing pretension to the individual possession of the
soil, and dictates the assertion that the right of mankind
at large to the earth's surface is still valid all deeds, cus-
toms, and laws notwithstanding " ? What did he mean
by scornfully sneering at those who " are continually try-
THIS APOLOGY EXAMINED. 83
ing to reconcile yes and no," and who delight "in ifs,
buts, and excepts " ? What did he mean by saying, " In
this matter of land tenure the verdict of morality must be
either yea or nay. Either men have a right to make the
soil private property or they have not.' There is no
medium " ? What did he mean in pointing out that what
is now called land nationalization "need cause no very
serious revolution in existing arrangements," and that
" Equity sternly commands it to be done " ? What did he
mean by putting, " as the first item on the list " of the
injuries which government at the time he wrote was
doing, " that gigantic injustice inflicted on nineteen-twen-
tieths of the community by the usurpation of the soil-
by the breach of their rights to the use of the earth"?
What did he mean by saying that the only plausible
defense of the poor laws was " the wrong done to people
at large by robbing them of their birthright their heri-
tage in the earth "by asking, " Why organize a diseased
state?" by declaring, "Sometime or other this morbid
constitution of things, under which the greater part of
the body politic is cut off from direct access to the source
of life, must be changed."
Did it all relate to the sort of ethics that has no bear-
ing on practical questions ?
Whatever may be the ethical views of Mr. Spencer now
that his eyes have been put out, and he has been set to
grind in the house of the lords of the Philistines, the
young Samson of "Social Statics" with locks as yet
unshorn by the social Delilah knew nothing of any such
ethics. Not merely in what I have quoted, but through-
out the book, from first page to last, the burden of " Social
Statics " is the necessity, the sacred duty of destroying
abuses that fetter the equal liberty of men. He sees,
indeed as who does not? that before liberty can truly
reign men must be fit for liberty j and he realizes that
84 REPUDIATION.
there may be social conditions in which liberty might
temporarily work ill ; but he insists again and again that
wherever there is any yearning for liberty, any percep-
tion of the wrong done by its denial, there the time has
come for the struggle against injustice to be made, and
that the way to fit men for the enjoyment of rights is to
destroy wrongs. The central thought of the book, that
permeates all its parts, is that of a divinely appointed
order, which men are bound to obey a God-given law, as
true in the social sphere as the laws of physics are true
in the physical sphere, to which all human regulations
must be made to conform ; and that this law is the law
of equal freedom the law from which is deduced the
condemnation of private property in land. For those
who palter with expediency; for those who would dally
with wrong; for those who say that a thing is right in
the abstract, but that practical considerations forbid its
being carried into effect Mr. Spencer, from the first
page of " Social Statics " to the last, has nothing but the
utmost contempt and scorn.
Here is one extract from the close of the introduction
to " Social Statics " (pp. 51, 56, 60-65) which will show how
widely different were the ethics taught in " Social Statics "
from what the author of the Spencerian philosophy, in
1889, told the Times they were :
And yet, unable as the imperfect man may be to fulfil the perfect
law, there is no other law for him. One right course only is open ;
and he must either follow that or take the consequences. The
conditions of existence will not bend before his perversity; nor
relax in consideration of his weakness. Neither, when they are
broken, may any exception from penalties be hoped for. " Obey or
suffer," are the ever-repeated alternatives. Disobedience is sure to
be convicted. And there are no reprieves. . . .
Our social edifice may be constructed with all possible labor and
ingenuity, and be strongly cramped together with cunningly devised
enactments, but if there be no rectitude in its component parts, if
THIS APOLOGY EXAMINED. 85
it is not buflt on upright principles, it will assuredly tumble to
pieces. As well might we seek to light a fire with ice, feed cattle
on stones, hang our hats on cobwebs, or otherwise disregard the
physical laws of the world, as go contrary to its equally imperative
ethical laws.
Yes, but there are exceptions, say you. We cannot always be
strictly guided by abstract principles. Prudential considerations
must have some weight. It is necessary to use a little policy.
Very specious, no doubt, are your reasons for advocating this or
the other exception. But if there be any truth in the foregoing
argument, no infraction of the law can be made with impunity.
Those cherished schemes by which you propose to attain some
desired good by a little politic disobedience, are all delusive. . . .
The reasons for thus specially insisting on implicit obedience
will become apparent as the reader proceeds. Amongst the con-
clusions inevitably following from an admitted principle, he will
most likely find several for which he is hardly prepared. Some of
these will seem strange ; others impracticable ; and it may be one
or two wholly at variance with his ideas of duty. Nevertheless,
should he find them logically derived from a fundamental truth, he
will have no alternative but to adopt them as rules of conduct,
which ought to be followed without exception. If there be any
weight in the considerations above set forth, then, no matter how
seemingly inexpedient, dangerous, injurious even, may be the
course which morality points out as "abstractedly right," the
highest wisdom is in perfect and fearless submission.
And these are the paragraphs with which (pp. 517,
518) "Social Statics" closes:
Not as adventitious, therefore, will the wise man regard the
faith that is in him, not as something which may be slighted, and
made subordinate to calculations of policy; but as the supreme
authority to which all his actions should bend. The highest truth
conceivable by him he will fearlessly utter; and will endeavor to
get embodied in fact his purest idealisms: knowing that, let what
may come of it, he is thus playing his appointed part in the world-
knowing that, if he can get done the thing he aims at well : if not
well also ; though not so well.
And thus, in teaching a uniform, unquestioning obedience, does
an entirely abstract philosophy become one with all true religion.
Fidelity to conscience this is the essential precept inculcated by
86 REPUDIATION.
both. No hesitation, no paltering about probable results, but an
implicit submission to what is believed to be the law laid down for
us. We are not to pay lip-homage to principles which our conduct
wilfully transgresses. We are not to follow the example of those
who, taking " Domine dirige nos " for their motto, yet disregard the
directions given, and prefer to direct themselves. We are not to
be guilty of that practical atheism, which, seeing no guidance for
human affairs but its own limited foresight, endeavors itself to play
the god, and decide what will be good for mankind, and what bad.
But, on the contrary, we are to search out with a genuine humility
the rules ordained for us are to do unfalteringly, without specu-
lating as to consequences, whatsoever these require ; and we are to
do this in the belief that then, when there is perfect sincerity
when each man is true to himself when every one strives to realize
what he thinks the highest rectitude then must all things prosper.
Could there be any sadder commentary upon the Her-
bert Spencer who in 1889 wrote this letter to the Times f
I am not objecting that Mr. Spencer has changed his
opinions. Such change might be for the better or might
be for the worse, but it would at least be within his
right. What I point out is that in this letter to the
Times, as in his previous letter to the St. James's Gazette,
Mr. Spencer does what is not within his right, what a
straight man could not do misstates what he previously
did say.
And while Mr. Spencer, in this letter to the Times, is
thus untruthful in regard to what he had taught in
"Social Statics," he is equally untruthful in regard to
his suppression of that book. His words are
For the last twelve or fifteen years I have refrained from issuing
new editions of that work, and have interdicted translations.
The plain meaning of this is, that for twelve or fifteen
years prior to 1889 Mr. Spencer had stopped the publica-
tion of "Social Statics." There is no other honest con-
struction. And this is the way in which it was under-
stood. The Times, in its editorial comment on Mr.
THIS APOLOGY EXAMINED. 87
Spencer's letter, taking it to mean that " for the last fif-
teen years he had been doing all he conld to suppress the
book ; " and Mr. Frederick Greenwood, who also com-
mented on the letter, taking it to mean that " for the last
fifteen years he had not allowed it to appear in any lan-
guage."
As a matter of fact, this is not true. " Social Statics "
was still being printed by Mr. Spencer's authorized pub-
lishers, D. Appleton & Co. of New York. The only scin-
tilla of truth in this denial is that, as he has since (in
1892) stated, he had seven years before this resolved that
he would import no more copies into England. As for
the "interdiction of translations," I suppose this means
that the book bore originally the usual English formula
"Rights of translation reserved;" for, judging from its
going out of print in England, and its never having been
pirated in the United States, it is not likely that any fur-
ther interdiction was needed to prevent its translation.
That Mr. Spencer should have continued the publica-
tion of " Social Statics " for years after he had told the
readers of the St. James's and the Times that he had sup-
pressed it, I can only account for on the ground that he
did not care to deprive himself of what revenue he was
drawing from its sale, and had really no objection to the
circulation of his attacks on landlordism, so long as his
London friends did not hear of it. Certain it is, that he
could have withdrawn it at any time. D. Appleton & Co.
are not book pirates, but honorable gentlemen, who pub-
lish Mr. Spencer's works under arrangement with their
author, and even in the absence of a copyright law would
certainly have ceased printing " Social Statics," if he had
requested. To any one who knows them this needs no
proof. But as a matter of fact, in 1885, when the contro-
versy between Mr. Spencer and Mr. Frederic Harrison
appeared in the Nineteenth Century, the Messrs. Appleton,
88 EEPUDIATION.
thinking there would be a large American sale for it in
book form, made plates and printed an edition.* They
had barely published this when they suppressed it, as was
understood, on a cabled request from Mr. Spencer. Not
another copy went out. The copies printed were
destroyed and the plates melted, although a rival firm did
publish the controversy, and sell a considerable number.
Or, if he had preferred that, D. Appleton & Co. would at
any time have printed in " Social Statics " any retraction
or modification of its expressions on the land question he
had wished. But, while the preface prefixed to the book
in 1864, and the note to Chapter IV. a reply to Professor
Sidgwick, inserted in 1875 and the additional preface
added in 1877, did set forth the modifications of Mr.
Spencer's opinions about various other matters, they con-
tain nothing to show any change of his opinions on the
land question; and the book has continued to be pub-
lished up to 1892 without any such modification.
It is, of course, not for me to object that Mr. Spencer
did not withdraw "Social Statics" in the only place
where it was being published, or that he did not insert a
retraction or modification of its utterances on the land
question although to me the wonder is that when, on
his return to England in 1882, he seems to have definitely
made up his mind to take the side of landlordism if
pressed to it, he did not melt every plate and buy up
every copy he could. I am only comparing Mr. Spencer's
statements in the Times with the facts, because of the evi-
dence the comparison gives of the character of the man,
* "The Nature and Reality of Religion. Controversy between
Frederic Harrison and Herbert Spencer. With an Introduction,
Notes, and an Appendix on the Religious Value of the Unknowable,
by Count IVAlviella." New York : D. Appleton & Co., 1, 3 and 5
Bond Street. 1885.
THIS APOLOGY EXAMINED. 89
and because of the light it throws on the change in his
opinions on the land question.
For this letter to the Times not only shows Mr. Spen-
cer's intense desire to be counted on the side of " vested
interests " in the struggle over the land question that was
beginning, but it also shows how he was intending to
join formally the ranks of the defenders of private prop-
erty in land without the humiliation of an open recanta-
tion of what he had said in " Social Statics." By aid of
double-barreled ethics and philosophic legerdemain Mr.
Spencer evidently hopes to keep some reputation for con-
sistency and yet uphold private property in land. As
compared with the apology in the St. James's Gazette, the
new matter in this apology in the Times consists in the
conversion of what he said in " Social Statics" (Section 7,
Chapter IX.) as illustrating that "after all nobody does
implicitly believe in landlordism," into a conformity with
"existing legal theory and practice;" in the assumption
that the compensation of which he had spoken (Section 9)
meant compensation satisfactory to landlords ; and bold-
est of all (for this in Chapter X., Section 3, he had
expressly denied), in the assumption that the recognition
of equal rights to land means the administration and
management of land by public officials.
I should like also to call the attention of those who put
faith in Mr. Spencer's philosophic acumen to the manner
in which in this letter he withdraws to the Scilly Isles,
and to the conditioning of the tenancy of land upon
" professing a certain creed or adopting prescribed habits
of life," his condemnation of private property in land, as
ethically indefensible. They have their choice between
intellectual incapacity and intellectual dishonesty. What
logical difference is there between a small island and a
large island? between the exaction of rent in personal
services and the exaction of rent in money? Is it ethi-
90 REPUDIATION.
cally defensible to deny to men their birthright, to permit
them to live on the earth only on condition that they
shall give up for the privilege all that their labor can
produce save the barest living, to reduce them to straits
that compel their children to grow up in squalor and vice
and degradation worse than any heathenism, and to pass
out of life in thousands before they are fairly in it ; yet
ethically indefensible to compel them to profess a certain
creed or adopt prescribed habits of living ? Ought it not
be clear even to a philosopher's apprentice that if English
landlords to-day do not prescribe the creed or habits of
their tenants, it is only because they do not care to, but
prefer generally to exercise their power in taking money
rent? If the Duke of Westminster wanted to have a
thousand retainers, clad in his livery, follow him to St.
James's ; if the Duke of Norfolk cared to permit no one
but Catholics to live on his estates ; if the Duke of Argyll
chose to have a buffoon at his elbow in cap and bells,
they could have any of these things as readily, in fact
even more readily, than could any Earl or Duke of the
olden time. And so indeed could any of our great
American landowners. Did Mr. Spencer never see in
London newspapers offers of employment, conditioned
on the profession of a certain creed ? Did he never, in
passing to and from the Athenseum Club, see coachmen
and footmen dressed in fantastic liveries and " sandwich
men" clad ridiculously and shamefully? Does he not
know that in the British Isles in his own time men are
driven off the land to give place to wild beasts or cattle ?
And does he not know that the power of forbidding the
use of his land gives to every landowner the same powers
of prescribing the conditions under which he will permit its
use as any owner of the Scilly Isles possibly could have ?
The view we thus get of Mr. Spencer's mental progress
and processes is interesting both philosophically and
THIS APOLOGY EXAMINED. 91
psychologically. As, however, we shall find the lines of
escape thus indicated amplified in " Justice," there is no
need of examining them now. But what he here says on
the matter of compensation has a special interest as
throwing light on what he really meant in that incongru-
ous passage in Section 9, Chapter IX., of " Social Statics,"
of which I have spoken. In this letter to the Times the
only passage from "Social Statics" that is quoted, or
indeed more than vaguely alluded to, is this. That Mr.
Spencer intends the Times and its readers to understand
this as a recognition in " Social Statics " of the justice of
the claim of landowners to compensation for their land
is clear, for he carefully leaves out all mention of the
closely linked sentences that immediately follow the pas-
sage he quotes :
But with this perplexity and our extrication from it, abstract
morality has no concern. Men having got themselves into the
dilemma by disobedience to the law, must get out of it as well as
they can ; and with as little injury to the landed class as may be.
Meanwhile, we shall do well to recollect, that there are others
besides the landed class to be considered. In our tender regard for
the vested interests of the few, let us not forget that the rights of
the many are in abeyance ; and must remain so, as long as the earth
is monopolized by individuals. Let us remember, too, that the
injustice thus inflicted on the mass of mankind, is an injustice of
the gravest nature . . . inferior only in wickedness to the crime of
taking away their lives or personal liberties.
But while it is clear that Mr. Spencer wishes the Times
and its readers to understand that he not only is, but
always was, as good a compensationist as landlords could
desire, he falls later on into an expression that again
shows, as does the passage in " Political Institutions," that
the explanation I have put upon that seemingly incon-
gruous passage in "Social Statics" is the one really
intended. In the last part of the letter he speaks of
92 REPUDIATION.
" compensation for the artificial value given ty cultivation
amounting to the greater part of its value." Not compen-
sation for land, but compensation only for improvements.
But this would never satisfy landowners, and so, with-
out respect for the axiom that the whole is greater than
its part, he proceeds to assert that compensation for this
part will equal, and indeed exceed, the value of all they
now get.
Thus we see both what the question of compensation
had really been in Mr. Spencer's own mind, and how he
now proposes to settle it, so that he may henceforward
take the side of existing landlordism.
CHAPTER V.
SECOND LETTER TO THE TIMES.
IN his letter to the Times Mr. Spencer had surely abased
himself enough to have been let alone by those whose
favor he had so dearly sought. But even those who profit
by apostasy often like to show their contempt for the
apostate. Though the Times itself accepted his apology,
it added some contemptuous reproof, and gave place to
letters from Mr. Greenwood, Professor Huxley and Sir
Louis Mallet that must have been extremely galling to a
renowned philosopher.
Here is the pertinent part of what the Times said :
So, without denying that he did once say something of the sort,
he explains that it was forty years ago, that for the last fifteen
years he has been doing all he can to suppress the book in
which he said it, and that he never meant his words to have any
bearing upon practical questions. He was in fact engaged in con-
structing a system of "absolute political ethics, or that which
ought to be," and he feels distinctly aggrieved by the transfer of
his opinions from that transcendental sphere to the very different
one in which Mr. Laidler and his friends are accustomed to dwell.
. . . What Mr. Spencer said in his youth and inexperience he has
unsaid in his maturer years and with more deliberate judgment. . . .
Were we asked to point a moral for philosophers, we should bid
them beware of meddling with the absolute. Forty years ago Mr.
Spencer set forth in search of " absolute political ethics," and con-
structed his system to his own satisfaction. But it turns out to
have been the most relative of things after all, since for the last
fifteen years it has ceased to be absolute even to the mind that
94 REPUDIATION.
conceived it. ... Mr. Spencer settled that which ought to be, as
regards landownership, but a quarter of a century later we find
him endeavoring, much to the credit of his modesty and candor, to
suppress his own version of the absolute. He does not seem, how-
ever, to have abandoned the original quest, for he gives us his
revised conclusions as to the absolute ethics of land tenure, which
appear to us to contain some of the original identical flaws which
were to be found in the older version.
The communication from Mr. Frederick Greenwood,
an able high-Tory journalist, was published by the Times
on the 9th, under the heading " A Caution to Social Phi-
losophers." Characterizing Mr. Spencer's letter to the
Times as " a heavy lesson to political philosophers," Mr.
Greenwood points out that "no matter how sorry Mr.
Spencer may be for having misled so, many poor men who
habitually hang on the authority of great men like him-
self," yet the very quotation he makes from his " Political
Institutions" contains the same seeds of error in its
admission that " ownership established by force does not
stand on the same footing as ownership established by
contract," and in its admission that " the assimilation of
the two ownerships may eventually be denied."
Sir Louis Mallet's letter, published on November 12,
was to similar effect. He pointed out that Mr. Spencer
still admitted an analogy between private property in
land and slavery, which, of course, to Sir Louis seemed
dangerous and wicked.
Professor Huxley came at the philosopher in a bull-
headed way that must have seemed very unkind. Speak-
ing in the name of those "to whom absolute political
ethics and a priori politics are alike stumbling-blocks," and
expressing the certainty that his friend, Mr. Spencer,
would be the last person willingly to abet the tendency to
sanction popular acts of injustice by antiquarian or
speculative arguments, he asked him for a categorical
answer to the question whether according to "absolute
SECOND LETTER TO THE TIMES. 95
political ethics," A. B., who has bought a piece of land in
England, as he might buy a cabbage, has a moral as well
as a legal right to his land or not ?
And he follows with these pertinent questions :
If he does not, how does " absolute political ethics " deduce his
right to compensation?
If he does, how does "absolute political ethics" deduce the
state's right to disturb him?
By this time Mr. Spencer must have wished he had not
written to the Times, though it is a striking evidence of
the little knowledge of "Social Statics" in England (a
fact on which Mr. Spencer had evidently calculated), that
in none of these letters, or in those that followed, do any
of the " hecklers," with the one exception of Mr. Laidler,
seem to have any knowledge of what Mr. Spencer had
really said in that book a knowledge that would have
roused their ire to a far higher pitch, and enabled them
to ask still harder questions.
The reader may wonder why in an attempt to deny his
utterances in "Social Statics," Mr. Spencer should have
printed the passage from " Political Institutions," which
is in reality a reaffirmation of them. The only explana-
tion I can offer is that he felt that he must print some-
thing, and had absolutely nothing else to print. For
there is no word in all his works up to this time (" Jus-
tice " being yet to come) that gives the slightest evidence
of any modification of the views set forth in " Social Stat-
ics." And since he had six years before successfully
referred to this passage, as though it indicated a modifi-
cation of his views, he probably felt safe in so using it a
second time. Thinking that it would suffice to settle Mr.
Laidler, he evidently did not calculate on its provoking a
" fire in the rear," from his own friends, the adherents of
landlordism, when he was giving up everything real, and
only striving to save a semblance of consistency.
96 REPUDIATION.
Mr. Spencer conveniently ignored the letters of Mr.
Greenwood and Sir Louis Mallet, but he did make a pre-
tense of answering Professor Huxley, in a letter pub-
lished in the Times, November 15.
Here is the letter, which, although the first paragraph
only is pertinent to the task I have in mind, I give in full,
in order to guard against Mr. Spencer's controversial
habit of saying that his utterances have been garbled :
To the Editor of the Times.
SIR : As Professor Huxley admits that his friend A. B.'s title to
his plot of land is qualified by the right of the state to dispossess
him if it sees well as, by implication, he admits that all land-
owners hold their land subject to the supreme ownership of the
state, that is, the community as he contends that any force or
fraud by which land was taken in early days does not affect the
titles of existing owners, and a fortiori does not affect the superior
title of the community and as, consequently, he admits that the
community, as supreme owner with a still valid title, may resume
possession if it thinks well, he seems to me to leave the question
standing very much where it stood ; and since he, as I suppose,
agrees with me that any such resumption, should a misjudgment
lead to it, ought to be accompanied by due compensation for all
artificial value given to land, I do not see in what respect we dis-
agree on the land question. I pass, therefore, to his comments on
absolute political ethics.
" Your treatment is quite at variance with physiological princi-
ples " would probably be the criticism passed by a modern practi-
tioner on the doings of a Sangrado, if we suppose one to have
survived. "Oh, bother your physiological principles," might be
the reply. "I have got to cure this disease, and my experience
tells me that bleeding and frequent draughts of hot water are
needed." "Well," would be the rejoinder, "if you do not kill your
patient, you will at any rate greatly retard his recovery, as you
would probably be aware had you read Professor Huxley's ' Lessons
on Elementary Physiology,' and the more elaborate books on the
subject which medical students have to master."
This imaginary conversation will sufficiently suggest that, before
there can be rational treatment of a disordered state of the bodily
functions, there must be a conception of what constitutes their
ordered state : knowing what is abnormal implies knowing what is
SECOND LETTER TO THE TIMES. 97
normal. That Professor Huxley recognizes this truth is, I suppose,
proved by the inclusion of physiology in that course of medical
education which he advocates. If he says that abandonment of the
Sangrado treatment was due, not to the teachings of physiology, but
to knowledge empirically gained, then I reply that if he expands this
statement so as to cover all improvements in medical treatment he
suicidally rejects the teaching of physiological principles as useless.
Without insisting upon that analogy between a society and an
organism which results from the interdependence of parts perform-
ing different functions though I believe he recognizes this I
think he will admit that conception of a social state as disordered
implies conception of an ordered social state. We may fairly
assume that, in these modern days at least, all legislation aims at
a better; and the conception of a better is not possible without
conception of a best. If there is rejoicing because certain diseases
have been diminished by precautions enforced, the implied ideal is
a state in which these diseases have been extinguished. If
particular measures are applauded because they have decreased
criminality, the implication is that the absence of all crime is a
desideratum. Hence, however much a politician may pooh-pooh
social ideals, he cannot take steps toward bettering the social state
without tacitly entertaining them. And though he may regard
absolute political ethics as an airy vision, he makes bit by bit
reference to it in everything he does. I simply differ from him in
contending for a consistent and avowed reference, instead of an
inconsistent and unacknowledged reference.
Even without any such strain on the imagination as may be
required to conceive a community consisting entirely of honest and
honorable men even without asking whether there is not a set of
definite limits to individual actions which such men would severally
insist upon and respect even without asserting that these limits
must, in the nature of things, result when men have severally to
carry on their lives in proximity with one another, I should have
thought it sufficiently clear that our system of justice, by interdict-
ing murder, assault, theft, libel, etc., recognizes the existence of
such limits and the necessity for maintaining them ; and I should
have thought it manifest enough that there must exist an elaborate
system of limits or restraints on conduct, by conformity to which
citizens may cooperate without dissension. Such a system,
deduced as it may be from the primary conditions to be fulfilled,
is what I mean by absolute political ethics. The complaint of Pro-
fessor Huxley that absolute political ethics does not show us what
98 REPUDIATION.
to do in each concrete case seems to be much like the complaint of
a medical practitioner who should speak slightingly of physiological
generalizations, because they did not tell him the right dressing for
a wound or how best to deal with varicose veins. I cannot here
explain further, but any one who does not understand me may find
the matter discussed at length in a chapter on " Absolute and Rela-
tive Ethics" contained in "The Data of Ethics."
It appears to me somewhat anomalous that Professor Huxley,
who is not simply a biologist but is familiar with science at large,
and who must recognize the reign of law on every hand, should
tacitly assume that there exists one group of lawless phenomena
social phenomena. For if they are not lawless if there are any
natural laws traceable throughout them, then our aim should be to
ascertain these and conform to them, well knowing that noncon-
formity will inevitably bring penalties. Not taking this view, how-
ever, it would seem as though Professor Huxley agrees with the
mass of "practical" politicians, who think that every legislative
measure is to be decided by estimation of probabilities unguided
by a priori conclusions. Well, had they habitually succeeded, one
might not wonder that they should habitually ridicule abstract
principles ; but the astounding accumulation of failures might have
been expected to cause less confidence in empirical methods. Of
the 18,110 public Acts passed between 20 Henry HI. and the end of
1872, Mr. Janson, Vice-President of the Law Society, estimates
that four-fifths have been wholly or partially repealed, and that in
the years 1870-72 there were repealed 3532 Acts, of which 2759
were totally repealed. Further, I myself found, on examining the
books for 1881-83, that in those years there had been repealed 650
Acts belonging to the present reign, besides many of preceding
reigns. Remembering that Acts which are repealed have been
doing mischief, which means loss, trouble, pain to great numbers
remembering, thus, the enormous amount of suffering which this
helter-skelter legislation has inflicted for generations and for cen-
turies, I think it would not be amiss to ask whether better guidance
may not be had, even though it should come from absolute political
ethics.
I regret that neither space nor health will permit me to discuss
any of the questions raised by Sir Louis Mallet. And here, indeed,
I find myself compelled to desist altogether. In so far as I am
concerned, the controversy must end with this letter. I am, etc.,
HERBERT SPENCER.
ATHEN^TJM CLUB, Nov. 13.
SECOND LETTER TO THE TIMES. 99
Really, this " Answer to Professor Huxley " is no answer
at all. What Mr. Spencer virtually says is: "I admit
all that the landowners may want me to admit. Let us
change the subject."
Yet even in thus changing the subject, he is obliged to
give up the distinction he had made between absolute
political ethics and relative political ethics, for his long-
drawn explanation to Professor Huxley means, if it means
anything at all, that absolute political ethics do have a
bearing on practical political conduct.
CHAPTER VI.
MORE LETTERS.
WITH this Mr. Spencer endeavored to withdraw, and
no wonder. But letters from Mr. Greenwood,
Professor Huxley, and a number of new participants,
including Auberon Herbert for the defense, continued to
appear in the Times for some time longer, and Messrs.
Greenwood and Huxley succeeded in dragging from him
another brief confession.
Professor Huxley made him give up his illustration
from physiological principles, and Mr. Greenwood, press-
ing him as to whether, as averred by Mr. Laidler, he had
ever said that to right one wrong it takes another, first
made him declare that he did not remember to have said
it, and then, pressing him still further, made him declare
he had not said it and to repudiate it if he had.
Although this is a mere side-issue, perhaps it may be
worth while, even at this late date, to vindicate Mr.
Laidler and refresh Mr. Spencer's memory. In " Social
Statics," Chapter XXI., " The Duty of the State," Section
8, may be found the doctrine which Mr. Laidler referred
to, when, in citing Mr. Spencer against Mr. Morley's
objection to land nationalization, he said, as reported by
the Times
Mr. Spencer has said that the land had been taken by force and
frand. That gentleman had also said that to right one wrong it
takes another.
MORE LETTERS. 101
This in effect, if not in exact words, Mr. Spencer cer-
tainly does say in Chapter XXI., Section 8, in combating
the doctrine of non-resistance. He declares all coercion
immoral in itself, but (using the same terms in the same
sense as Mr. Laidler) justifies government when " it uses
wrong to put down wrong." He adds :
The principle of non-resistance is not ethically true, but only
that of non-aggression. . . . We may not carelessly abandon our
rights. We may not give away our birthright for the sake of peace.
. . . We may not be passive under aggression. In due maintenance
of our claim is involved the practicability of all our duties. ... If
we allow ourselves to be deprived of that without which we cannot
fulfil the Divine will, we virtually negative that will.
I thus take the trouble to refresh Mr. Spencer's memory
and vindicate Mr. Laidler, for, although the latter gentle-
man was allowed one letter in the Times, it was after-
wards that the question was raised by Mr. Greenwood,
and I do not suppose that Mr. Laidler got another
chance, the Times speaking of him contemptuously, as a
Mr. Laidler, and printing his letter in smaller type,
although it was he who first brought out Mr. Spencer,
and provoked the whole discussion.
Mr. Laidler's letter, of which neither party to the con-
troversy seemed to care to take notice, was published by
the Times on the same day as Mr. Spencer's second letter.
He said
To (he Editor of the Times.
SIR: As one of the deputation of members of the Newcastle
Labor Electoral Organization who recently waited upon Mr. John
Morley, M.P., to ascertain his opinion on certain political and
social topics, I was intrusted by my fellow-members of the deputa-
tion with the question of the nationalization of the land, and this
subject I discussed with Mr. Morley. In doing so, I sought to back
up my position by quoting the ninth chapter of " Social Statics,"
by Mr. Herbert Spencer, and I certainly thought I had a good case
when I found on my side the most distinguished authority of our
102 REPUDIATION.
time. To my great surprise, I now find that in the letters which he
has addressed to you, Mr. Herbert Spencer appears to be very
anxious to repudiate the doctrines which he preached so eloquently
in 1850. Now, although it is a common thing for the politician of
to-day to repudiate principles and deductions which he formerly
warmly espoused and to adopt others which he once energetically
condemned, one does not expect the same vacillation on the part of
a distinguished philosopher like Mr. Herbert Spencer. I find it
difficult to understand his position, which seems to be this that
while adhering to his general principles he abandons certain deduc-
tions therefrom. Now, to my mind, the ninth chapter of "Social
Statics," which deals with "The Eight to the Use of the Earth,"
seems as true, as logical, and as unanswerable an argument in
favor of the nationalization of the land as it doubtless appeared to
Mr. Herbert Spencer on the day it was written. Let us trace the
course of his argument through the ten sections of which the
chapter is composed.
Giving a short abstract of these ten sections of Chapter
IX. Mr. Laidler continued
In the foregoing digest, beyond one or two connecting words,
the language is that of Mr. Herbert Spencer himself. Does it not
constitute an unanswerable argument in favor of the nationaliza-
tion of the land? If the author would permit it to be reprinted,
what an admirable tract the ninth chapter of "Social Statics"
would be for the propagation of socialistic* principles! But he
now seems to repudiate the offspring of his own genius ! We have,
however, a right to ask that, instead of a vague repudiation in
general terms, Mr. Herbert Spencer should tell us specifically what
deductions he has abandoned and why he has abandoned them.
We might then endeavor to answer his answers to his own proposi-
tions. Yours,
JOHN LAIDLER, Bricklayer.
How far Mr. Spencer has tried to answer his own prop-
ositions, we shall see in "Justice."
* Mr. Laidler uses the term " socialistic " in the vague way in
which it is so commonly used in England, and doubtless means
land nationalization principles.
PAET HI.
RECANTATION.
I. THE FATE OP "SOCIAL STATICS."
n. THE PLACE OP "JUSTICE" IN THE SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY.
in. THE SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY.
IV. THE IDEA OP JUSTICE IN THE SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY.
V. MR. SPENCER'S TASK.
VI. "THE RIGHTS TO THE USES OP NATURAL MEDIA."
VII. "JUSTICE" ON THE EIGHT TO LIGHT AND AIR.
Vm. "JUSTICE" ON THE BIGHT TO LAND.
IX. "JUSTICE" THE EIGHT OP PROPERTY.
X. THE EIGHT OP PROPERTY AND THE BIGHT OP TAXATION.
XI. COMPENSATION.
XII. "JUSTICE" THE LAND QUESTION.
Xin. PRINCIPAL BROWN.
Equity therefore does not permit property in
land. . . . Not only have present land tenures an
indefensible origin, but it is impossible to discover
any mode in which land can become private prop-
rty. . . . Ethical truth is as exact and as per-
emptory as physical truth ; and that in this matter
of land tenure the verdict of morality must be
distinctly aye or nay. Either men have a right to
make the soil private property, or they have not.
There is no medium. We must choose one of the
two positions. There can be no half-and-half
opinion. In the nature of things the fact must be
either one way or the other. Herbert Spencer, 1850.
CHAPTER I.
THE PATE OP "SOCIAL STATICS."
WE now come to the purpose for which the preced-
ing lengthy examination has been made : the con-
sideration of Mr. Spencer's present opinions on the land
question, as set forth with all the weight of the "Syn-
thetic Philosophy" in its author's most recent volume,
" Justice," which bears date of June, 1891, and was pub-
lished somewhat later in that year.
But it will be best to break the chronological order,
and record here the fate of " Social Statics." Even after
Mr. Spencer had made the Times and Mr. Greenwood
believe that he had suppressed it years before, that book
still continued to be published by Mr. Spencer's authorized
publishers, D. Appleton & Co., and their edition of "Jus-
tice," published in October, 1891, contains an advertise-
ment of it in its original form. But now, at last, it has
been done for. It has not been killed outright; that
would be mercy compared with its present fate. It has
and I cannot but feel that " Progress and Poverty," the
Edinburgh reviewer, and Mr. John Laidler of Newcastle,
have been innocent causes of its fate it has been disem-
boweled, stuffed, mummified, and then set up in the gar-
dens of the Spencerian philosophy, where it may be
viewed with entire complacency by Sir John and his
Grace.
106 RECANTATION.
Soberly, the original volume has with this year been
withdrawn from publication, to give place to a new
"Social Statics," dated January, 1892, and published in
February. This volume, which is, of course, now to
pass in the publisher's lists as " Social Statics," has for
full title, " Social Statics, abridged and revised, together
with 'The Man versus the State.'" It consists of dis-
jointed fragments of the old " Social Statics," which, in
order to make some approach to the bulk of the original,
is padded out with the magazine articles before referred
to. In the preface Mr. Spencer says :
My first intention was to call this volume, or, rather, part of a
volume, "Fragments from Social Statics," and afterwards, "Selec-
tions from Social Statics." Both of these titles, however, seemed
to indicate a much less coherent assemblage of parts than it con-
tains. On the other hand, to call it an abridgment is somewhat
misleading, since the word fails to imply that large and construc-
tively important parts are omitted. No title, however, appears
appropriate, and I have at length decided that Social Statics,
abridged and revised, is the least inappropriate.
If appropriateness was what Mr. Spencer sought, it
does seem as if a title much less inappropriate might have
been found. For the only discernible principle of revi-
sion is the chopping out of all that might imply a God or
offend vested interests, in the same fashion that Russian
censors revise distasteful works, the result being a "Ham-
let " from which not only Hamlet himself, but the Ghost,
the Queen Mother, and Ophelia, have gone. The "First
Principle" is left, but everything large or small relating
to land is omitted. The only allusion to land is in the
caviling at Locke, which is retained, and that what was
originally Section 3, Chapter X., now converted into a
chapter, headed " Socialism," is left by careless editing to
begin, as in the original:
THE FATE OF "SOCIAL STATICS." 107
The doctrine that all men have equal rights to the use of the
earth seems at first sight to countenance a species of social organi-
zation at variance with that from which the right of property has
just been deduced.*
The foot-note indicated by this asterisk is :
* Referring to an omitted part of the last chapter, the argument
of which, with modifications, will now be found in Part IV. of the
"Principles of Ethics."
Thus revised, " Social Statics " no further concerns us.
All that Mr. Spencer originally said about the relation
between men and the earth having now been definitely
withdrawn, we are referred for his present opinions to the
book we are about to consider.
But the advertising of the revised " Social Statics " is
worth noting, as by some blunder it lays before the Ameri-
can reader what was originally intended for English cir-
culation only, and brings to mind the fiction about the
suppression of " Social Statics," which did duty in the 8t.
James's Gazette and the London Times. Here is the adver-
tisement as published at the head of D. Appleton & Co.'s
announcements in May, 1892 :
SOCIAL STATICS, BY HERBERT SPENCER. New and revised edi-
tion, including "The Man versus the State," a series of essays
on political tendencies heretofore published separately. 12mo.
420 pages. Cloth, $2.00.
Having been much annoyed by the persistent quotation from the
old edition of " Social Statics," in the face of repeated warnings, of
views which he had abandoned, and by the misquotation of others
which he still holds, Mr. Spencer some ten years ago stopped the
sale of the book in England and prohibited its translation. But the
rapid spread of communistic theories gave new life to these mis-
representations ; hence Mr. Spencer decided to delay no longer a
statement of his mature opinions on the rights of individuals and
the duty of the State.
108 RECANTATION.
This is a queer statement to come from D. Appleton &
Co., who have been publishing and advertising the old
edition of "Social Statics" up to this year, without the
slightest warning to purchasers that the author had
changed his views otherwise than as stated in the pref-
aces and notes, which, as I have before said, made no
reference to any change on the land question. It is
strange to hear from them, that the annoyed Mr. Spencer
ten years ago stopped the sale of his book in England, when
it had not been in print for over twenty years, serenely
leaving it to be sold in the only country where it was in
print, and that he also at the same time prohibited its
translation. Why is Mr. Spencer so careful of what
Englishmen in the little home island and even the "for-
eigner" may read, yet so careless of what is read by
Americans, Canadians and Australians ? And why have
D. Appleton & Co., for nearly ten years, been passing off
on their great constituency a book that its author would
not allow to be sold in his own home or in foreign coun-
tries? These are questions this advertisement suggests
but does not answer.
CHAPTER II.
THE PLACE OF " JUSTICE " IN THE SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY.
" TUSTICE," to which we are to look for Mr. Spencer's
ll present opinions on the land question, is esteemed
by its author his most important book. This volume, the
full title of which is, "The Ethics of Social Life Jus-
tice," is also entitled "Part IV. of Ethics." It is the
tenth of the ponderous volumes already published, which
are advertised as " Spencer's Synthetic Philosophy." The
grand divisions of this Synthetic Philosophy, as now
advertised, are: "First Principles," "The Principles of
Biology," " The Principles of Psychology," " Principles of
Sociology," and " Principles of Morality." Of these five
grand divisions, the "Principles of Morality," as it is
styled in the advertisements, or "Principles of Ethics,"
as it is styled in the title-page of the book itself, is the
grand division to which "Justice" belongs in the Spen-
cerian scheme. The first volume of this grand division,
" The Data of Ethics," has been already published. Vol-
ume II., " The Inductions of Ethics," and Volume III.,
" The Ethics of Individual Life," have not yet appeared,*
Mr. Spencer, as he states in the preface to " Justice," pre-
ferring to hasten this volume, as most important. After
these two deferred volumes have been completed, there
* They have been published since this was put in plate.
110 RECANTATION.
are, as he also tells us, two more volumes, " The Ethics of
Social Life Negative Benevolence," and " The Ethics of
Social Life Positive Benevolence," to which he will turn
his attention, thus completing his full philosophical
scheme.
This scheme of "Synthetic Philosophy" is the most
pretentious that ever mortal man undertook, since it
embraces no less than an explanation to mankind, with-
out recourse to the hypothesis of Originating Intelligence,
of how the world and all that is in it contained, including
we ourselves, our motives, feelings, powers, instincts,
habits and customs, came to be. Of this large scheme,
the ethical part is the most important, being, as Mr.
Spencer tells us, " that to which I regard all the preceding
parts as subsidiary." And of this most important part,
he also tells us that this volume, " The Ethics of Social
Life Justice," is the most important.
Thus "Justice," which so far as it treats of the land
question we are about to consider, is by its author deemed
the very summit and capstone of his whole philosophy.
And that, indeed, it must be, follows from the supreme
importance of its subject-matter. For it treats of right
and wrong, of what should and what should not be, in
those social relations of men from which spring the most
fiercely debated practical questions of our time questions
that involve the happiness or misery, the physical, mental
and moral development of vast populations, the advance
of civilization or its retrogression. As to the principles
of right and wrong in individual relations there is little if
any dispute ; and not merely through Christendom, but
" from Paris to Pekin," mankind are substantially agreed
as to what constitutes good or bad. It is when we come
to the social relations of men to those social adjustments
which prescribe and control rights of ownership, which
affect the production, distribution, accumulation and
THE PLACE OF "JUSTICE." Ill
enjoyment of wealth, which are the main ground of legis-
lation, and which over and above the injunctions of
individual morality throw around men a perfect network
of shalls and shall nots, that we reach the befogged and
debatable land the region of burning questions.
It is where the philosopher thus passes from the region
of mere curious speculation into the arena where, for men
living and men yet to come, the issues of want or plenty,
of ignorance or enlightenment, of slavery or freedom,
must be decided, that the ordinary apprehension may best
apply to his teachings the tests of usefulness and sincerity.
That the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and that
the tree is best known by its fruit, are maxims not to be
disregarded in philosophy. What matters the teaching
of any philosophy as to the origin of things, compared
with its teaching on matters that affect the fullness, hap-
piness and nobleness of life! And how shall we tell
whether the philosopher be an earnest man or a mere
prater, so readily -and so clearly as by noting whether he
takes the side of wronger or of wronged, the undeservedly
rich or the undeservedly poor? Thus, "Justice" is not
merely the roof and crown of the Spencerian Synthetic
Philosophy j it is its touchstone as well.
CHAPTER in.
THE SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY.
I WISH to keep close to the land question. But to
understand fairly Mr. Spencer's views on the land
question as expressed in " Justice," and to discover what
ground there may be for the changes they show, it is ne-
cessary to get some idea of the system of which it is the
crown.
" Justice " is in fact the real revision of " Social Statics "
in the new light of the system of philosophy which its
author has since elaborated. Both books go over the
same ground, that of social economics, and the title of
one might serve for that of the other. This ground it
was that first attracted Mr. Spencer, and he went over it
forty-two years ago in the temper of a social reformer.
He now returns to these living, burning questions of the
time with the reputation of a great philosopher, after
assiduous years spent in what purports to be a wider and
deeper survey. For of the philosophy which he has in
the meantime elaborated it is claimed not only that " it is
more logically complete than any other system," but that
"it is more practical than any other, because it bears
immediately upon common experience, takes hold of the
living questions of the time, throws light upon the course
THE SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY. 113
of human affairs, and gives knowledge that may serve
both for public and individual guidance." *
I speak of Herbert Spencer in " Social Statics " as a
social reformer, to distinguish his attitude at that time
from his present attitude. But he was not content in
that book to advocate empirical remedies for the disorder,
waste and wrong that he beheld about him. He saw that
expediency offered no sure guide; that such was the
infirmity of human powers, and such, in the complexity
of social actions and reactions, was the impossibility of
calculating results, that legislation based on mere policy
was constantly bringing to naught the best-laid schemes,
constantly entangling men in blind ways, constantly
resulting in the unforeseen and unwished. The burden
of " Social Statics " is that there is a better guide in social
affairs than the calculations of expediency; that what
men should look to is not results but principles ; that the
moral sense may be trusted where the intellect is certain
to go astray. Its central idea is that the universe
bespeaks to us its origin in an intelligence of which jus-
tice must be an attribute ; that there is in human affairs
a divinely appointed order to which, if it would prosper,
society must conform; that there is an eternal rule of
right, by which, despite all perturbations of the intellect,
social institutions may be safely measured.
This rule of right, as expressed in the first principle
of "Social Statics" this "law of equal liberty," that
" each has freedom to do all that he wills provided that
he infringes not the equal freedom of any other" what
is it indeed but an expression in primary essential of the
Golden Rule ? What Mr. Spencer declared in "Social
* E. L. Youmans, M.D., "Herbert Spencer and the Doctrine of
Evolution," Popular Science Library. D. Appleton & Co., New
York.
114 RECANTATION.
Statics " is in fact what the National Assembly of France
declared in 1789, "That ignorance, neglect or contempt
of human rights are the sole causes of public misfortunes
and corruptions of government." And with clearer vision
than the French Assembly, he saw and did not hesitate to
assert that the most important of human rights from the
neglect and contempt of which society to-day suffers, is
the natural and equal right to the use of the planet.
It is its protest against materialism, its assertion of the
supremacy of the moral law, its declaration of God-given
rights that are above all human enactments, that despite
whatever it may contain of crudity and inconsistency
make " Social Statics " a noble book, and in the deepest
sense a religiously minded book.
In the course Mr. Spencer thus entered in his early
manhood there was work enough to have engaged the
greatest powers for the longest lifetime ; but work that
would have involved a constant and bitter contest with
the strongest forces forces that have at their disposal
not only the material things that make life pleasant, but
present honor as well. Mr. Spencer did not continue the
struggle that in " Social Statics " he began. He turned
from the field of social reform to the field of speculative
philosophy, in which he has won great reputation and
authority. It is the scheme of philosophy thus developed
that forms the basis of " Justice," as the ideas of a living
God, of a divinely appointed order, and of an eternal dis-
tinction between right and wrong, just and unjust, form
the basis of " Social Statics."
In its earlier volumes this philosophy was styled " Spen-
cer's Evolutionary Philosophy." This title has since been
abandoned for the less definite but more ambitious one of
" Spencer's Synthetic Philosophy." Since synthesis is the
opposite of analysis, the putting together, instead of tak-
ing apart a synthetic philosophy is a philosophy which
THE SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY. 115
explains the world (a term which in the philosophic
sense includes all of which we can become conscious),
not by the process of taking things apart and seeing of
what they are composed; but by assuming an original
principle or principles, and from that starting-point men-
tally building up the world, thus showing how it came to
be. The Book of Genesis embodies probably the oldest
synthetic philosophy we have record of. Mr. Spencer's is
the latest.
Spencer's "Synthetic Philosophy" is in the main a
fusion and extension of two hypotheses the nebular
hypothesis of the formation of celestial bodies, and what
is best known as the Darwinian hypothesis of the devel-
opment of species, with a bridging over of such gulfs as
the passage from the inorganic to the organic, and from
matter and motion to mind, and some infusion of what I
take to be Kantian metaphysics. Though Mr. Spencer
objects to the characterization, I can only describe this
philosophy as materialistic, since it accounts for the world
and all it contains, including the human ego, by the
interactions of matter and motion, without reference to
any such thing as intelligence, purpose or will, except
as derived from them. It does not, of course, any more
than other materialistic philosophies, pretend to explain
what matter and motion are, or how they came to be.
That, for it, is the unknowable, while it deals only with
what may be known by men. But within the region of
the knowable, all things to it have come to be, or are
coming to be, by the interactions of matter and motion,
in a process which it terms "evolution," and which it
describes as " an integration of matter, and concomitant
dissipation of motion, during which the matter passes
from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite,
coherent heterogeneity, and during which the retained
motion undergoes a parallel transformation."
116 KECANTATION.
After evolution has reached its limit and all the motion
is dissipated, comes a temporary equilibrium, and then
dissolution sets in, by the integration of motion and the
dissipation of matter, so that, according to the Synthetic
Philosophy, the universe goes on, so far as we can see,
to infinity, like one of those disks boys play with, which
by means of a twisted string is made to spin around one
way, then to come to a momentary stop, and then spin
back the other way, the process continuing so long as the
boy will gently extend and then gently bring together his
hands. What is it that supplies the force furnished in
the case of the toy by the boy's hands ? And has it, like
the boy's hands, conscious will behind it? This to the
Spencerian Synthetic Philosophy is the unknowable.
This unknowable is not God, though Mr. Spencer
presents it to the religious sentiment as something with
which it may be satisfied, and some of his followers, and
sometimes even he himself, speak of it in ways that sug-
gest identity. In " Social Statics," however, Mr. Spencer
frequently uses the term " God," but he certainly never
thought that he knew God in the sense of comprehending
him, or that it was possible for man so to know him.
And if the unknowable of his philosophy means that-
Being above all beings ! Mighty One,
Whom none can comprehend and none explore !
Who fill'st existence with thyself alone
Embracing all, supporting, ruling o'er
Being whom we call God, and know no more ! *
why should he with the development of his philosophy
have abandoned the use of the old term for that which
beneath the myths and fables and creeds by which men
have endeavored to formulate spiritual perceptions has
* Derzhavin, Bowring's translation.
THE SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY. 117
been always recognized as apparent to the human soul
yet transcending human knowledge ?
This unknowable must be distinguished from the
unknown. It is that which not only is not, but never
can be known in any way ; that which not merely we can-
not comprehend, but of which we can know nothing at all,
even of its intelligence or non-intelligence, its conscious-
ness or non-consciousness, its nature or its attributes. It
is difficult indeed to see how we may predicate even exis-
tence of it, as we may of an unknown person or unknown
thing. For this requires at least some knowledge. But
of the unknowable we lack the capacity of knowing
anything whatever. Air is unknowable directly to our
sense of sight ; we cannot directly see air. But by its
resistance, its weight, its chemical and other qualities, it
is knowable by our other faculties ; and it is indirectly
knowable even to our sight, through the moving of
leaves, the motion of watery surfaces, etc. ; while if air
were unknowable, we could not be conscious of it in any
possible way. It would be precisely the same to us as
no air.
By the constitution of the human mind it is impossible
for us in attempting to trace back the line of causation
to find any stopping-place until we reach that which
thinks and wills that to which the volition is akin which
to our consciousness is an originating element in the
trains of sequences that we ourselves set in motion, or at
least modify and divert. Thus any materialistic or
mechanical philosophy must either beg the question by
assuming the eternity of matter and motion, or admit
something behind them which it must take for granted
and leave out of its explanation, simply denying that it
can be recognized as intelligence or will apart from mat-
ter and motion, i.e., spirit. If the unknowable in the
Spencerian philosophy means anything more than the
118 RECANTATION.
vacuum that is thus left where a spiritual First Cause is
denied, it seems to mean what by some metaphysicians is
styled " the thing in itself."
This " thing in itself " is in metaphysical language the
noumenon as distinguished from the phenomenon: the
thing as it really is, as distinguished from the thing as it
is recognized in its qualities by the percipient being. But
this, if not another name for spirit, really amounts to
vacancy. Such idea of "the thing in itself" as opposed
to the thing as known in phenomena, seems to come from
the habit, to which our use of language leads, of associ-
ating independent existence with qualities to which we
give independent names. Thus no man ever saw white
except as a white thing. But as things have other colors
we can readily separate the idea white from the idea
thing. Forgetting, since we are dealing only with words,
that the abstraction of one color implies its replacement
by another color, and the abstraction of all colors would
render the thing non-existent so far at least as our sight
is concerned, we may mentally separate the idea of color,
'and imagine the thing in other respects as remaining.
Extending the process of abstraction to all other quali-
ties, we may fancy that we have still remaining the idea
of the thing separated from all idea of its qualities. But
what we have remaining is really only a verbal simu-
lacrum, that sounds like something, and may be written
or parsed, but which on analysis consists of negations,
and means really no thing or nothing. This, as well as
I can understand it, is that "thing in itself," of which, in
some part, or in some aspects, Mr. Spencer's unknowable
seems to consist.
But if the Spencerian philosophy is thus indefinite as
to what precedes or underlies matter and motion, it cer-
tainly shows no lack of definiteness from the appearance
of matter and motion onward. With matter and motion
THE SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY. 119
begins its knowable, and from thenceforward, without
pause or break, it builds up the whole universe by the
integration of the one, and the dissipation of the other,
in the mode described as evolution, without recourse to
any other element.
In this elimination of any spiritual element lies, it
seems to me, the essential characteristic of the Spencerian
philosophy. It is not, as is largely supposed, the evolution
philosophy, but an evolution philosophy ; that is to say,
its rejection of any spiritual element in its account of the
genesis of things does not follow from its acceptance of
the principle of evolution ; but the peculiarity of its teach-
ings as to evolution arises from its ignoring of the spirit-
ual element, from its assumption that, matter and motion
given, their interactions will account for all that we see,
feel or know.
In reality the Spencerian idea of evolution differs as
widely from that held by such evolutionists as Alfred
Russel Wallace, St. George Mivart, or Joseph Le Conte,
as it differs from the idea of special and direct creation. It
is only when this is recognized that the real point of issue
raised by or perhaps rather around the doctrine of evolu-
tion is seen. We all see that the oak is evolved from the
acorn, the man from the child. And that it is intended
for the evolution of something is the only intelligible
account that we can make for ourselves of the universe.
Thus in some sense we all believe in evolution, and in
some sense the vast majority of men always have. And
even the evolution of man from the animal kingdom
offers no real difficulty so long as this is understood as
only the form or external of his genesis. To me, for
instance, who, possibly from my ignorance of such
branches, am unable to see the weight of the evidence of
man's descent from other animals, which many specialists
in natural science deem conclusive, It yet appears antece-
120 RECANTATION.
dently probable that externally such might have been his
descent. For it seems better to accord with the economy
manifested through nature, to think that when the soul
of man first took incasement in physical body on this
earth it should have taken the form nearest to its needs,
rather than that inorganic matter should be built up.
And while I cannot conceive how, even in illimitable
time, the animal could of itself turn into the man, it is
easy for me to think that if the spirit of man passed into
the body of a brute the animal body would soon assume
human shape.
Let me illustrate the distinction I wish to point out :
Here is a locomotive of the first class, or a great Corliss
engine, capable on the pressure of a child's finger of
exerting to definite ends a mighty force. How did it
come to be ?
"It came to be," some one might answer, "from the
integrations of matter and motion. This matter existed,
not to go further back than is necessary, in ores of iron
and copper and zinc, and in the wood of trees. By
motion acting on matter these materials were trans-
ported, separated, combined and adjusted, until inte-
grated into this definite, coherent heterogeneity that
you see."
Such answer would not satisfy me. I would indeed
see that it was quite true that from the first wresting of
the ores from their beds, to the last touch of file or emery-
paper, every step in this construction involved the action
of motion on matter; but I would know that this was
not all, and that what so ordered and directed the action
of motion on matter as to bring this construction into
being was the intelligence and volition of man. And I
would reply, "You do not go deep enough: what this
construction really bespeaks is something you have
omitted ; something to which matter is but the material,
THE SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY. 121
and motion the tool the intelligence, consciousness and
freedom of human will."
Or, here is a picture. Let it be a reproduction of a
Madonna of Raphael's, such as are made or might be
made by self-feeding presses. Shall any one explain the
impression of grace and beauty and loving purity that it
produces on him who contemplates it, by explaining on
the undulatory theory of light how impressions of color
are produced on the retina of the eye? Or shall he
account for its genesis by telling me that by integrations
of matter and motion certain pigments have become dis-
posed on paper in a certain way ? Should he attempt to
do so I would say to him, " You are telling me merely of
the medium through which in this picture soul speaks to
soul ; you are merely telling me of the means by which
the thought of the painter found expression in outward
form."
But suppose he should answer
" You delude yourself. I have investigated the matter,
and have been to the place where such pictures as this
are brought forth. I saw no painter ; I saw only a series
of revolving cylinders, through which an endless roll of
paper was drawn by steel fingers. By the automatic
motion of this machinery one cylinder impressed on the
paper some patches of one color, and another some patches
of another color, till at last, by such successive actions of
motion on matter, a picture like this came forth."
Would I be any more convinced that such a picture
could have come to be without that power, essentially
different from matter and motion, which we feel in our-
selves and recognize in other men, which draws a deep
gulf between man and all other animals; that power
which plans, contrives, and by using matter and motion
creates ; that power in short which we call spirit ? Would
I not say to him, " What you tell me of the way this pic-
122 RECANTATION.
ture was brought forth by no means lessens my cer-
tainty that it could primarily have originated only in the
mind and soul of a painter, but only shows me in the
automatic working of the presses of which you speak a
higher expression of the same power of using tools to
body forth thought that was shown in the use of palette
and brush. In this reproduction, as in each and all of the
various processes and machines by which it was brought to
be, I see a manifestation of the same essential thing that
the original picture would show to me originating will,
adapting mind ; in short, not matter and motion, but
spirit, or soul."
And of what moment would be the question whether
this picture came into existence by the direct action of
human will upon the paper, or indirectly through its
action upon automatic machinery, as compared with the
question whether its existence involved human action
or not?
It is on this vital point of the existence or non-existence
of spirit as a prime motor that the real issue raised by
theories of evolution comes. Such evolutionism as is
represented by the men of whom I have spoken, sees in
evolution only a mode in which the creative spirit works.
Such evolutionism as is formulated in the Spencerian
philosophy eliminates spirit from its hypothesis, and
takes into account only matter and motion.
Here is where all materialistic or mechanical theories
of the universe ultimately fail. The belief in God, that
is to say, in a Spiritual Originator, has no such utterly
inadequate and ridiculous genesis as that which we shall
shortly see Mr. Spencer gives for it. It springs from the
same primary ineradicable perception that universally
leads men, whenever they see in a thing destitute of life
the evidence of adaptation involving choice, to attribute
it to man. No civilized man, after inspection, ever took
THE SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY. 123
the rudest huts raised by savages for the structures of
lower animals. No savage who might at a distance have
thought a ship a bird, or a steamer a marine monster,
ever failed on closer view to know that it was a man's
building. No wandering Bedouin ever attributed to nat-
ural forces ruins so vast that they transcended his ideas
of man's ability. On the contrary, so clear is the impress
and testimony of that creative power which so widely
and unmistakably distinguishes man from all other ani-
mals, that rude peoples invariably attribute constructions
which they deem beyond man's ability, to genii, fairies or
demons beings possessing powers of the same kind as
man, but in larger degree. And they do this for the
same reason that they attribute the bringing into being
of the highest of adaptations, those that embody life, to
a highest of spiritual beings the Great Spirit, or God.
And when our larger knowledge shows us no wavering or
confusion in the line which marks conscious adaptation,
so that to the specialist the chipping of a flint taken from
a long-buried river-drift, or the scratching on a tusk of a
preglacial animal, shows the same unmistakable evidence
of man's work as does the engine or the picture, how
shall we otherwise interpret the evidences of design simi-
lar in kind but infinitely higher in degree which nature
on every hand reveals than as indicating the work of God ?
But to return again to our illustration: If when, to
him who contends that the engine or the picture has come
to be by the integrations of matter and motion, I say that
such structures unmistakably bespeak man's work, sup-
pose he should reply to me :
" What is man's work but the interaction of matter and
motion ? What is man's hand but a certain arrangement
of matter ? What is the force it exerts but a dissipation
of motion? Did they, too, not exist in an indefinite,
incoherent homogeneous shape in the primordial mass?
124 BECANTATION.
Do they not come to man from unnumbered transmuta-
tions in the food he eats, the water he drinks, the air he
breathes ; to pass from him into other numberless muta-
tions? If you think man is not included in matter and
motion, shut off even for a little while his supplies of
matter and motion, and where is your man ? "
" Your explanation no better satisfies me than before,"
I would reply. " While it may be true as far as it goes,
it is inadequate and false in omitting an essential factor,
and that a factor which is not last but first. Matter and
motion acting to all eternity could not bring forth such a
structure as this. I know, from all my experience of how
things come to be, that this structure had Its primary
genesis in thought; that in all its parts, and as a com-
bined whole, it was thought out before it was worked out.
I grant you that, at least normally, our perceptions of
thought in others are dependent on our perceptions of
matter and motion. But I too think. And I know from
perceptions that are even closer and truer than my per-
ceptions of matter and motion, that thought is something
different from matter and motion, and from any com-
bination of them. I think when my body is still, when
my eyes are shut, even when my senses are locked from
the external world by sleep. And though I can only
look out, not in ; though I cannot tell you what I myself
am, any more than you can tell me what matter and
motion are ; although I can no more tell you how I came
to be than you can tell me how matter and motion came
to be, nor in what way this, that I feel is I, is embodied
in a material frame, I do feel directly, and know from
its capacities, that it is something different from and
superior to the matter and motion of that frame, and that
it endures while they change. And so your explanation
of the genesis of things that excludes everything but
matter and motion, is to me as superficial as if you were
THE SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY. 126
to explain a Caesar or Shakespeare by the food he ate ;
an 'In Memoriam' by pen and ink; or my recognition
of my friend's voice, and our communication of thought
through the telephone, by the copper wire and the cur-
rent of electricity.
" So clear, so certain, am I that what I can recognize,
better than I can define, as spirit, is alone competent to
produce things in which I see conscious, willing intelli-
gence, that if you were to show me a brush that seemed
of itself to paint pictures, a pen that seemed of itself to
write intelligible words, or even an animal that seemed to
show that power which is the essential characteristic of
man, I could only account for it as a manifestation of
spirit acting in a way unfamiliar to me if not spirit in a
human body, playing a trick upon me, then spirit in
some other form. And this would be the conclusion of
all men."
While less acute thinkers profess to sneer at the evi-
dence from design, Schopenhauer, whose great ability
certainly entitles him to high rank among atheistic phi-
losophers, is able to avoid the conclusion of an Orig-
inating Intelligence only by eliminating intelligence from
will, and assuming that bare will, or desire unconjoined
with intelligence, directly originates, just as the will to
make a bodily movement brings about that movement
without knowledge or consciousness of how it is brought
about.*
* Schopenhauer's explanation of the origin of species is in inter-
esting contrast to that of the evolutionary hypothesis, and to my
mind comes closer to the truth. According to him the numberless
forms and adaptations of animated nature, instead of proceeding
from slow modifications, by which various creatures have been
adapted to their conditions, are the expression of the desire or col-
lective volition of the animal. I quote from the chapter on Com-
parative Anatomy in "The Will in Nature," Bohn translation :
126 RECANTATION.
But within the sphere in which we can trace origina-
tion does it anywhere appear that will without intelli-
gence can accomplish anything? So far as we can see
clearly, is it not always true that where volition without
commensurate intelligence seems to result in accomplish-
ment it is because the needed intelligence has been sup-
plied by another will ? Thus an engine-driver desires his
train to move forward or backward, fast or slow, and by
a motion that seems directly responsive to his will, his
desire takes effect through the pulling of a lever. He
may know nothing of the adjustments of the machine
that in response to his will thus converts heat into
motion, and utterly lack the intelligence needed to con-
struct it. But that knowledge and intelligence were none
"Every animal form is a longing of the will to live which is roused
by circumstances. For instance, the will is seized with a longing
to live on trees, to hang on their branches, to devour their leaves,
without contention with other animals and without ever touching
the ground. This longing presents itself throughout endless time
in the form (or Platonic idea) of the sloth. It can hardly walk at
all, being only adapted for climbing ; helpless on the ground it is
agile on trees and looks itself like a moss-clad bough in order to
escape the notice of its pursuers. . . .
" The universal fitness for their ends, the obviously intentional
design of all the parts of the organism of the lower animals without
exception, proclaim too distinctly for it ever to have been seriously
questioned, that here no forces of Nature acting by chance and
without plan have been at work, but a will. . . . [That] no organ
interferes with another, each rather assisting the others and none
remaining unemployed; also that no subordinate organ would be
better suited to another mode of existence, while the life which the
animal really leads is determined by the principal organs alone,
but on the contrary each part of the animal not only corresponds to
every other part, but also to its mode of life : its claws for instance
are invariably adapted for seizing the prey which its teeth are
suited to tear and break, and its intestinal canal to digest ; its limbs
are constructed to convey it where that prey is to be found, and no
organ ever remains unemployed . . . added to the circumstance
THE SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY. 127
the less necessary to this moving of the train. If not
conjoined with his will they were conjoined with other
wills the wills that have constructed a machine by
which a train may be moved on the pulling of a lever.
The little intelligence needed in use proves the great
intelligence exerted in construction.
So a lady at the opera puts her glass to her eyes and
turns a screw as she wishes to make what she sees appear
nearer. She may not know how many lenses her glass
contains; still less their nature and properties; and is
utterly without the knowledge required for making such
glasses. But that she may accomplish at will results
requiring such knowledge is because others possess it.
that no organ required for its mode of life is ever wanting in any
animal, and that all, even the most heterogeneous, harmonize
together and are as it were calculated for a quite specially deter-
mined way of life, for the element in which the prey dwells, for the
pursuit, the overcoming, the crushing and digesting of that prey-
all this, we say, proves that the animal's structure has been deter-
mined by the mode of life by which the animal desired to find its
substance, and not vice versa. It also proves that the result is
exactly the same as if a knowledge of that mode of life and of its
outward conditions had preceded the structure, and as if therefore
every animal had chosen its equipment before it assumed a body ;
just as a sportsman before starting chooses his whole equipment,
gun, powder, shot, pouch, hunting-knife and dress, according to the
game he intends chasing. He does not take aim at the wild boar
because he happens to have a rifle ; he took the rifle with him and
not a fowling-piece, because he intended to hunt the wild boar.
The ox does not butt because it happens to have horns ; it has
horns because it intends to butt.
"Now to render this proof complete we have the additional circum-
stance that in many animals, during the time they are growing, the
effort of the will to which a limb is destined to minister, manifests
itself before the existence of the limb itself, its employment thus
anticipating its existence. Young he-goats, rams, calves, for
instance, butt with their bare polls before they have any horns ; the
young boar tries to gore on either side, before its tusks are fully
128 EECANTATION.
So, if we look through any part of the wide field in
which human advance has brought volition nearer to
result and lessened the knowledge and intelligence
required by the will to use, we find its reason in the
greater knowledge and intelligence shown in adaptation.
If the ordinary shipmaster of to-day can with the aid of
a quadrant, a nautical almanac and a table of logarithms
learn from the heavens his position on the trackless ocean,
it is because of the high intelligence and tireless studies
of others. If girls who know only how to strike a key and
interpret a click, or put a peg in a hole, can talk with
each other hundreds of miles apart, it is because of dis-
coverers, inventors and constructors.
If, then, in the only field in which we can see origina-
tion taking place, we find that the originator is always
intelligent, conscious will, and if we find that where the
developed which would respond to the intended effect, while on the
other hand it neglects to use the smaller teeth it already has in its
mouth and with which it might really bite. Thus its mode of
defending itself does not adapt itself to the existing weapons, but
vice versa.
"... Behold the countless varieties of animal shapes. How
entirely is each of them the mere image of its volition, the evident
expression of the strivings of the will which constitute its character !
Their difference in shape is only the portrait of their difference in
character. . . . Each particular striving of the will presents itself
in a particular modification of shape. The abode of the prey
therefore has determined the shape of its pursuer . . . and no
shape is rejected by the will to live as too grotesque to attain its
ends. ... As the will has equipped itself with every organ and
every weapon, offensive as well as defensive, so has it likewise
provided itself in every animal shape with an intellect, as a means
of preservation for the individual and the species. . . . Beasts of
prey do not hunt nor foxes thieve because they have more intelli-
gence; on the contrary they have more intelligence, just as they
have stronger teeth and claws, because they wished to live by
hunting and thieving."
THE SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY. 129
will that uses an adaptation does not possess the know-
ledge or intelligence necessary to originate it, another
will or wills conjoined with deeper knowledge and wider
intelligence has done so, what is the reasonable inference
as to adaptations of a higher kind, the genesis of which
we cannot see, and which so far transcend the knowledge
and intelligence of the creatures that through them are
enabled to give their own wills effect?
What are our bodies but a more perfect adjustment of
parts, such as we see in machines ? what are our eyes but
a more perfect adjustment of lenses, such as we see in
opera-glasses ? If, then, my hand closes when I will to
grasp, without any knowledge on my part of the corre-
lated movements that must necessarily intervene ; if when
I merely will to look, the lenses of my eyes are by deli-
cate and complex machinery directed to the position and
adapted to the distance ; if all through animal and even
vegetable nature I may see utilizations of knowledge and
adaptations of intelligence transcending, not merely the
powers of their users, but the highest human knowledge
and intelligence, shall I infer that these utilizations and
adaptations come without knowledge and intelligence ? or
shall I regard them as evidences of a deeper knowledge
and wider intelligence, which, since we find intelligence
and knowledge invariably associated with consciousness,
must pertain to a higher consciousness ?
But to come back to the Book of Genesis that is offered
to us in Mr. Spencer's Synthetic Philosophy.
First if we will insist upon a first comes the unknow-
able ; then force ; then from force, matter and motion.
Matter first appears, permeated with motion, in a state of
indefinite, incoherent homogeneity, from which a princi-
ple which is styled " the instability of the homogeneous "
starts the "integration of matter and concomitant dis-
sipation of motion," called evolution, " during which the
130 RECANTATION.
matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity
to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, and during which
the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation."
This is in brief the whole story :
Matter revolving in accordance with the nebular hypoth-
esis gives rise to nebulous aggregations; these to suns,
which throw off revolving satellites, that in the course of
time cool into earths, on the crust of which continuing
evolution separates gases and differentiates the strata of
inorganic matter. By the multiplying effects of motion
acting on matter, the earth becomes fitted for life ; and
from the differences in the physical mobilities and chemi-
cal activities in the segregations of matter produce in col-
loid or jelly-like substances, such as starch, the beginnings
of life, which is defined as " the definite combination of
heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive,
in correspondence with external coexistences and se-
quences." And then by forces of various kinds, but all
derived from motion, and being its mechanical equiva-
lents, all the forms of life, vegetable and animal, proceed.
By this process of evolution man was finally developed
from a lower animal he himself, with all his attributes
and social institutions, being like everything else an out-
come of this process, which, acting through survival of
the fittest, heredity and the pressure of conditions, has
been and is molding him into harmony with those con-
ditions.
Of primitive man we have much and very definite
information from Mr. Spencer. He was smaller and less
powerful, especially in the lower limbs, than man is now,
but had a larger abdomen and came earlier to maturity.
He was wavering and inconstant ; he had no surprise or
curiosity or ingenuity; his imagination was reminiscent
only, not constructive ; he lacked abstract ideas, was with-
out notion of definiteness and truth, or of benevolence,
THE SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY. 131
equity or duty ; he was unable to think even of a single
law, much less of law in general ; had neither the habit
of expressing things definitely, nor the habit of testing
assertions, nor a due sense of contrast between fact and
fiction ; and for him deliberately to weigh evidence was
impossible. He was a cannibal ; was entirely promiscu-
ous in his sexual relations ; had no idea of any other life
or of any supernatural existences or powers, and no care
for, no sympathy with, and no idea of the goodness or
badness of acts toward any of his fellows, except so far
as female primitive man was concerned with her offspring
during infancy.
How this sorry monster, this big-bellied, short-legged,
bad lot of an ancestor of ours managed to avoid the fate
of the Kilkenny cats, and keep in existence, we are not
definitely informed ; but it seems from the Synthetic Phi-
losophy that he did, and went on evoluting.
Various processes of his further evolution are in the
Synthetic Philosophy described. Seeing shadows cast by
the sun, the primitive man took them for other selves,
which, aided by his dreams, brought him to a belief in
doubles, more extensive even than that which Mr. Stead
has expounded in his "Real Ghost Stories" and "More
Ghost Stories." This led him to believe in another life,
and his fear of chiefs and efforts to propitiate them after
they were dead evolved the idea of God. Some regard
for others, and some crude notion of property, was also
evolved by fear of reprisal from others when he injured
them or took their belongings, and by the punishment
inflicted by chiefs. Cannibalism declined as the practice
of slavery grew, and it became more profitable to work a
captive than to eat him. But primitive man was not
only a cannibal, he was a trophy-taker, given to the prac-
tice of gathering human heads and jaw-bones as evidences
of his prowess. This led to mutilations of the living, or
132 RECANTATION.
self-mutilations, as marks of respect or deference, and
this again led to the giving of presents ; and this in its
turn evolved on the one side into political and ecclesias-
tical revenues, and on the other into a greater respect for
property, and a recognition of value, and finally into bar-
ter, and then trade. In similar ways all our perceptions,
feelings, instincts and habits have arisen. As for the
mooted question, whether we have innate ideas or whether
all our ideas are derived from experience, the solution of
the Synthetic Philosophy is, that while all our ideas are
originally derived from experience, they are of two kinds
those which the experience of our ancestors has regis-
tered in our inherited nervous system, and which there-
fore seem to us original, or innate, and those which we
ourselves derive from experience.
Such, in brief, is the scheme of philosophy that in the
interval between the publication of " Social Statics " and
the publication of "Justice" Mr. Spencer has developed;
and which it is the purpose of the last book to apply to
the moral questions gone over in the first.
Of the inadequacy of such a philosophy to account for
human progress or coherently to marshal the great facts
of human life and human history I have already treated
at some length in Book X. of "Progress and Poverty,"
entitled, " The Law of Human Progress." But what we
are now concerned with is the question, Where in such a
philosophy is a basis for moral ideas to be found ?
I cannot see, nor can I find that Mr. Spencer has been
able to. Though still continuing to condemn Bentham,
as he did in "Social Statics," all his efforts to obtain
something like a moral sanction reach no further than
expediency.
And how can it be otherwise ? If, in all we are and
think and feel, we are but passing phases of the inter-
actions of matter and motion? if behind the force
THE SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY. 133
manifested in matter and motion is nothing but the
unknowable, and before us nothing but dissipation per-
sonal dissipation when we die, and the matter and
motion of which alone we are composed seek other
forms ; and then a death of the race, followed by a dissi-
pation of the globe? why should we not eat, drink, and
be merry to the limit of opportunity and digestion? If
our ideas of God and of a future life come merely from
the blunders of savages so stupid that they took shadows
for other selves and dreams for realities? if we would
still be eating each other had it not been discovered that
man might use man more profitably as a laborer than as
food? if what we call the promptings of conscience are
merely inherited habits, the results of the fear of punish-
ment transmitted through the nervous system? why
should I not lie whenever I may find it convenient and
safe to lie ? why should I avoid any omission or commis-
sion that will bring no legal or social or personal penalty
or inconvenience? why should I refrain from selling my
ability, whatever it may be, to any cause or interest that
has power to give me what I desire, whether it be wealth
or honor ?
Mr. Spencer's philosophy makes no distinction between
motives and results, nor does it admit of any. If it has
any gospel, it is the gospel of results, and the results that
it treats as to be sought are only results that make life
pleasurable. Temperance, chastity, probity, industry,
public spirit, generosity, love ! They have in this philos-
ophy no promise and no reward, save as they may directly
or indirectly add to the pleasure of the individual. For
the self-sacrifice of the hero, the devotion of the saint, the
steadfastness of the martyr ; for the spirit that ennobles
the annals of mankind, that has led and yet leads so
many to endure discomfort, want, pain, death, for the
love of the true and the pure and the good j for the noble
134 KECANTATION.
hope of doing something to break the chains of the cap-
tive, to open the eyes of the blind, to make life for those
who may come after fuller, nobler, happier ; for the faith
that has led men to dare all things and suffer all things ;
it has no breath of stimulation or praise. In the cold
glare that it takes for light, such men are fools. For it
knows no more of human will as a factor in the advance
of mankind than it does of the Divine Will. To it what
conditions exist, and what conditions will exist, are deter-
mined by the irresistible grind of forces that in the last
analysis are resolvable into the integration of matter
and the dissipation of motion. Its fatalism eliminates
free will. Environment and heredity are everything,
human volition nothing. Carry this philosophy to its
legitimate conclusion, and the man is a mere automaton
who thinks he is a free agent only because he does not
feel the strings that move him. That I am a man is
because I have been evolved from the brute, as the
boulder is rounded from the rock; as the brute, my
ancestor, was evolved from colloid, and colloid from
indefinite, incoherent homogeneous matter. And that I
am this of that kind of a man, with such and such
powers, tastes, habits, ways of thinking, feeling, perceiv-
ing, acting, is simply the result of the external influences
that registered in my ancestors the nerve impressions
transmitted to me, and that have continued to mold
me. Social institutions, the outgrowth of a similar evo-
lution in which free will had no part, will continue their
evolution without help or hindrance from anything which
is really choice or volition of mine.
Extremes sometimes curiously meet. The philosophy
of Schopenhauer, which in deriving everything from will
is the antipodes of the Spencerian philosophy, and which,
like the philosophies of India, of which it is a European
version, holds existence an evil, and looks for relief only
THE SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY. 135
to the renunciation of the will to live, would, if it were
generally accepted, produce among the European races
the same social lethargy, the same hopelessness of reform,
the same readiness to bow before any tyrant, that have
so long characterized the masses of India. It seems to
me that the essential fatalism of the philosophy of Mr.
Spencer would have a similar result.*
And as the pessimistic philosophy of the one seems to
flow from the abandonment of action for mere specula-
tion, and from the satiety and ennui which under certain
conditions accompany it, so the evolutionary philosophy
* In "Progress and Poverty," Book X., Chapter L, I say :
" The practical outcome of this theory is in a sort of hopeful fatal-
ism, of which current literature is full. In this view, progress is
the result of forces which work slowly, steadily and remorselessly,
for the elevation of man. War, slavery, tyranny, superstition,
famine and pestilence, the want and misery which fester in modern
civilization, are the impelling causes which drive man on, by
eliminating poorer types and extending the higher ; and hereditary
transmission is the power by which advances are fixed, and past
advances made the footing for new advances. The individual is
the result of changes thus impressed upon and perpetuated through
a long series of past individuals, and the social organization takes
its form from the individuals of which it is composed. Thus, while
this theory is, as Herbert Spencer says* 'radical to a degree
beyond anything which current radicalism conceives,' inasmuch
as it looks for changes in the very nature of man ; it is at the same
time ' conservative to a degree beyond anything conceived by cur-
rent conservatism,' inasmuch as it holds that no change can avail
save these slow changes in men's natures. Philosophers may teach
that this does not lessen the duty of endeavoring to reform abuses,
just as the theologians who taught predestinarianism insisted on
the duty of all to struggle for salvation ; but, as generally appre-
hended, the result is fatalism 'do what we may, the mills of the
gods grind on regardless either of our aid or our hindrance.' "
Some years after this was written I had a curious illustration of
* The Study of Sociology" Conclusion.
136 RECANTATION.
of the other seems to be such as might result from the
abandonment of a noble purpose from a turning from
the thorny path which an attack upon vested wrongs
must open, to embrace the pleasanter ways of acquies-
cence in things as they are.
It is not for me to say what is cause and what is effect ;
but the correspondence of Mr. Spencer's philosophy, which
ignores the spiritual element and knows nothing of duty,
with his own attitude as shown in his letters to the St.
James's Gazette and the Times and in " The Man versus the
State," is very striking. In "Justice" we shall see more
of this correspondence.
its truth. Talking one day with the late E. L. Youmans, the
great popularizer of Spencerianism in the United States, a man of
warm and generous sympathies, whose philosophy seemed to me
like an ill-fitting coat he had accidentally picked up and put on, he
fell into speaking with much warmth of the political corruption of
New York, of the utter carelessness and selfishness of the rich, and
of their readiness to submit to it, or to promote it wherever it
served their money-getting purposes to do so. He became so
indignant as he went on that he raised his voice till he almost
shouted.
Alluding to a conversation some time before, in which I had
affirmed and he had denied the duty of taking part in politics, I
said to him, "What do you propose to do about it!"
Of a sudden his manner and tone were completely changed, as
remembering his Spencerianism, he threw himself back, and replied,
with something like a sigh, "Nothing! You and I can do nothing
at all. It's all a matter of evolution. We can only wait for evolu-
tion. Perhaps in four or five thousand years evolution may have
carried men beyond this state of things. But we can do nothing."
CHAPTER IV.
THE IDEA OP JUSTICE IN THE SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY.
S the culminating development of his evolutionary
or Synthetic Philosophy, Mr. Spencer now comes to
treat of those social-economic questions that involve the
idea of justice, in a book which he entitles " Justice."
But what is justice ?
It is the rendering to each his due. It presupposes a
moral law, and its corollaries, natural rights which are
self-evident. But where in a philosophy that denies
spirit, that ignores will, that derives all the qualities and
attributes of man from the integration of matter and the
dissipation of motion, can we find any basis for the idea
of justice ?
" Justice," says Montesquieu, " is a relation of congruity
which really subsists between two things. This relation
is always the same, whatever being considers it, whether
it be God, or an angel, or lastly a man." This, too, in
" Social Statics," was Mr. Spencer's conception. Justice
he tells us there means equalness that is to say, a rela-
tion of congruity or equality which is always the same,
and always apprehensible by men, no matter what be
their condition of development or degree of knowledge.
As the basis of all his reasoning he postulates an inherent
moral sense, which " none but those committed to a pre-
conceived theory can fail to recognize" a perception
138 KECANTATION.
that bears to morality the same relationship that the per-
ception of the primary laws of quantity bears to mathe-
matics; and which enables us to recognize an "eternal
law of tilings," a " Divine order," in which, and not in
any notions of what is expedient either for the individual
or for all individuals, we may find a sure guide of con-
duct, the apprehension of right and wrong. And this it
seems to me is necessarily and universally involved in
the idea of justice, so that when a man, whatever be his
theories, thinks of right or wrong, just or unjust, he
thinks of a relation, like that of odd and even, or more
and less, which is always and everywhere to be seen by
whoever will look.
But this self-evidence of natural rights the Synthetic
Philosophy denies. It admits the existence of natural
rights that is to say, rights which pertain to the indi-
vidual man as man, and are consequently equal; but it
derives the genesis of these rights, or at least their appre-
hension by man, from this process of his gradual evolu-
tion, by virtue of which they evolve, or he becomes
conscious of them, after a certain amount of " social dis-
cipline," and not before. If such rights exist before, it
must be potentially, or in some such way as the Platonic
ideas. But as this would involve an appointed order;
and hence intelligent will, to which we must attribute
equity; and hence God; it seems inconsistent with Mr.
Spencer's present view not necessarily with that part
which derives our physical constitutions from lower ani-
mals and primarily from the integrations of matter and
motion for this is a mere matter of external form, and
that our bodies come, somehow, "from the dust of the
earth" as the Scriptures put it, is as clear as that ice
comes from water but with that part which gives to the
ego the same genesis, and accounts for our mental and
moral qualities by variation, survival of the fittest, the
JUSTICE IN THE SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY. 139
pressure of conditions, social discipline and heredity of
acquired characteristics.
Mr. Spencer realizes this inconsistency, for, abandon-
ing altogether his original derivation and explanation of
justice, he proceeds in " Justice " to make another deriva-
tion and explanation in accordance with his new philos-
ophy, devoting to this the first eight chapters, or some-
thing more than a fifth of the book. With its validity
or invalidity, its coherency or incoherency, I am not here
concerned; my object being merely to show how he
arrives at the conception of justice and what it is, so that
we may judge the teachings of "Justice" from its own
avowed standpoint.
To present Mr. Spencer's argument as intelligibly as I
can, I will make a synopsis of the first eight chapters of
" Justice," as far as possible in his own words, but with-
out quotation-marks, employing smaller type where the
exact words can be used at some length.
These chapters are
1. Animal Ethics.
During immaturity, benefits received must be inversely
proportioned to capacities possessed. After maturity,
benefits must vary directly as worth, measured by fitness
for the conditions of existence. The ill-fitted must suffer
the evils of unfitness, and the well-fitted prove their
fitness.
2. Sub-Human Justice.
The law of sub-human justice is that each individual
shall receive the benefits and the evils of its own nature
and its consequent conduct.
3. Human Justice.
Each individual ought to receive the benefits and the
evils of his own nature and consequent conduct, neither
being prevented from having whatever good his actions
140 RECANTATION.
normally bring him, nor allowed to shoulder off this evil
on other persons.
4. The Sentiment of Justice.
Our feeling that we ourselves ought to have freedom to
receive the results of our own nature and consequent
actions, and which prompts maintenance of the sphere for
this free play, results from inheritances of modifications
produced by habit, or from more numerous survivals of
individuals having nervous structures which have varied
in fit ways, and from the tendency of groups formed of
members having this adaptation to survive and spread.
Recognition of the similar freedom of others is evolved
from the fear of retaliation, from the punishment of inter-
ference prompted by the interests of the chief, from fear
of the dead chiefs ghost, and from fear of God, when dead-
chief-ghost worship grows into God worship, and, finally,
by the sympathy evolved by gregariousness.
5. The Idea of Justice.
It emerges and becomes definite from experiences, gen-
eration after generation, which provoke resentment and
reactive pains, until finally there arises a conception of a
limit to each kind of activity up to which there is freedom
to act. But it is a long time before the general nature of
the limit common to all cases can be conceived. On the
one hand there is the positive element, implied by each
man's recognition of his claims to unimpeded activities and
the benefits they bring; on the other hand there is the
negative element implied by the consciousness of limits
which the presence of other men having like claims neces-
sitates. Inequality is suggested by the one, for if each is
to receive the benefits due his own nature and consequent
conduct, then, since men differ in their powers, there must
be differences in the results. Equality is suggested by the
other, since bounds must be set to the doings of each to
avoid quarrels, and experience shows that these bounds are
JUSTICE IN THE SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY. 141
on the average the same for all. Unbalanced appreciation
of the one is fostered by war, and tends to social organiza-
tion of the militant type, where inequality is established
by authority, an inequality referring, not to the natural
achievement of greater rewards by greater merits, but to
the artificial apportionment of greater rewards to greater
merits. Unbalanced appreciation of the other tends to
such theories as Bentham's greatest happiness principle,
and to communism and socialism. The true conception is
to be obtained by noting that the equality concerns the mu-
tually limited spheres of action which must be maintained
if associated men are to cooperate harmoniously, while
the inequality concerns the results which each may achieve
by carrying on his actions within the implied limits. The
two may be and must be simultaneously asserted.
6. The Formula of Justice.
It must be positive in so far as it asserts for each that,
since he is to receive and suffer the good and evil of his
own actions, he must be allowed to act. And it must be
negative in so far as, by asserting this of every one, it
implies that each can be allowed to act only under the
restraint imposed by the presence of others having like
claims to act. Evidently, the positive element is that
which expresses a prerequisite to life in general, and the
negative element is that which qualifies this prerequisite
in the way required, when, instead of one life carried on
alone, there are many lives carried on together.
Hence, that which we have to express in a precise way
is the liberty of each limited only by the like liberties of
all. This we do by saying, Every man is free to do what
he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of
any other man.
7. The Authority of this Formula.
The reigning school of politics and morals has a con-
tempt for doctrines that imply restraint on the doings of
142 RECANTATION.
immediate expediency. But if causation be universal, it
must hold throughout the actions of incorporated men.
Evolution implies that a distinct conception of justice can
have arisen but gradually. It has gone on more rapidly
under peaceful relations, and been held back by war.
Nevertheless, where the conditions have allowed, it has
evolved slowly to some extent, and formed for itself
approximately true expressions, as shown in the Hebrew
Commandments, and without distinction between generos-
ity and justice, in the Christian Golden Rule, and in modern
forms in the rule of Kant. It is also shown on the legal
side, in the maxims of lawyers as to natural law, admitted
inf erentially even by the despotically minded Austin.
These, it will be objected, are a priori beliefs. The
doctrine of evolution teaches that a priori beliefs enter-
tained by men at large must have arisen, if not from the
experiences of each individual, then from the experiences
of the race. Fixed intuitions must have been established
by that intercourse with things which throughout an
enormous past has directly and indirectly determined the
organization of the nervous system, and certain resulting
necessities of thought. Thus had the law of equal free-
dom no other than a priori derivations, it would still be
rational to regard it as an adumbration of a truth, if not
still literally true. And the inductive school, including
Bentham and Mill, are, on analysis, driven to the basis of
a priori cognitions.
But the principle of natural equity, expressed in the
freedom of each, limited only by the like freedom of all,
is not exclusively an a priori belief.
Examination of the facts has shown it to be a fundamental law,
by conformity to which life has evolved from its lowest up to its
highest forms, that each adult individual shall take the conse-
quences of its own nature and actions : survival of the fittest being
the result. And the necessary implication is an assertion of that
full liberty to act which forms the positive element in the formula
JUSTICE IN THE SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY. 143
of justice ; since, without full liberty to act, the relation between
conduct and consequence cannot be maintained. Various examples
have made clear the conclusion manifest in theory, that among
gregarious creatures this freedom of each to act has to be
restricted ; since if it is unrestricted there must arise such clashing
of actions as prevents the gregariousness. And the fact that,
relatively unintelligent though they are, inferior gregarious crea-
tures inflict penalties for breaches of the needful restrictions,
shows how regard for them has come to be unconsciously estab-
lished as a condition to persistent social life.
These two laws, holding, the one of all creatures and the other
of social creatures, and the display of which is clearer in proportion
as the evolution is higher, find their last and fullest sphere of mani-
festation in human societies. We have recently seen that along
with the growth of peaceful cooperation there has been an increas-
ing conformity to this compound law under both its positive and
negative aspects ; and we have also seen that there has gone on
simultaneously an increase of emotional regard for it, and intellec-
tual apprehension of it.
So that we have not only the reasons above given for concluding
that this a priori belief has its origin in the experiences of the race,
but we are enabled to affiliate it on the experiences of living crea-
tures at large, and to perceive that it is but a conscious response to
certain necessary relations in the order of nature.
No higher warrant can be imagined ; and now, accepting the law
of equal freedom as an ultimate ethical principle, having an author-
ity transcending every other, we may proceed with our inquiry.
8. Its Corollaries.
That the general formula of justice may serve for gui-
dance, deductions must be drawn severally applicable to
special classes of cases. The several particular freedoms
deducible from the laws of equal freedom may fitly be
called, as they commonly are called, rights. Rights truly
so called are corollaries from the law of equal freedom,
and what are falsely called rights are not deducible from it.
It is not worth while to examine this argument. It is
sufficient for our purpose to see that in " Justice " Mr.
Spencer re-asserts the same principle from which in
" Social Statics " he condemned private property in land.
CHAPTER V.
MR. SPENCER'S TASK.
rilHE first eight chapters of " Justice," as we have seen,
J_ bring Mr. Spencer by a different route to the same
"first principle" which he had laid down forty years
before in " Social Statics," and from which he had deduced
the equal right of all men to the use of land and the
ethical invalidity of private property in land" all deeds,
customs, and laws notwithstanding."
We are not concerned now with " Social Statics." We
are not concerned with any of Mr. Spencer's changes in
opinion, teleological, metaphysical, or of any other kind.
We have here merely the Synthetic philosopher, who from
grounds based on the doctrine of evolution lays down as
the fundamental formula of justice, the axiomatic principle
from which all the rights of men in their relations with
each other are to be deduced : that all men have freedom
to do as they will, provided they infringe not the equal
freedom of all others.* What follows, with regard to the
* From Appendix A of "Justice," it seems that Mr. Spencer has
hitherto supposed that his statement of this "first principle" of
" Social Statics " was the first time it had been thus put. In 1883
Professor Maitland had, however, pointed out that "Kant had
already enunciated in other words a similar doctrine." Mr. Spen-
cer tells us that, "Not being able to read the German quotation
given by Mr. Maitland," he was unable to test the statement until,
ME. SPENCER'S TASK. 145
use of land, from this fundamental principle of the evo-
lutionary philosophy? Is it not, unavoidably and irre-
sistibly, what Mr. Spencer stated years before ?
Given a race of beings having like claims to pursue the objects
of their desires given a world adapted to the gratification of
those desires a world into which such beings are similarly born,
and it unavoidably follows that they have equal rights to the use of
this world. For if each of them "has freedom to do all that he
wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other,"
then each of them is free to use the earth for the satisfaction of his
wants, provided he allows all others the same liberty. And con-
versely, it is manifest that no one, or part of them, may use the
earth in such a way as to prevent the rest from similarly using it ;
seeing that to do this is to assume greater freedom than the rest,
and consequently to break the law.
Is there one single deduction in Chapter IX. of " Social
Statics " that does not as clearly follow from this reason-
ing of " Justice " one single word that requires altera-
tion to fit it for a place in the deductions to be drawn
from this formula, except the single word " God " ? And
the substitution of "The Unknowable" or "Evolution"
for " God " would in no wise alter or lessen the force of
the reasoning.
in the preparation of "Justice," he reached Chapter VI., when he
discovered in a recent English translation of Kant certain passages
which he gives, that " make it clear that Kant had arrived at a con-
clusion, which, if not the same as my own, is closely allied to it."
I mention this as showing the importance Mr. Spencer yet
attaches to the "first principle," from which he deduced the con-
demnation of private property in land. Otherwise the matter is of
no interest. His statement of this principle or formula was a good
one, and doubtless original with him. Who had stated it before
made no more difference than who first stated that one and one
equal two. There are some things which to the human mind are
self-evident that is to say, which may be seen by whoever chooses
to look and this is one of them.
146 RECANTATION.
How, then, shall Mr. Spencer justify private property
in land, which in his letters to the Times he had bound
himself to do ? How shall he deduce the rights of land-
owners to compensation for their land or in any way assert
for them rights that will lessen or modify, or in any way
condition, the equal right of all their fellows to the use of
land?
To men like Professor Huxley there is a short and easy
way of doing this. It is simply to deny the existence of
natural rights ; that is to say, rights having any higher
or more permanent sanction than municipal regulation.
To be sure this opens a most awkward dilemma, for if
power, or if you please legislative enactment, be the only
sanction of right, what remains for the House of Have,
when the House of Want shall muster its more numerous
forces, either on the field of brute strength or in legis-
latures already controlled by popular suffrage? But,
" after us, the deluge ! " and such considerations do not
much trouble those who take this short and easy way.
Mr. Spencer, however, is debarred from taking it ; not by
what he has before said on the land question, for that
could be unsaid, but by his philosophy. If there is no
right but might, what does that philosophy mean and
what is it for? If there is no law but that of the state,
why does he write books to tell us what the state ought
and ought not to do? And, furthermore, he has just
deduced as his formula of justice, having, he says, the
highest imaginable warrant the same first principle
from which in " Social Statics " he deduced the invalidity
of private property in land.
The short and easy way of justifying private property
in land, because it exists, or because it is sanctioned by
the state, is therefore not open to Mr. Spencer, unless he
is ready to abandon the last shred and figment of philo-
sophic claim. His is a more difficult task. What he has
MR. SPENCEE'S TASK. ' 147
to do, is to prove that the disinheritance of nineteen-
twentieths of his countrymen accords with his " ultimate
ethical principle having an authority transcending every
other "his formula of justice, that " Every man is free
to do that which he will, provided he infringes not the
equal freedom of any other man." To show that the so-
called rights of existing landowners to monopolize the
land on which all must live are real rights, he must, on
his own statement, show that they are deducible from
the law of equal freedom.
Knowing, then, from Mr. Spencer's more recent utter-
ances that he is determined at any cost to get on the
comfortable side of the land question, we may be certain
in advance that "Justice" will afford a spectacle both
interesting and instructive. Interesting as the effort of
a man of ability to accomplish a feat of intellectual leger-
demain equivalent, not to swallowing a sword, but to
swallowing himself. Instructive as showing how far a
man so able that many people think him the greatest
philosopher that has ever yet appeared ; a man who has
the advantage of knowing what can be said on the other
side, can, on grounds which admit the equal right of
men to be in the world, succeed in justifying that exist-
ing social arrangement which gives to a few the exclu-
sive ownership of the world, and denies to the many any
right to its use, save as they purchase the privilege of
these few world-owners.
A Lord Bramwell or a Professor Huxley or a Duke of
Argyll would rush in boldly and proceed frankly. But
Mr. Spencer knows that to accomplish his task the atten-
tion of the reader must be confused and the real issue
avoided. The effort to do this is to be seen at a glance
the moment we come to the vital part of " Justice."
In "Social Statics" the discussion of "The Rights of
Life and Personal Liberty " occupies hardly more than a
148 RECANTATION.
single page, being treated as " such self-evident corolla-
ries from our first principle as hardly to need a separate
statement." In " Justice " it is padded out into two chap-
ters -"The Right to Personal Integrity" and "The
Rights to Free Motion and Locomotion," which, by refer-
ences to the Fijians, the Wends, the Herculeans, the
Homeric Greeks, and so on, are made to occupy some
twelve or thirteen times as much space. But, although
Mr. Spencer also refers to the Abors, the Nagas, the
Lepchas, the Jakuns, and other far-off people, he takes no
notice of such infractions of the right of free motion and
locomotion by landowning dukes as in 1850 excited his
indignation.
In place of the chapter on " The Right to the Use of
the Earth," which stands out so clearly and so promi-
nently in " Social Statics," we find in " Justice " a chapter
on " The Rights to the Uses of Natural Media," of which
only a part is devoted to the right to the use of land,
though a short note, having something of the same rela-
tion to it that the traditional lady's postscript has to her
letter, is inserted in the Appendix.
This treatment of land, or the surface of the earth, as
but one of the natural media is in the highest degree
unphilosophic, and could be adopted only for the pur-
pose of confusion. For so far as man is concerned all
natural media are appurtenant to land; and the term
" land " in political economy and law comprises all natural
substances and powers. To treat land as one of |such
natural media as light and air is therefore as unphilo-
sophic as it would be to treat it as one of such sub-divi-
sions of itself as water, rock, gravel or sand. The clearest
and only philosophic terminology is that adopted in
"Social Statics" the right to the use of the earth, or
the right to the use of land. For the right to the use of
all natural elements comes from and with, and is insepa-
ME. SPENCER'S TASK. 149
rably involved in and annexed to, the right to the use of
land.
Mr. Spencer's reasons for thus treating land as but one
of the natural media appear as we read. Not merely is
the burning question thus minimized and confused, but
it becomes easier by means of analogy to slide over the
injustice of the present treatment of land an injustice
which, as Mr. Spencer had himself previously seen, is
inferior only to murder or slavery and to bring private
property in land into the category of things with which
we need not concern ourselves.
H
CHAPTER VI.
"THE RIGHTS TO THE USES OP NATURAL MEDIA."
ERE in full is Chapter XI. of "Justice":
CHAPTER XI. THE RIGHTS TO THE USES OP NATURAL MEDIA.
49. A man may be entirely uninjured in body by the actions of
fellow-men, and he may be entirely unimpeded in his movements
by them, and he may yet be prevented from carrying on the activi-
ties needful for maintenance of life, by traversing his relations to
the physical environment on which his life depends. It is, indeed,
alleged that certain of these natural agencies cannot be removed
from the state of common possession. Thus we read :
" Some things are by nature itself incapable of appropriation, so
that they cannot be brought under the power of any one. These
got the name of res communes by the Roman law ; and were denned,
things the property of which belongs to no person, but the use to all.
Thus, the light, the air, running water, etc., are so adapted to the
common use of mankind, that no individual can acquire a property
in them, or deprive others of their use." ("An Institute of the Law
of Scotland," by John Erskine (ed. Macallan), i., 196.)
But though light and air cannot be monopolized, the distribution
of them may be interfered with by one man to the partial depriva-
tion of another man may be so interfered with as to inflict serious
injury upon him.
No interference of this kind is possible without a breach of the
law of equal freedom. The habitual interception of light by one
person in such way that another person is habitually deprived of an
equal share, implies disregard of the principle that the liberty of
each is limited by the like liberties of all ; and the like is true if
free access to air is prevented.
"EIGHTS TO THE USES OP NATURAL MEDIA." 151
Under the same general head there must, however, by an unusual
extension of meaning, be here included something which admits of
appropriation the surface of the Earth. This, as forming part of
the physical environment, seems necessarily to be included among
the media of which the use may be claimed under the law of equal
freedom. The Earth's surface cannot be denied to any one abso-
lutely, without rendering life-sustaining activities impracticable.
In the absence of standing-ground he can do nothing ; and hence it
appears to be a corollary from the law of equal freedom, interpreted
with strictness, that the Earth's surface may not be appropriated
absolutely by individuals, but may be occupied by them only in
such manner as recognizes ultimate ownership by other men ; that
is by society at large.
Concerning the ethical and legal recognitions of these claims to
the uses of media, not very much has to be said: only the last
demands much attention. We will look at each of them in suc-
cession.
$ 50. In the earliest stages, while yet urban life had not com-
menced, no serious obstruction of one man's light by another man
could well take place. In encampments of savages, and in the
villages of agricultural tribes, no one was led, in pursuit of his
ends, to overshadow the habitation of his neighbor. Indeed, the
structures and relative positions of habitations made such aggres-
sions almost impracticable.
In later times, when towns had grown up, it was unlikely that
much respect would forthwith be paid by men to the claims of their
neighbors in respect of light. During stages of social evolution in
which the rights to life and liberty were little regarded, such com-
paratively trivial trespasses as were committed by those who built
houses close in front of others' houses, were not likely to attract
much notice, considered either as moral transgressions or legal
wrongs. The narrow, dark streets of ancient continental cities, in
common with the courts and alleys characterizing the older parts
of our own towns, imply that in the days when they were built the
shutting out by one man of another man's share of sun and sky was
not thought an offense. And, indeed, it may reasonably be held
that recognition of such an offense was in those days impracticable ;
since, in walled towns, the crowding of houses became a necessity.
In modern times, however, there has arisen the perception that
the natural distribution of light may not be interfered with.
Though the law which forbids the building of walls, houses, or
152 RECANTATION.
other edifices of certain heights, within prescribed distances from
existing houses, does not absolutely negative the intercepting of
light ; yet it negatives the intercepting of it to serious degrees, and
seeks to compromise the claims of adjacent owners as fairly as
seems practicable.
That is to say, this corollary from the law of equal freedom, if it
has not come to be overtly asserted, has come to be tacitly recog-
nized.
$ 51. To some extent interference with the supply of light
involves interference with the supply of air; and, by interdicting
the one, some interdict is, by implication, placed on the other. But
the claim to use of the air, though it has been recognized by English
law in the case of windmills, is less definitely established : probably
because only small evils have been caused by obstructions.
There has, however, risen into definite recognition the claim to
unpolluted air. Though acts of one man which may diminish the
supply of air to another man, have not come to be distinctly
classed as wrong ; yet acts which vitiate the quality of his air are in
modern times regarded as offenses offenses for which there are in
some cases moral reprobations only, and in other cases legal penal-
ties. In some measure all are severally obliged, by their own
respiration, to vitiate the air respired by others, where they are in
proximity. It needs but to walk a little distance behind one who
is smoking, to perceive how widely diffused are the exhalations
from each person's lungs ; and to what an extent, therefore, those
who are adjacent, especially indoors, are compelled to breathe the
air that has already been taken in and sent out time after time.
But since this vitiation of air is mutual, it cannot constitute aggres-
sion. Aggression occurs only when vitiation by one, or some, has
to be borne by others who do not take like shares in the vitiation ;
as often happens in railway carriages, where men who think them-
selves gentlemen smoke in other places than those provided for
smokers : perhaps getting from fellow-passengers a nominal, though
not a real, consent, and careless of the permanent nuisance entailed
on those who afterwards travel in compartments reeking with stale
tobacco-smoke. Beyond the recognition of this by right-thinking
persons as morally improper, it is forbidden as improper by railway
regulations; and, in virtue of by-laws, may bring punishment by
fine.
Passing from instances of this kind to instances of a graver
kind, we have to note the interdicts against various nuisances
"EIGHTS TO THE USES OF NATURAL MEDIA." 153
stenches resulting from certain businesses carried on near at hand,
injurious fumes such as those from chemical works, and smoke pro-
ceeding from large chimneys. Legislation which forbids the acts
causing such nuisances, implies the right of each citizen to unpol-
luted air.
Under this same head we may conveniently include another kind
of trespass to which the surrounding medium is instrumental. I
refer to the production of sounds of a disturbing kind. There are
small and large trespasses of this class. For one who, at a table
cPhote, speaks so loudly as to interfere with the conversation of
others, and for those who, during the performance at a theater or
concert, persist in distracting the attention of auditors around by
talking, there is reprobation, if nothing more : their acts are con-
demned as contrary to good manners, that is, good morals, for the
one is a part of the other. And then when inflictions of this kind
are public, or continuous, or both as in the case of street-music
and especially bad street-music, or as in the case of loud noises
proceeding from factories, or as in the case of church bells rung at
early hours, the aggression has come to be legally recognized as
such and forbidden under penalty: not as yet sufficiently recog-
nized, however, as is shown in the case of railway whistles at cen-
tral stations, which are allowed superfluously to disturb tens of
thousands of people all through the night, and often to do serious
injury to invalids.
Thus in respect of the uses of the atmosphere, the liberty of
each limited only by the like liberties of all, though not overtly
asserted, has come to be tacitly asserted ; in large measure ethically,
and in a considerable degree legally.
$ 52. The state of things brought about by civilization does not
hinder ready acceptance of the corollaries tlms far drawn; but
rather clears the way for acceptance of them. Though in the days
when cannibalism was common and victims were frequently sacri-
ficed to the gods, assertion of the right to life might have been
received with demur, yet the ideas and practices of those days have
left no such results as stand in the way of unbiased judgments.
Though during times when slavery and serfdom were deeply organ-
ized in the social fabric, an assertion of the right to liberty would
have roused violent opposition, yet at the present time, among
ourselves at least, there exists no idea, sentiment, or usage, at
variance with the conclusion that each man is free to use his limbs
and move about where he pleases. And similarly with respect to
154 RECANTATION.
the environment. Such small interferences with others' supplies of
light and air as have been bequeathed in the structures of old
towns and such others as smoking fires entail, do not appreciably
hinder acceptance of the proposition that men have equal claims to
uses of the media in which all are immersed. But the proposition
that men have equal claims to the use of that remaining portion of
the environment hardly to be called a medium on which all stand
and by the products of which all live, is antagonized by ideas and
arrangements descending to us from the past. These ideas and
arrangements arose when considerations of equity did not affect
land tenure any more than they affected the tenure of men as slaves
or serfs ; and they now make acceptance of the proposition difficult.
If, while possessing those ethical sentiments which social discipline
has now produced, men stood in possession of a territory not yet
individually portioned out, they would no more hesitate to assert
equality of their claims to the land than they would hesitate to
assert equality of their claims to light and air. But now that long-
standing appropriation, continued culture, as well as sales and pur-
chases, have complicated matters, the dictum of absolute ethics,
incongruous with the state of things produced, is apt to be denied
altogether. Before asking how, under these circumstances, we
must decide, let us glance at some past phases of land tenure.
Partly because in early stages of agriculture, land, soon
exhausted, soon ceases to be worth occupying, it has been the
custom with little-civilized and semi-civilized peoples, for individ-
uals to abandon after a time the tracts they have cleared, and to
clear others. Causes aside, however, the fact is that in early
stages private ownership of land is unknown : only the usufruct
belongs to the cultivator, while the land itself is tacitly regarded as
the property of the tribe. It is thus now with the Sumatrans and
others, and it was thus with our own ancestors : the members of the
Mark, while they severally owned the products of the areas they
respectively cultivated, did not own the areas themselves. Though
it may be said that at first they were members of the same family,
gens, or clan, and that the ownership of each tract was private
ownership in so far as the tract belonged to a cluster of relations ;
yet since the same kind of tenure continued after the population of
the Mark had come to include men who were unrelated to the rest,
ownership of the tract by the community and not by individuals
became an established arrangement. This primitive condition will
be clearly understood after contemplating the case of the Russians,
among whom it has but partially passed away.
"BIGHTS TO THE USES OF NATURAL MEDIA." 166
"The village lands were held in common by all the members of
the association [mir] ; the individual only possessed his harvest, and
the dvor or inclosure immediately surrounding his house. This
primitive condition of property, existing in Russia up to the present
day, was once common to all European peoples." ("The History of
Russia," A. Rambaud, trans, by Lang, vol. i., p. 45.)
With this let me join a number of extracts from Wallace's
"Russia," telling us of the original state of things and of the sub-
sequent states. After noting the fact that while the Don Cossacks
were purely nomadic " agriculture was prohibited on pain of
death," apparently because it interfered with hunting and cattle-
breeding, he says :
"Each Cossack who wished to raise a crop plowed and sowed
wherever he thought fit, and retained as long as he chose the land
thus appropriated; and when the soil began to show signs of
exhaustion, he abandoned his plot and plowed elsewhere. As
the number of agriculturists increased, quarrels frequently arose.
Still worse evils appeared when markets were created in the vicin-
ity. In some stamtzas [Cossack villages] the richer families appro-
priated enormous quantities of the common land by using several
teams of oxen, or by hiring peasants in the nearest villages to come
and plow for them; and instead of abandoning the land after
raising two or three crops they retained possession of it. Thus the
whole of the arable land, or at least the best parts of it, became
actually, if not legally, the private property of a few families."
(Ib. ii. 86.)
Then he explains that as a consequence of something like a
revolution :
"In accordance with their [the landless members of the commu-
nity's] demands the appropriated land was confiscated by the
Commune and the system of periodical distributions . . . was intro-
duced. By this system each male adult possesses a share of the
land." (16. ii. 87.)
On the Steppes "a plot of land is commonly cultivated for only
three or four years in succession. It is then abandoned for at least
double that period, and the cultivators remove to some other por-
tion of the communal territory. . . . Under such circumstances the
principle of private property in the land is not likely to strike root ;
each family insists on possessing a certain quantity rather than a
certain plot of land, and 'contents itself with a right of usufruct,
whilst the right of property remains in the hands of the Commune."
(Ib. ii. 91.)
156 EECANTATION.
But in the central and more advanced districts this early practice
has become modified, though without destroying the essential char-
acter of the tenure.
"According to this system [the three-field system] the culti-
vators do not migrate periodically from one part of the communal
territory to another, but till always the same fields, and are obliged
to manure the plots which they occupy. . . . Though the three- field
system has been in use for many generations in the central prov-
inces, the communal principle, with its periodical reallotment of
the land, still remains intact." (Ib. ii. 92.)
Such facts, and numerous other such facts, put beyond question
the conclusion that before the progress of social organization
changed the relations of individuals to the soil, that relation was
one of joint ownership and not one of individual ownership.
How was this relation changed! How only could it be changed?
Certainly not by unforced consent. It cannot be supposed that all,
or some, of the members of the community willingly surrendered
their respective claims. Crime now and again caused loss of an
individual's share in the joint ownership ; but this must have left
the relations of the rest to the soil unchanged. A kindred result
might have been entailed by debt, were it not that debt implies a
creditor ; and while it is scarcely supposable that the creditor could
be the community as a whole, indebtedness to any individual of it
would not empower the debtor to transfer in payment something of
which he was not individually possessed, and which could not be
individually received. Probably elsewhere there came into play the
cause described as having operated in Russia, where some, cultivat-
ing larger areas than others, accumulated wealth and consequent
power, and extra possessions ; but, as is implied by the fact that in
Russia this led to a revolution and reinstitution of the original
state, the process was evidently there, and probably elsewhere,
regarded as aggressive. Obviously the chief cause must have been
the exercise of direct or indirect force : sometimes internal but
chiefly external. Disputes and fights within the community, lead-
ing to predominance (achieved in some cases by possession of forti-
fied houses), prepared the way for partial usurpations. When, as
among the Suanetians, we have a still extant case in which every
family in a village has its tower of defense, we may well under-
stand how the intestine feuds in early communities commonly
brought about individual supremacies, and how these ended in the
establishment of special claims upon the land subordinating the
general claims.
"RIGHTS TO THE USES OP NATURAL MEDIA." 157
But conquest from without has everywhere been chiefly instru-
mental in superseding communal proprietorship by individual
proprietorship. It is not to be supposed that in times when cap-
tive men were made slaves and women appropriated as spoils of
war, much respect was paid to preexisting ownership of the soil.
The old English bucaneers who, in their descents on the coast,
slew priests at the altars, set fire to churches, and massacred the
people who had taken refuge in them, would have been very incom-
prehensible beings had they recognized the landownership of such
as survived. When the pirate Danes, who in later days ascended
the rivers, had burned the homesteads they came upon, slaughtered
the men, violated the women, tossed children on pikes or sold them
in the market-place, they must have undergone a miraculous trans-
formation had they thereafter inquired to whom the Marks
belonged, and admitted the titles of their victims to them. And
similarly when, two centuries later, after constant internal wars
had already produced military rulers maintaining quasi-feudal
claims over occupiers of lands, there came the invading Normans,
the right of conquest once more overrode such kinds of possession
as had grown up, and still further merged communal proprietorship
in that kind of individual proprietorship which characterized feu-
dalism. Victory, which gives unqualified power over the defeated
and their belongings, is followed, according to the nature of the
race, by the assertion of universal ownership, more or less qualified
according to the dictates of policy. While in some cases, as in
Dahomey, there results absolute monopoly by the king, not only of
the land but of everything else, there results in other cases, as
there resulted in England, supreme ownership by the king with
recognized sub-ownerships and sub-sub-ownerships of nobles and
their vassals holding the land one under another, on condition of
military service : supreme ownership being, by implication, vested
in the crown.
Both the original state and the subsequent states have left their
traces in existing land laws. There are many local rights which
date from a time when "private property in land, as we now
understand it, was a struggling novelty." *
" The people who exercise rights of common exercise them by a
title which, if we could only trace it all the way back, is far more
ancient than the lord's. Their rights are those which belonged to
" The Land Laws," by Sir Fredk. Pollock, Bart., p. 2.
158 RECANTATION.
the members of the village community long before manors and
lords of the manor were heard of." *
And any one who observes what small tenderness for the rights
of commoners is shown in the obtainment of Inclosure Acts, even in
our own day, will be credulous indeed if he thinks that in ruder
times the lapse of communal right into private rights was equitably
effected. The private ownership, however, was habitually incom-
plete ; since it was subject to the claims of the over-lord, and through
him, again, to those of the over-over-lord: the implication being
that the ownership was subordinate to that of the head of the com-
munity.
" No absolute ownership of land is recognized by our law books
except in the Crown. All lands are supposed to be held immedi-
ately, or mediately, of the Crown, though no rent or services may
be payable, and no grant from the Crown on record." t
And that this conception of landownership survives, alike in
theory and in practice, to the present time, is illustrated by the
fact that year by year State authority is given for appropriating
land for public purposes, after making due compensation to exist-
ing holders. Though it may be replied that this claim of the State
to supreme landownership is but a part of its claim to supreme
ownership in general, since it assumes the right to take anything
on giving compensation; yet the first is an habitually enforced
claim, while the other is but a nominal claim not enforced ; as we
see in the purchase of pictures for the nation, to effect which the
State enters into competition with private buyers, and may or may
not succeed.
It remains only to point out that the political changes which
have slowly replaced the supreme power of the monarch by the
supreme power of the people, have, by implication, replaced the
monarch's supreme ownership of the land by the people's supreme
ownership of the land. If the representative body has practically
inherited the governmental powers which in past times vested in
the king, it has at the same time inherited that ultimate proprie-
torship of the soil which in past times vested in him. And since
the representative body is but the agent of the community, this
ultimate proprietorship now vests in the community. Nor is this
denied by landowners themselves. The report issued in December,
* "The Land Laws," by Sir Fredk. Pollock, Bart., p. 6.
t Ifc, p. 12.
"EIGHTS TO THE USES OF NATURAL MEDIA." 159
1889, by the council of " The Liberty and Property Defense League, "
on which sit several Peers and two judges, yields proof. After
saying that the essential principle of their organization, "based
upon recorded experience," is a distrust of "officialism, imperial or
municipal," the council go on to say that :
"This principle applied to the case of land clearly points to
individual ownership, qualified by State suzerainty. . . . The land
can of course be 'resumed' on payment of full compensation, and
managed by the 'people,' if they so will it."
And the badness of the required system of administration is the
only reason urged for maintaining the existing system of land-
holding : the supreme ownership of the community being avowedly
recognized. So that whereas, in early stages, along with the free-
dom of each man, there went joint ownership of the soil by the
body of men ; and whereas, during the long periods of that militant
activity by which small communities were consolidated into great
ones, there simultaneously resulted loss of individual freedom and
loss of participation in landownership ; there has, with the decline
of militancy and the growth of industrialism, been a reacquire-
ment of individual freedom and a reacquirement of such partici-
pation in landownership as is implied by a share in appointing the
body by which the land is now held. And the implication is that
the members of the community, habitually exercising as they do,
through their representatives, the power of alienating and using as
they think well, any portion of the land, may equitably appropriate
and use, if they think fit, all portions of the land. But since
equity and daily custom alike imply that existing holders of particu-
lar portions of land may not be dispossessed without giving them
in return its fairly estimated value, it is also implied that the
wholesale resumption of the land by the community can be justly
effected only by wholesale purchase of it. Were the direct exercise
of ownership to be resumed by the community without purchase,
the community would take, along with something which is its own,
an immensely greater amount of something which is not its own.
Even if we ignore those multitudinous complications which, in the
course of century after century, have inextricably entangled men's
claims, theoretically considered even if we reduce the case to its
simplest theoretical form; we must admit that all which can be
claimed for the community is the surface of the country in its
original unsubdued state. To all that value given to it by clearing,
breaking up, prolonged culture, fencing, draining, making roads,
farm-buildings, etc., constituting nearly all its value, the community
160 RECANTATION.
has no claim. This value has been given either by personal labor,
or by labor paid for, or by ancestral labor ; or else the value given
to it in such ways has been purchased by legitimately earned
money. All this value artificially given vests in existing owners,
and cannot without a gigantic robbery be taken from them. If,
during the many transactions which have brought about existing
landownership, there have been much violence and much fraud,
these have been small compared with the violence and the fraud
which the community would be guilty of did it take possession,
without paying for it, of that artificial value, which the labor of
nearly two thousand years has given to the land.
$ 53. Reverting to the general topic of the chapter the rights
to the uses of natural media it chiefly concerns us here to note the
way in which these rights have gradually acquired legislative sanc-
tions as societies have advanced to higher types.
At the beginning of the chapter we saw that in modern times
there have arisen legal assertions of men's equal rights to the uses
of light and air : no forms of social organization or class interests
having appreciably hindered recognition of these corollaries from
the law of equal freedom. And we have just seen that by implica-
tion, if not in any overt or conscious way, there have in our days
been recognized the equal rights of all electors to supreme owner-
ship of the inhabited area rights which, though latent, are
asserted by every Act of Parliament which alienates land. Though
this right to the use of the Earth, possessed by each citizen, is
traversed by established arrangements to so great an extent as to
be practically suspended; yet its existence as an equitable claim
cannot be denied without affirming that expropriation by State
decree is inequitable. The right of an existing holder of land can
be equitably superseded, only if there exists a prior right of the
community at large ; and this prior right of the community at large
consists of the sum of the individual rights of its members.
NOTE. Various considerations touching this vexed question of
landownership, which would occupy too much space if included
here, I have included in Appendix B.
Let us take breath and gather our wits. It is like
going through a St. Gothard tunnel. Here we are on
the other side, sure enough ! But how did we get there?
"EIGHTS TO THE USES OF NATURAL MEDIA." 161
Mr. Spencer brought us in, asserting the law of equal
freedom as "an ultimate ethical principle, having an
authority transcending every other ; " declaring that
"rights truly so called are corollaries from the law of
equal freedom, and what are falsely called rights are not
deducible from it."
He brings us out, with a confused but unmistakable
assertion that the freedom to use land belongs only to
the small class of landlords; with an assertion of the
strongest kind of their right to deprive all other men of
freedom to use the earth until they are paid for it.
How has he got there ?
Has he shown that the law of equal freedom gives free-
dom to the use of land only to a few men and denies it
to all other men ? Has he shown that the right so called
of the small class of landowners to the exclusive use of
land is a true right and not a false right, by deducing it
from the law of equal freedom ? Has he met one of the
conditions called for by his elaborate derivation and for-
mula of justice in the preceding chapters of this very book ?
Has he shown the invalidity of a single one of the deduc-
tions by which he proved in " Social Statics " that justice
does not permit private property in land ?
It is worth while to examine this chapter in detail. Its
argument is divisible into two parts (1) as to the right
to the use of light, air, etc., and (2) as to the right to the
use of land. Let us consider the one part before passing
to the other.
CHAPTER VH.
"JUSTICE" ON THE RIGHT TO LIGHT AND AIR.
MR. SPENCER'S carelessness of thought is shown in
the very opening sentence of this chapter on " The
Rights to the Uses of Natural Media " :
A man may be entirely uninjured in body by the actions of fellow-
men, and he may be entirely unimpeded in his movements by them,
and he may yet be prevented from carrying on the activities needful
for maintenance of life, by traversing his relations to the physical
environment on which his life depends.
How?
To ordinary apprehension, the only way in which men
can be deprived of the use of " the physical environment
on which life depends " is either by such bodily injuries
as killing, maiming, binding, imprisoning, or by such
restrictions on movement as have the threat of bodily
injury behind them, like the taboo among the South Sea
Islanders, or private property in land among us. Nor
have the tyrants of the world, much as they would have
liked to, ever been able to find any other way.
Without condescending to explain, Mr. Spencer goes
on to quote Erskine to the effect that " the light, the air,
running water, etc., are so adapted to the common use of
mankind, that no individual can acquire a property in
them, or deprive others of their use."
"JUSTICE" ON THE EIGHT TO LIGHT AND AIR. 163
This again shows carelessness in apprehension and
statement. What Erskine really means is that the law
does not, and that because it cannot, give property in
the substance of matter, so that the molecules or atoms
of which it is composed may be identified and reclaimed
through all changes in form or place ; but that ownership
can attach to matter only in its relation to form or
place. For instance, I buy to-day a dog or a horse. I
acquire in this purchase the ownership of what matter is
now, or at any time in the future may be, contained in
the form of this dog or horse, not the ownership of a
certain amount of matter in whatever form it may here-
after assume. That no law could give me, nor could I
even set up a claim to it, for it would be impossible for
me to identify it. For the matter which my dog or horse
embodies for the moment, like the matter of which my
own frame is composed, is constantly passing from that
form to other forms. The only thing tangible to me or
other men is this form. And it is in this that ownership
consists. If my dog eats your mutton-chop, your property
in the chop does not become property in the dog. If the
law gives you any action it is certainly not that of replevin.
The principle of the law that Erskine refers to is thus
stated by Blackstone (Chapter 2, Book II.) :
I cannot bring an action to recover possession of a pool or other
piece of water either by superficial measure for twenty acres of
water or by general description, as for a pond or a rivulet ; but I
must bring my action for what lies at the bottom and call it twenty
acres of land covered with water. For water is a movable, wander-
ing thing, and must of necessity continue common by the law of
nature, so that I can only have a temporary, transient, usufructuary
property ; wherefore if a body of water runs out of my pond into
another man's I have no right to reclaim it. But the land which that
water covers is permanent, fixed and immovable, and therefore in
this I may have a certain substantial property, of which the law
will take notice and not of the other.
164 RECANTATION.
Now the comparatively rough distinctions that are
amply sufficient for the purposes of the lawyer are not
always sufficient for the purposes of the philosopher. If
we analyze this principle of the law, we see that no real
distinction is made as to ownership between the sub-
stance of water and the substance of land that is to
say, between the more or less stable forms of matter of
which the body of the universe consists. The distinction
is as to tangible form. I may bring an action for ice,
which is water that has assumed tangible form by the
lowering of temperature, or for water in barrels or bottles,
which in another way gives it form. And the real reason
why in an action for the possession of a body of water I
must describe it as land covered by water is that it is the
land which holds the water in place and gives it form.
So, on the other hand, if a freshet or a water-burst
carry the fertile soil from my field into that of my neigh-
bor, I can no more reclaim it by action at law than I can
reclaim the water that runs out of my pond. Or if a
volcanic convulsion were to shift the position of a min-
eral deposit, it would cease to belong to one landowner
and the other would acquire legal possession. The legal
result would be precisely the same as the legal result of
a change in a rivulet's course. In ruder times, ere the
art of surveying was so well developed as now, it was
customary to fix the boundaries of legal possession by
natural objects deemed immovable, such as mountains,
ocean shores, rivers, etc., and in places where this method
has been retained changes in landmarks frequently
change the ownership of considerable bodies of land, as
on the shifting banks of the lower Mississippi. But our
modern surveying takes for its basis latitude and longi-
tude. And this is the essential idea of landownership :
It is the ownership, not of certain atoms of matter, be
they rock, soil, water or air, or of certain forms of energy,
"JUSTICE" ON THE EIGHT TO LIGHT AND AIB. 165
such as heat, light or electricity, but the ownership of a
certain section of space and of all that may be therein
contained.
Mr. Spencer is confusing two essentially different ideas
the idea of substance and the idea of form or locality.
In the one sense nothing whatever may be owned land
no more than light or electricity. In the other, all natu-
ral substances and powers may be owned water, air, light,
heat or electricity, as truly as land. And they are owned,
though, since in our legal terminology space and its con-
tents are known as land, they must in law be. described as
land. . Whoever, under our laws, acquires ownership in
land may deprive others of light, air, running water, etc.,
and does acquire a property in their use, which is fre-
quently a tangible element, and at times the only ele-
ment in the value of an estate as where the purity of
the air, the beauty of the view, the abundance of sunlight
which a favorable exposure gives, the presence of mineral
springs, or the access to streams, are elements in the
price at which land can be sold or rented.
In the next sentence we are told that "light and air
cannot be monopolized." But they are monopolized in
the monopolization of land, and this as effectually as
any monopolizer could wish. It is true that air and
sunlight are not formally bought, sold and rented. But
why? Not that they could not be measured off and
determined by metes and bounds, but simply because
they are to our physical constitutions inseparable from
land, so that whoever owns the land owns also the air it
is bathed in and the light that falls on it. Light and air
are monopolized whenever land is monopolized ; and the
exclusive use to them is bought and sold whenever land
is bought and sold.
It is not merely that, as the flying-machine has not
yet been perfected, the owner of land holds the means of
166 RECANTATION.
access to the air above it and the light that falls on it ; it
is that the owner of land is the owner of such light and
air, not merely virtually, but formally and legally. And
were the air-ship perfected, he would have the same legal
right to forbid trespass on his light and air, and to
demand payment for any use made of it or any passage
through it, thousands of feet above the surface, as he
now has to forbid trespass on his ground or to demand
payment for any use of or any passage through what lies
thousands of feet below it. In English law, land does
not mean merely the surface of the earth within certain
metes and bounds, but all that may be above and all that
may be below that surface; and under the same legal
right by which the landowner holds as his private prop-
erty any certain part of the surface of the globe he also
holds the rocks and minerals below it and the air and the
light above it. As Blackstone says : " The word ' land '
includes not only the face of the earth, but everything
under it or over it. ... By the name of land everything
terrestrial will pass." The landowner is, in law as well
as in fact, not a mere surface-owner, but a universe-owner.
And just as in some places landowners sell the surface
right, retaining mineral rights; or sell mineral rights,
retaining surface rights ; or sell the right of way, retain-
ing rights to other use : so, where there is occasion, the
right to use light and air may be separated, in sales and
purchases and title-deeds, from the right to the use of the
ground.
An invention which would make practicable the use
of light and air without possession of the surface, would
at once bring out the fact that, legally, they belong to
landowners, just as subterranean mining and the projec-
tion of underground railways have brought out the fact
that landowners are legal owners of all beneath the sur-
face. In fact, existing deeds furnish instances in which
"JUSTICE" ON THE RIGHT TO LIGHT AND AIR. 167
the real thing bought and sold, though properly enough
styled land in the conveyances, is not land at all in lie
narrow meaning, but light and air, or the right to their
use. To cite a case: The city of Cleveland, O., some
years since, desired to convert the viaduct bridge over the
Cuyahoga River into a swinging bridge. To do this it
was necessary that one end of the bridge should in its
swing pass for a short distance through the air over a
strip of land belonging to a private owner. The city of
Cleveland had, therefore, to buy the right to use this air,
and I have before me a copy of the deed, executed on the
28th of February, 1880, by which, in consideration of
$9994.88, Meyers, Bouse & Co. sell and convey to the city
of Cleveland the right to swing such bridge over a small
area thirty-five feet above the ground. Of this estate in
the air the grantors describe themselves as holding a
good and indefeasible title in fee simple, with the right to
bargain and sell the same. Were it thirty-five hundred or
thirty-five hundred thousand feet above the surface, the
legal right of ownership would be the same. For the owner,
ship which attaches to land under our laws is not to be
really measured by linear feet and inches, but by parallels
of latitude and meridians of longitude, starting from the
center of the earth and indefinitely extendible. And
while Meyers, Eouse & Co. have sold to the city of Cleve-
land a slice of their air of perhaps fifteen feet in depth,
they still retain the legal ownership of all the air above
it, and could demand toll of or refuse passage to any
flying-machine that should attempt to cross it.
The same lack of analytic power continues to be shown
by Mr. Spencer when he goes on to tell us that the equal
rights to the use of light and air, though not recognized
in primitive stages, have, in the course of social evolution,
come to be completely or all but completely recognized
now. So far is this from being true, that in such countries
168 RECANTATION.
as England and the United States there is no recognition
whatever of the equal right to the use of light and air.
To the list of interdictions which he cites as recognitions
of this equal right, he might as well have added that of
shying bricks through these media at passers-by. For
where the interdictions he mentions of interceptions of
light and air, of smoking in certain places, of the mainte-
nance of stenches and fumes, of the making of disturbing
noises are not mere interdictions of certain species of
assault; they are interdictions based on and involved in
the ownership of land.
Mr. Spencer might have seen this for himself, where he
speaks of " the law which forbids the building of walls,
houses, or other edifices within prescribed distances of
other houses . . . and seeks to compromise the claims of
adjacent owners as fairly as seem practicable."
Owners of what? Why, owners of land. It is only as
an owner of land, or as the tenant of an owner of land,
that under our English law any one has a right to com-
plain of the interception of light and air by another land-
owner. The owner of land may intercept light and air,
may make noises and create stenches to any extent he
pleases, provided he infringes not the equal rights of
other owners of land, for light and air are considered by
English law as what they truly are, so far as human beings
are concerned, appurtenances of land. No one in England,
be he stranger or native-born, has any legal right what-
ever to the use of English light and English air, save as
the owner or grantee of an owner of English land. That
even on the Queen's highways the public are deemed to
have such rights as against adjacent landholders I am not
sure. Certain it is, that one may travel for miles through
the public roads, amid the finest scenery in those countries,
and find the view wantonly shut out by high and costly
walls, erected for the express purpose of intercepting the
"JUSTICE" ON THE RIGHT TO LIGHT AND AIR. 169
light, and crowned on their tops with broken glass, to tear
the clothes and cut the flesh of any one who dares climb
them to get such a view as the unintercepted light would
give.
The rights to the use of light, air and other natural
media are in truth as inseparable from the right to the use
of land as the bottom of that atmospheric ocean which sur-
rounds our globe is inseparable from the globe's surface ;
and the pretense of treating them separately could spring
only from Mr. Spencer's evident desire to confuse the sub-
ject he is pretending to treat, to cover with a fog of words
his abandonment of a position incapable of refutation, and
from the false assumption that the liberty of each to the
use of air and light, limited only by the like liberty of all,
is practically and legally recognized, to lead to the still
more preposterously false assumption that equal rights to
the use of land are also fully recognized.
But before examining this last assumption, there is one
form of it which he incidentally makes that is worth notic-
ingthe assumption that the equal right to personal lib-
erty and freedom of movement is already fully recognized.
It is a pity that Mr. Spencer had not intermitted his
studies of the Abors, the Bodas, the Creeks, the Dhimals,
the Eghas, and other queer people, to the end of the
alphabet, of whom his later books are as full as those of
the pedants of the last century were of classical quota-
tions, and made some observations in his own country.
They would have saved him from the astounding state-
ment that
At the present time, among ourselves at least, there exists no
idea, sentiment, or usage, at variance with the conclusion that each
man is free to use his limbs and move about where he pleases.
The truth is, that instead of every one being free in
England "to use his limbs and move about where he
170 RECANTATION.
pleases," there is no part of the British Isles, even though
it be wild moor, bleak deer-forest or bare mountain-top,
where a man is free to move about without permission of
the private owner, except it be the highroads, the pub-
lic places, or other strips and spots of land deemed the
property of the community.
Mr. Spencer seems to have forgotten this now, but he
knew it when in " Social Statics " he denounced the system
that permitted the Duke of Leeds to warn off tourists
from Ben Mac Dhui, the Duke of Atholl to close Glen
Tilt, the Duke of Buccleuch to deny Free Church sites,
and the Duke of Sutherland to displace Highlanders with
deer.
"Verily, they have their reward." The name of Her-
bert Spencer now appears with those of about all the
Dukes in the Kingdom as the director of an association
formed for the purpose of defending private property in
land that was especially active in the recent London
County Council election.
CHAPTER VIH.
"JUSTICE" ON THE RIGHT TO LAND.
AT last, however, as all men must, even after the flying-
J\. machine becomes practicable, Mr. Spencer is forced
to come down from light and air to solid earth.
But observe howreluctantly,howtenderly,heapproaches
the main question, the subject he would evidently like to
ignore altogether. Land to us the one solid, natural
element; our all-producing, all-supporting mother, from
whose bosom our very frames are drawn, and to which
they return again; our standing-place; our workshop;
our granary ; our reservoir and substratum and nexus of
media and forces ; the element from which all we can pro-
duce must be drawn ; without which we cannot breathe the
air or enjoy the light ; the element prerequisite to all human
life and action he speaks of as " that remaining portion
of the environment, hardly to be called a medium," which
" by an unusual extension of meaning " is included in the
things to which the equal liberty of all extends.
Yet, at last, and thus tenderly, after having shown to
his own satisfaction that with regard to personal rights
and the liberty of movement, " things as they are " in such
countries as England do not differ from " things as they
ought to be," except, perhaps, that there is too much
smoking in railway carriages, Mr. Spencer does at last get
to the burning question of the land. And no sooner does
he get there than the power by virtue of which a truth
172 EECANTATION.
once recognized can never be entirely forgotten or utterly
ignored, forces from him this recognition :
If, while possessing those ethical sentiments which social disci-
pline has now produced, men stood in the possession of a territory
not yet individually portioned out, they would no more hesitate to
assert equality of their claims to the land than they would hesitate
to assert equality of their claims to light and air.
" If, while possessing those ethical sentiments which social
discipline has now produced." This " if " is the assumption
of the Spencerian philosophy, that our moral sentiments
have been evolved by pressure of conditions, survival of the
fittest and hereditary transmission, since the time when,
according to it, primitive men were accustomed to eat each
other. Having told us that social evolution has brought
mankind in the Victorian era to the recognition of equal
rights to air and light, Mr. Spencer now assumes that the
idea of equal rights to the use of land is the product of a
similar development instead of being a primary perception
of mankind.
Now this assumption is not merely opposed to all the
facts ; it is inconsistent with the Spencerian philosophy.
To consider the philosophy first : It holds that man is
an evolution from the animal. He comes to be man by
gradual development from the monkey or from some form
of life from which the monkeys have also sprung. In the
course of this evolutionary process, continued since he
became man, he has acquired his present instincts, habits
and powers.
Now I will not ask how, since the highest animals that
habitually eat their own kind are on the synthetic genea-
logical tree far below any of the animals, existing or
extinct, from which man can have descended, the oft-
repeated assumption that primitive men were habitual
cannibals can be reconciled with the assumption that they
derived their habits from their animal ancestors.
"JUSTICE" ON THE EIGHT TO LAND. 173
But I will make bold to ask how the assumption that
men have only now arrived at the perception of the equal-
ity of rights to the use of the natural media, and especially
land, can be reconciled with the assumption that our
moral perceptions are derived from animals. Animals
fight with their own kind, as men fight ; or at least some
of them do occasionally, though none fight so frequently
and so wantonly. But is there an animal, from the mon-
key to the jellyfish, that does not, with animals of its own
kind, and when at peace, fail to claim for itself and accord
to others the liberty to use natural media, bounded only
by the equal liberty of all ? If there is not, how can the
assumption that it has taken man all these ages to recog-
nize the equality of rights to the use of natural media be
made to harmonize with the assumption that he primarily
derives his perceptions from the animal ?
I ask this question to emphasize the fact that, in his
effort to smooth away the monstrous injustice of private
property in land, Mr. Spencer does violence to his own
theories not alone to the theories which he held when he
wrote " Social Statics," but to the theories of his Synthetic
Philosophy the theories set forth in " Justice ; " that he
stands ready to sacrifice to his new masters not only his
moral honesty, but even what the morally depraved often
cling to the pretense of intellectual honesty. In order
to ignore the gist of the land question while pretending to
explain it, he is endeavoring to create the impression that
the present treatment of land, if not indeed the best, is at
least the highest form which the progressive development
of the idea of the equality of rights to the use of natural
media has assumed. But to say that the idea of equal
rights to land is the product of advancing social discipline
is to say that it has proceeded from the contrary idea that
of unequal rights, or private property in land. Since the
animals show no trace of this idea, this assumption is
174 BECANTATION.
inconsistent with the doctrine that primitive man came
closest to the animals. And to assume, as Mr. Spencer
does in this chapter, that men start with the idea of
unequal rights to land, and have been working up through
social discipline to the idea of equal rights, is likewise
inconsistent with all the points in the elaborate derivation
of the idea of justice, which occupy the first eight chapters
of this very book.
The assumption that the idea of equal rights to land is
the product of social discipline is at both ends contradicted
by the facts. In America, Australia and New Zealand,
men of English speech, possessing "those ethical senti-
ments which social discipline has now produced," have
stood in possession of territory not yet individually por-
tioned out ; but, instead of asserting the equality of claims
to land, they have proceeded to portion out individually
this territory as fast as they could. Thus the effect upon
their ethical sentiments of the social discipline to which
they have been subjected has been the precise opposite of
what Mr. Spencer asserts. Instead of leading them from
non-perception to a perception of the equality of rights
to land, social discipline, dominated by landowners, and
continued steadily and rigorously, had, within compara-
tively recent times, almost entirely crushed out the idea
of natural rights in land among the English people, and
taught them to look on private property in land as in
no wise differing from property in other things.
Or, try Mr. Spencer's assumption from the other end.
Among the aboriginal races in the countries we modern
English have overrun, the idea of equal rights to land,
and of course to other natural media, has been so clearly
perceived that they were unable to comprehend the arti-
ficial notion of private property in land could no more
see than could Mr. Spencer in 1850 how land could equita-
bly become private property. To this very day, and in
"JUSTICE" ON THE RIGHT TO LAND. 175
spite of the pressure of the national government and of
the surrounding whites, the Cherokees, the Choctaws, and
other civilized remnants of the aboriginal tribes of the
United States, though recognizing fully the right of prop-
erty in things produced by labor, and recognizing also the
right of private possession of land, refuse to recognize land
as the property of the individual ; and no man can hold
land among them except while putting it to use. The idea
that land itself can become subject to such individual
ownership as attaches to things that man produces by
labor, is as repugnant to the human mind, undisciplined
by generations of cruel repression and undistorted by
persistent misteachings, as the idea that air or sunlight
may be so owned.
Mr. Spencer himself, while stating that the perception
of the equality of natural rights to land is the product of
the social advance that has brought men of the highest
civilization to their present ethical condition, goes on in
the next paragraph to show at length that " in early stages
private ownership of land is unknown," and that private
property in land has arisen from "the exercise of direct
or indirect force, sometimes internal but chiefly external." *
* It may be worth noting that here Mr. Spencer again confuses
equal rights with joint rights. The primitive idea is not that of
deeming land the property of the tribe, and the relation of individ-
uals to the soil one of joint ownership. Although within generally
vague territorial limits each tribe may claim the right to exclude
other tribes, yet the idea is not that of property in the land, but of
that sort of separation which took place between Lot and Abraham ;
and the relation of the members to the land is not that of joint
ownership, but of equal right to use such regulations as in the
earlier stages become necessary, being merely those which secure
this equality in use. Among no primitive people would it be
thought that a member of the tribe required the consent of the
whole to make use of land no one else was using. He would do
that without question, as a matter of individual right.
176 RECANTATION.
What Mr. Spencer thus admits is that private property
in land has no derivation from perceptions of justice,
whether these be original or acquired by evolution, but
that its only genesis is force. And then comes his supreme
effort. In the reference to the feudal system and the
assumption that the rights of the monarch, as representa-
tive of the whole people, are still exercised by the people's
representatives, lies the pivotal point of his whole argu-
ment.
To return to my illustration of the tunnel. This is the
way he gets there :
We are told that when private property in land did
arise, it was habitually incomplete, since it was subject to
the claims of the over-lord, the implication being that the
ownership was subordinate to that of the head of the com-
munity ; and that this conception survives alike in theory
and in practice to the present time, since the state now
takes land for public purposes after making due compen-
sation to existing holders. The supreme power of the
monarch having been replaced by the supreme power of
the people, the people are now the supreme owners of the
land, and may take it, if they please, on payment of full
compensation. Thus, individual freedom has been reac-
quired with regard to land, and to-day, in the existing
theory and practice of English law, and like their equal
rights to light and air, the equal rights of all to the use of
land are fully recognized.
All that has gone before is the by-play of the juggler
to distract attention. In this the transmogrification is
worked.
Here, with one flash of synthetic logic, the horse-chest-
nut becomes a chestnut horse ! Here is the explanation
of what was averred in Mr. Spencer's letter to the Times
that the view of lanclownership he has taken all along is
"congruous with existing legal theory and practice."
"JUSTICE" ON THE EIGHT TO LAND. 177
Here is his reconciliation of his formula of justice that
" each is at liberty to do all that he wills, provided that
he infringes not the equal liberty of any other man"
with the views of that august body, the Liberty and Prop-
erty Defense League, " on which sit several Peers and two
judges." Both are harmonized in the assumption that the
equal rights of all to the use of land are to-day recognized
in the right of Parliament to take land for public pur-
poses on paying for it.
What, it may be asked, has become of the nineteen-
twentieths of the people of England who, as "Social
Statics " told us, were being robbed of their birthright
their heritage in the earth by a gigantic injustice infe-
rior only in wickedness to murder and enslavement ? Why,
having the privilege of voting for members of one branch
of the Legislature, which Mr. Spencer has, in this very
book, page 49, described as "a motley assemblage of
nominees of caucuses, ruled by ignorant and fanatical
wire-pullers," they have been transmogrified into supreme
owners of the land.
What, it still may be asked, has become of that part of
them that do not have even the poor privilege of voting
for this motley assemblage of nominees of caucuses ?
There is no answer. We may search Chapter IV. of
the "Principles of Ethics The Ethics of Social Life:
Justice," in vain. They have incontinently dropped out
of sight.
It may be worth while to examine that part of Mr.
Spencer's logical process where it is assumed that the
legal theory and practice by which the British Legisla-
ture, on the payment of compensation, now takes land for
public purposes is identical with the theory and practice
by which the feudal monarch, as representing the whole
people, was the supreme owner of land. This is all that
178 RECANTATION.
he ventures specifically to assert, and the question raised
by it is much narrower than the real question, whether the
present legal theory and practice does adequately recog-
nize the equal rights of all to land. Yet, even here, Mr.
Spencer clearly suppresses the vital fact.
The taking of land for public purposes on payment of
compensation or by process of condemnation, as it is
termed is neither an exercise nor recognition of the
supreme ownership of land. In the American States
where the ownership of land is by their constitutions
declared allodial, the same powers of condemning land
are exerted, and more freely exerted than in England. If
pictures are bought for the national galleries, not con-
demned, it is merely because there is no need for condem-
nation. The same legal power exists to take pictures for
public use as to take land. In case of necessity, such as
war, the power of taking anything is habitually exercised,
and ships, horses, railways, provisions, and even men are
taken for public uses. The power to do this is a power
incident to the supreme authority and at times necessary
to society.
When, in 1889, Johnstown, Pa., was cut off from the
rest of the world by the flood that destroyed preexist-
ing organization, a British subject, Arthur J. Moxham,
was placed in charge by what a Quaker would call " the
sense of the meeting." His first acts were to seize
all food, to destroy all liquor, and to put every able-
bodied man at work, leaving the matter of compensation
to be determined afterwards. He voiced the will of the
society, driven by crushing disaster into a supreme effort
for self-preservation, and the man who had resisted his
orders would, if need be, have been shot.
But the theory of English law that the crown is the
only owner of English land, and that the highest estate
"JUSTICE" ON THE EIGHT TO LAND. 179
an individual can hold is that of tenancy, though often
confused with the right of eminent domain, has in reality
a different origin. Now a mere fiction, it had in feudal
times expression in practice. When William the Con-
queror divided England, he conditioned his grants on the
payment of rent in dues or services. This was the
essence of the feudal principle. In a rough and partial
but still substantial way, it recognized the right of the
community to rent. It was a rude attempt to carry out
that system of land nationalization which Mr. Spencer in
"Social Statics" declares the only equitable system of
land tenure. Under it the holding of valuable land
entailed payment or service. The crown lands main-
tained the sovereign and the civil list. From the church
lands the expenses of public worship, and of education,
the care of the sick and the relief of wayfarers were pro-
vided; the holders of military tenures had to maintain
the army and do the fighting, and on occasions, such as
the ransom of the king, the knighting of his eldest son,
the marriage of his eldest daughter, etc., were called on
for extra payments ; while the right of all Englishmen to
the use of some portion at least of English soil was recog-
nized in the numerous public commons. This spirit of
the feudal system was the origin of primogeniture, of
wardships and liveries and other feudal incidents, which,
where they remain on the law books of to-day, are but
meaningless and useless survivals.
Mr. Spencer, in his " glance at some past phases of land
tenure," has told us of the Sumatrans, the Don Cossacks,
the Russians, the Suanetians, and the Dahomeans, but he
has failed to tell us how we of the English speech have lost
those fragments of the equal right to the use of land that
we retained long after the last conquest of England. I do
not charge him with ignorance. If he does not tell us, it
180 EECANTATION.
is not because he does not know, for " Political Institu-
tions " shows that he does know.* But he does not tell us,
because the facts are inconsistent with the juggle by
which he is trying to impose on the reader. It was in
reality by a gigantic series of no-rent declarations on the
part of the class that had got possession of English land
on condition of paying rent for it. The crown lands
were given away by profligate sovereigns without any
stipulation of return in rent to the community. Henry
VIII. made over the greater part of the church lands to
his favorites, and the people were robbed of the services
and benefits that they had received from the former
holders. Finally, by act of the Long Parliament, con-
firmed after the Restoration by a close majority, the
military dues were abolished ; and, growing in power by
what they fed on, the landholders, now actually land-
owners, appropriated to themselves, by the simple process
of inclosure, nearly all the common lands.
The essence and meaning of the supreme ownership of
the land of England by the crown is thus gone. What
remains is but a legal fiction, a mere survival of form, of
no more validity than was in the time of George III. the
form by which he styled himself King of France. Yet in
this empty phrase, and in the taking of land for public
* In the chapter on Political Differentiation, page 297, "Princi-
ples of Sociology," Volume II., he quotes from Hallam:
"William the Conqueror . . . divided this kingdom into about
60,000 parcels, of nearly equal value [partly left in the hands of
those who previously held it, and partly made over to his followers
as either owners or suzerains], from each of which the service of a
soldier was due."
And again, in the chapter on Property, page 553 of the same
book, occurs the passage once before quoted:
"In our case the definite ending of these tenures took place in
1660 ; when for feudal obligations (a burden on landowners) was
substituted a beer-excise (a burden on the community)."
"JUSTICE" ON THE EIGHT TO LAND. 181
use on payment of full compensation, Mr. Spencer tells
his disinherited countrymen that their equal rights are
actually recognized.
Thus the equal right of Englishmen to the use of Eng-
lish land amounts to the privilege of buying it at its full
value! What, then, has the Englishman as English-
man? A Russian or a Turk, a Winans or a Carnegie,
may use land in England by paying for it.
If we put the conclusion as to the right to the use of
land to which Mr. Spencer thus comes in " Justice " in the
same form which he uses in " Social Statics," we have this :
Given a race of beings having like claims to pursue
the objects of their desires given a world adapted to the
gratification of those desires a world into which such
beings are similarly born, and it unavoidably follows
that they have the right to use this world as soon as
they have paid the full value of it to those of their num-
ber who call themselves its owners.
But this telling the disinherited masses that their equal
rights to land are already acknowledged seems hardly
satisfactory to Mr. Spencer himself, for he at once pro-
ceeds to reinforce it, by the plea that for them to claim
any more than the right of buying land at its full value
would be ethically wrong. This is a putting of the cart
before the horse. For a wrong is only the violation of a
right. Rights, as Mr. Spencer has just before told us, are
the particular freedoms deducible from the law of equal
freedom, and to assert wrong he must show violation of
that law. Let us, however, follow his reasoning.
The first proposition is that
Since equity and daily custom alike imply that existing holders
of particular portions of land may not be dispossessed without
giving them in return its fairly estimated value, it is also implied
that the wholesale resumption of the land by the community can be
justly effected only by the wholesale purchase of it.
182 RECANTATION.
Is it? By equity and custom when the state takes any
part of the wealth of a particular person it compensates
him. But when it takes part of the wealth of all persons,
or of all persons of a special class, as it is constantly
doing by taxation, does it compensate them ?
The reason for compensation, when land is taken from
particular owners, is that otherwise a discrimination would
be made between them and other landowners. Equity,
as Mr. Spencer once told us, means equalness. It would
not be equitable for the community to resume possession
of the land of this or that particular landowner without
compensation, while leaving to other landowners their
land, for while this would be to leave unredressed the
unequalness between landholders and others, it would be
to treat landowners unequally as between themselves.
But if all land were resumed equity would require no com-
pensation, for while landowners would be treated equally
as between themselves, the inequality between them and
other members of the community would be removed, and
all would be treated with equalness. And since they,
too, are members of the community, the resumption of all
land by the community would place all in a condition of
equalness with respect to the land.
But, continues Mr. Spencer herein admitting that the
community may in equity take the land
Were the direct exercise of ownership to be resumed by the
community without purchase, the community would take, along
with something which is its own, an immensely greater amount of
something which is not its own.
How so ? The proposition is only to take the land, not
to take anything else.
Because, Mr. Spencer continues
Even if we ignore those multitudinous complications which, in
the course of century after century, have inextricably entangled
"JUSTICE" ON THE EIGHT TO LAND. 183
men's claims, theoretically considered even if we reduce the case
to its simplest theoretical form-
Well, all classes of land-resumptionists would quickly
reply, we are quite willing to do so. Since, as laid down
in " Social Statics," men derive their equal rights to the
use of the world from their equal presence in the world,
there can be no complications that can entangle their
equal claims to the use of land, either considered theo-
retically or in any other way.
But without heeding this, Mr. Spencer goes on to say,
that even if we ignore what no one proposes to consider,
and even if we reduce the case to simple theoretical form
We must admit that all which can be claimed for the community
is the surface of the country in its original unsubdued state. To
all that value given to it by clearing, breaking up, prolonged cul-
ture, fencing, draining, making roads, farm-buildings, etc., con-
stituting nearly all its value, the community has no claim. This
value has been given either by personal labor, or by labor paid for,
or by ancestral labor ; or else the value given to it in such ways has
been purchased by legitimately earned money. All this value
artificially given vests in existing owners, and cannot without a
gigantic robbery be taken from them. If, during the many trans-
actions which have brought about existing landownership, there
have been much violence and much fraud, these have been small
compared with the violence and the fraud which the community
would be guilty of did it take possession, without paying for it, of
that artificial value, which the labor of nearly two thousand years
has given to the land.
What does Mr. Spencer mean? If he means that all
that can be claimed by the community is the land itself,
and that landowners should retain the value of their
improvements, and of all things else that they may pos-
sess, we admit it not entirely as a matter of strict justice,
for much of things other than the land itself, which exist-
ing landowners now possess, they have obtained by their
184 EECANTATION.
unjust appropriation of land. But we wish to be within
our right, and to let bygones be bygones, and so all that
we propose is just what Mr. Spencer in " Social Statics "
proposed the resumption of equal rights in land, leav-
ing to existing landowners, without question as to how
it was obtained, the whole value of their improvements in
or on land, and all their other property.
But what, then, does Mr. Spencer mean by talking of
"the surface of the country in its original unsubdued
state," as all the community can claim ? What does he
mean by talking of that " artificial value which the labor
of nearly two thousand years has given to the land"?
Vague as are his notions of value, can it be that he
means that, even if their natural rights are admitted, the
people of England are entitled only to what value the
land had before there were any people? and that they
must pay the landowners for the value of all the labor
that has been expended on that land since Cassar landed ?
What the people of England are entitled to by natural
right, and what we propose by the single tax to take for
their use, is the value of land as it is, exclusive of the
value of improvements as they are in or on the land pri-
vately owned. What would thus be left to the land-
owners would be their personal or movable property, the
value of all existing improvements in or on their land,
and their equal share with all other citizens in the land
value resumed. This is perfectly clear, and if not per-
fectly fair, is only so because it would leave to the land-
owners in their personal property and the value of their
improvements much not due to any exertion of labor by
themselves or their ancestors, but which has come to them
through the unjust appropriation of the proceeds of
others' labor.
The value of the land when the country was in its origi-
nal unsubdued state has nothing to do with the matter ;
"JUSTICE" ON THE RIGHT TO LAND. 185
what we have to deal with is the value of the land as it is.
Nor has the labor expended since Caesar's time anything
to do with it; the value of improvements to be left to
landowners is the value of existing improvements.
Surely if Mr. Spencer were to try to formulate his notions
it would be too preposterous even for him to contend
that in resuming our rights in the land not the rights of
the ancient Britons, nor the rights of primitive man, nor
the rights of the animals that existed before man was
we should credit the existing landowners with the value
which attaches to the land from our presence, and charge
them only with what value the land might have if we did
not exist. And surely he would not contend that the
landowners are alone entitled to the value which the
existing social environment gives to land to the sole
benefit of the introduction of Christianity, the extirpation
of wolves, the beating off or civilizing of the Danes, the
defeat of the Spanish Armada, the building of public roads
and the lighting of public streets, the introduction of
vegetables and fruits and the improvement of domestic
animals, the utilization of steam and electricity and
labor-saving appliances, the discoveries of science and
the progress of the arts!
Nor yet would he formally assert the notion that in
addition to the present value of their improvements the
landowners must be credited with the value of all such
improvements when they were new, and with the cost of
all the draining, hedging, fencing, digging, manuring,
building, etc., that have gone on for two thousand years
that the owner of land in the city of London, for
instance, must be credited, not only with the present
value of his houses, but with the value of the houses
that existed before the great fire, and from the time of
the first Roman camp ! This would be equally prepos-
terous.
186 RECANTATION.
It is hard to say what Mr. Spencer really does mean.
But he is evidently trying to get some sort of vague
excuse for assuming that it would not pay the disin-
herited to claim their rights in land, since to compensate
landowners would take more than the land is worth.
Let us, therefore, try to form some idea of what would
be the present value of the land of England in its " origi-
nal, unsubdued state," population and social environment,
and the existing buildings, which we propose to leave to
the landowners, remaining as they are.
If, whenever a house was pulled down, or destroyed by
fire, in Threadneedle Street or Lombard street, in Cheap-
side or at Charing Cross, the ground on which it stood
were to spring into its original condition, how much less
would be its value to those who, in renting or buying it,
seek not so much soil or rock or sand, but so many square
feet of standing-place in those centers of population and
trade? How much less would be the value of the land
that around London and Manchester and Liverpool and
Birmingham and Leeds and all the growing English
towns is being turned from agricultural uses into house-
sites, were it to revert to its condition in Roman times ?
While as for the country outside the cities and towns,
would it not, could such a miracle be worked, become
more rather than less valuable ? Something of draining,
hedging, walling, manuring and digging would be lost ;
but would not the accumulated richness of virgin soil,
the great forests that in England now would have enor-
mous value, the stores of coal and iron and other minerals
that have now been exhausted or can be worked only at
great depths, much more than make up ?
If Mr. Spencer would go to the greater Englands grow-
ing up in Australia and the American West, he would
cease thinking of Romans or Saxons or Normans as having
anything to do with the present value of English land;
"JUSTICE" ON THE EIGHT TO LAND. 187
for he would see that it is not what has been done in the
past, but the population and activity of the present, that
give value to land. He would see from Chicago or
Johnstown that London might be swept by fire or flood,
and yet, if the causes that concentrate population and
trade there still remained, land, instead of being less
valuable, would really become more valuable, from the
better improvements that the clearing would bring about.
He would see that, if the population and business of Lon-
don could be transported to a newly risen island in the
antipodes, land there would become as valuable as land
in London now ; and that, though all improvements were
to be left behind, the value of land in London would dis-
appear.
What the new countries will show us is, that as man
lives in the present so he lives by the labor of the present
and the immediate past, truly from hand to mouth ; and
what we get from our ancestors is little more than lan-
guage, traditions, laws, habits, and the store of transmitted
knowledge, including also prejudices and superstitions.
And thus rich and poor, learned and ignorant, we are
alike " the heirs of all the ages." While if some of us
are richer than we ought to be, and more of us are poorer
than we ought to be, it is not because of the wrongful
appropriations of wealth that took place in a dead and
gone past, but from the wrongful appropriations of wealth
that are taking place now.
Barring the appendix, which is yet to be considered,
we have now gone through Mr. Spencer's defense of exist-
ing landlordism his answer, in his maturest years, to the
arraignment of private property in land which he made
in " Social Statics." Stripped of its padding it amounts
simply to the assumption (1) that the equal rights of all
to the use of land are recognized in the right of the state
188 RECANTATION.
to take land for public purposes on paying compensa-
tion ; which is backed by the assumption (2) that equity
requires that existing owners shall be paid the full value
of the land they hold before equal rights to land can be
acknowledged.
Of the first assumption, the only attempt at support is
in the last paragraph, the reasoning of which on analysis
will be found to be this :
The equal right of all electors to the use of land is
recognized by implication in the right asserted by Parlia-
ment to take land for public use on paying full compen-
sation for its value ; because
If it is not, there is no equitable warrant for the state
so taking land for public uses, since the only right by
which the landowners can be superseded is the right of
the community at large : hence
As the state has this right, which it can get only as the
sum of the individual rights of its members ; therefore, by
its exercise, the individual rights of members of the state
to the use of land are now recognized.
Of the second assumption, the only attempt at support
is another obviously false assumption that the value of
land cannot be distinguished from the value of improve-
ments.
This is the argument of the lauded Synthetic Philos-
ophy in the most important part of the most important
book of its most important sub-division.
I commend the study of such logical processes to those
who on authority of Herbert Spencer's philosophy believe
that man is an evoluted monkey, who got the idea of God
from observing his own shadow.
As for anything deserving the name of reasoning,
anything on which may be founded either a denial of
the equal right of all to the use of land, or an affirmation
of the exclusive right of existing landowners, there is
"JUSTICE" ON THE EIGHT TO LAND. 189
nothing whatever. It is not merely that the reasoning of
" Social Statics " is not impugned : it is that the reasoning
of "Justice" itself is utterly ignored. No connection
whatever is made between the conclusions here assumed
and the formula of justice, the law of equal freedom,
which in preceding chapters of this very book has been
declared the ultimate ethical principle.
The reader has just been told that rights are the par-
ticular freedoms deducible from the law of equal free-
dom ; that what are truly called rights are deducible from
it, and that what are falsely called rights are not deduci-
ble from it. But where does Mr. Spencer, or how can he,
deduce the right which he asserts for landowners, the
right to the exclusive use of land until they are paid its
full value, from the law of equal freedom ? Or, if we go
back through all the links of his derivation of the
formula of justice can we find any connection between
what he now asserts as right, and what he has just
asserted as justice in any of its evolutionary stages ?
Does not the ownership by some to the exclusion of
others, of elements essential to all life, the legal giving of
the products of labor to those who do no labor, by taking
it away from those who do labor, violate what he declares
to be the principle of animal ethics that the ill-fitted
must suffer the evils of unfitness, and the well-fitted
prove their fitness ?
Does it not violate what he declares to be the principle
of sub-human justice, that each individual shall receive
the benefits and evils of its own nature and consequent
conduct ?
Does it not violate what he declares to be the principle
of human justice, that no one should be prevented from
having whatever good his actions normally bring to him,
nor allowed to shoulder off on other persons whatever
evil they bring ?
190 EECANTATION.
Does it not violate what lie declares to be the sentiment
of justice, the feeling that we ourselves ought to have
freedom to receive the results of our own nature and con-
sequent actions, and which prompts the maintenance of
this sphere of free play for others ?
Does it not violate what he declares to be the idea of
justice, the equality as to mutually limited spheres of
action, the inequality in the results which each may
achieve within these mutual limits ? Does it not establish
inequality by authority an inequality referring not to
the natural achievement of greater rewards by greater
merits, but to the artificial apportionment of rewards to
no merits at all ?
Does it not violate what he declares to be the formula
of justice, that every man is free to do that which he wills,
provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other
man?
Does it not set at defiance what he declares to be the
authority of this formula, the relation between conduct
and consequence, which he bases on his compound law ?
Private property in land, which Herbert Spencer in
"Justice" defends by the darkening of counsel and base-
less assumptions ! Does it not openly, notoriously, fla-
grantly, deny to men the equal use of natural opportunities
to live their lives, develop their powers, and reap the
rewards of their conduct? Does it not give to the idle,
the stupid, the profligate, the vicious, through the acci-
dents of birth or luck, or successful forestalling, the natu-
ral rewards of industry, energy, temperance and thrift?
Does it not proportionately, and far more than propor-
tionately (for it involves enormous wastes), deny these
rewards to those who have really earned them ? Does it
not give wealth, honor, the command of everything that
labor in a high civilization can produce, to idlers, idiots,
gamesters, profligates? Does it not, on the other hand,
"JUSTICE" ON THE RIGHT TO LAND. 191
condemn toil to penury, and honest labor to contempt
and grinding want ? Does it not, wherever our civiliza-
tion extends, make the mere opportunity to work a boon ?
keep men in idleness whose strongest desire is to earn a
living? fill prisons and almshouses? condemn to igno-
rance minds that might enlighten and bless mankind?
debase and embrute great masses of men and women?
rob little children of the grace and sweetness and glory
of life, and force them before their time out of a world in
which monopoly denies them room ?
Try Herbert Spencer by the ideas that he once held
the idea of a Living God, whose creatures we are, and the
idea of a divine order, to which we are bound to conform.
Or try him by what he now professes the idea that we
are but the evolutionary results of the integrations of
matter and motion. Try him by the principles of
" Social Statics," or try him by the principles of " Jus-
tice." In this chapter he proves himself alike a traitor to
all that he once held and to all that he now holds a con-
scious and deliberate traitor, who assumes the place of
the philosopher, the office of the judge, only to darken
truth and to deny justice -, to sell out the right of the
wronged and to prostitute his powers in the defense of
the wronger.
Is it a wonder that intellectually, as morally, this chap-
ter is beneath contempt?
CHAPTER IX.
"JUSTICE" THE RIGHT OP PROPERTY.
IN " Justice " as in " Social Statics," the chapter on the
right to land is followed by a chapter on the right
of property. That in " Social Statics " I have reprinted
in full, to meet Mr. Spencer's subsequent assertion that it
modified the radical conclusions of the preceding chapter.
But it is hardly necessary thus to treat the similar chap-
ter of " Justice." It begins (Section 54) :
Since all material objects capable of being owned are in one way
or other obtained from the earth, it results that the right of prop-
erty is originally dependent on the right to the use of the earth.
While there were yet no artificial products, and natural products
were therefore the only things which could be appropriated, this
was an obviously necessary connection. And though, in our devel-
oped form of society, there are multitudinous possessions, ranging
from houses, furniture, clothes, works of art, to bank-notes, rail-
way shares, mortgages, government bonds, etc., the origins of
which have no manifest relation to use of the earth ; yet it needs
but to remember that they either are, or represent, products of
labor, that labor is made possible by food, and that food is obtained
from the soil, to see that the connection, though remote and
entangled, still continues. Whence it follows that a complete
ethical justification for the right of property is involved in the same
difficulties as the ethical justification for the right to the use of the
earth.
Since all material things capable of being owned con-
sist either of land or products of land, the roundabout
"JUSTICE "-THE EIGHT OF PROPERTY. 193
connection between such things as are here specified and
the earth, through the food consumed by laborers, is a
queer one, which indicates what in some parts of " Social
Statics" may be suspected, that in speaking of land
Mr. Spencer, as is often the case with English writers, is
really thinking only of agricultural land.
The difficulties of which he speaks are the difficulties
he raises in " Social Statics," by confounding equal rights
with joint rights, and he here again takes issue with
Locke and assumes, as before, that for production to give
title, the right of the producer to the use of material must
be shown to be "greater than the preexisting rights of
all other men put together." The forty-one years that
have elapsed have left Mr. Spencer still entangled by this
self-raised difficulty. But he now goes on to say that the
difficulty arising from the question whether by labor "a
man has made his right to the thing greater than the
preexisting rights of all other men put together* . . .
may be avoided however. There are three ways in
which, under savage, semi-civilized, and civilized condi-
tions, men's several rights of property may be established
with due regard to the equal rights of all other men."
In the savage condition, he says there is a tacit agree-
ment that having equal opportunities of utilizing such
products, appropriation achieved by one shall be passively
assented to by the others.
* Mr. Spencer speaks of such usages as that an unsuccessful
hunter in passing might take a deer from a trap for food, leaving
head, skin, and saddle for the owner, as implying the belief of the
tribesmen that " this prey was in part theirs before it was killed."
But it no more implies this than the custom by which, among the
early California rancheros, any traveler might catch a fresh horse,
transfer his saddle and leave the tired one implied common prop-
erty in horses, or than the kindly customs of essentially the same
kind that are to be found wherever the struggle for existence that
has developed with our civilization has not become intense.
194 RECANTATION.
As to the semi-civilized condition, he says :
We meet with usages having the same general implications. . . .
It is perceived that the assent of the clan to ownership of food
grown on an appropriated portion by any one, is implied in the
assumptions of kindred ownership similarly established by all
others. ... In this case then as in the first, the right of property
arises in conformity with the law of equal freedom.
So far then Mr. Spencer derives, and properly derives,
the right of property from the exertion of labor under
conditions in which all are equally free to make use of
land. He now comes to his third division, where he is to
show how in civilized conditions the right of property
" may be established with due regard to the equal rights
of all other men." I will quote this in full :
Though we cannot say that ownership of property, thus arising,
results from actual contract between each member of the commu-
nity and the community as a whole, yet there is something like a
potential contract ; and such potential contract might grow into an
actual contract if one part of the community devoted itself to other
occupations, while the rest continued to farm : a share of the pro-
duce being in such case payable by agreement to those who had
ceased to be farmers, for the use of their shares of the land.* We
have no evidence that such a relation between occupiers and the
community, with consequent authorized rights of property in the
produce which remained after payment of a portion equivalent to
rent, has ever arisen ; for, as we have seen, the original ownership
by the community has habitually been usurped by internal or
external aggressors, and the rent, taking the shape, if not of pro-
duce, then of labor or military service, has been habitually paid to
* Here is another instance of the habit of thinking of land as
only agricultural land. The assumption here is that farmers are
the only users of land, whereas the obvious truth is that there is no
occupation that can be carried on without the use of land, and that
many other occupations require the use of much more valuable
land than does farming. In the occupancy of his London apart-
ments Mr. Spencer himself is more of a land-user, value considered,
than many a small farmer.
"JUSTICE "-THE EIGHT OF PROPEETY. 195
the usurper, a state of things under which equitable rights of prop-
erty, in common with equitable rights of all kinds, are submerged.
But out of such usurpations there has grown up, as we have seen,
ownership by the state and tenancy under it; from which there
may again arise a theoretically equitable right of property. In
China, where "the land is all held directly from the Crown"
"on payment of an annual tax," "with composition for personal
service to the government," the legitimate proprietorship of such
produce as remains after payment of rent to the community, can be
asserted only on the assumption that the emperor stands for the
community. In India, where the government is supreme land-
owner, and where, until the zemindar system was established, it
was the direct receiver of rents, the derivation of a right of prop-
erty by contract between the individual and the community can be
still less asserted without a strained interpretation. Nor at home,
where the theory that each landowner is a tenant of the Crown is
little more than a theory, is there any better fulfilment of the
ethical requirement. Only here and there, where state ownership
is not potential but actual, and ordinary rents are paid by occupiers
to the Crown (which has now in such cases come to be identified
with the community), has there been consequently established that
kind of use of the earth which gives a theoretically valid basis to
the right of private property.
Now what is it that Mr. Spencer here says ? It is that
a theoretically equitable right of property does not now
exist in civilized conditions ; but that it may arise if the
now nominal and potential supreme ownership of land by
the state is made real and actual by the taking for the
use of the community, by the representatives of the com-
munity, of the rents that are (or should be) paid by occu-
piers of land.
Truly "Justice" is a surprising book. Here we have
Mr. Spencer going back to the very principle he has just
recanted.
In one sentence of this paragraph he says that we have
no evidence that this equitable adjustment of the rights
to land in conformity with the needs of the civilized state
has ever arisen, since the original ownership of land by
196 RECANTATION.
the community has been habitually usurped, and in
another sentence he says vaguely that it has arisen only
here and there. But that it may arise and ought to arise,
and would give an even theoretically perfect basis to the
right of property, this section states, if not as clearly, but
yet on careful reading as unmistakably as does " Social
Statics" itself.
The paragraph just quoted is followed by this recapit-
ulatory paragraph, with which the section closes :
But admitting that the establishment of an ethically complete
right of property is beset with difficulties like those which beset
the establishment of an ethically complete right to the use of the
earth, we are nevertheless shown by a survey of the facts which
existing primitive societies present, and the facts traceable in the
early histories of civilized societies, that the right of property is
originally deducible from the law of equal freedom; and that it
ceases to be so deducible only when the other corollaries from the
law of equal freedom have been disregarded.
Or to put this statement of the propositions of this sec-
tion in fuller form, they are : (1) That the establishment
of the right of property is beset by the difficulties of
showing that the right of a man to the material element
from which property is obtained is greater than the
rights of all existing men put together. (2) But in
primitive societies and in the early history of civilized
societies, where the use of land is open to all, this equality
of access to land enables us to deduce the right of prop-
erty in things produced by labor from the law of equal
freedom; and (3) it ceases to be so deducible where
equality in the use of land is denied, as in civilized
societies at present; but would again become deducible
from the law of equal freedom if the rent of land were
taken for the use of the society.
If Mr. Spencer had written " Justice " under coercion ;
if imprisoned in the chambers of an Inquisition, and
"JUSTICE" THE EIGHT OF PROPERTY. 197
under fear of the rack, he had been forced against his will,
like Galileo, to recant what he still held to be true, we
might well believe that this Section 54 of " Justice " con-
tained his sign to posterity that in spite of the denials he
had just been compelled to make he in his heart held to
the truth.
But though, unfortunately, the conditions do not admit
of such a conclusion, this section is perhaps an even
stronger testimony to the power of truth. In the preced-
ing chapter Mr. Spencer has forced back his better
nature, and defended landlordism as well as the man who
had written " Social Statics " could. But when after an
interval of over forty years he begins to rewrite his old
chapter on "The Right of Property," the truth he once
held reasserts its sway, and though he cuts out all that
might give open offense to his new clients, the percep-
tion of truth, as by "unconscious cerebration," causes
him in the very first section to relapse, and to tell us
unmistakably, if not clearly that in the civilized state it
is only the appropriation of rent to the use of the whole
community that can give to property an ethical basis.
But Mr. Spencer soon recovers himself. Having in
Section 54 shown that in rude societies there is a sub-
stantial basis for the right of property, but that in highly
civilized countries, such as England, the equitable right
of property has been submerged by the usurpation of
landownership, he proceeds in Section 55 to assert, as
he did in the preceding chapter, that the course of
modern civilization has been more fully to establish this
right.
Section 55 begins :
This deduction [i.e., of the right of property from the law of
equal freedom through the equal right to the use of land], early
recognized in custom and afterwards formulated by legislators, has
198 RECANTATION.
come to be elaborated and enforced more and more fully as society
has developed.
Then comes something about primitive societies, the
patriarchal group and the house community, in which
occurs the reference to inherent value already quoted on
page 51, and the section thus closes :
To trace the development of the right of property as established
by rulers and administered by their agents, setting out with the
interdict on theft in the Hebrew commandments, and continuing
down to modern days, in which proprietorships of all kinds have
been legally formulated in multitudinous detail and with great
precision, would be no less out of place than it would be superflu-
ous. It suffices for present purposes to note that this implication
of the principle of justice, perceived from the first perhaps more
clearly than any other, has gained in the course of social progress
increased definiteness of recognition as well as increased extension
and increased peremptoriness ; so that now, breach of the right of
property by unauthorized appropriation of a turnip or a few sticks,
has become a punishable offense ; and there is ownership of a song,
of a pattern, of a trade-mark.
The principle of justice in the right of property
perceived from the first, as Mr. Spencer has just
explained, is equality in the use of natural opportunities.
Has this principle gained by a social progress, which as
exemplified in England, now denies nineteen-twentieths
of the people of all right whatever in the land of their
birth, punishes them if they take a handful of wild fruit
or a few sticks from the abundant offerings of nature,
creates private ownership in a salmon-fishery, a coal-
mine, an advowson or a hereditary pension, and con-
demns millions to chronic pauperism?
This is what Mr. Spencer's examination of the right of
property in "Justice" amounts to: First showing that
the right of property in civilized societies has to-day no
ethical basis, he goes on to make believe that it has, and
"JUSTICE "-THE BIGHT OP PROPERTY. 199
from this basis of make-believe to assume the ethical
validity of existing conditions. And then he virtuously
turns on the communists. They are a feeble folk and
have no friends.
In this he follows the order of " Social Statics," but the
spirit is that of " The Man versus the State." He ignores
what he once saw plainly, the incentive to communistic
and socialistic schemes in the bitter wrong and wide-
spread suffering of the existing order, declares their
motive to be the desire to take from the worker the pro-
duce of his work, and assumes that between them and
existing social conditions lies the only choice. Here is
the section :
$ 56. Supposing themselves to be justified, and indeed enjoined
by moral principle, many in our days are seeking to override this
right. They think it wrong that each man should receive benefits
proportionate to his efforts deny that he may properly keep
possession of all which his labor has produced, leaving the less
capable in possession of all which their labors have produced.
Expressed in its briefest form, their doctrine is Let unlike kinds
and amounts of work bring like shares of produce let there be
"equal division of unequal earnings."
That communism implies violation of justice as defined in fore-
going chapters, is manifest. When we assert the liberty of each
bounded only by the like liberties of all, we assert that each is free
to keep for himself all those gratifications and sources of gratifi-
cation which he procures without trespassing on the spheres of
action of his neighbors. If, therefore, one obtains by his greater
strength, greater ingenuity, or greater application, more gratifi-
cations or sources of gratification than others, and does this without
in any way trenching on the spheres of action of others, the law of
equal freedom assigns him exclusive possession of all such extra
gratifications and sources of gratification ; nor can others take them
from him without claiming for themselves greater liberty of action
than he claims, and thereby violating the law.
In past times the arrangements made were such that the few
superior profited at the expense of the many inferior. It is now
proposed to make arrangements such that the many inferior shall
profit at the expense of the few superior. And just as the old social
200 EECANTATION.
system was assumed by those who maintained it to be equitable, so is
this new social system assumed to be equitable by those who propose
it. Being, as they think, undoubtedly right, this distribution may
properly be established by force ; for the employment of force, if not
avowedly contemplated, is contemplated by implication. With a hu-
man nature such as has been known throughout the past and is known
at present, one who, by higher power, bodily or mental, or greater
endurance of work, gains more than others gain, will not voluntarily
surrender the excess to such others : here and there may be found a
man who would do this, but he is far from being the average man.
And if the average superior man will not voluntarily surrender to
others the excess of benefit gained by his superiority, the implica-
tion is that he must be obliged to do this, and that the use of force
to oblige him is justifiable. That the many inferior are physically
able thus to coerce the few superior is agreed on both sides, but the
assumption of the communists is that the required coercion of the
minority who are best by the majority who are worst would be
equitable.
After what was said in the early chapter of this Part, it scarcely
needs pointing out that a system established in pursuance of this
doctrine would entail degeneration of citizens and decay of the
community formed by them. Suspension of that natural discipline
by which every kind of creature is kept fit for the activities
demanded by the conditions of life, would inevitably bring about
unfitness for life and either prompt or slow disappearance.
An old fable tells us that when the plague raged
among the animals they concluded that among them was
some great criminal, who must be sacrificed to the wrath
of heaven, and agreed that to discover him all should
confess their sins. The fox volunteered to act as Judge.
He listened with equanimity to the lion's recital of flocks
devoured and men slaughtered, declaring his majesty
blameless, and in the same way excused all that the tiger,
the hyena, the wolf, and the bear confessed. At length
came a poor ass, who told how, when his master had
forgotten to give him his breakfast, he had nibbled a few
leaves from his load of cabbages. "You impious
rascal ! " cried the fox, " it is you beyond doubt who have
brought on us the anger of the gods ! " and applauding
"JUSTICE "-THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY. 201
the decision and following his lead, the lordly animals
threw themselves on the poor ass and tore him to pieces.
As the nibbling of a cabbage-leaf is to Herod's slaugh-
ter of the innocents, so is the dream of a few communists
compared with what the monopoly of land is actually
doing. In the highest civilization in other respects that
the world has yet seen this monopoly is, even now, entail-
ing the degradation of citizens and decay of the commu-
nity, so that Mr. Spencer cannot look out of the windows
of his club without seeing men turned into advertising
signs ; or get into a cab without having some miserable
wretch officiously hasten to close the door in the hope of
a penny ; or travel through the three kingdoms without
beholding the decay of population in the country and its
congestion in the slums of towns. It is, even now, sus-
pending " that natural discipline by whieh every creature
is kept fit for the activities demanded by the conditions
of life," so that men are being destroyed, on the one side
by repletion and debauchery, and on the other side by
privation and the denial of opportunities for honest
work. It is, even now, taking the produce of their work
from superior worker and inferior worker alike, and is
giving the gratifications and sources of gratification
earned by work to those who do no work is piling up
wealth in the hands of those who do nothing to produce
wealth, who as landowners are useless appropriators and
worse than useless destroyers. To this giant wrong, this
most monstrous of all denials of the law of equal free-
dom, Mr. Spencer is as complaisant as the fox was to the
lion, while he vents his indignation on the poor ass of
communism.
The next and final chapter shows how far Mr. Spencer
really wishes to assert the right of property. It was, as
he knows, by violating the right of property in putting
taxes on the products of labor that the larger tenants of
202 RECANTATION.
English land made themselves its virtual owners and
that private property in land has come to be established
in those wide regions to which English institutions have
been extended. And it is on the line of abolishing this
taxation of labor and the products of labor that, as is
now evident, the struggle for the resumption of equal
rights in land will in English-speaking countries be made
nay, is already beginning to be made. So in the next
section Mr. Spencer brings out his double-barreled ethics
to break down the right of property and to open the door
for what is essentially socialism and communism in the
interests of the rich :
$ 57. While absolute ethics thus asserts the right of property,
and while no such breach of it as is implied by the schemes of
communists is warranted by that relative ethics which takes
account of transitional needs, relative ethics dictates such limita-
tion of it as is necessitated for defraying the costs of protection,
national and individual.
The truth recognized at the outset, that the preservation of the
species, or that variety of it constituting a nation, is an end which
must take precedence of individual preservation, has already been
cited as justifying that subordination of the right to life which is
implied by exposure to possible death in defensive war, and as also
justifying that subordination of the right to liberty which military
service and subjection necessitate. Here it must be again cited as
affording a legitimate reason for appropriating such portions of the
possessions and the earnings of individuals, as may be required for
adequately resisting enemies. But while there is thus a quasi-
ethical justification for whatever encroachment on the right of
property is necessitated for the purposes of defensive war, there is
no justification for any such encroachment for the purposes of
offensive war.
No less manifest is it that" the right of property is legitimately
subject to one further restriction. Property must be trenched
upon for supporting those public administrations by which the right
of property, and all other rights, are enforced. In a society wholly
composed of men who duly respected one another's claims, no such
partial invasion of the right of property would be called for ; but in
existing societies and in such societies as are likely to exist for a
"JUSTICE "-THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY. 203
long time to come, the nearest approach to fulfilment of the law of
equal freedom is made when the various deduced rights are sacri-
ficed to the extent needful for preservation of the remainders.
Relative ethics, therefore, warrants such equitably distributed taxa-
tion as is required for maintaining order and safety.
Since the ethical commands, " Thou shalt do no murder "
and " Thou shalt not steal," mean also, thou shalt not permit
thyself to be murdered or to be stolen from, the justifi-
cation of defensive war needs no invention of relative
ethics. Nor is this needed to justify under extraordi-
nary circumstances what under ordinary circumstances
would be violations of the right of property. Take Johns-
town, when the sun rose on wreck and ruin and death
in their most awful forms, and on men and women half
crazed with listening all night long to the shrieks that
came from the flaming mass of float-wood into which the
flood was sweeping their nearest and dearest. In order-
ing the destruction of all liquor, the seizing of all food,
and the impressment, should that be necessary, of all who
could work, in a systematized effort to succor who still
might be succored and to bury what remained to bury of
the dead, was not Arthur Moxham acting, in the name of
the reason and conscience of the community, on the same
eternal principles of right and wrong that in ordinary
conditions would have forbidden these things ? What in
form was a denial of the rights of property and person
was in its essence respect for life and property.
But while changing conditions may change the appli-
cation of ethical principles, it is only as the change in a
ship's course turns the compass-card in her binnacle.
The change is in the conditions, not in the principles. And
if there be an ethical right of property, then, except
under conditions of imminent danger and dire stress, a
community cannot be justified in taking property by
force from the individual.
204 RECANTATION.
What Mr. Spencer does in this section, in the name of
his convenient fiction of relative ethics, is to justify the
habitual violations of the right of property which are
committed under the name of government in all civilized
countries, and thus to make his philosophy of things as they
ought to be, conform the better with things as the ruling
classes desire to maintain them. And he does this effec-
tually, for he leaves the right of property without defense,
save in idle platitudes, against those forms of taxation
which have everywhere proved so efficient in robbing the
many and enriching the few.
To be sure Mr. Spencer justifies the taking of property
by taxation only for purposes of defensive war and the
maintenance of order and safety. But such limitations
are practically no limitations. Neither an English jingo
nor an American protectionist would quarrel with them.
No invading foot has trod English soil, no hostile fleet
has fired a shot at an English town, since the English
national debt began to form. Yet what one of all the
wars for which the English masses have paid in blood and
privation and of which this great debt is the reminder, has
not been advocated at the time as a defensive war? Is
not our monstrous American tariff declared by its advo-
cates to be necessary to the maintenance of order and
safety? What has been the assigned reason for the
maintenance of every fat English sinecure but order and
safety ?
Granted that Mr. Spencer would abolish the more fla-
grant abuses of taxation; or, as in the light of his
changes on the land question we may more certainly say,
granted that he is in favor of abolishing them so long as
Sir John and his Grace do not seriously object ; yet in
admitting that the right of property may justly be set
aside by the state for ordinary public needs and uses, he
opens the door for every abuse that the ruling power
"JUSTICE "-THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY. 205
the majority, if you please may at any time choose to
deem a use. He leaves no principle save the shifting one
of expediency to guard the right of property against any
interest or desire or whim that may gain control of the
legislative power.
But the reign of relative ethics, like that of the old-
fashioned devil, to which it bears some analogy, is not to
be forever, for we are given to understand that when
evolution has carried the descendants of what are now
the human race to a point as far above us as it has car-
ried us above the monkey, and brought on the agnostic
millennium, relative ethics are to vanish in the unknowable
pit. So Mr. Spencer tells us that " in a society composed
of men who duly respected one another's claims, no such
partial invasion of the rights of property would be called
for." But then, he continues, it is called for " in existing
societies and in such societies as are likely to exist for a
long time to come." What ground does that give me
to assert that I am robbed directly by the blackmail
demanded in the name of duty at the American post-
office every time a friend sends me a book from a foreign
country, or even from Canada, and am robbed indirectly
every day of my life in the purchases I make ? The pro-
tectionist, if a Spencerian and disposed to argue, would
simply reply, " You are talking absolute ethics, whereas,
as Herbert Spencer has shown, we are now under the rule
of relative ethics."
It is true, but in a sense that Mr. Spencer does not
mean, that if men duly respected one another's claims,
no taking of individual property in taxation by the state
would be necessary. For if men duly respected one
another's claims to the use of land, all necessity for
invading the right of property by taxation would disap-
pear. Either by the single tax on land values or by the
crude and clumsy scheme of land nationalization pro-
206 RECANTATION.
posed by Mr. Spencer himself in " Social Statics," enough
revenue would accrue to the state to defray all needed
expenses without taking a penny of any man's property.
But if men are to continue to disregard each other's
claims to the use of land, and to continue to treat that
element as belonging to a few individuals and this Mr.
Spencer now insists on then there is no possible
improvement in society or in the race that could dispense
with the taking of property by taxation.
Mr. Spencer evidently entertains the innocent notion
that could the soldier and the policeman be done away
with, there would be no further need for public revenues,
and all organized government could be dispensed with.
But would not civilized societies still need revenues for
building and keeping roads and bridges, for paving and
cleaning streets, for establishing lighthouses and support-
ing a fire service, and doing the many things which
become increasingly necessary to the public health,
safety, comfort, and convenience, as social integration
goes on ? Or in the millennium of the Spencerians, as in
the millennium of the anarchists, is each one to pave,
clean and light the street before his door, when and how
he pleases? are roads, bridges and public works, as to
which competition is impossible, to be left to private
individuals and companies, charging what they please
and rendering what service they choose? and are all
other public functions to be dependent on volunteer
service or voluntary subscription?
CHAPTER X.
THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY AND THE RIGHT OP TAXATION.
OF such primary and practical importance is the
question just raised, that it is worth while to. dis-
cuss it more fully.
Mr. Spencer, in a book he has reissued this year, has
flippantly accused "Mr. George and his friends" with
asserting the absolute right of the community over
the possessions of each member. Yet in nothing is the
divergence between us and the common opinion more
sharply shown than in this, that we utterly deny the
right of the community to take the property of the indi-
vidual for any purpose whatsoever, except under circum-
stances where all rights must yield to the supreme right
of self-preservation. There may be circumstances of
such sudden stress and danger as would justify an indi-
vidual in taking the horse or boat of another individual,
in making use of his house, his goods, or anything that
is his ; and so there may be similar circumstances that
will justify such taking of individual property on the
part of a community. But short of this, which is not a
limitation but an abrogation, we hold the right of prop-
erty to be absolute, and deny the proposition which Mr.
Spencer in the chapter just quoted asserts, and which is
commonly conceded, that the right of property is limited
by the right of the state to take in taxation what it may
208 RECANTATION.
think it needs. Thus we are to-day the defenders of the
right of property as against communists, protectionists,
and socialists, as well as against such moderate deniers
of the right of property as the revenue tariffites of the
Cobden Club class, and such half-way individualists as
the Liberty and Property Defense League and Mr.
Auberon Herbert's associations.
How then is it that we are called deniers of the right
of property?
It is for the same reason that, when I was a boy,
caused nine-tenths of the good people in the United
States, north as well as south, to regard abolitionists
as deniers of the right of property; the same reason
that made even John Wesley look on a smuggler as a
kind of robber, and on a custom-house seizer of other
men's goods as a defender of law and order. Where
violations of the right of property have been long sanc-
tioned by custom and law, it is inevitable that those who
really assert the right of property will at first be thought
to deny it. For under such circumstances the idea of
property becomes confused, and that is thought to be
property which is in reality a violation of property.
That such confusion exists to-day may be seen in the
way in which the great struggle for better conditions of
life for the masses, that all over the civilized world has
begun or is impending, is generally regarded by both
sides. Except by the single-tax men, and possibly by
the philosophic anarchists, it is thought of as a struggle
between capital and labor a contest between the rights
of man and the rights of property. It is not merely that
one side charges the other side with proposing to impair
the right of property. It is, that, with the exceptions
noted, those who would better secure the rights of men,
do propose restrictions and denials of the right of prop-
erty. So, from the thoroughgoing socialists who
PROPERTY AND TAXATION. 209
would have the state appropriate all capital and direct
all industry, to those milk-and-water socialists who are
willing to play at doing something, by encouraging
trades-unions, and by twopenny alms' and restrictions,
and by attempts to make the rich less rich, and conse-
quently as they think the poor less poor, through income
and succession taxes and Irish Land Acts, we find those
who aim, or profess to aim at improving the conditions
of the laboring masses, advocating measures which are
violations of the right of property. In this confusion of
thought we who hold that the right of property is an
absolute right, we who say that the command "Thou
shalt not steal" applies to the state as fully as to the
individual, are looked upon by one side as deniers of the
right of property, and by the other even by the poor,
timid university socialists as not radical enough.
Yet to whoever will grasp first principles it must be
evident :
That there can be no real conflict between labor and
capital since capital is in origin and essence but the
product and tool of labor;
That there can be no real antagonism between the rights
of men and the rights of property since the right of prop-
erty is but the expression of a fundamental right of man ;
That the road to the improvement of the conditions of
the masses cannot be the road of restricting and denying
the right of property, but can only be that of securing
most fully the right of property ; and that all measures
that impair the right of property must in the end injure
the masses since while it may be possible that a few
may get a living or be aided in getting a living by rob-
bery, it is utterly impossible that the many should.
It is not as deniers, but as asserters of the equal rights
of man, that we who for want of a better name call our-
selves single-tax men so strenuously uphold the right of
210 RECANTATION.
property. It is not because we would palter with a social
system that condemns the masses to hard work and low
wages, to absolute want and starvation more or less dis-
guised ; but because we would bring about a social sys-
tem in which it would be impossible for any one to want
or to starve unless he deserved to. It is not because we
are less radical, but because in the true sense we are more
radical than the socialists of all degrees.
Let me ask those who think there is any conflict between
the rights of men and the rights of property to name
any denial of the rights of men which is not or does not
involve a denial of the rights of property ; or any denial
of the rights of property which is not or does not involve
a denial of the rights of men. Take chattel slavery.
Was that an assertion of the right of property or a
denial of the right of property?
Or, consider any system of tyranny or oppression by
which the personal liberties of men have been denied or
curtailed. Take out of it the element which infringes
the right of property and is not its efficacy gone ?
On the other hand, take anything which denies or
impairs the right of property robbery, brigandage,
piracy, war, customs duties, excises, or taxes on wealth in
any of its forms do they not all violate personal liberty,
directly and indirectly?
This is not an accidental, but a necessary connection.
The right of life and liberty that is to say, the right of
the man to himself is not really one right and the right
of property another right. They are two aspects of the
same perception the right of property being but another
side, a differently stated expression, of the right of man
to himself. The right of life and liberty, the right of the
individual to himself, presupposes and involves the right
of property, which is the exclusive right of the individual
to the things his exertion has produced.
PROPERTY AND TAXATION. 211
This is the reason why we who really believe in the
law of liberty, we who see in freedom the great solvent
for all social evils, are the stanehest and most unflinch-
ing supporters of the rights of property, and would
guard it as scrupulously in the case of the millionaire
as in the case of the day-laborer.
But what is property? This we must keep clearly in
mind if, in attempting to see what the right of property
does and does not permit, we would avoid confusion.
The question is not what the state sanctions, but what it
may rightfully sanction. There are those who say that
the right of property, as all other rights, is derived from
the state. But they do not really think this; for they
are as ready as any one else to say of any proposed
state action that it is right or it is wrong, in which they
assert some standard of action higher than the state.
Property not property in the legal sense, for that
may be anything which greed or perversity may have
power to ordain; but property in the ethical sense is
that which carries with it the right of exclusive owner-
ship, including the right to give, sell, bequeath or
destroy.
To what sort of things does such right of ownership
rightfully attach?
Clearly to things produced by labor, and to no other.
And that this rightful ownership can attach only to
things produced by labor is always shown by those who
try to assert such right of ownership in other things.
For invariably, instead of proving a right of ownership
in such other things, they devote themselves to proving
the right of ownership in things produced by labor, and
then assume that in some way the right thus accruing
has become transferred to things of a different nature.
Mr. Spencer is an example of this, as are all without
exception who have ever written on the side he has now
212 RECANTATION.
assumed. He wishes in this book to justify property in
land. But he only justifies property in the products of
labor, and then insinuates what he dares not clearly state
that by some process of transfer or conjoinment the
right of ownership in the products of labor has become
transmuted into a right of ownership in land.
In this, however, he does as well as any one who ever
attempted it. The logical processes of those who attempt
to prove a right of exclusive ownership in land are
always akin to those of the bumboat man, who, having
agreed to bring the sailor a white monkey, brought him
instead a yellow dog which he insisted had eaten a white
monkey. They are like a lawyer who, called on to prove
his client's title to an estate, should go on to prove his
client's title to the money which he gave for the estate.
The ethical right of property is so perfectly clear as to
be beyond all dispute as to be testified to by all who
attempt to assert some other right of property. It
springs from the right of each man to use his own
powers and enjoy their results. And it is a full and
absolute right. Whatever a man produces belongs to
him exclusively, and the same full and exclusive right
passes from him to his grantor, assignee or devisee, not
to the amount of eighty or fifty or any other percentage,
but in full. And as is shown by reason and as is proved
by the experience of the world, the advance in civilization
depends upon the recognition of this right. Therefore
for the state to levy taxes on that which is truly prop-
erty, that is to say, upon the possession of wealth in any
of its forms, is unjust and injurious is a denial and vio-
lation of the right of property and of the rights of man.
But it may be said : In an isolated condition it is true
that a man is entitled to all that he produces, and that it
is robbery to take any part of it from him against his
will. But in the civilized condition it is not alone the
PEOPEETY AND TAXATION. 213
exertion of the individual that contributes to his produc-
tion. Over and above what the producer receives from
other producers, and for which he recompenses them in
the various ways by which the claims between man and man
are settled in ordered society, he is aided, in an indefinite
yet tangible way, by society as a whole. Does he not
therefore owe to society as a whole some return ? Is not
organized society, or the state, entitled therefore to claim
and to take some portion of what in an isolated condition
would be rightfully his exclusive property ?
We reply : There is such a debt, but the producer can-
not escape paying it, even though there be left to him in
full what is his by the right of property. Here is a man
who gives to a painter an order for a beautiful picture.
Can he alone enjoy it ? Here is another man who builds
a factory, or works out a beneficial invention. Do what
benefits he may receive, even if he be untaxed, represent
the sum total of its benefits? Does not what he has
done also benefit others and benefit society at large?
And if society helps the individual producer, does not the
individual producer also help society? These diffused
benefits, these benefits which society as a whole receives,
are something separate from what the right of property
accords to the producer. They become tangible in the
value of land, and may be taken by society without any
curtailment of the right of property. To bring one
beautiful picture to a town might not perceptibly
increase the value of land. But bring a number, or even
one famous picture, and the value of land will percep-
tibly increase. Place the pictures of one of the great
European galleries on a piece of American land that you
might now buy for a hundred dollars and you will soon
find a value of millions attaching to that land. And
that the erection of a factory, or even of a dwelling-house,
or the utilization of a beneficial invention, will percep-
214 RECANTATION.
tibly add to the value of land every one knows. Look
at the millions on millions which the elevated roads have
added to the value of New York lands.
Again, it may be said, as Mr. Spencer now says, that it
is necessary for organized society to have revenues, and
that therefore the society must take some part at least of
the property of individuals. The proposition we admit,
but the conclusion we deny. Organized society must
have revenues ; but the natural and proper and adequate
source of those revenues is not in what justly belongs to
individuals, but in what justly belongs to society the
value which attaches to land with the growth of society.
Let the state take that, and there will be no need for it
to violate the right of property by taking what justly
belongs to the individual.
Mr. Spencer's admission in "Justice" of the right of
the state to take from individuals their property by taxa-
tionan admission which makes impossible any clear
assertion of the right of property is forced upon him
by the radical change in his teachings that his fear of
Sir John and his Grace has compelled him to make. He
made no such surrender of individual rights to the state
in " Social Statics." On the contrary he there emphati-
callythough as to details not very clearly, for in many
things he saw men only as trees walking asserts the
rights of the individual as against society. But in "Jus-
tice " he is compelled to admit the right of the state to
take property by taxation, because of his desire to admit
the right of landowners to appropriate the revenues
which are the natural provision for the needs of the
state.
For the state is natural and necessary, and the state
must have revenues. Hence any one who does not see,
or who chooses to deny, that the natural revenue of the
state is the value which social growth gives to land, is
PEOPEETY AND TAXATION. 215
compelled to admit that for the purpose of obtaining reve-
nue the state may take the property of individuals, and
thus to deny the right of property.
Suppose some one to have asked the Herbert Spencer
who wrote " Social Statics": "Where shall the state get
its necessary revenues if it scrupulously observes the right
of property and does not continue to take by force what
it needs of the property of individuals I n
He would have promptly replied, for the answer is in
that book, "By taking through its own agents for its
own purposes the rent of land, which is now taken by
the agents of Sir John and his Grace for their pur-
poses."
But the Herbert Spencer who now writes "Justice"
could find no answer to such a question, since he writes
for the purpose of defending the appropriations of Sir John
and his Grace. Hence he is compelled to deny the right
of property justifying its appropriation by an agency
which in another place in this same book he calls "the
many-headed government appointed by multitudes of
ignorant people ; " and which, indeed, owing to the
poverty, ignorance, greed and immorality which are the
results of ignoring the right of property, is not unde-
serving of such a contemptuous characterization.
But that he really knows better ; that he really sees
that the taxation of the products of labor is a violation
of the right of property which differs from slavery only
in degree ; and that he is advocating it only in the inter-
ests of that privileged class to gain whose tolerance now
seems to be his supreme ambition, is clearly shown
farther on in this same book, where in opposing what he
deems unnecessary taxation he clearly states the principle
that condemns all taxation of what belongs to individuals.
I quote from Chapter XXVI. of "Justice," "The Limits
of State-duties," Section 121, pp. 222-224;
216 RECANTATION.
If justice asserts the liberty of each limited only by the like
liberties of all, then the imposing of any further limit is unjust ; no
matter whether the power imposing it be one man or a million of
men. ... In our time the tying of men to the lands they were
born on, and the forbidding any other occupations than the pre-
scribed ones, would be considered as intolerable aggressions on
their liberties. But if these larger inroads on their rights are
wrong, then also are smaller inroads. As we hold that a theft is a
theft whether the amount stolen be a pound or a penny, so we must
hold that an aggression is an aggression whether it be great or
small. . . . We do not commonly see in a tax a diminution of free-
dom, and yet it clearly is one. The money taken represents so
much labor gone through, and the product of that labor being taken
away, either leaves the individual to go without such benefit as was
achieved by it or else to go through more labor. In feudal days,
when the subject classes had, under the name of corvees, to render
services to their lords, specified in time or work, the partial slavery
was manifest enough; and when the services were commuted for
money, the relation remained the same in substance though
changed in form. So is it now. Taxpayers are subject to a state
corvee, which is none the less decided because, instead of giving
their special kinds of work, they give equivalent sums ; and if the
corvee in the original undisguised form was a deprivation of free-
dom, so is it in its modern disguised form. " Thus much of your
work shall be devoted, not to your own purposes, but to our pur-
poses," say the authorities to the citizens ; and to whatever extent
this is carried, to that extent the citizens become slaves of the
government.
"But they are slaves for their own advantage," will be the reply
"and the things to be done with the money taken from them are
things which will in one way or other conduce to their welfare."
Yes, that is the theory a theory not quite in harmony with the
vast mass of mischievous legislation filling the statute-books. But
this reply is not to the purpose. The question is a question of
justice; and even supposing that the benefits to be obtained by
these extra public expenditures were fairly distributed among all
who furnish funds, which they are not, it would still remain true
that they are at variance with the fundamental principle of an
equitable social order. A man's liberties are none the less
aggressed upon because those who coerce him do so in the belief
that he will be benefited. In thus imposing by force their wills
upon his will, they are breaking the law of equal freedom in his
PROPERTY AND TAXATION. 217
person; and what the motive may be matters not. Aggression
which is flagitious when committed by one, is not sanctified when
committed by a host.
Thus, in the same book, does Herbert Spencer answer
Herbert Spencer.
CHAPTER XI.
COMPENSATION.
WHILE not needed in reply to Mr. Spencer, for his
own scornful denial that there is any way in
which land can equitably become private property
remains unanswered by him, the wide prevalence of the
idea that justice requires the compensation of land-
owners if their exclusive ownership be abolished, makes
it worth consideration ; the more so as the same principle
is involved in other questions, which are already, or may
soon become, of practical importance.
That this idea will not bear examination Mr. Spencer
himself shows, even when, as now, he is more than will-
ing to be understood as accepting it. While anxious to
find some ground, any ground, for assuming that land-
owners are entitled to compensation for something equal
or more than equal to the value of their land, he nowhere
ventures to assert that they are entitled to compensation
for their land. Such a notion is too preposterous to be
stated by any one who has ever realized the relation of
men to land.
Yet to those who have not, it seems at first most
reasonable, for it accords with accustomed ideas. If it
were ever customary for primitive man to eat his grand-
mother, as the Synthetic Philosophy would lead us to
suppose, she must have been thought a wicked old
COMPENSATION. 219
woman who without compensation to the would-be eater
tried to avoid that fate. In a community such as
Edmond About pictured in his " King of the Mountain/'
where brigandage was looked on as a most respectable
business, the captive who tried to escape without ransom
would be deemed a violator of his captors' rights. And
many a man now living can appreciate Mark Twain's
portrayal of the pangs of conscience felt by Huckleberry
Finn as he thought that in not denouncing his negro
companion he was helping to rob a poor widow.
The habitual confusion of thought where violations of
property have long been treated by custom and law as
property, requires time and effort to escape from, and
while justice is yet struggling for recognition there is
with many a desire to compromise between the right that
ought to be and the wrong that is. Thus there are
to-day, in England at least, even among those who to
some extent have become conscious of the injustice of
denying the equal right to the use of land, many who
think that before this natural right can be equitably
asserted present landowners must be compensated for
their loss of legal rights.
This idea does not apply to the land question alone.
It was carried out in England in the compensation paid
to West India slave-owners on the abolition of slavery ;
in the compensation paid to the owners of rotten Irish
boroughs at the time of the Union for the loss of their
power to sell legislation ; in the capitalization of heredi-
tary pensions; and in the compensation paid to their
holders when profitable sinecures are abolished.
Nor are we without examples of the same idea in the
United States. It is often contended that it would be
wrong to abolish protective duties where capital has been
invested on the expectation of their continuance; and
not many years since, even in the North, good, honest
220 RECANTATION.
people, so far awake to the crime of slavery that they
deemed the original enslavement of a man wickedness so
atrocious as to merit death which indeed was the pen-
alty denounced by our laws against engaging in the
external slave-trade really believed that slave-owners
must be compensated before existing slavery could be
justly abolished. Even after the war had fairly begun,
this idea was so strong that the nation compensated
owners when, in 1862, slavery was abolished in the Dis-
trict of Columbia, and subsequent efforts to apply the
same principle to the slave States that adhered to the
Union were defeated only by the opposition to any
national interference with slavery.
Let us see clearly what this question of compensation is :
It does not involve the validity of any contract or
agreement or promise formally made by the state. This
does not exist and is not pleaded by the advocates of
compensation in the cases we are considering. If it did,
the question would arise how far legislative power may
bind legislative power, and one generation control the
action of succeeding generations. But it is not neces-
sary to discuss that here.
It is not a question of all right of compensation. That
the state should compensate when it destroys a building
to make way for a public improvement, or takes goods
or provisions or horses or shipping for which it may
have sudden need, or demands of some citizens services
which it does not demand of others, is not a question.
The right of compensation in such cases is not disputed.
That is to say it is not a question whether the state
should pay for its destruction of property having moral
sanction, for the assertion of moral sanction involves the
right of compensation. Where the right of compensa-
tion itself becomes the issue is only where the want of
moral sanction in the property in question is conceded.
COMPENSATION. 221
Thus the belief in the rightfulness of compensation for
the abolition of slavery bore no determining part in the
minds of those who believed in the rightfulness of slavery.
The pro-slavery men, who asserted that slavery was of
God's ordinance, that it was the natural right and duty
of the stronger to enslave the weaker so they might
paternally care for them, who insisted not merely that
slavery ought not to be abolished where it existed, but
that it ought to be extended where it did not exist, were
not affected by belief in the rightfulness of compensa-
tion. That slave-owners ought to be compensated if
slavery was abolished followed from their assertion that
slavery was right and ought not to be abolished. It was
only in the minds of those who had come to think that
slavery was wrong and ought to be abolished, that the idea
that slaveholders must be compensated assumed impor-
tance, and became the pivotal question.
So as to land. The idea of compensation is raised and
has importance only where it serves as a secondary
defense of private property in land. If a man believes in
private property in land it is needless to address to him
any argument for the necessity of compensation on its
abolition. He does not believe in its abolition, but in its
continuance and extension ; and as the greater includes
the less, he already believes in the necessity of compensa-
tion if it be abolished. But if he has come to doubt its
justice and to favor its abolition, then the raising of the
question of compensation, as though it were a new and
separate moral question, may serve the purpose of a
second embankment or second ditch in military defense,
and prevent him from advocating abolition, or at least
abolition that would cause any loss to vested interests.
And the intermediate character of this defense of vested
wrong gives it of course great attractions for those timid
and prudent souls who when moral right comes in con-
222 RECANTATION.
flict with powerful interests like to keep out of the
battle.
Thus the idea of compensation with which we are con-
cerned is the idea of compensation for the abolition of
something in itself conceded to be wrong. Yet it is
based on moral grounds, and raises what is purely a
moral question.
Those who assert this necessity of compensation for
the abolition of what in itself they concede to be wrong
contend that the state has incurred a moral obligation
by its previous acquiescence. They say that while it
would be right for it to refuse such acquiescence in the
first place as to prohibit slavery where it does not yet
exist; to refrain from making private property of new
land; to refuse to grant new pensions or impose new
protective duties or grant new special privileges yet
where it has already done such things the state is morally
bound to those who have accepted its action; and for
it to destroy the value of property already acquired
under its sanction would be in the nature of a retroactive
law.
But in this there is evident confusion. If it were pro-
posed that the state should undo what has already been
done under its sanction as, for instance, that it should
declare invalid titles to the proceeds of slave labor
already rendered, and give the slaves legal claim for pre-
vious services ; or if it should call on the beneficiaries of
protective tariffs for profits they had already acquired-
then this reasoning might have weight. But it is not
retroactive to declare that for the future the labor of the
slave shall belong to himself, nor that for the future
trade shall be free. To demand compensation for action
of this kind is to assert, not that the state must be bound
by what it has already done, but that what it has already
done it is morally bound to continue to do.
COMPENSATION. 223
The loss for which compensation is in such cases
asked is not the loss of a value in hand, but the loss of
an expectation. The value of a bale of cotton is an
actual existing value, based on work done. But the
value of a slave is not actual, but prospective ; it is not
based on work done, but on the expectation that the
state will continue to compel him to work for his owner.
So the value of a house or other improvement represents
the present value of the labor thus embodied. But
the value of land itself represents merely the value of the
expectation that the state will continue to permit the
holder to appropriate a value belonging to all. Now, is
the state called on to compensate men for the failure of
their expectations as to its action, even where no moral
element is involved ? If it make peace, must it compen-
sate those who have invested on the expectation of war ?
If it open a shorter highway, is it morally bound to com-
pensate those who may lose by the diversion of travel
from the old one? If it promote the discovery of a
cheap means of producing electricity directly from heat,
is it morally bound to compensate the owners of all the
steam-engines thereby thrown out of use and all who are
engaged in making them? If it develop the air-ship,
must it compensate those whose business would be
injured? Such a contention would be absurd. Yet the
contention we are considering is worse. It is that the
state must compensate for disappointing the expectations
of those who have counted on its continuing to do wrong.
When the state abolishes slavery or hereditary pen-
sions or protective duties or special privileges of any kind,
does it really take from the individuals who thereby lose,
anything they actually have ? Clearly not. In the aboli-
tion of slavery it merely declines for the future to compel
one man to work for another. In the abolition of heredi-
tary pensions it merely declines for the future to take
224 RECANTATION.
property by force from those to whom it rightfully
belongs and hand it over to others. In the abolition of
protective duties it merely declines for the future forcibly
to interfere with the natural rights of all in order that a
few may get an unnatural profit. In the abolition of
special privileges it merely declines for the future to use
its power to give some an advantage over others.
See, then, for what in such cases compensation is
really asked. It is not for any attempt to right past
wrongs ; it is for refusing to do wrong in future. It is
not for the unequal treatment of individuals; it is for
refusal to continue unequal treatment. That there may
be a loss of salable value to individuals in this refusal is
true. But it is not a loss of anything they now have ; it
is a loss of what they expected to get. It is not a loss
for which these individuals can justly demand compensa-
tion or the state can justly make compensation. It is a
loss of the kind that the silversmiths of Ephesus sus-
tained from Paul's preaching; a loss of the kind that
comes to liquor-sellers from the spread of a temperance
movement ; a loss of the kind that falls on some individ-
uals with every beneficial invention and every public
improvement. Such demand for compensation is a
denial of any right of reform. It involves the idea that
the state, having once done wrong, is morally bound to
continue it not merely that it must continue to do
wrong or else compensate ; but that it must continue to
do wrong anyhow.
For compensation implies equivalence. To compensate
for the discontinuance of a wrong is to give those who
profit by the wrong the pecuniary equivalent of its con-
tinuance. Now the state has nothing that does not
belong to the individuals who compose it. What it gives
to some it must take from others. Abolition with com-
pensation is therefore not really abolition, but continu-
COMPENSATION. 225
ance under a different form on one side of unjust
deprivation, and on the other side of unjust appropria-
tion. When on the abolition of a hereditary pension the
holder is compensated, he receives in money or bonds a
sum calculated to yield him in interest the same power of
annually commanding the labor of others that the pen-
sion gave. So compensation for the selling value of a
slave, which disappears on the refusal of the community
longer to force him to work for the master, means the
giving to the master of what the power to take the prop-
erty of the slave may be worth. What slave-owners lose
is the power of taking the property of the slaves and
their descendants; and what they get is an agreement
that the government will take for their benefit and turn
over to them an equivalent part of the property of all.
The robbery is continued under another form. What it
loses in intention it gains in extension. If some before
enslaved are partially freed, others before free are par-
tially enslaved.
That confusion alone gives plausibility to the idea of
compensation for refusal to continue wrong, is seen in
the fact that such claims are never put forward in behalf
of the original beneficiaries of the wrong, but always
in behalf of purchasers. Sometimes the confusion is that
of direct substitution. Thus it is sometimes said, " Here
is a man who, presuming on the continued consent of the
state, invests his earnings in property depending on that
consent. If the state withdraws its consent, does it not,
unless it compensates him, destroy the products of his
hard labor?"
The answer is clear : It does not. Let the property be,
for instance, a slave. What the state destroys in abolish-
ing slavery is not what may have been given for the
slave, but the value of the slave. That the purchaser
got by honest work what he exchanged for the slave is
226 RECANTATION.
not in point. He is not injured as laborer, but as slave-
owner. If he had not exchanged his earnings for the
slave the abolition of slavery would have caused him no
loss. When a man exchanges property of one kind for
property of another kind he gives up the one with all its
incidents and takes in its stead the other with its inci-
dents. He cannot sell bricks and buy hay, and then
complain because the hay burned when the bricks would
not. The greater liability of the hay to burn is one of
the incidents he accepted in buying it. Nor can he
exchange property having moral sanction for property
having only legal sanction, and claim that the moral
sanction of the thing he sold attaches now to the thing
he bought. That has gone with the thing to the other
party in the exchange. Exchange transfers, it cannot
ereate. Each party gives up what right he had and takes
what right the other party had. The last holder obtains
no moral right that the first holder did not have.
"But," it may be said, "the purchaser of what has
been long treated as property stands in a different posi-
tion from the original holder. In our administration of
justice between man and man, this difference between
the wrongful appropriator and the innocent purchaser is
recognized, and long possession is held to cure defects of
original title. This principle ought to be recognized by
the state in dealing with individuals, and hence when, even
by omission, it deprives innocent purchasers of what has
long been held as property it ought to compensate them."
Innocent purchasers of what involves wrong to others !
Is not the phrase absurd? If in our legal tribunals,
" ignorance of the law excuseth no man," how much less
can it do so in the tribunal of morals and it is this to
which compensationists appeal.
And innocence can only shield from the punishment
due to conscious wrong; it cannot give right. If you
COMPENSATION. 227
innocently stand on my toes, you may fairly ask me not
to be angry ; but you gain no right to continue to stand
on them. Now in merely abolishing property that in-
volves wrong, the state imposes no penalty, it does not
even demand recompense to those who have been
wronged. In this it is more lenient than the principles
on which we administer justice between man and man.
For they would require the innocent purchaser of what
belonged to another to make restitution, not only of the
thing itself, but of all that had been received from it.
Nor does the principle of market overt, which gives to
the purchaser of certain things openly sold in certain
places, possession even against the rightful owner unless
he proves fraud ; nor the principle of statutes of limita-
tion, which refuses to question ownership after a certain
lapse of time, deny this general principle.
The principle of "market overt" is, not that passage
from hand to hand gives ownership, but that there are
certain things so constantly passing from hand to hand by
simple transfer that the interests of commerce and the
general convenience are best served by assuming pos-
session to be conclusive of ownership where wrongful
intent cannot be proved. The principle of statutes of
limitation is not that mere length of possession gives
ownership, but that past a certain point it becomes
impossible certainly to adjudicate disputes between man
and man. This is one of the cases in which human law
must admit its inadequacy more than roughly to enforce
the dictates of the moral law. No scheme of religion
and no theory of morals would hold him blameless who
relied on a statute of limitations to keep what he knew
belonged morally to another. But legal machinery cannot
search into the conscience, it can inquire only into the
evidence; and the evidence of things past is to human
perceptions quickly dimmed and soon obliterated by the
228 RECANTATION.
passage of time. So that as to things whose ownership
must depend on what was done in the past, it is neces-
sary, to avoid interminable disputes, that the state should
set some limit beyond which it will not inquire, but will
take possession as proof of ownership.
In our ordinary use of words everything subject to
ownership and its incidental rights is accounted prop-
erty. But there are two species of property, which,
though often ignorantly or wantonly confounded, are
essentially different and diametrically opposed. Both
may be alike in having a selling value and being subject
to transfer. But things of the one kind are true prop-
erty, having the sanction of natural right and moral law
independently of the action of the state, while things of
the other kind are only spurious property, their mainte-
nance as property requiring the continuous exertion of
state power, the continuous exercise or threat of its force,
and involving a continuous violation of natural right and
moral law. To things of the one kind the reasonable
principle of statutes of limitation properly applies; for,
being in their nature property, any question of their
ownership is not a question of general right, but only a
question of transactions between man and man in the
past. But to things of the other kind, and as between
the individual and the state, this principle does not and
cannot apply, for holding their character as property
only from the action of the state, that character is gone
the moment the state withdraws its support. The ques-
tion whether this support shall or shall not be withdrawn
is not a question of what was done in the past, but of
what shall be done in the future a question of general
rights, not a 'question between individuals. Things
which are brought into existence by the exertion of
labor, and to which the character of property attaches
from their origin as an extension of the right of the man
COMPENSATION. 229
to himself, are property of the first kind. Special privi-
leges by which the state empowers and assists one man
in taking the proceeds of another's labor, are property of
the second kind.
A question of the ownership of a coat, a tool, a house,
a bale of goods, is a question of the ownership of the
concrete results of past labor. "We know from the
nature of the thing that it must be owned by somebody,
but after lapse of time we cannot from the weakness of
human powers undertake in case of dispute to determine
who that may be ; and hence, refusing to inquire so far
back, we assume the right to be in the possessor, of
which we have at least presumptive evidence. But a
question of the maintenance or abolition of slavery
or private property in land, of the continuance or non-
continuance of a trade monopoly, a hereditary pension,
or a protective duty, is a question whether the state shall
or shall not in the future lend its power for the wrongful
appropriation of the results of labor yet to be performed.
There is in this no place for the principle of statutes of
limitation. No indistinctness as to the past can affect
the decision. It is not a question of what has been done
in the past, but of what shall be done in the future. And
so far from the presumption being that the possessor of
this species of property is entitled to it, the moral cer-
tainty is the other way.
Again it is said, " Here is a man who invests in a slave
and another who invests in a building, both being alike
recognized as property by the state. The state by refusing
longer to give its former sanction destroys the value of one
investment while the other continues profitable. Have
not these two men been treated with inequality, which in
justice should be remedied by compensation? If there
was a wrong involved in the one species of property, was
it not a wrong of which by state sanction all were guilty ?
230 RECANTATION.
Is it just therefore that those who have happened to
invest in it should bear the whole loss?"
To other confusions there is here added confusion as
to the relation between the state and its members. If
the maintenance by the state of a species of property
that involves wrong is to be considered as the action of
all its members, even of those who suffer by it, so must
the resolve of the state to do so no longer be considered
as the resolve of all, even of those who relatively lose by
it. If the one cannot demand recompense, how can the
others demand compensation ?
Passing this, the moral law appealed to in the demand
for compensation must be the moral law that binds indi-
viduals. Now the moral law cannot sanction immorality.
It must hold as void even a specific contract to do wrong.
But in the cases we are considering there is no contract.
The claim is merely that the state by its wrongful action
having given rise to the expectation that it would con-
tinue such wrongful action, is morally bound, should it
decline to do so, to compensate those who have invested
in this expectation. Would such a claim hold as between
individuals ? If, for instance, I have been accustomed to
spend my earnings in a gambling-house or rum-shop till
the proprietor has come to count on me as a source of
regular profit, am I morally bound to compensate him if
I stop? Or if an innocent purchaser has bought the
business on the expectation that I would continue, does
that bind me to compensate him ?
Consider further: If a moral right of property is
created by the acquiescence of the state in a wrong, then
it must be morally binding on all. If the state would
violate the moral law in abolishing slavery without com-
pensation, so would the slave violate the moral law in
attempting to escape without first compensating his
COMPENSATION. 231
master, and so would every one who aided him, even
with a cup of cold water. This was actually held and
taught and enacted into law in the United States pre-
vious to the war, and with reference to the white slaves
of Great Britain is held and taught by the foremost men
and journals of that country, who declare that for the
masses even by strictly legal forms to resume their
natural rights in the land of their birth, without com-
pensation to present legal owners, would be a violation of
the Ten Commandments !
That the state is not an individual, but is composed of
individual members all of whom must be affected by its
action, is the reason why its legitimate sphere is that of
securing to those members equal rights. This is the
equality which it is bound to secure, not equality in the
results of individual actions; and whoever chooses to
invest on the presumption of its denial of equal rights
does so at his own risk. He cannot ask that, to secure
equality of profits between him and investors who did
not take this risk, the state should continue to deny
equality of rights. It is the duty of the state to secure
equality of rights, not to secure equality of profits.
Of the investments of all kinds constantly being made
under the equal sanction of the state some result in loss
and some in gain. Supposing it to be asked, "Why
should not the state secure equality by compensating
those who lose?"
The answer would be quick and clear. It is not the
business of the state to secure investors from loss, and it
would be grossly unjust for it to attempt to do so. For
this would be to compel those who had made good
investments to make up the losses of those who had
made bad ones. It would be to take from prudence and
care their natural reward and make them bear the losses
232 RECANTATION.
of recklessness and waste ; to punish forethought, to put
a premium on ignorance and extravagance, and quickly
to impoverish the richest community.
But would it not be even more unjust and unwise for
the state to compensate those who up to the last moment
had held and bought property involving wrong, thus
compelling those who had refrained from holding and
buying it to make up their losses? Is it true that the
acquiescence of the state in a wrong of this kind proves
it equally the wrong of all ? Did that part of the com-
munity consisting of slaves ever acquiesce in slavery ? Did
the men who were robbed of their natural rights in land
ever really acquiesce? Are not such wrongs always
instituted, in the first place by those who by force or
cunning gain control of the state? Are they not main-
tained by stifling liberty, by corrupting morals and con-
fusing thought and buying or gagging the teachers of
religion and of ethics? Is not any movement for the
abolition of such wrongs always and of necessity pre-
ceded by a long agitation in which their injustice is so
fully declared that whoever does not wilfully shut his
eyes may see it ?
"Caveat emptor" is the maxim of the law "Let the
buyer beware ! " If a man buys a structure in which the
law of gravity is disregarded or mechanical laws ignored
he takes the risk of those laws asserting their sway.
And so he takes the risk in buying property which con-
travenes the moral law. When he ignores the moral
sense, when he gambles on the continuance of a wrong,
and when at last the general conscience rises to the point
of refusing to continue that wrong, can he then claim
that those who have refrained from taking part in it,
those who have suffered from it, those who have borne
the burden and heat and contumely of first moving
against it, shall share in his losses on the ground that as
COMPENSATION. 233
members of the same state they are equally responsible
for it? And must not the acceptance of this impudent
plea tend to prevent that gradual weakening and dying
out of the wrong which would otherwise occur as the rise
of the moral sense against it lessened the prospect of its
continuance ; and by promise of insurance to investors
tend to maintain it in strength and energy till the last
minute ?
Take slavery. The confidence of American slave-
holders, strengthened by the example of Great Britain,
that abolition would not come without compensation,
kept up to the highest point the market value of slaves,
even after the guns that were to free them had begun to
sound, whereas if there had been no paltering with the
idea of compensation the growth of the sentiment
against slavery would by reducing the selling value of
slaves have gradually lessened the pecuniary interests
concerned in supporting it.
Take private property in land. Where the expecta-
tion of future growth and improvement is in every
advancing community a most important element in
selling value, the effect of the idea of compensation will
be to keep up speculation, and thus to prevent that
lessening in the selling value of land, that gradual
accommodation of individuals to the coming change,
which is the natural effect of the growth of the demand
for the recognition of equal rights to land.
The question we are discussing is necessarily a moral
question. Those who contend that the state is the source
of all rights may indeed object to any proposed state
action that it would be inexpedient, but they cannot object
that it would be wrong. Nevertheless, just as we find
the materialistic evolutionists constantly dropping into
expressions which imply purpose in nature, so do we find
deniers of any higher law than that of the state vocifer-
234 RECANTATION.
ous in their declarations that it would be wrong, or
unjust, or wicked, for the state to abolish property of
this spurious kind without compensation. The only
way we can meet them with any regard for their profes-
sions is to assume that they do not quite understand the
language, and that by such expressions they mean that it
would be inexpedient. Their argument, I take it, may
be most fairly put in this way : Experience has shown
respect for property rights to be greatly conducive to the
progress and well-being of mankind, and all rights of
property resting (as they assert) on the same basis, the
recognition of the state, the destruction of a recognized
right of property by action of the state would give a
shock to and cast a doubt over all rights of property, and
thus work injury.
But even if we ignore any moral basis, and assume
that all rights of property are derived from the state, it
is still clear that while some forms of property do con-
duce to the general wealth and prosperity, others may be
recognized by the state that lessen the general wealth
and impair the general prosperity. The right of piracy,
which at times and places has been recognized by the
state, does not stand on the same basis of expediency
with the right of peaceful commerce. The right of
hereditary jurisdiction, or " the right of pit and gallows "
as it was called in Scotland, where it was actually bought
out by the state as a piece of valuable property; the
right, long having a salable value in France, of adminis-
tering justice ; the right, at times recognized by the state
as belonging to every petty lordling, of making private
war, of collecting local dues and tolls and customs, and
compelling services; the right of trampling down the
fields of the husbandman in the pursuit of game; the
monopolies which made valuable privileges of permis-
sions to manufacture, to trade and to import, were cer-
COMPENSATION. 235
tainly not promotive of the general prosperity. On the
contrary the general wealth and prosperity have been
greatly enhanced by their abolition.
Even if we grant that all rights of property have the
same basis and sanction and eliminate all moral distinc-
tion, reason and experience still show that there is but
one right of property that conduces to the prosperity of
the whole community, and that this is the right which
secures to the laborer the product of his labor. This
promotes prosperity by stimulating production, and
giving such security to accumulation as permits the use
of capital and affords leisure for the development of the
intellectual powers. It is respect for this, not respect
for those forms of property which the perversion or folly
of legislative power may at times sanction, and which
consist in the power of appropriating the results of
others' labor, that universal experience shows to be essen-
tial to the peace, prosperity and happiness of mankind.
So far from the destruction of those spurious and
injurious rights of property which have wound around
the useful rights of property, like choking weeds around
a fruitful vine, being calculated to injure that respect
for property on which wealth and prosperity and civiliza-
tion depend, the reverse is the case. They are not
merely directly destructive of what it promotes, but to
class them with it and to insist that the respect due to it
is also due to them is to give rise to the belief that all
rights of property are injurious to the masses. The his-
tory of mankind shows that the respect for property which
is essential to social well-being has never been threatened,
save by the growth of these noxious parasites. And this
to-day is the only thing that threatens it. Why are the
socialists of to-day so hostile to capital? It is for no
other reason than that they confuse with what is really
capital legalized wrongs which enable the few to rob the
236 BECANTATION.
many, by appropriating the products of labor and
demanding a blackmail for the use of the opportunity to
labor. To teach that the good and the bad in legal
recognitions are indistinguishable, that all that the state
may choose to regard as property is property, is virtually
to teach that property is robbery !
And what is this state, to whose control by selfishness
or ignorance or dishonesty or corruption these deniers of
moral distinctions would give the power of binding men
in the most vitally important matter for all future time ?
Caligula was the state. Nero was the state. Louis XIV.
truly said, " The state, it is I." And according to Her-
bert Spencer the state in England consists of " a motley
assemblage of nominees of caucuses, ruled by ignorant
and fanatical wire-pullers." Practically, the state is
always what man, what combination, what interest, may
control its machinery. Hence the expediency of strictly
limiting its power; and, if indeed there be no moral
principle, no higher law, that will give us clear guidance
as to what the state may or may not do, then it becomes
all the more expedient that we carry the principle of
state omnipotence over rights to its logical conclusion,
and assert the power of the state in any present or any
future time utterly to annul any stipulation, contract,
regulation or institution of the state at any past time.
If there be no moral right, no higher law, to check the
action of the state, then is it all the more needful that it
should be subject at least to the prospective check of
sharp and complete reversal. For the more permanent
and therefore the more valuable are the special privi-
leges which the state has power to grant, the greater is
the inducement to selfish interests to gain control of it.
Nothing better calculated to corrupt government and to
strengthen a most dangerous tendency of our time can
well be imagined than the doctrine that state grants
COMPENSATION. 237
which enable one man to take the labor and property of
others can never be abolished without compensation to
those who may hold them.
Of different nature is the plea sometimes made, that
compensation, by disarming opposition, is the easiest and
quickest way of abolishing a vested wrong. As to this,
not only is compensation not abolition, not only does its
advocacy tend to keep in full strength the pecuniary
interests which are the greatest obstacles to the reform,
but it renders it impossible to arouse that moral force
which can alone overcome an intrenched wrong. For to
say that men must be compensated if they are prevented
from doing a thing is to say that they have a right to do
that thing. And this those who intelligently advocate
compensation know. Their purpose in advocating com-
pensation is to prevent abolition.
It is sometimes said that it would have been cheaper
for us to pay for the Southern slaves, as Great Britain
did in the West Indies, than incur the civil war. But
the assumption that American slavery might thus have
been got rid of and the war avoided, is far from being
true. An aristocratic government, such as that of Great
Britain in 1832, may abolish slavery in a few small de-
pendencies by imposing the burden on its own people,
but in a popular government and on a great scale this
cannot be done. Great Britain saved no war by paying
compensation, for the West Indian planters could not
have fought emancipation, and if the West Indian slaves
were freed more quickly with compensation than they
could have been without, it was solely because the class
concerned in the maintenance of vested wrongs was over-
poweringly strong in the British Parliament. With even
such representation as the masses now have it would
have been easier to abolish slavery in the West Indies
without compensation than with it. In the United
238 RECANTATION.
States abolition with compensation was never a practical
question, nor could it have become a practical question
until the sentiment against slavery had reached even a
stronger pitch than that which led to war. The war
came before more than a small minority had seriously
thought of abolishing slavery, let alone of paying for it j
before either section really dreamed of war. It came from
the unstable equilibrium which legalized wrong begets,
from the incidental issues and passions which it always
arouses when the moral sense begins to revolt against it,
even before the main question is reached. It came, not
from a demand for compensation on one side and a refusal
to give it on the other, but from the timidity with which
the moral question had been treated by those who really
saw the essential injustice of slavery, and which by con-
cessions and compromises had so strengthened and em-
boldened the slavery interest that in revolt at measures
far less threatening to it than the discussion of abolition
with compensation could have been, it flung the nation
into war.
And even if the alternative of compensation or war
had been fairly presented to the American people, who
shall say that it would have been really wiser and
cheaper for them to surrender to such a demand ? Could
the Nemesis that follows national wrong have thus been
placated ? Might not the carrying out of such a measure
as the compensation for three million slaves have given
rise to political struggles involving an even more disas-
trous war? And would the precedent established in the
conscious violation of the moral sense ultimately have
cost nothing ? The cost of the war, in blood, in wealth,
in the bitterness aroused and the corruptions of govern-
ment engendered, cannot well be estimated; yet who
cannot but feel that the moral atmosphere is clearer and
that the great problems which still beset the Republic are
COMPENSATION. 239
easier of solution than if with the alternative of compen-
sation or war, like a pistol at its head, the nation had
consciously and cravenly surrendered to wrong ?
What this plea for compensation amounts to is, that it
is cheaper to submit to wrong than to stand for right.
Universal experience shows that whenever a nation
accepts such a doctrine of submission it loses indepen-
dence and liberty without even gaining peace. The
peace it will secure is the peace that declining Rome
bought of the barbarians, the peace of fellaheen and
Bengalees.
Even in personal matters it is difficult to say what will
be the result of action based on mere expediency ; in the
larger and more intricate scale of national affairs it is
impossible. This is why, as contended by Mr. Spencer
in "Social Statics," the course of true wisdom in social
affairs is to follow the dictate of principle to ask, not
what seems to be expedient, but what is right. If a law
or institution is wrong, if its continuance involves the
continuance of injustice, there is but one wise thing to do,
as there is but one right thing, and that is to abolish it.
To come back to the main question :
All pleas for compensation on the abolition of unequal
rights to land are excuses for avoiding right and con-
tinuing wrong; they all, as fully as the original wrong,
deny that equalness which is the essential of justice.
Where they have seemed plausible to any honestly
minded man, he will, if he really examines his thought,
see that this has been so because he has, though perhaps
unconsciously, entertained a sympathy for those who
seem to profit by injustice which he has refused to those
who have been injured by it. He has been thinking of
the few whose incomes would be cut off by the restora-
tion of equal rights. He has forgotten the many who
are being impoverished, degraded, and driven out of life
240 RECANTATION.
by its denial. If he once breaks through the tyranny of
accustomed ideas and truly realizes that all men are
equally entitled to the use of the natural opportunities
for the living of their lives and the development of their
powers, he will see the injustice, the wickedness, of
demanding compensation for the abolition of the monop-
oly of land. He will see that if any one is to be com-
pensated on the abolition of a wrong, it is those who have
suffered by the wrong, not those who have profited by it.
Private property in land the subjecting of land to
that exclusive ownership which rightfully attaches to
the products of labor is a denial of the true right of
property, which gives to each the equal right to exert his
labor and the exclusive right to its results. It differs
from slavery only in its form, which is that of making
property of the indispensable natural factor of produc-
tion, while slavery makes property of the human factor ;
and it has the same purpose and effect, that of compelling
some men to work for others. Its abolition therefore
does not mean the destruction of any right but the cessa-
tion of a wrong that for the future the municipal law
shall conform to the moral law, and that each shall have
his own.
I have gone over this question of compensation this
" last ditch " of the advocates of landlordism because it
is so persistently raised, not that it arises in anything I
have advocated. We who propose that natural and
therefore easy method of restoring their equal rights to
men, which for the purpose of clearly differentiating it
from all schemes of land nationalization we call the
single tax, do not propose to take from landowners any-
thing they now have. We propose to leave to land-
owners whatever they actually have, even though it be in
their hands the fruits of injustice ; we propose not even
to change the forms of land tenure, and greatly to sim-
COMPENSATION. 241
plify instead of enlarging the machinery and functions
of the state. We propose, in short, only so to change
present methods of raising public revenues that they
shall conform to the requirements of the right of prop-
erty, taking for the use of the state that which rightfully
belongs to the state, leaving to individuals that which
rightfully belongs to the individual.
But that clumsy mode of abolishing private property
in land which is properly called land nationalization
requires the taking of rightful property in the improve-
ments that have been annexed to land. In this it calls
for compensation in a way that confusion of thought
may carry to the ownership of land itself. And even the
taking of land it proposes would be in form a taking of
property. The land would have to be formally appro-
priated by the state and then rented out. Now we are
accustomed to the compensation of owners when par-
ticular portions of land are taken for the use of the state,
and this indeed as I have before pointed out is rightful,
so that it is easy for the superficial to think that when
the state shall take all the land for the purpose of renting
it out again it should compensate all owners. Thus the
scheme of land nationalization gives to the idea of com-
pensation a plausibility that does not properly belong
to it.
This is the reason why in England, where there has
been a good deal of talk of land nationalization, the
notion of compensation is strong among certain classes,
while in America, where the movement for the recogni-
tion of equal rights to the use of land has gone from the
beginning on the lines of the single tax, there is almost
nothing of it, except as a reflection of English thought.
And this is the reason why, although even in England
the advocates of land nationalization are few and weak
as compared with the great body that is advancing on
242 RECANTATION.
the unjust privileges of landlords by the way of taxation,
the English advocates of landlordism always endeavor
to discuss the land question as though the actual taking
of land by the state were the only thing proposed. It
will be observed for instance that Mr. Spencer, in " Jus-
tice," never so much as alludes to the proposition to
secure equal rights in land by taking land values, not
land. Yet he cannot be so ignorant of what is going on
about him as not to know that this is the line which the
advance against landlordism is taking and must take.
He ignores it because there is on that line no place for
proposing or even suggesting compensation. Compensa-
tion to the ultimate payers of a tax is something unheard
of and absurd.
The primary error of the advocates of land nationaliza-
tion is in their confusion of equal rights with joint rights,
and in their consequent failure to realize the nature and
meaning of economic rent errors which I have pointed
out in commenting on Mr. Spencer's declarations in
"Social Statics." In truth the right to the use of land
is not a joint or common right, but an equal right ; the
joint or common right is to rent, in the economic sense of
the term. Therefore it is not necessary for the state to
take land, it is only necessary for it to take rent. This
taking by the commonalty of what is of common right,
would of itself secure equality in what is of equal right
for since the holding of land could be profitable only
to the user, there would be no inducement for any one to
hold land that he could not adequately use, and monopo-
lization being ended no one who wanted to use land
would have any difficulty in finding it. And it would at
the same time secure the individual right, for in taking
what is of common right for its revenues the state could
abolish all those taxes which now take from the individual
what is of individual right.
COMPENSATION. 243
The truth is that customs taxes, and improvement
taxes, and income taxes, and taxes on business and occu-
pations and on legacies and successions, are morally and
economically no better than highway robbery or burglary,
all the more disastrous and demoralizing because prac-
tised by the state. There is no necessity for them. The
seeming necessity arises only from the failure of the
state to take its own natural and adequate source of
revenue a failure which entails a long train of evils of
another kind by stimulating a forestalling and monopo-
lization of land which creates an artificial scarcity of the
primary element of life and labor, so that in the midst
of illimitable natural resources the opportunity to work
has come to be looked on as a boon, and in spite of the
most enormous increase in the powers of production the
great mass find life a hard struggle to maintain life, and
millions die before their time, of overstrain and under-
nurture.
When the matter is looked on in this way, the idea of
compensation the idea that justice demands that those
who have engrossed the natural revenue of the state
must be paid the capitalized value of all future engross-
ment before the state can resume those revenues is too
preposterous for serious statement.
And while in the nature of things any change from
wrong-doing to right-doing must entail loss upon those
who profit by the wrong-doing, and this can no more be
prevented than can parallel lines be made to meet; yet
it must also be remembered that in the nature of things
the loss is merely relative, the gain absolute. Whoever
will examine the subject will see that in the abandonment
of the present unnatural and unjust method of raising
public revenues and the adoption of the natural and just
method even those who relatively lose will be enormous
gainers.
CHAPTER XII.
"JUSTICE" "THE LAND QUESTION."
WHILE "Justice" shows no decadence of intellec-
tual power, and those who have seen the utter-
ances of a great thinker in preceding volumes of the
Synthetic Philosophy will doubtless have as high an
opinion of this, there is in it everywhere, as compared
with " Social Statics," the evidence of moral decadence,
and of that perplexity which is the penalty of deliberate
sacrifice of intellectual honesty. But it were wearying,
and for our purpose needless, to review the subsequent
chapters of " Justice," and to show the contradictions and
confusions into which Mr. Spencer falls at every turn,*
and the manner in which he recants his previously
* One of these may be worth quoting as particularly interesting
in view of what has gone before and what is yet to come. In
Chapter XVI., "The Right of Gift and Bequest," pp. 122-124, Mr.
Spencer says :
"Few will deny that the earth's surface and the things on it
should be owned in full by the generation at any time existing.
Hence the right of property may not equitably be so interpreted as
to allow any generation to tell subsequent generations for what
purpose or under what conditions they are to use the earth's sur-
face or the things on it. ... One who holds land subject to that
supreme ownership of the community which both ethics and law
assert, cannot rightly have such power of willing the application of
it as involves permanent alienation from the community."
"JUSTICE "-"THE LAND QUESTION." 245
expressed opinions on such subjects as the political
rights of women, and even the equal political rights of
men. To complete the examination of that cross-section
of his teachings which in the beginning I proposed, let
us proceed to the consideration of his very last word on
the land question, the note to which he refers the reader
at the close of the chapter on " The Eights to the Uses of
Natural Media."
This note is to be found among the appendices to
" Justice," which consist of Appendix A, " The Kantian
Idea of Rights," before referred to (page 173) ; Appendix
B, "The Land Question;" Appendix C, "The Moral
Motive," a reply to a criticism by the Rev. J. Llewellyn
Davis ; and Appendix D, " Conscience in Animals," which
is a collection of dog stories.
The idea that for the genesis of all there is in man,
even his moral perceptions, we must look down, not up,
permeates the Synthetic Philosophy, seeking to obliterate
the gulf between man and other animals by greedily
swallowing every traveler's tale that tends to degrade
man and every wonder-monger's story that ascribes
human faculties to brutes. Thus '' Justice" begins with
" Animal Ethics " and ends with dog stories, the appendix
devoted to them being twice as large as that devoted to
" The Land Question " and illustrated with diagrams.*
* The dog stories wliich close this crowning book of the Syn-
thetic Philosophy are sent to Mr. Spencer by Mr. T. Mann Jones, of
Devon, with this introduction :
" DEAR SIR : The following careful observations on animals other
than man, may be of interest to you as supporting your idea that
the idea of 'duty' or 'ought' (owe it) may be of 'non-supernatural'
origin. ' Supernatural ' is used in the usual sense, without commit-
ting the writer to any opinion."
These "careful observations" are indorsed by Mr. Spencer as
highly remarkable and instructive, and as supporting his own con-
246 RECANTATION.
These dog stories are, however, fit companions to the
savage stories with which, by the assistance of a corps of
readers, the volumes of the Synthetic Philosophy are
profusely embellished. The wooden literalness with
which, to suit himself, Mr. Spencer interprets the
imagery and metaphor of which the language of all
peoples who come close to nature is full, is perhaps the
most comical thing in this unconsciously comic collec-
tion. I hesitate to give an instance, such is the embar-
rassment of riches ; but here, to quote at random, is one.
It is from the chapter on " The Religious Idea " in " Princi-
ples of Sociology." Mr. Spencer has been showing to his
own satisfaction, and doubtless to that of the gentlemen
who regard him as greater than Aristotle, how from the
adoption of such family names as "Wolf, and the habit of
speaking of a strong man as " a bear," the less civilized
peoples, whom he generically lumps as " savages," have
come to believe that their ancestors passed into animals.
He goes on to show " how naturally the identification of
stars with persons may occur." Recalling first, what he
declares to be " the belief of some North Americans that
the brighter stars in the Milky Way are camp-fires made
by the dead on their way to the other world," this is the
fashion in which he does it :
elusion, and he tells us, apparently on the faith of them, that Mr.
Jones is a careful, critical and trustworthy observer. To give a
sample, here is one of the observations, which as it has no dia-
grams, I may quote as printed :
" TJie 'ought' may be established as an obligation to a higher mind
in opposition to ilie promptings of the strongest feelings of the animal ;
e.g.-
"A bitch I had many years ago showed great pleasure at the
attentions of male dogs, when in season. I checked her repeatedly,
by voice only. This set up the 'ought' so thoroughly, that though
never tied up at such times, she died a virgin at thirteen and a half
years old."
"JUSTICE "-"THE LAND QUESTION." 247
When a sportsman, hearing a shot in the adjacent wood,
exclaims, " That's Jones ! " he is not supposed to mean that Jones
is the sound; he is known to mean that Jones made the sound.
But when a savage, pointing to a particular star originally thought
of as the camp-fire of such or such a departed man, says, " There
he is," the children he is instructing naturally suppose him to mean
that the star itself is the departed man ; especially when receiving
the statement through an undeveloped language. Principles of
Sociology, Vol. II. , p. 685.
" Lo, the poor Indian ! *
What would happen to the beliefs of savage children
if their undeveloped language enabled them to receive
such information as is often conveyed through our devel-
oped language such, for instance, as " She's a daisy ! " or
" He's a brick ! " or " You would have to use a pickax to
get a joke through his head" ?
But I am keeping the reader from " The Land Ques-
tion." This is, for our purpose at least, the most
important utterance of what its author deems the most
important book of the great Synthetic Evolutionary
Philosophy a book that begins with "Animal Ethics,"
and ends with dog stories. I quote this appendix in
full:
APPENDIX B. THE LAND QUESTION.
The course of Nature, "red in tooth and claw," has been, on a
higher plane, the course of civilization. Through " blood and iron "
small clusters of men have been consolidated into larger ones, and
these again into still larger ones, until nations have been formed.
This process, carried on everywhere and always by brute force, has
resulted in a history of wrongs upon wrongs: savage tribes have
been slowly welded together by savage means. We could not, if
we tried, trace back the acts of unscrupulous violence committed
during these thousands of years ; and could we trace them back we
could not rectify their evil results.
Landownership was established during this process ; and if the
genesis of landownership was full of iniquities, they were iniquities
committed not by the ancestors of any one class of existing men
248 RECANTATION.
but by the ancestors of all existing men. The remote forefathers
of living Englishmen were robbers, who stole the lands of men who
were themselves robbers, who behaved in like manner to the
robbers who preceded them. The usurpation by the Normans,
here complete and there partial, was of lands which, centuries
before, had been seized, some by piratical Danes and Norsemen,
and some at an earlier time by hordes of invading Frisians or old
English. And then the Celtic owners, expelled or enslaved by
these, had in bygone ages themselves expropriated the people who
lived in the underground houses here and there still traceable.
What would happen if we tried to restore lands inequitably taken
if Normans had to give them back to Danes and Norse and Frisians,
and these again to Celts, and these again to the men who lived in
caves and used flint implements? The only imaginable form of the
transaction would be a restoration of Great Britain bodily to the
Welsh and the Highlanders ; and if the Welsh and the Highlanders
did not make a kindred restoration, it could only be on the ground
that, having not only taken the land of the aborigines but killed
them, they had thus justified their ownership !
The wish now expressed by many that landownership should be
conformed to the requirements of pure equity, is in itself commend-
able ; and is in some men prompted by conscientious feeling. One
would, however, like to hear from such the demand that not only
here but in the various regions we are peopling, the requirements
of pure equity should be conformed to. As it is, the indignation
against wrongful appropriations of land, made in the past at home,
is not accompanied by any indignation against the more wrongful
appropriations made at present abroad. Alike as holders of the
predominant political power and as furnishing the rank and file of
our armies, the masses of the people are responsible for those
nefarious doings all over the world which end in the seizing of new
territories and expropriation of their inhabitants. The filibustering
expeditions of the old English are repeated, on a vastly larger scale,
in the filibustering expeditions of the new English. Yet those who
execrate ancient usurpations utter no word of protest against these
far greater modern usurpations nay, are aiders and abetters in
them. Remaining as they do passive and silent while there is
going on this universal land-grabbing which their votes could stop ;
and supplying as they do the soldiers who effect it; they are
responsible for it. By deputy they are committing in this matter
grosser and more numerous injustices than were committed against
their forefathers.
"JUSTICE "-"THE LAND QUESTION." 249
That the masses of landless men shonld regard private land-
ownership as having been wrongfully established, is natural ; and,
as we have seen, they are not without warrant. But if we entertain
the thought of rectification, there arises in the first place the ques-
tion Which are the wronged and which are the wrongersf Passing
over the primary fact that the ancestors of existing Englishmen,
landed and landless, were, as a body, men who took the land by
violence from previous owners ; and thinking only of the force and
fraud by which certain of these ancestors obtained possession of
the land while others of them lost possession ; the preliminary ques-
tion is Which are the descendants of the one and of the other?
It is tacitly assumed that those who now own lands are the pos-
terity of the usurpers, and that those who now have no lands are
the posterity of those whose lands were usurped. But this is far
from being the case. The fact that among the nobility there are
very few whose titles go back to the days when the last usurpa-
tions took place, and none to the days when there took place the
original usurpations; joined with the fact that among existing
landowners there are many whose names imply artisan ancestors ;
show that we have not now to deal with descendants of those who
unjustly appropriated the land. While, conversely, the numbers
of the landless whose names prove that their forefathers belonged
to the higher ranks (numbers which must be doubled to take
account of intermarriages with female descendants) show that
among those who are now without land, many inherit the blood of
the land-usurpers. Hence, that bitter feeling toward the landed
which contemplation of the past generates in many of the landless,
is in great measure misplaced. They are themselves to a consider-
able extent descendants of the sinners ; while those they scowl at
are to a considerable extent descendants of the sinned-against.
But granting all that is said about past iniquities, and leaving
aside all other obstacles in the way of an equitable rearrangement,
there is an obstacle which seems to have been overlooked. Even
supposing that the English as a race gained possession of the land
equitably, which they did not; and even supposing that existing
landowners are the posterity of those who spoiled their fellows,
which in large part they are not; and even supposing that the
existing landless are the posterity of the despoiled, which in large
part they are not ; there would still have to be recognized a trans-
action that goes far to prevent rectification of injustices. If we are
to go back upon the past at all, we must go back upon the past
wholly, and take account not only of that which the people at large
250
EECANTATION.
have lost by private appropriation of land, but also that which they
have received in the form of a share of the returns we must take
account, that is, of Poor-Law relief. Mr. T. Mackay, author of " The
English Poor," has kindly furnished me with the following memo-
randa, showing something like the total amount of this since the
43d Elizabeth (1601) in England and Wales.
"Sir G. Nicholls ('History of Poor Law,' appendix to Vol. H.)
ventures no estimate till 1688. At that date he puts the poor-rate at
nearly 700,000 a year. Till the beginning of this century the
amounts are based more or less on estimate.
1601-1630.
1631-1700.
1701-1720.
1721-1760.
1761-1775.
1776-1800.
1801-1812.
1813-1840.
1841-1890.
say
(1688 Nicholls puts at 700,000.)
(1701 Nicholls puts at 900,000.)
(1760 Nicholls says li millions.)
(1775 put at li millions.)
(1784 2 millions.)
(1803 4 millions ; 1813 6 millions.)
(based on exact figures given by
Sir G. Nicholls.) 170
(based on Mulhall's Diet, of Statis-
tics and Statistical Abstract.) 334
3 millions.
30 "
20
40
22
50
65
734 millions."
The above represents the amount expended in relief of the poor.
Under the general term "poor-rate," moneys have always been col-
lected for other purposes county, borough, police rates, etc. The
following table shows the annual amounts of these in connection
with the annual amounts expended on the poor :
Total levied.
Expended on
Other purposes,
poor.
balance.
" Kir d
C In 1803.
5,348,000
4,077,000
1,271,000?
QIT \T.
Nicholls.
] " 1813.
8,646,841
6,656,106
1,990,735?
( " 1853.
6,522,412
4,939,064
1,583,341?
Total spent.
Sum spent.
Statistical
< " 1875.
12,694,208
7,488,481
5,205,727
Abstract.
} " 1889.
15,970,126
8,366,477
7,603,649
In addition, therefore, to sums set out in the first table, there is a
further sum, rising during the century from li to 7i millions per
annum, 'for other purposes.'
"JUSTICE "-"THE LAND QUESTION." 251
"Mulhall, on whom I relied for figures between 1853 and 1875,
does not give ' other expenditure.' "
Of course of the 734,000,000 given to the poorer members of
the landless class during three centuries, a part has arisen from
rates on houses ; only such portion of which as is chargeable against
ground-rents, being rightly included in the sum the land has con-
tributed. From a landowner, who is at the same time a Queen's
Counsel, frequently employed professionally to arbitrate in ques-
tions of local taxation, I have received the opinion that if, out of
the total sum received by the poor, 500,000,000 is credited to the
land, this will be an underestimate. Thus even if we ignore the
fact that this amount, gradually contributed, would, if otherwise
gradually invested, have yielded in returns of one or other kind a
far larger sum, it is manifest that against the claim of the landless
may be set off a large claim of the landed perhaps a larger claim.
For now observe that the landless have not an equitable claim to
the land in its present state cleared, drained, fenced, fertilized,
and furnished with farm-buildings, etc. but only to the land in its
primitive state, here stony and there marshy, covered with forest,
gorse, heather, etc. ; this only, it is, which belongs to the commu-
nity. Hence, therefore, the question arises What is the relation
between the original "prairie value" of the land, and the amount
which the poorer among the landless have received during these
three centuries ? Probably the landowners would contend that for
the land in its primitive, unsubdued state, furnishing nothing but
wild animals and wild fruits, 500,000,000 would be a high price.
When, in " Social Statics," published in 1850, 1 drew from the law
of equal freedom the corollary that the land could not equitably be
alienated from the community, and argued that, after compensating
its existing holders, it should be reappropriated by the community,
I overlooked the foregoing considerations. Moreover, I did not
clearly see what would be implied by the giving of compensation
for all that value which the labor of ages has given to the land.
While, as shown in Chapter XI., I adhere to the inference origi-
nally drawn, that the aggregate of men forming the community are
the supreme owners of the land an inference harmonizing with
legal doctrine and daily acted upon in legislation a fuller con-
sideration of the matter has led me to the conclusion that individual
ownership, subject to state suzerainty, should be maintained.
Even were it possible to rectify the inequitable doings which
have gone on during past thousands of years, and by some bal-
ancing of claims and counter-claims, past and present, to make
252 RECANTATION.
a rearrangement equitable in the abstract, the resulting state of
things would be a less desirable one than the present. Setting
aside all financial objections to nationalization (which of themselves
negative the transaction, since, if equitably effected, it would be a
losing one), it suffices to remember the inferiority of public adminis-
tration to private administration, to see that ownership by the state
would work ill. Under the existing system of ownership, those who
manage the land, experience a direct connection between effort and
benefit ; while, were it under state ownership, those who managed
it would experience no such direct connection. The vices of offi-
cialism would inevitably entail immense evils.
Was ever philosopher so perplexed beforef
Mr. Spencer started out in 1850 to tell us what are our
rights to land. And, excepting that he fell into some
confusion by carelessly transforming equal rights into
joint rights, he clearly did so. But now, in 1892, and in
the climax of the Spencerian Synthetic Philosophy, he
has got himself into a maze, in which the living and
the dead Normans, Danes, Norsemen, Frisians, Celts,
Saxons, Welsh, and Highlanders; old English and new
English; plebeians with aristocratic names, and aristo-
crats with plebeian names, and female descendants who
have changed their names; ancient filibusters and
modern filibusters are all so whirling round that, in
sheer despair, he springs for guidance to "a landowner
who is at the same time a Queen's Counsel," and is led by
him plump into the English poor law and a long array
of figures.
Yet, in the mad whirl he still pretends to consistency.
"I adhere," he says, "to the inference originally drawn,
that the aggregate of men forming the community are
the supreme owners of the land."
Here is that inference in his own words the inference
originally drawn in " Social Statics " :
Given a race of beings having like claims to pursue the objects
of their desires given a world adapted to the gratification of thoa
desires a world into which such beings are) similarly born, and it
"JUSTICE "-"THE LAND QUESTION." 253
unavoidably follows that they have equal rights to the use of this
world. . . . Equity, therefore, does not permit property in land.
. . . The right of mankind at large to the earth's surface is still
valid ; all deeds, customs, and laws notwithstanding.
What is it that Mr. Spencer here asserts? Not that
men derive their rights to the use of the earth by gift,
bequest or inheritance, from their ancestors, or from any
previous men, but that they derive them from the fact
of their own existence. Who lived on the earth before
them, or what such predecessors did, has nothing what-
ever to do with the matter. The equal right to the use
of land belongs to each man as man. It begins with his
birth ; it continues till his death. It can be destroyed or
superseded by no human action whatever.
And this is the ground on which, without exception,
stand all who demand the resumption of equal rights to
land. Where there has been any reference on their part
to the wrongfulness of past appropriations of land, it has
merely been as in the case of Mr. Spencer himself in
"Social Statics" by way of illustrating the origin of
private property in land, not by way of basing the
demand for the rights of living men on the proof of
wrongs done to dead men.* Neither Mr. Spencer in his
* I, for instance, have uniformly asserted that it made no differ-
ence whatever whether land has been made private property by
force or by consent ; that the equal right to its use is a natural and
inalienable right of the living, and that this is the ground, and the
only ground, on which the resumption of those rights should be
demanded. Thus in " The Irish Land Question," in 1881, I said :
" The indictment which really lies against the Irish landlords is
not that their ancestors or the ancestors of their grantors robbed
the ancestors of the Irish people. That makes no difference. 'Let
the dead bury their dead.' The indictment that truly lies is, that
here and now, they rob the Irish people. . . . The greatest enemy
of the people's cause is he who appeals to national passions and
excites old hatreds. He is its best friend who does his utmost to
bury them out of sight."
254 RECANTATION.
"straight" days, nor any one else who has stood for
equal rights in land, ever dreamed of such a stultifying
proposition as that the right to the use of land must be
drawn from some dispossessed generation, for this would
be to assert what he so ridiculed, that "God has given
one charter of privilege to one generation and another
to the next."
Yet, now, this same Herbert Spencer actually assumes
that the only question of moral right as to land is, who
robbed whom, in days whereof the very memory has
perished, and when, according to him, everybody was
engaged in robbing everybody else. He not only eats
his own words, denies his own perceptions, and endea-
vors to confuse the truth he once bore witness to, but he
assumes that the whole great movement for the recogni-
tion of equal rights to land, that is beginning to show
its force wherever the English tongue is spoken, has
for its object only rectification of past injustices the
ridiculous search, in which he pretends to engage, as to
what ancestor robbed what ancestor and that until that
is discovered, those who now hold as their private prop-
erty the inalienable heritage of all may hold it still.
And in the course of this " argument," this advocate of
the rich against the poor, of the strong against the weak,
declares that the toiling masses of England, made igno-
rant and brutal and powerless by their disinheritance,
have lost their natural rights by serving as food for
powder and payers of taxes in foreign wars waged by the
ruling classes.
This is bad enough; but more follows. Mr. Spencer
discovers a new meaning in the English poor laws.
In " Social Statics," be it remembered, he declared that
the equal right to the use of land is the natural, direct,
inalienable right of all men, having its derivation in the
fact of their existence, and of which they can in no
"JUSTICE "-"THE LAND QUESTION." 255
possible way be equitably deprived. He declared that
equity does not permit private property in land, and that
it is impossible to discover any mode by which land can
become private property. He scouted the idea that force
can give right, or that sale or bequest or prescription can
make invalid claims valid ; saying that, " though nothing
be multiplied forever, it will not produce one ;" asking,
"How long does it take for what was originally wrong
to grow into a right? and at what rate per annum do
invalid claims become valid ? " He declared that neither
use nor improvement, nor even the free consent of all
existing men, could give private ownership in land, or
bar the equal right of the next child born. And he,
moreover, proved that land nationalization, which he
then proposed as the only equitable treatment of land,
did not involve state administration.
Not one of the arguments of "Social Statics" is
answered in "Justice" not even the showing that land
nationalization merely involves a change in the receivers
of rent, and not the governmental occupation and use of
land. There are two things, and two things only, that
Mr. Spencer admits that he overlooked the relation of
the poor law to the claims of landowners, and the
amount of compensation which the landless must give to
the landed " for all that value which the labor of ages
has given to the land."
Mr. Spencer has discussed the poor law before. One
of the longest of the chapters of "Social Statics," from
which I have already quoted,* is devoted to it; and in
recent writings he has again referred to it. In "Social
Statics " he declares that the excuse made for a poor law
that it is a compensation to the disinherited for the
deprivation of their birthright has much plausibility;
* pp. 89-90.
256 RECANTATION.
but he objects, not only that the true remedy is to restore
equal rights to land, but that the poor law does not give
compensation, insisting that poor-rates are in the main
paid by non-landowners, and that it is only here and
there that one of those kept out of their inheritance gets
any part of them.
In 1884, in "The Coming Slavery," he repeats the
assertion that non-landowners get no benefit from the
poor law, saying
The amount which tinder the old poor law the half-pauperized
laborer received from the parish to eke out his weekly income was
not really, as it appeared, a bonus, for it was accompanied by a
substantially equivalent decrease of his wages, as was quickly
proved when the system was abolished and the wages rose.
In " The Sins of Legislators," he repeats that instead
of being paid by landowners, the poor-rates really fall
on non-landowners, saying
As, under the old poor law, the diligent and provident laborer
had to pay that the good-for-nothings might not suffer, until fre-
quently, under this extra burden, he broke down and himself took
refuge in the workhouse as, at present, it is admitted that the
total rates levied in large towns for all public purposes, have now
reached such a height that they "cannot be exceeded without
inflicting great hardship on the small shopkeepers and artisans,
who already find it difficult enough to keep themselves free from
pauper taint."
But in Appendix B Mr. Spencer ignores all this. He
assumes that landowners have been the real payers and
the disinherited the real receivers of the poor-rates ; and,
adding together all that the landowners have paid in
poor-rates since the time of Queen Elizabeth, he puts the
whole sum to their credit in a ledger account between
existing landlords and existing landless.
He begins this account at 1601. He credits the land-
lords and charges the landless with all that has been col-
"JUSTICE "-"THE LAND QUESTION." 257
lected from land for poor-rates between 1601 and 1890.
Now, if this is done, what is to be put on the other side
of the ledger? We must take the same date, the ordi-
nary bookkeeper would say, and charge the landlords
and credit the landless with all the ground-rents the
landowners have received from 1601 to 1890. To this
we must add all that the landowners have received from
the produce of general taxes between 1601 and 1890, by
virtue of their political power as landlords.* And to
this we must again add the selling value in 1890 of the
land of England, exclusive of improvements. The
difference will show what, if we are to go back to 1601,
and no further, existing landlords now owe to existing
landless.
This would be the way of ordinary, every-day book-
keeping if it were undertaken to make up such a debtor
and creditor account from 1601 to 1890. But this is not
the way of Spencerian synthetic bookkeeping. What
Mr. Spencer does, after crediting landlords and charging
the landless with the amount collected from land for
poor-rates between 1601 and 1890, is, omitting all refer-
ence to mesne profits, to credit the landless and charge
the landlords with the value of the land of England, not
as it is, but "in its primitive, unsubdued state, furnish-
ing nothing but wild animals and wild fruits" that is,
before there were any men. This though by what sort
of synthetic calculus he gets at it he does not tell us
Mr. Spencer estimates at 500,000,000, a sum that will
about square the account, with some little balance on the
side of the landlords !
* The Financial Reform Almanac has given some idea of what
enormous sums the British landowners have received from the
offices, pensions and sinecures they have secured for themselves,
and from their habit of providing for younger sons and poorer
relatives in the army, navy, church, and civil administration.
258
RECANTATION.
Generous to the poor landless is Mr. Accountant
Spencer! so generous that he ought to make a note of
it in writing Part VI. of his " Principles of Ethics " " The
Ethics of Social Life : Positive Beneficence." For is it
not positive beneficence to those who are to be credited
with it to say that 500,000,000 would be a high estimate
of the value of England when there was nothing there
but wild animals and wild fruit ? To one of less wide
magnificence two and threepence would seem to be
rather more than a high estimate of the value of the
land of England before man came.
CHAPTER XIIL
PRINCIPAL BROWN.
REALLY, this final close of the most important dis-
cussion of the most important book of the most
important grand division of the great Spencerian Syn-
thetic Philosophy can only be fitly treated by calling on
the imagination for an illustration :
Mr. J. D. Brown, for some time before our civil war
a prominent citizen of Vicksburg, Miss., was a native
of Connecticut, of Puritan stock and thrifty habits.
Beginning life as a clock-maker, he emigrated when a
young man to that part of Ohio, settled from New Eng-
land, which is still in those regions known as the West-
ern Reserve. There he went to school-teaching, joined a
local literary society, and made some speeches which
were highly applauded, and in which he did not hesitate
to denounce slavery as the sum of all villainies, and
to declare for immediate, unconditional emancipation.
Somewhat later on, he went South and settled at Vicks-
burg, where he became professor of moral philosophy in
a young ladies' seminary, and, finally, its principal.
Being prudent in speaking of the peculiar institution,
and gaining a reputation for profundity, he became
popular in the best society, a favorite guest in the lavish
hospitalities of the wealthier planters, and, in the South-
ern manner, was always spoken of to visitors with pride
260 RECANTATION.
as " Principal Brown, one of our most distinguished men,
sir! a great educator, and a great authority on moral
philosophy, sir ! n
The slavery question was in the meantime growing
hotter and hotter. There were no abolitionists in Vicks-
burg or in the country about, for any one suspected of
abolitionism was promptly lynched, or sent North in a coat
of tar and feathers. But slaves were occasionally disap-
pearing, among them some of especial value as mechan-
ics; and even a very valuable yellow girl, whose beauty
and accomplishments were such that her owner had refused
$5000 for her, had been spirited off by the underground
railroad. And "society" in Vicksburg was becoming
more and more excited. Though no one yet dreamed
that it was destined ere long to redden the Mississippi,
and light the skies of Vicksburg with bursting bombs,
the cloud on the northern horizon was visibly swelling
and darkening, and in "bleeding Kansas" a guerrilla
war had already crimsoned the grass.
Still, the lines of Principal Brown were cast in pleas-
ant places, and he received the honors due to a great
philosopher, deemed all the greater by those who in their
secret hearts did not find his moral philosophy quite
intelligible; for he not only made a practice of using
the longest words and of interlarding his discourses with
references to people of whom his auditors had never
heard, and of whom he could say anything he pleased,
but he had taken Balzac's hint, and every now and again
he strung together a series of words that sounded as
though they might mean something, but really had no
meaning at all. He had thus gained a reputation for
great profundity with those who vainly puzzled over
them, and who attributed their difficulty to an ignorance
they were ashamed to admit.
But one woeful day there came to Vicksburg some echo
of one of his debating-club speeches in the Western
PRINCIPAL BROWN. 261
Reserve, and some of the leading citizens deemed fit to
interrogate him. He had to lie a little, but succeeded in
quieting them; and as not much was said about the
matter, his standing in Vicksburg society was, in gen-
eral, unchanged.
Following this, however, something worse happened.
The Rev. Dr. Sorely, one of the most eloquent divines of
the Methodist Church South, made a trip to Ohio, and in
the Western Reserve delivered a lecture on the biblical
and patriarchal system of labor as practised by our
Southern brethren. Among the auditors was a man
who remembered and quoted some of the eloquent utter-
ances, on the other side, of the reverend doctor's friend,
Principal Brown. The matter might have passed
unheeded, but that the Vicksburg Thunderbolt, anticipat-
ing much glory to the South from the Northern visit of
its eloquent defender, had sent a special correspondent
with him; and a report of the lecture, including the
reference to Principal Brown, duly appeared in its
columns.
This was indeed a serious matter, and the Principal
wrote immediately to the Thunderbolt with feeling and
vehemence. He said that he feared that if he remained
silent many would think he had said things he had not
said; intimated that he had never been in Ohio, and
what he had said when he was there he had said for the
purpose of finding a secure basis for slavery; that he
had only been talking of transcendental ethics, and not
of sublunary ethics at all; that he had always insisted
that the slave-owners of the South should be paid in full
for their slaves; that he had never supposed that the
question would come up for millions of years yet; and
that the most he had said was that, " It may be doubted, if
it does not possibly seem inferable, that perhaps there may
be reason to suspect that at some future time the slaves
may be liberated, after paying to their owners more than
262 RECANTATION.
they are worth; but I have no positive opinion as to
what may hereafter take place, and am only sure that, if
emancipation ever does take place, the negroes must pay
to their owners far more in interest on their purchase
money than they now pay in work."
To most of the citizens of Vicksburg this seemed
entirely satisfactory, but there were some dissentients.
Colonel F. E. Green strongly urged patriotic citizens not
to think of such a thing as treating the Principal to a
coat of tar and feathers, and Professor Bullhead, of the
leading young men's seminary, wrote to the Thunderbolt,
requesting his respected colleague to give a categorical
answer to the question " whether, when A B went to the
slave-pen and bought a negro, the negro was or was not
his property, morally as well as legally." If yes, then
Professor Bullhead wanted to know what his learned
and respected friend meant by admitting the possibility
of emancipation even some millions of years hence ; and
if no, then Professor Bullhead wanted Principal Brown
to tell him why the slaves, before regaining their free-
dom, must pay their owners more than they were worth.
And Professor Bullhead closed with some sarcastic
references to transcendental ethics.
Principal Brown did not answer this plain question of
his friend Professor Bullhead, but got rid of him as
quickly as he could, telling him that there was no dispute
between them, since they both insisted on the right of
any citizen to work and whip his own negro, and then
luring him off into a long discussion of transcendental
ethics vs. sublunary ethics. But it was evident that
something more had to be done, and the papers soon
contained an announcement that Principal Brown pro-
posed to forego for a time the publication of Volumes
XXIV. and XXV. of his great work on Moral Philos-
ophy, and immediately to bring out Volume XXVI., con-
PRINCIPAL BEOWN. 263
taining a chapter on the slavery question, which he
proposed to read to the citizens of Vicksburg at a public
meeting.
The lecture drew a large audience of the first citizens
of Vicksburg. There was also a sprinkling of rougher
citizens, some of whom before entering the hall deposited
in a rear lot a long rail that they had brought with them,
and some pails that smelled like tar, with a number of
large but evidently light sacks. However, the lecture
was a great success, and at the close, Principal Brown's
hand was nearly shaken off, and he was escorted to his
home by an enthusiastic and cheering crowd, who vowed
that nothing like such a "demolisher to the nigger-
lovers " had ever been heard in Vicksburg before.
But although the stately periods of the Principal are
occasionally marred by what is evidently a reportorial
tendency to the slang of the time, let me quote from the
papers of the next day, which contained long reports of
the speech, accompanied with glowing encomiums:
[From the Vicksburg Thunderbolt, June 19, 1859.]
The wealth and beauty and fashion of Vicksburg turned out in
full force last evening to listen to a lecture on the slavery question
by our distinguished townsman, Principal J. D. Brown, the widely
honored writer on moral philosophy. In the audience our reporter
counted thirty-seven colonels, two majors, and thirty-two judges,
besides the pastors of all the leading churches. It is a great pity,
as many of the enthusiastic hearers said, while congratulating
Principal Brown and each other at the conclusion, that William
Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips themselves could not have
been there ; for if their miserable nigger-loving hides could be
penetrated by the solid blocks of learning, the unanswerable logic,
and the mathematical demonstrations which Principal Brown
poured into his audience, they would have sung exceedingly small ;
even if they had not seen the full wickedness of their efforts to rob
the widow and the orphan by interfering with our beneficent
domestic institution.
264 RECANTATION.
Much of Principal Brown's lecture it will be impossible to give to
our readers this morning, for our reporter, not being well versed in
moral philosophy, finds himself unable from his notes to make
sense of some of the more profound passages, and is uncertain as
to how some of the authorities cited spell their names. There was
some confusion, too, in the hall when Principal Brown touched on
the subject of transcendental ethics, and said that he had always
held, and always would hold, that in transcendental ethics all men
were pretty much alike. But Colonel Johnson rose in his place and
stilled the disturbance, asking the audience to keep their coats on
till the Principal got through ; and when Principal Brown explained
that transcendental ethics related to the other side of the moon,
while sublunary ethics related to this side of the moon, there was
silence again. It was in the wind-up, however, that the professor
got in his best work, and roused his audience to the highest pitch
of delight and enthusiasm. He said :
"There are people who contend that these negro slaves of the
South, after they have paid their owners in full the compensation
due them, ought to be put back in their native land. But how are
we to find who brought them here? Some were brought in Spanish
vessels, some in Portuguese vessels, some in Dutch, some in Eng-
lish, and some in American vessels ; and these vessels are all by
this time sunk or destroyed, and their owners and crews are dead,
and their descendants have got mixed. Besides, they only got the
negroes from the barracoons on the African coast. Who is to tell
where the ancestor of each one was taken from and who took him
to the coast f Many of these slaves bear such names as Brown,
Smith, Jones, and Simpson, names borne by the very men who
brought their progenitors here. Then they have such given names
as Caesar, Hannibal, Dick, Tom, Harry, Ephraim, Alexander, and
Nebuchadnezzar, so that no one can tell from their names whether
they originally came from Africa or England, Italy, Jerusalem,
Greece, or Assyria. And what have these negroes ever done for
freedom? Did any one ever hear of them expressing any sympathy
for the independence of Greece, or protesting against the Russian
invasion of Hungary, or even contributing for the conversion of the
Jews, or for sending missionaries to the South Sea Islands, where
only man is vile f Contrariwise, when British tyranny invaded our
shores did not these negroes work just as readily for the hirelings
of King George as they did for their own patriotic masters who
were fighting the battles of liberty? And to-day when a nigger
runs away, where does he head for? Does he not make a straight
PRINCIPAL BROWN. 265
streak for Canada, a country groaning under the government of an
effete monarchy, and with a full-fledged aristocrat for governor-
general ? One would like to know that these negro slaves, whom it
is proposed to send back to their native land when they have com-
pensated their owners, have some real love for free institutions,
before thrusting freedom upon them.
"To think that slavery was wrongly established is natural, and
not without warrant in transcendental ethics. But if we entertain
the thought of rectification, there arises in the first place the ques-
tion who enslaved them? Their owners did not. They only
bought them. These negroes were enslaved by negroes like them-
selves, likely enough by their own mothers, cousins, and aunts.
Now which are the descendants of the one and which of the other?
and where are they to be found? But supposing that they could be
found, there would still have to be recognized a transaction which
goes far to prevent rectification. If we are to go back upon the
past at all, we must go back upon the past wholly, and take account
of what it has cost to feed and clothe and keep these negroes since
they have been here.
" I have consulted one of our most eminent negro traders, a
gentleman who has probably bought and sold more negroes than
any one in the Southwest, and after a close calculation, he informs
me that taking men, women and children together, and considering
the loss of their labor which their owners have to suffer in the rear-
ing of children, sickness, and old age, and the cost of overseers,
drivers, patrols, and an occasional pack of bloodhounds, the aver-
age negro costs the average owner a fraction over $267.57 per
annum. But as I wish to be generous to the negro I have thrown
off the 57 cents and a fraction, and will put their cost to their
masters at only $267 a year.
" Now, the first cargo of negro slaves was landed in Jamestown,
Va., in the year 1620, and the external slave-trade was abolished
in 1808. We may therefore assume the average time during which
each negro has been in this country as one hundred and fifty years.
Saying nothing whatever about interest, it is thus clear that each
living negro owes to his owner, as the cost of keeping him, $267
a year for one hundred and fifty years, which, excluding interest,
amounts at the present time to just $40,050. (Great applause.)"
Here a man in a back seat rose, and in a decidedly Yankee accent
asked Principal Brown if he included negro babies? The Principal
replying in the affirmative, the intruder began : " How can a negro
baby just born owe any one forty thou " The rest of the sentence
266 RECANTATION.
was lost by the sudden exit of the intruder from the hall, over the
heads of the audience. There was quite an excitement for a few
moments, but Colonel Johnson again rose and restored order by
asking the young men in the rear not to escort the interrupter
farther than the vacant lot adjoining until the close of the proceed-
ings, as the audience were intent on enjoying the remainder of the
logical feast which their distinguished townsman was laying before
them. All being quiet again, Principal Brown resumed :
" Observe that the negroes have not an equitable claim to them-
selves in their present condition washed, clothed and fed, civilized,
Christianized and taught how to work but only to themselves in
their primitive wild and uncivilized condition. Now, what is the
relation between the original ' wild nigger ' value of each slave and
what each one of them has received from his owner during one
hundred and fifty years? We know that they were bought at the
barracoons, delivered on board ship at prices ranging from a half-
pound of beads to a bottle of rum or a Manchester musket, the
owners being at the cost of transporting them to America, includ-
ing the heavy insurance caused by the necessarily great mortality,
items which as you will observe I have not charged against the
existing slaves. My friend the slave merchant estimates that on an
average 15s. 9d. English money would be a high rate. Let us call
it, however, $4 American money. Thus we see that an equitable
rectification would require that each negro in the South should pay
his owner a balance of $40,046 ! (Loud and long-continued
applause.)
" Now, when in the Western Eeserve many years ago, I drew from
transcendental ethics the corollary that the ownership of a man
could not be equitably alienated from the man himself, and argued
that after the slaves had compensated their owners they should be
freed, I had overlooked the foregoing considerations. Moreover, I
did not clearly see what would be implied by the giving of compen-
sation for all that during these one hundred and fifty years it has
cost the owner to keep the slave. While, therefore, I adhere to the
inference originally drawn that is to say, as far as transcendental
ethics is concerned a fuller consideration of the matter has led me
to the conclusion that slavery, subject to the right of the slave to
buy himself on payment to his owner of what he has cost, say
$40,046, should be maintained. But it may be readily seen that
such a transaction would be a losing one to the slaves themselves,
for at the present market price of negroes, they are not worth, big
and little, more than $1000 each. And, whereas I have also said
PEINCIPAL BROWN. 267
that I really did not know but that in the course of some millions of
years it might possibly be that the slaves could be allowed their
freedom on paying to their owners full compensation, I now see,
since what is due from them to their masters is constantly increas-
ing, that with humanity as it now is, the implied reorganization
would become more and more unprofitable. (Still louder and
longer applause, led by Professor Bullhead, who called for three
times three cheers, which were given with a will, the audience
rising and the ladies waving their handkerchiefs.)
"I also wish to point out that all this talk about giving their
freedom to the slaves is as foolish as it is wicked. Since under our
laws the slave himself is the property of the master, the slaves
already have their freedom in the freedom of the master. Thus the
equal freedom of each to do all that he wills, provided that he inter-
feres not with the equal freedom of all others, as taught by tran-
scendental ethics, is already recognized by the laws of the South,
and nothing more remains for us to do, except to keep abolitionist
theories from spreading in this 'land of the free and home of the
brave!"'
The uproarious enthusiasm of the audience could no longer be
restrained, and, led by Professor Bullhead, who rushed on the stage
and embraced Principal Brown, our best citizens crowded round
him. During this time the wretch who had interrupted the Princi-
pal was tarred and feathered in an adjoining lot, and ridden on a
rail to a levee. Unfortunately all efforts of the police to discover
the perpetrators of this reprehensible proceeding have failed. It is
generally supposed to have been the work of some negroes who
were listening through the open windows and whose feelings were
hurt by the slighting insinuation of the stranger as to the value of
colored infants.
While thus calling attention to the similarity between
Mr. Spencer's philosophic methods and those of Principal
Brown, I do not wish to make any personal comparison
between the two philosophers. Since he was under fear
of tar and feathers, that would be unjust to Principal
Brown.
CONCLUSION.
THE MOBAL OF THIS EXAMINATION.
I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend,
and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this
universal frame is without a mind. ... It is true
that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to
atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's
minds about to religion ; for while the mind of man
looketh upon second causes scattered it may some-
times rest in them and go no further ; but when it
beholdeth the chain of them confederate and linked
together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.
Bacon.
CONCLUSION.
THE MORAL OP THIS EXAMINATION.
I HAVE laid before the reader enough to show what
weight is due to Mr. Spencer's recantation of his
earlier declarations on the land question.
But even his high reputation and great influence would
not have led me to make so elaborate an examination,
did it relate only to him. My purpose has been more
than this.
In abandoning his earlier opinions Mr. Spencer has
adopted those which have the stamp of the recognized
authorities of our time. In seeking for excuses to justify
his change he has taken the best he could find ; and the
confusions and fallacies and subterfuges to which he
resorts are such as pass for argument with the many
men of reputation and ability, who have undertaken to
defend the existing system. Examination will show that
no better defense of that system has been made or can
be made.
Taking Mr. Spencer as the foremost representative of
those who deny the justice and expediency of recognizing
the equal right to land a preeminence given him by his
great reputation, his accorded ability, and the fact that
he once avowed the opinions he now seeks to discredit
I have set forth his utterances on the land question,
from his first book to his last, printing them in full in
271
272 CONCLUSION.
order to do him the amplest justice, and subjecting them
to an examination which any one of ordinary ability and
information is competent to test. I have thus given the
best example to be found in the writings of one man, of
what may be said for and what may be said against the
equal right to land.
It is not the example of intellectual prostitution thus
disclosed that I would dwell upon. It is the lesson that
prompts to intellectual self-reliance. It is not merely
the authority of Mr. Spencer as a teacher on social sub-
jects that I would discredit ; but the blind reliance upon
authority. For on such subjects the masses of men
cannot safely trust authority. Given a wrong which
affects the distribution of wealth and differentiates society
into the rich and the poor, and the recognized organs of
opinion and education, since they are dominated by the
wealthy class, must necessarily represent the views and
wishes of those who profit or imagine they profit by the
wrong.
That thought on social questions is so confused and
perplexed, that the aspirations of great bodies of men,
deeply though vaguely conscious of injustice, are in all
civilized countries being diverted to futile and dangerous
remedies, is largely due to the fact that those who
assume and are credited with superior knowledge of
social and economic laws have devoted their powers, not
to showing where the injustice lies but to hiding it ; not
to clearing common thought but to confusing it.
It is idle to quarrel with this fact, for it is of the nature
of things, and is shown in the history of every great move-
ment against social wrong, from that which startled the
House of Have in the Roman world by its proclamation
of the equal fatherhood of God and the equal brother-
hood of men, to that which in our own time broke the
shackles of the chattel slave. But it is well to recognize
THE MORAL OF THIS EXAMINATION. 273
it, that those who would know the truth on social and
economic subjects may not blindly accept what at the
time passes for authority, but may think for them-
selves.
It is not, however, in regard to social problems only
that I trust this examination may do something to
enforce the need of intellectual self-reliance. It is in
regard to those larger and deeper problems of man's
nature and destiny which are, it seems to me, closely
related to social questions.
Stepping out of their proper sphere and arrogating to
themselves an authority to which they have no claim,
professed teachers of spiritual truths long presumed to
deny the truths of the natural sciences. But now pro-
fessed teachers of the natural sciences, stepping in turn
out of their proper sphere and arrogating to themselves
an authority to which they have no claim, presume to
deny spiritual truths. And there are many, who having
discarded an authority often perverted by the influence
of dominant wrong, have in its place accepted another
authority which in its blank materialism affords as
efficient a means for stilling conscience and defending
selfish greed as any perversion of religious truth.
Mr. Spencer is the foremost representative of this
authority. Widely regarded as the scientific philosopher ;
eulogized by his admirers as the greatest of all philoso-
phersas the man who has cleared and illuminated the
field of philosophy by bringing into it the exact methods
of science he carries to the common mind the weight of
the marvelous scientific achievements of our time as
applied to the most momentous of problems. The effect
is to impress it with a vague belief that modern science
has proved the idea of God to be an ignorant superstition
and the hope of a future life a vain delusion.
274: CONCLUSION.
Now, the great respect which in our day has attached to
professed scientific teachers, and which has in large degree
given to them the same influence that once attached to the
teachers of religion, arises from the belief in the truth-
fulness of science from the belief that in the pure, clear
atmosphere in which its votaries are supposed to dwell
they are exempt from temptations to pervert and distort.
And this has been largely attributed to them where they
have passed the boundaries of what is properly the
domain of the natural sciences and assumed the teaching
of politics and religion. It is his reputation as an
honest, fearless thinker, bent only on discovering and
proclaiming the truth, a reputation which he derives
from his reputation as a scientific philosopher, that gives
to Mr. Spencer the powerful influence which, having
been exerted to deny all hope of a world to come, is now
exerted to deny the right of the masses to the essentials
of life in this world to maintain the wrong, wider than
that of chattel slavery, which condemns so many not merely
to physical, but to mental and moral privation and want,
to undeveloped and distorted lives and to untimely death.
While the examination we have made has only inci-
dentally touched the larger phases of Mr. Spencer's phi-
losophy, it has afforded an opportunity to judge of the
very things on which his popular reputation is based
his intellectual honesty and his capacity for careful,
logical reasoning. It has, so to speak, brought the
alleged philosopher out of what to the ordinary man is a
jungle of sounding phrases and big words, and placed
him on open ground where he may be easily understood
and measured. In his first book, written when he
believed in God, in a divine order, in a moral sense, and
which he has now emasculated, he does appear as an
honest and fearless, though somewhat too careless a
thinker. But that part of our examination which crosses
THE MOEAL OF THIS EXAMINATION. 275
what is now his distinctive philosophy shows him to be,
as a philosopher ridiculous, as a man contemptible a
fawning Vicar of Bray, clothing in pompous phraseology
and arrogant assumption logical confusions so absurd as
to be comical.
If the result be to shatter an idol, I trust it may also
be to promote freedom of thought.
As there are many to whom the beauty and harmony
of economic laws are hidden, and to whom the inspiring
thought of a social order in which there should be work
for all, leisure for all, and abundance for all in which
all might be at least as true, as generous and as manful
as they wish to be is shut out by the deference paid to
economic authorities who have as it were given bonds
not to find that for which they profess to seek, so there
are many to-day to whom any belief in the spiritual ele-
ment, in the existence of God and in a future life, is
darkened or destroyed, not so much by difficulties they
themselves find, but by what they take to be the teach-
ings of science. Conscious of their own ignorance,
distrustful of their own powers, stumbling over scientific
technicalities and awed by metaphysical terminology,
they are disposed to accept on faith the teachings of
such a man as Mr. Spencer, as those of one who on all
things knows more and sees further than they can, and
to accord to what they take to be intellectual preeminence
the moral preeminence that they feel ought to accom-
pany it. I know the feeling of such men, for I remember
the years when it was my own.
To these it is my hope that this examination may be
useful, by putting them on inquiry. In its course we
have tested, in matters where ordinary intelligence and
knowledge are competent to judge, the logical methods
and intellectual honesty of the foremost of those who in
the name of science eliminate God and degrade man,
276 CONCLUSION.
taking from human life its highest dignity and deepest
hope. Now, if in simple matters we find such confusion,
such credulity, such violation of every canon of sound
reasoning as we have found here, shall we blindly trust
in deeper matters in those matters which always have
and always must perplex the intellect of man ?
Let us rather, as I said in the beginning, not too much
underrate our own powers in what is concerned with
common facts and general relations. While we may not
be scientists or philosophers we too are men. And as to
things which the telescope cannot resolve, nor the micro-
scope reveal, nor the spectrum analysis throw light on, nor
the tests of the chemist discover.!^ is as irrational to
accept blindly the dictum of those who say, " Thus saith
science !" as it is in things that are the proper field of
the natural sciences to bow before the dictum of those
who say, " Thus saith religion ! "
I care nothing for creeds. I am not concerned with
any one's religious belief. But I would have men think
for themselves. If we do not, we can only abandon one
superstition to take up another, and it may be a worse
one3 It is as bad for a man to think that he can know
nothing as to think he knows all. There are things
which it is given to all possessing reason to know, if they
will but use that reason. And some things it may be
there are, that as was said by one whom the learning
of the time sneered at, and the high priests persecuted,
and polite society, speaking through the voice of those
who knew not what they did, crucified are hidden from
the wise and prudent and revealed unto babes.
NEW YORK, October 12, 1892.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT UOS ANGELES
University of California
SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY
405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388
Return this material to the library
from which it was borrowed.
UNIVERSITY of <: .
LOS ANGELES
LIBRARY
UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY
A 000219141 9
