CHAPTER LXXI. THE HISTORY OF RIGHTS OF PROPERTY BY WOLSELEY P. EMERTON, D.C.L. Oxon., Author of "Analysis and Abridgment of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations'"; "Questions and Exercises in Political Economy"; etc. THE History of Rights of Property in Land has, like other studies of the past, been investigated by two methods: (1)* The metaphysical, which commencing with the assumption of certain general principles of human nature, supposed to be already known, and with men's notions upon certain facts goes on to the consecutive order of those notions in point of time,† and (2) Although these do not precisely coincide with the deductive and inductive methods, yet the metaphysical generally attracts those minds which are inclined to deduction, and the historical, those minds which are inclined to induction. On the question whether political economy is a deductive or an inductive science, see my Abridgment of Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," p. 61, and the authorities therein quoted. Perhaps the best instance of the successful application of the metaphysical method is to be found in Cairn's "Slave Power" where the premises were very simple and very easily verified. Ricardo's Theory of Rent is now generally rejected on account of defective premises, an exceptional having been by its author mistaken for a normal state of things. On account of the facility it affords for plausibly justifying the illusions of prejudice, the metaphysical method has always been a favourite, e.g. the Irish famine was by one party attributed to the improvidence of the Celtic race, and by another to the tyranny of landlords. Those who studied economical facts and the history of economics pointed out that the famine was almost equally severe in Belgium, where landlords were not very numerous, and where all from the Duke of Arenberg to the peasant endeavoured to save half their incomes, showing also that the real cause is to be found in the fact that any population that subsists on the cheapest food, whether its motive for so doing be indolence or thrift, is always in danger of famine. The historical method which traces the actual course of the facts in order of time, from trustworthy, and if possible from contemporary testimony, and derives its notions of the sequence of events, as well as of the events themselves, from a cautious generalisation of those facts. It is now the fashion to employ the term "metaphysical," so far at least as practical matters are concerned, as a term of contempt, and to exalt the study of facts and figures, though, at the same time, few facts are more manifest than are the great sacrifices which men have made, and the zeal with which men will strive to make facts coincide with their notions of what is or what ought to be, or at least to prevent facts from too rudely dispelling the pleasing delusion.* Ideas have thus an enormous influence upon action, and in order that they may have this influence, it is by no means necessary that they should be perfectly clear and distinct. † The idea of political. equality, spurning alike all notion of obedience and all notion of protection due from one private citizen to another may easily, unless the state of facts coincide with the idea, make the political equal a social A good example of this weakness is to be found in the reluctance with which the biographers of Charlemagne gave up the romance of the pseudo Turpin for the authentic narrative of Eginbard, and a more recent example in the popular substitution of the mythical for the real Wallace and Bruce by ardent Scotch patriots and romantic English ladies. The resolution of the House of Commons that bank notes were esteemed equal to coin of the realm, and the bitter attacks made upon Lord King when he refuted their absurd doctrine by the practical sarcasm of demanding payment in gold or silver coin of full weight from all his debtors, affords another example of the same weakness in a graver matter. + Many shout lustily for "Free Church, Free Schools," without noticing that the word "free" is used in opposite senses in the two phrases, meaning in the case of "Free Church," support at the expense of members and freedom from control by the State, and in the case of "Free School," freedom from all expense to scholars and absolute control by the State. * serf, and the notion of free contract between those who are nominally equals may, under certain social conditions, bring about a relation differing little from the status of master and slave. Private rights may, in this case, easily develop into public powers, and indeed the owner of all the soil of a country could not well be anything else than a despot of that country, the penalties which he can enforce being both greater and more certain than those which are at the command of the nominal political chief.† Such an origin of the power of commanding others is of comparatively late date, and although there is nothing to prevent those who are in possession of the power of commanding the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of life and of the faculty of communicating that power to others from exercising great influence over their less fortunate neighbours (after the fashion of the Tartar Khans, the true Shepherd Kings of Central Asia), yet until this is done by means not of the animal but of the vegetable world, requiring as a condition precedent tolerably settled habitations, such power can hardly be said to owe its origin to, or to have any connection with, anything approaching land ownership. The evidence of language shows (in accordance with the sagacious conjecture of the old writers), that the pastoral had preceded the agricultural condition, and if the chief cereals owe * This is dwelt upon at some length and with great ingenuity by Henry George, who, in his " 'Progress and Poverty," declares that Americans endure a law of contract which makes one man as much the serf of another, as though serfdom were legally established. + This was curiously exemplified within living memory in the case of the owner of the Island of Rathlin, on the north coast of Ireland, who used to punish delinquents by exiling them to "the continent of Ireland." We here find a landlord, simply in virtue of his civil powers as landlord, virtually exercising the “ High Justice." In the ancient classification, exile was always reckoned a capital punishment." 66 their origin to Mesopotamia we need not wonder that their names in the chief Indo-Germanic languages have little resemblance to each other. If it be alleged that in Greece and Italy the possession of cattle and not the possession of land formed the basis and standard of all private property, the reason is to be sought in the fact that agriculture was at first conducted on a system of joint possession.* The legendary King Italus is said to have turned the Italians from pastoral to agricultural life, and the story shrewdly connects with the change the origin of Italian legislation; law, agriculture, and the founding of cities being closely associated among Greeks and Italians alike, so that the very Temple was the point of intersection of the lines of the land-measurer, and the boundary of the city traced by the plough, a recognition of the fact that the community was dependent upon agriculture. So intensely did the cultivators cling to their fields and homesteads that though the Romans lost many battles they scarcely ever in making peace ceded Roman soil, and the legends show that even petty agriculture was not thought to disgrace the noblest families. But though the greater portion of Roman land was cultivated in early times by those whom we should call peasant proprietors, yet the prominence given to the Equites in the Servian constitution shows that there must have been many who held land to a much larger extent than the traditional two or seven jugera, and the metayer system or "stock and land lease" was probably not unknown. But as it was long before the system of middlemen was heard of, and still longer before it became common, the great A similar state of things prevailed in Ireland, perhaps late in the middle ages, the "Senchus Mor" evidently regarding the act of "receiving stock" (i.e. accepting cattle for stocking purposes) from another and not the holding of land as the real act of vassalage. |