Democracy and Liberty. William Edward Hartpole Lecky
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argument, upon which much stress has been put, but which has now, in a great degree, lost its force, is that the land of the country is the source of the food on which its people depend, and that special legislation ought therefore to prevent it from being in the uncontrolled power of the few. As I have already said, I believe that, if any clear case of public welfare can be established, the Government has the right to take complete or partial possession of the land, on condition of compensating the owners. If England were surrounded by a brass wall, and if its people depended for their subsistence on the crops raised within that wall, severe restrictions should undoubtedly be placed on the use of great portions of the soil for parks or sporting purposes. But the situation is much modified when the main supply of food for the people is not derived from English soil, but comes from the United States, from the Colonies, from India, and from Russia, and when this supply pours in with such abundance and at such prices that the best English land is almost crushed by the competition, while the inferior lands have become, as food-producing land, almost useless.
The unreality, however, of the speculation that would separate landed property by a sharp generic distinction as an object of spoliation from all other property speedily became apparent. The same class of reasoners soon found that similar or analogous arguments may be applied to other branches of property, and to defence of other forms of dishonesty. It is a significant fact that while Mr. George in his first book only proposed to rob the landowner, in his second book he proposed equally to rob the fundowner, being now convinced that the institution of public debts and private property in land rested on the same basis. In nearly all the Socialist programmes that are now issued on the Continent the ‘nationalisation of land’ is included, but it is always coupled with proposals for the nationalisation of all capital and means of production, and for the repudiation of national debts.
Jefferson had already anticipated these writers in their advocacy of the repudiation of national debts; and it must be acknowledged that the arguments for this course are quite as plausible as those in favour of land spoliation. It is said that one generation cannot bind another and impose on it the interest of its debts. We are reminded that these debts were incurred at a time when the masses, who now consider themselves, by a kind of right divine, the rulers of the State, were almost wholly unrepresented, and for objects of which they altogether disapprove. Demagogues are not wanting to persuade them that the war of the American Revolution and the war of the French Revolution, which are responsible for the greater part of the debt, were mere crimes of the aristocracy, and crimes directed against the people. Are the people, it is asked, for ever to bear the burden of debts so incurred, and incurred, too, when the national credit was so low that not more than 70l. or 60l. was paid to the Exchequer for bonds which now bear the value of 100l.?
As democracy advances, the precedents of spoliation pass into legislation, doctrines of this kind are likely to find an increasing number of adherents. This prospect renders peculiarly alarming the enormous increase of national debt that has taken place in Europe during the last few decades. It justifies the wisdom of the policy of America in paying off, even by very drastic measures, the bulk of its debt, and also the great and praiseworthy efforts that have been made by British Governments in the same direction.
Mining royalties stand on the same footing as private property in land. They are a kind of property which has been for generations bought, sold, mortgaged, and bequeathed with the full sanction of the law, and they have been estimated in the British Isles at the enormous sum of eight millions a year. There is a party, though happily not a large one, who openly advocate their simple confiscation. Thus the Glasgow Trade Council passed a resolution, ‘That this Council instructs the secretary to state to the (Mining Royalties) Commission that it is in favour of mining royalties becoming national property without compensation being given.’ Similar views are frequently expressed in Socialist literature, and they were put forward by some witnesses before the Labour Commission, the most conspicuous upholder of this shameless dishonesty being a Radical member of Parliament.50
Another kind of property which has been the subject of much more or less ingenious sophistry is literary property. The right of an author to the profits of the book he has written rests on the highest and simplest title by which property can be held—that of creation. The author made it. His title to what he has himself created, like that of the labour to what he himself earned, is certainly more direct, if it is not of a higher kind, than that of any species of property which is simply hereditary. But the peculiarity of literary property is, that while it may be of great value to its author, and of great utility to mankind, it may be stolen with peculiar facility, and in a different way from most other kinds of property. Like a bank-note, its value is destroyed if every one is allowed to reproduce it, and hence laws of copyright have been found necessary to protect it. Among all the forms of property, few are so imperfectly protected as this; but there are some who would abolish it altogether, refusing all legal protection to literary property. One of their arguments is, that an author merely gives a form to ideas and knowledge which are floating in the intellectual atmosphere around him, and which are the common property of all men, and has, therefore, no exclusive right to what he has written. If this be true—and it is far from being absolutely so—the simple answer is, that it is to the form alone, which is his own work, that he claims an exclusive right. A sculptor's right of property in his statue is not destroyed by the fact that the clay and the marble existed before he touched them with his chisel. An author claims no monopoly in his ideas; but the form in which he moulds them is so essentially the main element in the question, that the distinction is for all practical purposes trivial. There is no idea in Gray's Elegy which has not passed through thousands of minds. Gray alone gave them the form which is immortal.
It is said that an author is a ‘monopolist’ because he claims an exclusive right of selling his book, and that his claim is therefore opposed to the doctrine of free trade. But this is a pure confusion of thought. In the sense of political economy, a man is a monopolist who prevents others from pursuing a form of industry which they might have pursued independently of him, and had he not existed. He is not a monopolist if he only prevents them from appropriating what he alone has made, and what would not have existed without him. An author is a monopolist in no other sense than a proprietor or labourer who claims the exclusive possession of his own earnings or his own inheritance. If I write the history of a particular period, I claim no legal right of debarring others from writing about the same period, or using the materials that I have used. I claim only an exclusive right in that specific work which I have myself made. A fisherman would be rightly called a monopolist if he excluded all others from fishing in the sea. He is not rightly called a monopolist if he only claims an exclusive right to dispose of the fish which he has himself caught in the sea, which is open to all.51
But the author, it is said, is under a special obligation to the State because his property is protected by a special law. The answer is, that the very object for which all governments are primarily created, and for which all taxes are paid, is the protection of life and property. A government in protecting property is simply discharging its most elementary duty. Different kinds of property may be invaded, and must therefore be protected in different ways; and, as a matter of fact, the protection of literature costs the State much less in labour, in money, and in popularity than the protection of pheasants.
Others again contend for what they call the nationalisation of the means of communication, or, in other words, the appropriation of the railways and all other public conveyances by the State. If by this term is meant that the Government should either construct, or purchase at a fair price, the railways within its dominion, there is no objection of principle to be raised. The system of State railways exists in many countries. In judging whether it is for the advantage of the nation as a whole, we have to consider a large number of conflicting and closely balanced advantages and disadvantages, and the preponderance in each country must be decided according to its own special economical circumstances. It is also universally admitted that the State, having given great privileges and powers to a railway company, is perfectly justified in imposing upon it many restrictions. But when it is claimed that the State may, without purchase, or at a rate of compensation below its real value, take possession of a railway, depriving of their property the shareholders at whose risk and cost it was made, it can only be answered that such a claim is simple and naked robbery.