Henry George — A Perplexed
Philosopher
Part III—Recantation
(continued)
Chapter XII — Justice—"The Land Question"
While Justice shows no decadence of intellectual power, and those who have
seen the utterances 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,25 and the manner in which he recants his previously
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 Rights 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 (-Chapter
IX-); 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.26
26 The dog stories which close this crowning book of the Synthetic 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 committing the writer to any opinion."
These "careful observations" are indorsed by Mr. Spencer as highly
remarkable and instructive, and as supporting his own conclusion, 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 diagrams, I may quote as printed:
"The 'ought' may be established as an obligation to a higher mind in opposition
to the 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."
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 collection. I hesitate to give an
instance, such is the embarrassment of riches; but here, to quote at random,
is one. It is from the chapter on 'The Religious Idea' in Principles 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:
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 developed language — such, for instance, as "She's a daisy!" or "He's
a brick!" or "You would have to use a pickaxe to get a joke through
his head"?
But I am keeping the reader from "The Land Question." 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 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 commendable;
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.
That the masses of landless men should regard private landownership
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 question — Which are the wronged and
which are the wrongers? 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 question is — Which are the descendants
of the one and of the other? It is tacitly assumed that those who now own
lands
are the posterity of the usurpers, and that those who now have no lands
are the posterity of those who 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 usurpations 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 descendents) 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 considerable 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 arrangement,
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 transaction 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 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 memoranda, 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. II) 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. say 3 millions.
1631-1700. (1688 Nicholls puts at 700,000.) 30 "
1701-1720. (1701 Nicholls puts at 900,000.) 20 "
1721-1760. 1760 Nicholls says 11 millions.) 40 "
1761-1775. (17 75 put at 11 millions.) 22 "
1776-1800. (1784 2 millions.) 50 "
1801-1812. (1803 4 millions; 1813 6 millions.) 65 "
1813-1840. (based on exact figures given by Sir G. Nicholls.) 170 "
1841-1890. (based on Mulhall's Diet. of Statistics and Statistical Abstract.)
334 "
734 millions"
The above represents the amount expended in relief of the
poor. Under the general term "poor-rate," moneys have always
been collected 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 poor Other purposes
Sir G. Nicholls In 1803 5,348,000 4,077,000 1,271,000
In 1813 6,656,106 1,990,735
In 1853 4,939,064 1,583,341
Total spent Sum spent
StatisticalAbstract
In 1875 12,694,208 7,488,481 5,205,727
In 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 11 to 71 millions per annum, 'for other
purposes.'
"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 contributed. From a landowner, who is
at the same time a Queen's Counsel, frequently employed professionally
to arbitrate
in questions 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 community. 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, I
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 Xl, I adhere to the inference originally 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 consideration 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 balancing of claims and counter-claims,
past and present, to make 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 administration 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 officialism would
inevitably entail immense evils.
Was ever philosopher so perplexed before?
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 aristocrats 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 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 … 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 whatever 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.27 Neither Mr. Spencer in his "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."
27 I, for instance, have uniformly asserted that it made no difference 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."
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 endeavors to confuse the truth he once bore witness to, but he assumes
that the whole great movement for the recognition 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 property
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 ignorant 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
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,28 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; 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.
28 pp. 64-65.
In 1884, in "The Coming Slavery," he repeats the assertion that
non-landowners get no benefit from the poor law, saying —
The amount which under the old poor law the half-pauperised 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 nonlandowners, saying —
As, under the old poor law, the diligent and provident
laborer had to pay that the good-for-nothings might not suffer, until frequently,
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 landlords and charges the
landless with all that has been collected 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 ordinary book-keeper 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.29 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.
29 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 them-selves and from their habit of providing for younger
sons and poorer relatives in the army, navy, church and civil administration.
This would be the way of ordinary, every-day bookkeeping 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 book-keeping. 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 reference 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,
furnishing 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!
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.
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