Your use, in so many passages of your Encyclical, of the inclusive term “property” or “private” property,
of which in morals nothing can be either affirmed or denied, makes your meaning,
if we take isolated sentences, in many places ambiguous. But reading it as
a whole, there can be no doubt of your intention that private property in
land shall be understood when you speak merely of private property. With
this interpretation, I find that the reasons you urge for private property
in land are eight. Let us consider them in order of presentation. You urge:
1. That what is bought with rightful property is rightful property. (RN,
paragraph 5) ...
2. That private property in land proceeds from man’s gift of reason.
(RN, paragraphs 6-7.) ...
3. That private property in land deprives no one of the use of land. (RN,
paragraph 8.) ...
4. That Industry expended on land gives ownership in the land itself. (RN,
paragraphs 9-10.) ...
5. That private property in land has the support of the common opinion of
mankind, and has conduced to peace and tranquillity, and that it is sanctioned
by Divine Law. (RN, paragraph 11.) ...
6. That fathers should provide for their children and that private property
in land is necessary to enable them to do so. (RN, paragraphs 14-17.) ...
7. That the private ownership of land stimulates industry, increases wealth,
and attaches men to the soil and to their country. (RN, paragraph 51.) ...
8. That the right to possess private property in land is from nature, not
from man; that the state has no right to abolish it, and that to take the
value of landownership in taxation would be unjust and cruel to the private
owner. (RN, paragraph 51.) ...
5. That private property in land has the support of the common opinion
of mankind, and has conduced to peace and tranquillity, and that it is
sanctioned
by Divine Law. (11.)
Even were it true that the common opinion of mankind has sanctioned private
property in land, this would no more prove its justice than the once universal
practice of the known world would have proved the justice of slavery.
But it is not true. Examination will show that wherever we can trace them
the first perceptions of mankind have always recognized the equality of right
to land, and that when individual possession became necessary to secure the
right of ownership in things produced by labor some method of securing equality,
sufficient in the existing state of social development, was adopted. Thus,
among some peoples, land used for cultivation was periodically divided, land
used for pasturage and wood being held in common. Among others, every family
was permitted to hold what land it needed for a dwelling and for cultivation,
but the moment that such use and cultivation stopped any one else could step
in and take it on like tenure. Of the same nature were the land laws of the
Mosaic code. The land, first fairly divided among the people, was made inalienable
by the provision of the jubilee, under which, if sold, it reverted every
fiftieth year to the children of its original possessors.
Private property in land as we know it, the attaching to land of the same
right of ownership that justly attaches to the products of labor, has never
grown up anywhere save by usurpation or force. Like slavery, it is the result
of war. It comes to us of the modern world from your ancestors, the Romans,
whose civilization it corrupted and whose empire it destroyed.
It made with the freer spirit of the northern peoples the combination of
the feudal system, in which, though subordination was substituted for equality,
there was still a rough recognition of the principle of common rights in
land. A fief was a trust, and to enjoyment was annexed some obligation. The
sovereign, the representative of the whole people, was the only owner of
land. Of him, immediately or mediately, held tenants, whose possession involved
duties or payments, which, though rudely and imperfectly, embodied the idea
that we would carry out in the single tax, of taking land values for public
uses. The crown lands maintained the sovereign and the civil list; the church
lands defrayed the cost of public worship and instruction, of the relief
of the sick, the destitute and the wayworn; while the military tenures provided
for public defense and bore the costs of war. A fourth and very large portion
of the land remained in common, the people of the neighborhood being free
to pasture it, cut wood on it, or put it to other common uses.
In this partial yet substantial recognition of common rights to land is
to be found the reason why, in a time when the industrial arts were rude,
wars frequent, and the great discoveries and inventions of our time unthought
of, the condition of the laborer was devoid of that grinding poverty which
despite our marvelous advances now exists. Speaking of England, the highest
authority on such subjects, the late Professor Therold Rogers, declares that
in the thirteenth century there was no class so poor, so helpless, so pressed
and degraded as are millions of Englishmen in our boasted nineteenth century;
and that, save in times of actual famine, there was no laborer so poor as
to fear that his wife and children might come to want even were he taken
from them. Dark and rude in many respects as they were, these were the times
when the cathedrals and churches and religious houses whose ruins yet excite
our admiration were built; the times when England had no national debt, no
poor law, no standing army, no hereditary paupers, no thousands and thousands
of human beings rising in the morning without knowing where they might lay
their heads at night.
With the decay of the feudal system, the system of private property in land
that had destroyed Rome was extended. As to England, it may briefly be said
that the crown lands were for the most part given away to favorites; that
the church lands were parceled among his courtiers by Henry VIII., and in
Scotland grasped by the nobles; that the military dues were finally remitted
in the seventeenth century, and taxation on consumption substituted; and
that by a process beginning with the Tudors and extending to our own time
all but a mere fraction of the commons were inclosed by the greater landowners;
while the same private ownership of land was extended over Ireland and the
Scottish Highlands, partly by the sword and partly by bribery of the chiefs.
Even the military dues, had they been commuted, not remitted, would today
have more than sufficed to pay all public expenses without one penny of other
taxation.
Of the New World, whose institutions but continue those of Europe, it is
only necessary to say that to the parceling out of land in great tracts is
due the backwardness and turbulence of Spanish America; that to the large
plantations of the Southern States of the Union was due the persistence of
slavery there, and that the more northern settlements showed the earlier
English feeling, land being fairly well divided and the attempts to establish
manorial estates coming to little or nothing. In this lies the secret of
the more vigorous growth of the Northern States. But the idea that land was
to be treated as private property had been thoroughly established in English
thought before the colonial period ended, and it has been so treated by the
United States and by the several States. And though land was at first sold
cheaply, and then given to actual settlers, it was also sold in large quantities
to speculators, given away in great tracts for railroads and other purposes,
until now the public domain of the United States, which a generation ago
seemed illimitable, has practically gone. And this, as the experience of
other countries shows, is the natural result in a growing community of making
land private property. When the possession of land means the gain of unearned
wealth, the strong and unscrupulous will secure it. But when, as we propose,
economic rent, the “unearned increment of wealth,” is taken by
the state for the use of the community, then land will pass into the hands
of users and remain there, since no matter how great its value, its possession
will be profitable only to users.
As to private property in land having conduced to the peace and tranquillity
of human life, it is not necessary more than to allude to the notorious fact
that the struggle for land has been the prolific source of wars and of lawsuits,
while it is the poverty engendered by private property in land that makes
the prison and the workhouse the unfailing attributes of what we call Christian
civilization.
Your Holiness intimates that the Divine Law gives its sanction to the private
ownership of land, quoting from Deuteronomy, “Thou shalt not covet
thy neighbor’s wife, nor his house, nor his field, nor his man-servant,
nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything which is his.”
If, as your Holiness conveys, this inclusion of the words, “nor his
field,” is to be taken as sanctioning private property in land as it
exists today, then, but with far greater force, must the words, “his
man-servant, nor his maid-servant,” be taken to sanction chattel slavery;
for it is evident from other provisions of the same code that these terms
referred both to bondsmen for a term of years and to perpetual slaves. But
the word “field” involves the idea of use and improvement, to
which the right of possession and ownership does attach without recognition
of property in the land itself. And that this reference to the “field” is
not a sanction of private property in land as it exists today is proved by
the fact that the Mosaic code expressly denied such unqualified ownership
in land, and with the declaration, “the land also shall not be sold
forever, because it is mine, and you are strangers and sojourners with me,” provided
for its reversion every fiftieth year; thus, in a way adapted to the primitive
industrial conditions of the time, securing to all of the chosen people a
foothold in the soil.
Nowhere in fact throughout the Scriptures can the slightest justification
be found for the attaching to land of the same right of property that justly
attaches to the things produced by labor. Everywhere is it treated as the
free bounty of God, “the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” ...
Nowhere do these differences between wealth and poverty coincide with differences
in individual powers and aptitudes. The real difference between rich and
poor is the difference between those who hold the tollgates and those who
pay toll; between tribute-receivers and tribute-yielders.
In what way does nature justify such a difference? In the numberless varieties
of animated nature we find some species that are evidently intended to live
on other species. But their relations are always marked by unmistakable differences
in size, shape or organs. To man has been given dominion over all the other
living things that tenant the earth. But is not this mastery indicated even
in externals, so that no one can fail on sight to distinguish between a man
and one of the inferior animals? Our American apologists for slavery used
to contend that the black skin and woolly hair of the negro indicated the
intent of nature that the black should serve the white; but the difference
that you assume to be natural is between men of the same race. What
difference does nature show between such men as would indicate her intent
that one should
live idly yet be rich, and the other should work hard yet be poor? If
I could bring you from the United States a man who has $200,000,000, and
one who
is glad to work for a few dollars a week, and place them side by side in
your antechamber, would you be able to tell which was which, even were you
to call in the most skilled anatomist? Is it not clear that God in no way
countenances or condones the division of rich and poor that exists today,
or in any way permits it, except as having given them free will he permits
men to choose either good or evil, and to avoid heaven if they prefer hell.
For is it not clear that the division of men into the classes rich
and poor has invariably its origin in force and fraud; invariably involves
violation
of the moral law; and is really a division into those who get the profits
of robbery and those who are robbed; those who hold in exclusive possession
what God made for all, and those who are deprived of his bounty? Did
not Christ in all his utterances and parables show that the gross difference
between rich and poor is opposed to God’s law? Would he have condemned
the rich so strongly as he did, if the class distinction between rich and
poor did not involve injustice — was not opposed to God’s intent?
... read the whole letter
OR let him go to Edinburgh, the "modern Athens," of which Scotsmen
speak with pride, and in buildings from whose roofs a bowman might strike
the spires of twenty churches he will find human beings living as he would
not keep his meanest dog. Let him toil up the stairs of one of those monstrous
buildings, let him enter one of those "dark houses," let him close
the door, and in the blackness think what life must be in such a place. Then
let him try the reduction to iniquity. And if he go to that good charity
(but, alas! how futile is Charity without Justice!) where little children
are kept while their mothers are at work, and children are fed who would
otherwise go hungry, he may see infants whose limbs are shrunken from want
of nourishment. Perhaps they may tell him, as they told me, of that little
girl, barefooted, ragged, and hungry, who, when they gave her bread, raised
her eyes and clasped her hands, and thanked our Father in Heaven for His
bounty to her. They who told me that never dreamed, I think, of its terrible
meaning. But I ask the Duke of Argyll, did that little child, thankful for
that poor dole, get what our Father provided for her? Is He so niggard? If
not, what is it, who is it, that stands, between such children and our Father's
bounty? If it be an institution, is it not our duty to God and to our neighbor
to rest not till we destroy it? If it be a man, were it not better for him
that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the depths
of the sea? — The Reduction to Iniquity (a reply to the Duke of Argyll),
The Nineteenth Century, July, 1884
WE are so accustomed to poverty that even in the most advanced countries
we regard it as the natural lot of the great masses of the people; that we
take it as a matter of course that even in our highest civilization large
classes should want the necessaries of healthful life, and the vast majority
should only get a poor and pinched living by the hardest toil. There are
professors of political economy who teach that this condition of things is
the result of social laws of which it is idle to complain! There are ministers
of religion who preach that this is the condition which an all-wise, all-powerful
Creator intended for His children! If an architect were to build a theater
so that not more than one-tenth of the audience could see and hear, we should
call him a bungler and a botcher. If a man were to give a feast and provide
so little food that nine-tenths of his guests must go away hungry, we should
call him a fool, or worse. Yet so accustomed are we to poverty, that even
the preachers of what passes for Christianity tell us that the great Architect
of the Universe, to whose infinite skill all nature testifies, has made such
a botch job of this world that the vast majority of the human creatures whom
He has called into it are condemned by the conditions he has imposed to want,
suffering, and brutalizing toil that gives no opportunity for the development
of mental powers — must pass their lives in a hard struggle to merely
live! — Social Problems ... go
to "Gems from George"