§ 9. Justice or Equity is, therefore, the foundation of the law
of social life, both in the Old Testament and in the New. What,
then, follows
as to the Land Question? Let the results of our inquiry into
the teaching of the Law and the Prophets be briefly restated in the language
of
a modern philosopher.
"Equity," wrote Herbert Spencer in the middle of last century, "does
not permit private property in land."
"The verdict given by pure equity … dictates the assertion,
that the right of mankind at large to the earth's surface is still valid;
all deeds, customs, and laws notwithstanding" (Social Statics, ix.§3).
"It is impossible to discover any mode in which land can become private
property" (Ibid. § 4).
"The theory of the co-heirship of all men to the soil is consistent
with the highest civilisation … however difficult it may be to embody
that theory in fact, Equity sternly commands it to be done". (§ 10)
It is quite clear that there is no difference, except in literary form,
between Spencer's conclusions, and those which have been deduced,
in the foregoing chapters, from the writings of the Hebrew Lawgivers
and
Prophets.
The famous ninth chapter of Social Statics might quite well be
published, as the Church Catechism sometimes is, "with Scripture proofs." ... Read the whole chapter,
including footnotes
Yet the great concern of Moses was with the duty that lay plainly before
him; the effort to lay the foundations of a social state in which deep
poverty and degrading want should be unknown – where people released
from the meaner struggles that waste human energy should have opportunity
for intellectual and moral development.
Here stands out the greatness of the man. What was the wisdom and stretch
of the forethought that in the desert sought to guard in advance against
the dangers of a settled state, let the present speak!
In the full blaze of the nineteenth century, when every child in our
schools may know as common truths things of which the Egyptian sages
never dreamed;
when the earth has been mapped and the stars have been weighed; when
steam and electricity have been pressed into our service, and science
is wresting
from nature secret after secret – it is but natural to look back
upon the wisdom of three thousand years ago as an adult looks back
upon the learning of a child.
And yet, for all this wonderful increase of knowledge, for all this
enormous gain of productive power, where is the country in the civilised
world in
which today there is not want and suffering – where the masses are
not condemned to toil that gives no leisure, and all classes are not pursued
by a greed of gain that makes life an ignoble struggle to get and to keep?
Three thousands years of advances, and still the moan goes up: "They
have made our lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and in brick, and
in all manner of service!" Three thousand years of advances! and
the piteous voices of little children are in the moan.
Standing as I stand, where modern ideas have had fullest, freest development;
in the newest great city of the newest great nation; by the side of that
ultimate sea, where ends the westward march of the race that has circled
the globe, and farthest west meets east, the cool shades and sweet waters
whose promise has so long lured us on seem dissolving into mocking mirage.
Over ocean wastes far wider than the Syrian desert we have sought our
promised land – no narrow strip between the mountains and the sea,
but a wide and virgin continent. Here, in greater freedom, with vaster
knowledge and fuller experience, we are building up a nation that leads
the van of modern progress. And yet while we prate of the rights of humanity
there are already many among us thousands who find it difficult to assert
the first of natural rights – the right to earn an honest living;
thousands who from time to time must accept of degrading charity or
starve.
We boast of equality before the law; yet notoriously justice is deaf to
the call of those who have no gold and blind to the sin of those who have.
We pride ourselves upon our common schools; yet after our boys and girls
are educated we vainly ask: "What shall we do with them?" And
about our colleges children are growing up in vice and crime, because
from their homes poverty has driven all refining influences. We pin
our faith
to universal suffrage; yet with all power in the hands of the people,
the control of public affairs is passing into the hands of a class
of professional
politicians, and our governments are, in many cases, becoming but a
means for robbery of the people.
We have prohibited hereditary distinctions, we have forbidden titles of
nobility; yet there is growing up an aristocracy of wealth as powerful
and merciless as any that ever held sway.
We progress and we progress; we girdle continents with iron roads and
knit cities together with the mesh of telegraph wires; each day brings
some new invention, each year marks a fresh advance – the power of
production increased, and the avenues of exchange cleared and broadened.
Yet the complaint of "hard times" is louder and louder; everywhere
are people harassed by care, and haunted by the fear of want. With
swift, steady strides and prodigious leaps, the power of human hands
to satisfy
human wants advances and advances, is multiplied and multiplied. Yet
the struggle for mere existence is more and more intense, and human
labour
is becoming the cheapest of commodities. Beside glutted warehouses
human beings grow faint with hunger and shiver with cold; under the
shadow of
churches festers the vice that is born of want.
Trace to its roots the cause that is producing want in the midst of
plenty, ignorance in the midst of intelligence, aristocracy in democracy,
weakness
in strength – that is giving to our civilisation a one-sided and
unstable development – and you will find it something which this
Hebrew statesman three thousand years ago perceived and guarded against.
Moses saw that the real cause of the enslavement of the masses of Egypt
was – what has everywhere produced enslavement – the possession
by a class of land upon which and from which the whole people must live.
He saw that to permit in land the same unqualified private ownership that
by natural right attaches to the things produced by labour, would be inevitably
to separate the people into the very rich and the very poor, inevitably
to enslave labour – to make the few the masters of the many,
no matter what the political forms, to bring vice and degradation no
matter what
the religion.
And with the foresight of the philosophic statesman who legislates not
for the need of a day, but for all the future, he sought, in ways suited
to his times and conditions, to guard against this error.
Everywhere in the Mosaic institutions is the land treated as the gift
of the Creator to His common creatures, which no one has the right
to monopolise. Everywhere it is, not your estate, or your property, not
the land which
you bought, or the land which you conquered, but "the land which the
Lord thy God giveth thee" – "the land which the Lord lendeth
thee". And by practical legislation, by regulations to which he gave
the highest sanctions, he tried to guard against the wrong that converted
ancient civilisations into despotisms – the wrong that in after
centuries ate out the heart of Rome, that produced the imbruting serfdom
of Poland
and the gaunt misery of Ireland, the wrong that is today filling American
cities with idle men, and our virgin states with tramps.
He not only provided for a redistribution of the land among the people,
and for making it fallow and common every seventh year, but by the
institution of the Jubilee he provided for a redistribution of the
land every fifty years, and made monopoly impossible. ... Read the whole speech