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.
I do not say that these institutions were, for their ultimate purpose, the
best that might even then have been devised; but Moses had to work, as all
great constructive statesmen have to work, with the tools that came to his
hand, and upon materials as he found them. ... Read the whole speech