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414 The North American planters employed coarse tools rather than fine ones, mules rather than horses, because their slaves took so little care of them.
415 It can never obtain as much labor from the slave, as the fear of losing his situation and of not being able to obtain another, will from the free workman. (Hume.) Marlo, Weltoekonomie, 1848, I, 2, 38, grants this to be true only where all the forces of nature are appropriated by occupation, and the number of workmen is greater than the want of workmen.
416 Even in Brazil, only free men are, as a rule, employed as sugar refiners, distillers, teamsters etc. (Koster, Travels in Brazil, 1816, 362.) Storch, Russland unter Alexander I, Heft, 23, p. 255, cites the opinion of an eminent Russian manufacturer, that it would first be necessary to liberate the serf factory-hands. Masters have generally given up employing their own serfs in manufactures, allowed them to seek work for themselves, and only required them to pay them a species of tax. When this plan was adopted, it was found that they worked much better, (v. Haxthausen, Studien I, 61, 116.) It was a consequence of slavery that, in antiquity, the very wealthy purchased so little: omnia domi nascuntur! (Petron., 38.)
417 Thus Homer, Od. XVII, 322, in whose time even there were day laborers, θῆτες or ἔριθοι. (Od. IV, 644; X, 85; XI, 490; XIV, 102. Hesiod, Opera, 602.) And Varro, De Re rust. I, 17, advises that difficult labor should be performed rather by day laborers. Coli rura ab ergastulis pessimum est et quidquid agitur a desperantibus. Plin., H. N. XVIII, 7. Omne genus agri tolerabilius sub liberis colonis, quam sub villicis. (Columetta, De Re rust I, 7.) It has been estimated, that, in the West Indies, a negro slave performed only one-third of the work performed by an Englishman in his own country. (B. Edwards, History of the British West Indies, II, 131.) During the one afternoon, in every week, in which the negroes were allowed to work on their own account, they accomplished as much as on other entire days. Edinburgh R. IV, 842. Compare Bentham, Traite de Legislation I, 319. Ch. Comte, Traite de Legislation, 1827, Livre V.; Cairnes, The Slave-Power, its Character, Career and probable Designs, 1862; Olmsted, Journeys and Explorations in the Cotton Kingdom, 1861.
418 While the older tyrants had prohibited idleness, Draco and Solon even under pain of degradation (see places in Buechsenschuetz, Besitz und Erwerb, 260). Socrates called the ἅργια the sister of Freedom (Aelian, V.H.X, 14), and the σκολή the most beautiful of all professions.
419 B. Franklin, Observations concerning the Peopling of New Countries etc., 1751.
420 Monument erected to Bernstorff by his peasants, 8, 15. The Zamoiski estates yielded, 17 years after emancipation, three times as much as they did when serfdom prevailed. Coxe, Travels in Poland, I, 22. The transformation of the serfs into hereditary farmers cost Count Bernstorff 100,000 thalers; but the revenue derived from his lands increased in consequence, in twenty-four years, from 3,000 to 27,000 thalers. An English mower can mow a field two and three times as great as a Russian mower in a given time. If the former receives daily wages equivalent to seventy pounds of wheat, and the latter to only twelve, the Englishman's labor is still the cheaper; for he turns out 100 pounds of hay while the latter turns out only eight. Jacob, 43 seq. But the hiring out of serfs in the large cities of Russia yielded less to their masters than in the interior. Storch, Handbuch, II, 286.
421 Tucker, Progress of the United States, 1843, pp. 111 ff. We need not call attention to the inaccuracy of these figures, nor remark how little serviceable for our present purpose an average obtained from the density of population in different parts of Russia, where such densities are themselves so very different, would be.
422 The Spartans seemed to have counted on an adult free man for twice as much coarse food as a bondsman. (Thucyd., VI, 16.)
423 Stewart, Principles, I, 7, in accordance with historical data, says, that the peasantry in our days work for other people, because they have wants which can be satisfied only in this way; because "they are slaves of their own wants." The unquestionable superiority of free to slave labor, in point of economy, has been dwelt upon especially by Turgot, Sur la Formation et la Distribution, 28, and by Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, I, 8, III, 2. But see J. B. Say, Traite, I, ch. 19, and Storch, Handbuch, II, 184. When Hume, Discourses, No. 11, Populousness of ancient Nations, demonstrates the greater cost of slavery from the fact that the master of slaves must either breed or buy them, he forgets that in the case of free workmen he is obliged to provide also for the support of the workman's children. Only, the slaveholder has, indeed, to advance the whole at once.
424 Humboldt, Cuba, I, 177. Ashworth, Tour in the U.S. Cuba and Canada, 1861. The slaves in Louisiana were so overworked that they lived, on an average, scarcely seven years. Edinburg Rev., LXXXIII, 73. Even the Stoics were not agreed, whether it was right, in case of shipwreck, to sacrifice a cheap slave in order to save a valuable horse. (Cicero, de Off. III, 23.) Whether the self-interest of masters is an inducement to the mild treatment of their slaves depends on the price for which fresh slaves may be obtained. This is a strong reason why a high degree of civilization, where there are not counteracting influences, must make slavery less endurable. The more valuable slaves are, the worse is their condition. In the unfertile Bahamas, the price was L21; in Demarara, L86. In the former place they were required to do little work and were well fed and well clothed. Hence their numbers have increased there, while in Demarara they have decreased. (Edinburgh Rev., XLVI, 496, 180.)
425 Proverb: quot servi totidem hostes. (Macrob., Sat. I, 11, 13.)
426 Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 212. The chastity of both parties especially suffers. The leno of ancient comedy was a slave trader! Compare L. 27, Digest, V, 3. In the English negro colonies, it was not unusual for the guests of the planters, even in the best families, on retiring, to ask the accompanying servant for a girl, with as little concern as they would in England for a light. (Negro Slavery, or a Creed of ... that state of Society as it exists in the United States and in the Colonies of the West Indies, London, 1823, 53.)
427 Even the law of Upland forbade the sale of Christians. The children of a slave and of a free person were born free. Emancipation was considered a Christian act, to be performed for "the salvation of one's soul." Voluntary slavery was prohibited in 1266, and Magnus Erichson forbade slavery generally from the year 1335. See Geijer, Geschichte von Schweden, pp. 157, 185, 273. Estrup, in Falcks N. Staatsburg Magazin, 1837, 179, ff.
428 L. Alam, 137, 1. L. Fris., 17, 5. Decree of 960 concerning the abolition of the trade in Christian slaves between Germany, Italy and the Byzantine Empire. Tafel und Thomas, Urkunden der Staats-und Handelsgeschichte von Venedig, I, 18 ff.
429 Tacit. Germ. 25. In the Legg. Walliae 206 (Wolton) we read: "Hero eadem potestas in servum suum ac in jumentum."
430 The council of London in 1102 forbade men to be sold like beasts. (Concil., ed. Venet. 1730, XII, 1100, No. 27.) Guerard, Polyptiques d'Irminon, Prolegg., 220, describes a pedagogical model emancipation by the Church of its own serfs. On the whole, the church contributed more towards the emancipation of the serfs of others than of its own. See ch. 39, C. XII, qu. 2; c. 3,4; De Rebus eccl.
431 In Flanders since the end of the twelfth century. Warnkoenig, Flandrische Staats und Rechtsgeschichte (I, 244).
432 In what relates to Germany, compare Sugenheim, Geschichte der Aufhebung der Leibeigenschaft in Europa, 1861, p. 350 ff. The destruction of the old manorial system (Hofwesen) in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was often unfavorable to bondmen and favorable to serfs. Maurer, Gesch. der Frohnhoefe, II, 92. In Poland, where all were originally equal land-owners, many sank gradually through poverty to the condition of the so-called kinetes, who, although personally free, were not very far removed from slaves. Beginning with the thirteenth century, a great number of immunities, after the model of those accorded in Germany, were granted, by means of which they lost, for the most part, their direct subjection to the emperor and the empire alone. This was soon followed as a consequence by their personal oppression. (Roepell, Geschichte von Polen, I, p. 308 seq., and p. 570 seq.) In Bohemia, the old form of serfdom had so far disappeared in the fourteenth century, that it might be said it was known only to history. But during the reign of the weak king, Ladislaus II, a new species of serfdom came into vogue, the result of the preponderance of the aristocratic element. Palacky, Gesch. von Boehmen, II, p. 33 seq.; III, 31 seq. Aristocratic Denmark, before the peasant war of 1255-1258, subjected the free peasantry who had been leaseholders for a term of years to unlimited socage duty. Waldemar III, reduced to the same kind of service the land-owning peasantry, which especially from the date of Margaret's reign, developed into a species of glebae adscriptio. From the sixteenth century, when the royal power almost disappeared, these public privileges were abandoned to the nobility to such an extent that, in 1650, there were scarcely 5,000 free peasants. Dahlmann, III, p. 73 seq. However the severity of traeldom made way in the fourteenth century for the vornedskap (modified bondage), a milder species of vassalage. See Kolderup Rosenvinge, Grundriss der daenischen Rechtsgeschichte, 94.
433 The French expression mainmorte comes originally from the deprivation of the right of inheritance. In Beaumanoir's time, 1283, it was customary, after a number of serfs had lived together for a year and a day, for their chattels movable to become the common property of the community. (Warnkoenig, Franzoesische Rechtsgeschichte, II, 157.)
434 In France, Louis X. made it a fiscal speculation to sell serfs their liberty in whole districts, even against their will. His edict, Ordonnances, I, 583, recognizes that all men are by nature free, and that France is not without reason called the land of the Franks etc. Even in 1298, Philip IV. had exchanged the serfdom to the crown of several provinces for a land duty. The last ruler of Dauphiny gave all the serfs of the crown their liberty gratis, in 1394. (Sugenheim, p. 130.) When the so-called coutumes were written, there were only nine provincees in which by local law serfdom was permitted. The defeat of the jacquerie injured the cause of emancipation in France in the same way that the suppression of the war of the peasants did in Germany. About 1779, mainmorte was abolished in all lands of the crown, and its proof made almost impossible in all others. (Warnkoenig, II, 151 seq.) Yet it is said that there were 150,000 serfs de corps in France in 1789. (Cassagnac, Causes de la Revolution, III, 11.) Koloman, who died in 1114, forbade the slave trade in Hungary, and labored to raise all Christian slaves to conditionarii (renters). But the right of migration was abolished in 1351. King Sigismund, and still more, Matthias Corvinus, restored it, after the suppression of the war of the peasants, but in 1514 it was again lost until 1586. Further progress was arrested until the Urbarium of Maria Theresa.
435 In Italy, Frederick II. liberated all the serfs of the crown. (Constitutt. Regni Sicil., 164.) A model instance of emancipation at Bologna in 1256. The serfs of the state were simply set at liberty; the freedom of those of private persons was purchased with the money of the state, and a small corn-tithe laid on the emancipated as a compensation for the expense incurred in their behalf. In the future, there was not to be a bondman on Bologna territory. The motives which led to this measure are a strange admixture of Christianity and Democracy. (Muzzi, Annali di Bologna, 1840, I, 479.) Italy, at the end of the fourteenth century, was entirely free from Christian serfdom. (Muratori, Antt. Ital., I, 798.) In the canton of Berne, Switzerland, slavery was gradually abolished, the process commencing about the beginning of the fifteenth century. It continued, however, in the case of ordinary masters until 1798. Sugenheim, p. 530 seq. In England, Alfred the Great's efforts towards the gradual abolition of slavery (Wilkins, Leges, 29) remained without result. The steps taken by William I, towards a much narrower end, however, seem to have been more successful. (Leges Will. Conq., 225, 229; Turner, Hist. of England, I, 135.) From the time of the Norman conquest, prisoners of war ceased to recruit the ranks of slavery. Under Henry III and Edward I, socage tenants became more and more frequent; but, before long, their duties became less onerous, and might be discharged by others hired for the purpose, instead of by themselves. The first remarkable vestige of a class working for wages is met with in the law of 1351, which may be considered an effort made by the nobility to oppose the tendencies in favor of emancipation, which were a consequence of the development of cities. (Eden, State of the Poor, I, 7, 12, 30, 41,) Infra, 175. Although the peasant war under Wat Tyler and Straw, who wished to abolish servitude at a blow, failed of its object, we find that there were a great many instances of emancipation by individuals in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries when death or sickness overtook them, in which they declared the moral unfitness of slavery. (Wycliffe: "When Adam dalve and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?") Elizabeth liberated the last serfs of the crown. Compare 12 Charles II, ch. 24, 1660. Emancipation in the lowlands of Scotland was completed in 1574. (Tytler, Hist. of Scotland, II, 260.)
436 Modern Emancipation Laws: in Prussia, 1719, 1807, 1819; Lausitz; 1820, Westphalia; in Austria, 1781 (Bohemia and Moravia), 1782 (other German countries and Galicia); 1785 (Hungaria); Schleswig-Holstein, 1804, after many of the landed gentry had voluntarily emancipated their own serfs; in Bavaria, in 1808; in the kingdom of Westphalia, in 1808; in Hessen-Darmstadt, in 1811; in Wuerttemberg, in 1817; in Baden, in 1783, 1820 in newly acquired countries; in Mecklenburg, in 1820; in the kingdom of Saxony, in 1832; in Hanover, in 1833. The law of 1702, abolishing serfdom in Denmark, was evaded until 1788, and in part, even until 1800 by the Schollband (clod-bond) introduced in its stead. The only Christian people in Europe, who, until recently, kept serfs, was the Russian. The serfs of Russia, in 1834, numbered 22,000,000, i.e., about 40 per cent. of the entire population. In the meantime, the law of February 19, 1861, passed after four years of preparation, fixed the date of emancipation at the beginning of the year 1863. Slavery has been abolished in the United States since January 1, 1863; first of all in all portions of the country engaged in rebellion.
437 There is a very interesting discussion in the Journ. des Economistes for June 1863, of the question whether the owners of serfs are entitled to compensation on their emancipation, by Laboulaye, Wolowski, Lavergne, Garnier, Simon and others. In the United States it would have required $2,000,000,000 to fully compensate the slave-holders for depriving them of their slaves. (Quart. R., Jan., 1874, 142.) Compare my view, Roscher, Nationaloekonomi des Ackerbaues, 124.
438 Leave a new-born child to its "natural freedom" for twenty-four hours, and it will in all probability be dead at the end of the time!
439 Compare Edinburgh Review, LXXXIII, 64 ff., April, 1851, 333. Klein's Annalen XXV, 70, ff. Even in the fifth book of Moses, 15, 13, ff., we see that experience had taken into consideration that a freed serf without capital or landed property might very readily be in a worse condition than he was before. In the United States, the anticipation that the emancipated negroes might diminish in numbers has not been realized. The census of 1870 showed a negro population of 4,880,000, nearly ten per cent. more than in 1860. The increase of the number of churches, schools and savings banks also bears testimony to the prosperity of the negro. (R. Somers, The Southern States since the War, 1871.)
440 J. S. Mill, Principles, 10, ch. 7.
441 As to the Jews, see Ewald, Geschichte von Israel, I 2, p. 198. In general, see H. Wallon, Hist, de l'Esclavage dans l'Antiquite, II, 1847.
442 Thucyd. IV, 27; Xenoph. De Re. rep. Art. I, 10 ff., Aristoph. Nubes, 6; Antiph. De Caede Herod, 727. In the "Frogs" of Aristophanes, the relation between the slave Xanthias and his master is eloquent testimony to the good treatment he received. Slaves enjoyed great freedom of speech. (Demosth. Phil. III, iii.) Concerning masters accused of cruelty, see Demosth. Mid. 529, 7. Athen. VI, 266. The slave who had been ill-treated might seek refuge in a temple, after which his master was compelled to sell him. (Schol. Aristoph. Equitt. 1309. Plutarch, Thes. 36.)
443 Slaves might purchase their own freedom with their peculium. See Petit. Legg., Art. II, 179. There were many who lived entirely on their own account, paying a certain duty or tax to their masters, and who were well able to make savings. R. F. Hermann, Privatalterthuemer, 13, 9, 58, 11 ff. See the instance in Plato, De Rep. VI, 495, where a slave who had grown wealthy asks the daughter of his former master in marriage. Moreover, there was a general indisposition to hold Greeks as slaves. (Philostr. Apoll. VIII, 7, 12.) The case cited in Demosth. adv. Nicostr. 1249 ff., is all the stronger on this account.
444 Under Cleomenes, many purchased their freedom with their own means. Plutarch, Cleom. 23. At an earlier period, men like Lysandros, Gylippos, Kallikratidos had belonged to a class composed of the children of slaves brought up as citizens.
445 Cicero, pro Muraena, IX, 22.
446 Think of the subterranean ergastula, the fettered door-keepers and the gladiatorial exhibitions.
447 Even from the time of Plautus, the servi honestiores were wont to keep vicarios, or subordinate slaves. Plaut. Asin. I, 4, Seneca De Tranq. Anim. 8. Compare Cicero, Parad. V, 2. Of the slaves of the state, the public scribes were sometimes found in excellent circumstances.
448 The peculium was fully developed in the time of Plautus and Terence. Compare Terent., Phorm. I, 1. It was customary to promise slaves their freedom as soon as they had acquired a certain peculium. (Dionys. Hal., Antt. Rom., IV, 24. Tac., Ann., XIV, 42.) Humane masters permitted their slaves to dispose freely of their peculium by will. (Plin., Ep., VIII, 16.) There were many of the Romans who gave their slaves a fixed salary, from which they could make savings. (Senec., Epist., 80, 7.) Shepherds raised some sheep for themselves alone. (Plaut., Asin., III, 1, 36; Varro, R. R., I, 17, 7.) Premiums were offered for certain products (Athen., VI, 274 d), and there were cases even in which businesses were farmed out to slaves. (Corp. Inscr. Gr., No. 4,713 f.) The servi publici had the right to dispose of the half of what they owned, by will. (Ulpian, XX, 16.) Contracts of loan were sometimes made between master and slave. (Plut., Cato, I, 21, L., 49, 2, Digest, XV, 1.)
449 Compare Tacit., Ann., XIII, 26 seq. During the time from 356 to 211 A.C., it seems that there were, on an average, 1,380 slaves emancipated yearly. (Dureau de la Malle, Economie polit. des Romains, I, 290 ff.)
450 Concerning the highly educated slaves of Atticus, of the like of whom the Greeks had formerly few examples, see Drumann, Geschichte Roms., V, 66. The high prices, 100,000, and even 200,000 sesterces, paid for slaves, suppose a very high degree of education. (Martial, I, 59; III, 62; XI, 70; Seneca, Ep., 27.) But even Cicero was ashamed of his affliction over the death of an exceptionally clever slave. (Ad. Att., I, 12.)
451 At an earlier period, even the censor had punished cruel masters. But most of what was done to prevent the arbitrary condemnation to death of slaves, their castration etc., and to give them rights against their masters for libidinous acts towards them, for cruelty and insufficient support, or the furnishing them with bad food, was done after the time of Hadrian. (Compare Seneca, de Benef., III, 22; de Ira, III, 40, Sueton., Claud, 25, Dom., 7; Spartian., Hadr., 18; Gaius, I, 53; L., 1, 2, Digest, I, 6; L., 1, 8, D., I, 12; L., 1, 2, D., XLVII, 8; L., 1; Cod., IX, 14; Contra, see Dio Cass, I, V, 17.) However, the vitae necisque potestas existed in the time of Justinian. (Zimmern, Geschichte des roem., Privatrechts, I, 2, 661 ff.)
452 Salvian, De Gubern. Dei, V, 8. Theod., Cad. V, 4. Eumenis, Paneg Coast. 8, 9. Trebell, Poll. Claud., 9. Justin. Cad., XI, 26, 47. Compare v. Savigny, Ueber den romischen Colonat. Berliner Akad., 1822-23.
453 The figures given in Athen., VI, 103, concerning the number of bondmen in Greece are almost incredible. For Attica alone, the estimates vary between 110,000 (Letronne, in the Mem. de I'Academie des Inscr., 1822, 192, ff.) and 400,000 (Athen. 1. c.), while the free men are estimated at from 130,000 to 150,000. In Rome, during the time from the expulsion of the kings until the destruction of Carthage, the number of the slaves remained about the same. (Blair, State of Slavery among the Romans, 1833, 10, 15.) On the other hand, Dureau de la Malle is of opinion, that in 576 B.C., the number of slaves was to the number of free men as 1 to 25, and in 225 B.C. (including the metics), as 22 to 27. (Economie polit. des Romains I 270 ff., 296.) Compare Cato, de Re. rust. I, 3, IV, X, 1 XI; 1, XVII, XVIII, 1. In Germany, the number of bondmen, from the eighth to the tenth century, was estimated to be at least as great as that of free men. (Grimm, D. Rechtsaltherthuemer, 334.) Among the Anglo Saxons, before the Norman conquest, it was much higher, even three-fourths of the entire population. (Turner, Hist. of the A. S., VIII, 9.) Compare on the subject of this whole chapter my paper in the Archiv. der polit OEkonomie, N. F., IV, 30 ff.
454 Kloentrupp, Abhandlung der Lehre vom Zwangsdienste, 1801. Frequently, the lord had only a right of preference in case the children of the tenant desired to abandon the parental roof and take service elsewhere.
455 In Adam Smith's time, in England, the presumption was that a servant had been hired for a year. (I, 2, 15 ed., Bas.) Frederick the Great's ordinance of 1769, on this subject, forbade any one to enter into service for a shorter time than this (II, 1 ff.), while the Saxon ordinance of 1835, on the same matter, allowed engagements by the month, in cities. Darjes, Erste Gruende der Cameralwissenschaften, 2d ed. (1768), p. 432, demands that servants should always hire themselves for at least four or five years, and that their masters should have, during the whole of this time, the right to enforce the contract. In North America, however, service by the month has become customary and general, and no notice of the dissolution of the contract is, as a rule, required. (Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift, 1853, II, 191.) In Switzerland, contracts for service by the week are frequently made even by country servants. (Boehmert, Arbeiterverhh., II, 157.)
456 In the south of England, farm hands were used to change service only at Michaelmas. The choice of such a date made farmers very dependent on them, as it fell in harvest time. (Marshall, Rural Economy of the Southern Countries, II, 233.) A similar complaint in Cleves. (Schwerz, Rheinischwestphaelische Landw., 21 ff.) In Juelich, a half year's notice was required, during which time the servant who had received it, performed his work with disgust, and stirred up his fellow servants against their master. (Schwerz, II, 87.)
457 The families of day laborers, to whom the owner of the land gives the use of a house, small garden, a cow etc., constitute such a transition; and also, workmen who are fed. In Brandenburg, in 1644, only married persons or widowers with children were permitted to work as day laborers. (Mylius, C. C. March., V, 1, 3, 11.)
458 Wakefield, Swing Unmasked, or the Causes of rural Incendiarism, 1831.
459 By means of the former, the number of independent small householders was much increased in the country. Masters feel indisposed to hire young men liable to be subjected to military duty, because they may be called away at the moment their services are most needed. The returning soldier, as a rule, feels above doing menial service. (Schwerz, passim, I, 191 ff., 236.) On this account, servants' wages in Cleves rose much higher than those of day laborers. (194.) In Belgium, a farm hand cost, on an average, 400 francs a year; a day laborer, counting 300 working days to the year, only 339 francs. (Horn, Statist. Gemaelde, 175.) In the Palatinate, day laborers who receive nothing but their wages cost their masters less than those who receive only their food; and servants are the dearest of all. (Hanssen, Archiv der Politischen OEkonomie, N. F. X, 243.) If servants were relatively more poorly paid in 1813 than day laborers (Lotz, Revision, III, 147), it was because of the at least temporary retrogression of civilization which every great war causes.
460 Engel, Preuss. Statist. Jahrb., II, 261. Services which contribute to personal convenience are naturally committed much less frequently to independent day laborers than those which aid in production proper. Hence it is, that, as civilization advances, house-servants, especially of the female sex, constitute an ever-increasing portion of the total number of servants. In Prussia, in 1816, the number of servants who ministered to personal comfort was only 4.19 per cent. of the total number of servants engaged in industry; of female servants, it was 13.4 per cent. In 1861, on the other hand, the percentages were 8.4 and 37.2. In Great Britain, of the total number of servants over 20 years of age, only 2 per cent. were engaged in personal services. In 1841, they were 3-1/2 per cent. (Meidinger.) In France, in 1851, 2.5 per cent. of the whole population were in domesticite. (Stat. off.)
461 In England, now more especially, out of farm-hand day laborers: Edinburgh Rev., April, 1862.
462 A chief element in the earlier "organization of labor." So, also, in the Magdeburg Gesindeordnung (service-regulation) of 1789.
463 Saxon Landesordnungen of 1482 and 1543. Cod. August. I, 3, 23. The Gesindeordnung (service regulation) of Frederick the Great, threatened with the house of correction the receivers, and under certain circumstances also the givers of wages higher than the fixed rate of wages; but as a "matter of course," the payment of wages less than this was permitted. (V, 7) Great care was taken that wages greater than the law allowed should not be evaded by the payment of arrha or payment in produce. The same law forbade the deprivation of the servant of his right to determine the service by making of loans to him on long time (II, 7.) Even v. Berg, Handbuch des deutschen Polizeirechts, calls it a duty of the public authorities charged with the protection of property and of the public security, to see to it that there be no lack of good servants, and that the public (as if those who sell their services were not a part of it) should not be made the victims of exorbitant demands in the matter of servants' wages. Jung, more humane, demands that the authorities shall protect, especially, the weaker party. (Grundlehre der Staatswirthschaft, 1792, 700.) In Prussian legislation, the Silesian rescript of March 13, 1809, is the beginning of the new order of things. (Rabe, Samml. preuss. Gesetze, X, 59 ff.) The Obertribunal, or high court, decided, in 1874, that the bringing back of absconding servants by the police, which the law concerning servants of 1810 provided for, should not be allowed to occur any more.
464 Ordinance of the elector of Saxony of 1766, prohibiting the inhabitants of cities to take an apprentice from among the peasantry, unless he had served at least four years as a farm hand, beginning with his fourteenth year. Similarly, in Prussia in 1781.
465 In Berlin, even before the "populationistischen" period: Fidicin, Histor. diplom. Beitraege zur Gesch. der Stadt Berlin, I, 101. (From the year 1397.)
466 I Peter, 2, 18 ff.; I Timoth., 6, 12; Ephes., 6, 5; Philem., 15 ff.
467 In the German colonies of Mennonites in Russia, every youth serves a few years in the family of some other peasant. This is considered a sort of school. Wages are of course very large, and the treatment very mild. v. Haxthausen, Studien, II, 185. Southwestern Germany where small landed proprietors are many, something very analogous to this continues. (v. d. Goltz, loc. cit., 452.)
468 For a masterly exposition of the doctrine that the right of prescription or limitation is related to the politico-economical necessity of property, see John Stuart Mill, Principles, 3, II, ch. 2, sec. 2.
469 Locke, On Civil Government, II, 25-51; and so L. Mendelssohn, Jerusalem (1783), 32; Thiers, Du Droit de la Propriete (1849).
470 Modern writers, in their attempt to find a philosophical basis for the right of property, have taken two principal directions, the first a juridical, the second a political one. The axiom, res nullius cedit primo occupanti (compare L. 3, Digest, XLI, 1), explains only the smallest part of the relations of property, and that only because of a very fortuitous circumstance. According to Hobbes (Leviathan, 24), property has its origin in the recognition of it by the power of the state, by the autorite publique, the gouvernement (Bossuet, Politique tiree de l'Ecriture, Sainte, L. 3, 4), or as Montesquieu (Esprit des Lois XXVI., 15) more mildly expresses it, in the laws. The application of this principle would, on account of the extreme changeableness of the laws of every state, lead to most extreme insecurity, and to a steady oscillation from one Utopia to another, from one revolution to another, if it were not, at the same time, recognized that each one had a just title to the acquisitions he had made, not because the law, for the time being existing, acknowledged the right, but because they were the product of his labor and saving. The theory which bases the right of property on contract cannot be objected to with as much reason. Thus, Hugo Grotius, Jus Belli et Pacis, II, 2, who even justifies the occupation of things without an owner, on the supposition of the existence of an implied contract. It is very characteristic of the English, that in their political language, the words "liberty" and "property" are so frequently found in each other's company. In one of his classic speeches made by Fox in 1784, he gives a definition of liberty which begins with the words, "It consists in the safe and sacred possession of a man's property" etc. The recent doctrine, not unfrequently to be met with, that every man has a right to an amount of property corresponding to his wants, may be used to sanction all kinds of socialistic inferences. An entirely bewildered and bewildering description is to be found in Proudhon's Qu'est ce que la Propriete, 1848, as the precursor of which Brissot's Recherches philosophiques sur le Droit de Propriete et le Vol, may be considered. In medieval times, there are always a multitude of other titles to property besides production and saving. The title which is held in highest esteem for the time being is always because of this very extreme vis-a-vis of all other titles, strengthened and made general.
471 The word socialism brought into use by L. Reybaud is as ambiguous as the word communism is simple and intelligible. But most socialists agree that actual "society" (which is indeed to be distinguished from the state) is, together with its foundations, the existing relations of property and the family, entirely wrong. A radical reconstruction, they say, is needed to remove forever the chief evil of this system, viz.: the glaring difference between the rich and the poor, the educated and the uneducated. The difference between the doctrines of the socialists and of Political Economy does not, by any means, consist in this, that the former concerns itself more with the welfare of the lower classes, or even that it gives wider scope to economy in common. But socialism is, indeed, a living or housekeeping in common (Gemeinwirthschaft), which goes far beyond the feeling for the common interest (Gemeinsinn). Such economy in common is always opposed to freedom, and, at its first introduction, contrary to law. It can guarantee no compensation to those who have suffered from violence or force, because it leads to a thoughtless and wasteful exhaustion of the nation's resources, inasmuch as it weakens the incentive to industry and frugality. Political Economy, on the other hand, recommends an expropriation when the incentives to industry and frugality are thereby strengthened; and the increased resources thus obtained serve it, as full compensation to those whose property has been expropriated.
472 See Roscher, Betrachtungen ueber Socialismus und Communismus, Berliner Zeitschrift fuer Geschichtwissenschaft, 1845, III, 422 ff.
473 Vivre en travaillant ou mourir en combattant—the device on the flags of the mutinous silk-weavers at Lyons, in 1832.
474 We are so assured by Vauban (Dime Royale, 34 seq), of the later years of the reign of Louis XIV, that nearly 1/10 of the French people begged, that 5/10 could give no alms, because they were themselves on the very brink of indigence; 3/10 were fort malaises, embarasses de dettes et de proces; scarcely one per cent. could be said to be fort a leur aise. How much better off is the present Parisian workman! And yet, at that time, there was not the least spread of communistic doctrines. It is indeed seldom that completely down-trodden men react against their wretchedness with great energy.
475 "If my caprice be the source of law, then my enjoyment may be the source of the division of the nation's resources." Stahl, Rechtsphilosophie, II, 2, 72.
476 That the socialism of Plato, De Repub., V, was no mere fancy, is proved by the polemic which Aristophanes directs against it in his Ecclesiazuses. See also Aristot., Polit., II, 2, Schn. In the contemporary practice of the Greeks, with the increasing democratization of the state, it became more and more usual for it to bear the expense of the outlay for the means of subsistence of the great crowd. (See Plutarch, Cimo, 10.) Every act of public life was paid for. Citizens were paid for attending popular meetings three oboli per day, while the pay of the soldiers was six, and that of the sailors three. (Thucyd., III, 17; VII, 27; VIII, 45.) The pay of the commonest day laborer was from three to four oboli per day. Aristophan., Eccl., 310, and Pollux, VII, 29. The number of magistrates was very large, in order that as many as possible might participate in this species of remuneration. Thus, in Athens, when it had only about 20,000 inhabitants, there were 6,000 judges. In addition to all this, there were numberless feasts, plays, banquets etc., which were offered to the people gratis. The wealthy who were compelled to meet all the expense thus incurred, lived in such a state of terror of the populace, that they considered their own impoverishment as a species of deliverance. (Xenoph., Conviv., 4, and Lysias, pro Bonis.) Isocrates called it much more dangerous to be rich than to commit a crime, since in the latter case one might obtain a pardon or a mild punishment. (De Permut., p. 160.) (Lysias, De Invalido, de sacra Olea, seq.) There is little difference between this state of things and a semi-community of goods. Only that, indeed, the great mass of the slaves were excluded from enjoying them. The contrast which somewhat later distinguished the Cynics from the Cyreno-Epicureans affords a striking analogy to that which, in our own times, exists between the pure socialists and the worshipers of mammon after the fashion of Doctor Ure. Concerning the Utopia of Iambulos, see Diodor., II, 55 ff.
477 Our sources of information concerning the division of the Roman republic into a moneyed oligarchy, and the proletariat are very numerous. Compare infra, 205. The speeches of the Gracchi (e.g. Plut., T. Gracchus, 9), and still more the violent discourses of Catiline's conspiracy (Sallust, Cat., 20, 23, 37-39), remind us very forcibly of the shibboleths of modern socialism. We very frequently meet with the expression of a longing desire to return to the most uncivilized and hoary past, when there was no money and no wealth—an aspiration which lies at the very foundation of communism. Thus Virgil, Geo., I, 125, ff., Tibull. I, 3, 35, ff. Propert. II, 13, III, 5, 11; Seneca, Epist., 90; Senec., Oct. II, Hippol., II, 2; Plin., H. N. XXXII, 3. On the other hand, the practice of supporting the populace at the expense of great candidates or of the state, was developed to a very great extent. The masses lived very largely by the sale of their right of suffrage to the highest bidder. At the election of consuls in the year 54, 500,000 thalers were offered to the century called on to vote first. (Cicero, ad Quintum II, 15; ad. A.H. IV, 15.) Even Cato had a part in such bribery. (Sueton., Caes., 19.) In the social reform of the younger Gracchus, besides the limitation of large land-ownership, the principal points were the following: the sale of wheat under the market price, but only to the inhabitants of Rome itself; the construction of great highways in Italy; colonization at the expense of the state, and the increase of soldiers' pay. (Ritsch, Gracchen, 392 ff.) The socialistic plans of Rullus went much further. Were his agrarian laws put in execution, he would have confiscated very nearly the entire country in the interest of the poor, and of their demagogues! (Cicero, De Lege agrar.) Rome twice experienced a social revolution of the most frightful character, one by which a great portion of all private goods fell into the hands of the propertyless (soldiers), who knew nothing of how to turn it to account or to invest it—under Sulla, and then under the later Triumviri. (Compare Appian, Bell, civil., V, 5, 22.) Complaints concerning the latter, in Horat., Epist., I, 2, 49; Virgil, Buc., IX, 28; Tibull. I, 1, 19, IV, 1, 182; Propert., IV, 1, 129. The elder Gracchus had promised compensation to the last possessors. Tabulae novae of Cinna, Catiline, Caelius, Dolebella. Clodius introduced the distribution of wheat, which according to Cicero pro Sext., 25, ate up almost one-fifth of the public revenues. About 320,000 persons were, in this way, supported for a long period of time (Sueton., Caes, 41, Dio C., XLIII, 21; L. LV, 10), but only in such a manner as to keep them from starvation. (Sallust, 268 ed. Bip.) To all this was soon added distributions of salt, meal and oil, also free baths, numberless public plays, colossal banqueting, payment of one year's rent etc. Panem et circenses! (Juvenal, X, 80 seq.) The mere distribution of money under Augustus, in which from 200,000 to 320,000 men participated, cost each time from 2,500,000 to 6,000,000 thalers. (Monum Ancyr., 372 Wolf.) Extraordinary assistance was, by way of preference, accorded to colonies of the poor. (Sueton., Caes, 42.) Concerning this entire policy, see Plin., Paneg., 26 ff. Even in Constantinople, at the time of its foundation, large distributions of bread were made at the expense of Egypt, although there could scarcely be any real pauperism in that new and flourishing city. (Theod., Cod., XIII, 4, XIV 16; Socrat., II, 13.) I can only allude to the plan proposed by the emperor Gallien by the neo-platonist Plotin, to found a city in which the ideas of Plato's republic should be carried out. (Porphyr., V, Plotin., 8.)
478 During the two centuries of which the Reformation constituted the middle point, the transition from the peasant system of agriculture to the large farming system of modern times bore very heavily on the inferior classes. Such, too, was the operation of the fall in price of the precious metals. ( 140.) The suppression of the many monasteries caused an increase in the wretchedness of the poor; and the numerous poor-laws enacted in England, Spain etc., were not sufficient to supply a remedy. The feeling of the people during this period of tribulation found expression in the War of the Peasants, in the sect of Anabaptists, in the many reformations and counter-reformations, in the revolt of the Netherlands, in the conflicts for the crown in France and England etc. In Italy, the contrast existing between the moneyed oligarchy and the proletariat had been developed several centuries, but from the middle of the sixteenth century, it had become much more oppressive by reason of the universal impoverishment of the country. For an account of the pantheistic "Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit," with their community of goods and of women, see Ullmann, Reformatoren vor der Reformation, II, 18 ff. They were very numerous from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century in Italy and France, as well as in Germany, and lead us to the Adamites in the Hussite war. (Aschbach, Geschichte K. Sigismunds, III, 109.) Earlier yet, we have the sect of the Giovannali, who had their property and women in common, and who, in 1355, had won the third of Corsica, but who were afterwards suppressed by Genoa and the Church. (Lebret, Geschichte von Italien, VI, 208 ff.) The coarse socialist, John Balle, bears about the same relation to Wycliffe, that Muenzer and Bockholt did to Luther. (Walsingham, Hist. Angliae in Camden, Scriptt., 275.) Hans Boeheim of Wuerzburg, 1476, seems to be the direct precursor of Muenzer. (Ullmann, I, 421 ff.) It was almost as usual in Luther's time, as in 1848, or in our day, to hear of the deep demoralization of trade—the Fuggerei of the Germany of the time—and of the universal system of fraud that prevailed. See the citations in Hagen, Deutschland's Verhaeltnisse im Reform-Zeitalter, II, 313 ff. Muenzer's fundamental principle: Omnia simul communia! Sebastian Frank, Chronica, Zeytbuch und Geschychtbibel etc., 1551, fol. VI, 16, 27, 116, 194, 414, 433. John Bockholt's life presents us with a striking contrast. While they were bringing his perfumed women, sparkling with jewels, to his rose-covered bed, hung with curtains of gold cloth, on which he was reclining, his subjects were a prey to the horrors of famine, to such an extent that they were compelled to salt the bodies of children who had died of starvation. How frightful the end of this communistic benefactor of mankind! Libertine community of goods and women. (Calvin, Instructio adv. Libertinos, cap. 21.) English communists in the age of the reformation. (J. Story, Comment. on the Constitution of the U.S., I, 36.) Even under Cromwell, there were many Englishmen who believed that farmers were no longer obliged to pay rent to land-owners. On the sect of Levellers, see Walker, History of the Independency, II, 152. Even in Erasmus, we find some sympathy with communism. (Enchirid. milit. Christ, 80.) Contra, see Melanchthon, Prolegg. in Cic. de Off., Corp. Reform, XVI, 549 ff. The most remarkable systematic works of this period are Thomas More's, Utopia, 1516, and Campanella's Civitas, solis, 1620. Thomas More bluntly says that all existing governments are in fact only permanent conspiracies of the rich to further their own interests under the mask of the common good, and to despoil labor. The abolition of money, which should be continued in use only to carry on foreign war, would, he contends, remove all misery. There was no really private property in his Utopia. There should be a rigid superintendence of all work by the public authorities, whose duty it should be to see to it, that no one should abandon agricultural pursuits. All should eat at a common table and dress after the same fashion. Internal commerce should give way to a mutual exchange of gifts under the supervision of the state. Campanella, besides a community of goods, recommends continually varying occupation, to last not more than four hours daily; education in common, especially by means of pictures, popular encyclopedias etc., all under the supreme guidance of a despotism to be composed of the wise, some secular and some spiritual, operating through the confessional. Socialists nearly always succeed better in the critical part of their works than in the positive. Compare R. Mohl, Geschichte und Literatur der Staatswissenschaften, 1, 165 ff.
479 Considering the aversion exhibited against private property by J. J. Rousseau, and the unlimited power which he accords to the majority for the time being in the state (Contrat Social, 1761, II, ch. 4), it cannot be denied that his freedom and equality contain, to say the least, germs of communism by no means insignificant. But, he would, in the present state of civil society, have a feeling of respect for the rights of property implanted in the mind of the child very early, and even before the feeling of liberty is developed. (Emile, 1762, Livre II.) About the same time Morelly published his Basiliade ou Naufrage des Iles flottantes, 1753, a political romance in the interest of communism. See the same author's Code de la Nature, 1755. Mably, in his two works, Doutes proposes aux Economistes, 1768, and La Legislation ou Principes des Lois, 1776, recommended the abolition of all inequality and a real community of goods. The introduction of property seems to him, une faute qu'il etait presque impossible de faire. Even Beccaria calls property a dreadful but perhaps a necessary right which has left to the unfortunate nothing but a naked existence. (Dei Delitti e delle Pene, 1765, cap. 22.) The French Reign of Terror came pretty near carrying these ideas into effect. We need only refer to the abolition of the census, the payments made to the workingmen who attended the section meetings, two francs per diem, the enormous extension of confiscation, requisitions and forced loans, the revolution effected in the fortunes of individuals by the system of issuing assignats, the maximum affixed to the price of all the necessaries of life, the abolition of indirect taxes, and of what remained of the economic institutions handed down from the middle ages. According to St. Just: l'opulence est une infamie; il ne faut ni riches ni pauvres. The Cahier des Pauvres demands, first of all, that salaries "should no longer be estimated in accordance with the murderous principles of unbridled luxury." See Forster's letter dated November 15, 1793. (Saemmtl. Schriften, IX, 125.) On the conspiracy of Baboeuf, who was executed in 1796, and who wanted to see the completest equality and community of labor, of enjoyment and education, the abolition of large cities etc., see Buonarotti, La Conjuration de B., 1821. This book contributed powerfully towards the revival of communistic ideas after the July revolution. Among modern communists who are to be distinguished from the more ancient, especially by the industrial coloring given to their theories, Cabet, Voyage en Icarie, 1840, II, holds a very prominent place. He declares the abolition of religion, of the family and of the state, to be open questions, and desires to bring the practice of a community of goods to a successful issue only through the peaceful channel of conviction.
Compare Reybaud, Etudes sur les Reformateurs contemporains ou Socialistes modernes, 1840. L. Stein, Der Socialismus und Communismus des heutigen Frankreich. See, also, the learned history of socialistic systems in Marlo's Weltoekonomie, I, 2, 435 ff.; and in what concerns the most recent time, R. Meyer, Der Emancipationskampf des vierten Standes, II, 1874, seq.; a book which, in spite of its many defects, both doctrinal and journalistic, is as rich in thought, and in the knowledge of the subject it treats of, as it is permeated by a love of truth regardless of consequences. Among the opponents of socialism and communism, Malthus, On Population, B. III, ch. 3, and B. Hildebrand, Die Nationaloekonomie der Gegenwart und Zukunft, vol. I, 1848, hold a very distinguished place. J. S. Mill, Principles, II, ch. 1, 3, calls attention to the fact that hitherto the principle of free property has never been consistently carried out. The first social arrangement of modern society was almost everywhere the result of conquest and violence, large traces of which yet remain. Things have always been made property which ought not to be property. Governments have endeavored to intensify the darkness of the dark side of property, and favored the concentration instead of the diffusion of wealth etc. Hence, no one can claim that the social wrongs, so-called, had their origin in property as such. Schaeffle, Kapitalismus und Socialismus, 1870, has made a very note-worthy effort to recognize whatever of truth there is in socialism, and to combat its errors.
480 Saint Simon's reproach to the liberals, that their fundamental principle was: ote-toi de la, que je m'y mette, is well known.
481 Compare Malthus, Additions to the Essay on Population, 1817, IV, ch. 7.
482 The travailleurs egalitaires wished to murder not only the king, the court, and the ministry, but also the Liberals and all owners of property.
483 As soon, indeed, as this true love disappears in the married state, the community of goods even there degenerates only too easily into a spoliation of the better party by the worse.
484 The community of goods of the first Christians at Jerusalem, so frequently cited and extolled (James, I, 1), was only a community of use, not of ownership (Acts IV, 32), and, throughout, a voluntary act of love, not a duty (V. 4), least of all, a right which the poorer might assert. Spite of all this, that community of goods produced a chronic state of poverty in the church of Jerusalem. Hence, Paul had collections taken up for them on all sides, without, however, anywhere establishing a similar institution. (Romans, 15, 26; I. Corinth., 16, 1.) Compare Mosheim, De vera Natura Communionis Bonorum in Ecclesia Hierosol., in his Dissertatt. ad Histor. Eccles. pertinentes, II, 1 ff. As to whether Barnabas (Epist., 19) desired to say anything more, compare Epist. ad Diognetum, 5. For a real recommendation of a community of goods, on economic grounds, see Joh. Chrysostom., in Acta Apost., Hom. XI. Also Clemens Rom. c. 2 C. 12, qu. 1. Community of goods among the Essenes: Philo. Opp. II. 457 ff. Joseph. Bell, Jud., II. 8. Bellermann, Geschichtliche Nachrichten ueber die Essener. (1821.) In many monasteries, there has been and is a species of community of goods. There was once a singular contest on this subject, carried on between the Minorites and the Pope, in the time of Louis of Bavaria. The Minorites claimed that property was a thing, so much to be condemned, that even food, at the moment of eating it, did not belong to the person using it. The Pope taught on the other hand, that even Christ and the Apostles possessed property, part personal and part in common. (Raynaldi, Ann. eccl., XV, 241, 285 ff.) Community of goods of the Homiliates, later of the Brothers of Common Life, after the manner of the monks, but of a much higher kind. (Ullmann, Reformatoren v.d. Reform, II, 62 ff.) The first settlers of New Haven, Connecticut, held their property in common. Land was divided among families in proportion to the number of persons in them, and of the number of cattle they had brought with them; and all sales and purchases were made on account of the whole community. And so in Massachusetts during the first seven years of the colony's existence. (Ebeling, Geschichte und Erdbeschreib. der Vereinigten Staaten, II, 391, I, 557.) Herrnhut community of goods in Pennsylvania, from 1742 to 1762, but which was done away with when the number of colonists became too great. (Ebeling, IV, 717.) Community of goods of the Shakers and Lutheran Rappers. (Buckingham, Eastern States, II, 214, 427. Prinz Neuwied, Reise in Nord Amerika, I, 136, ff.) Russian sects with community of goods. (v. Haxthausen, I, 366, 407.) Harless, christliche Ethik 501, distinguishes very well between the "anti-christian" and "pseudo christian" stand point, from which it is sought to establish the doctrine of a community of goods. The Christian view of this subject (compare Ephes., 4, 28, I; Thess., 4, 11, II, 3, 12; Matth., 6, 24; Pet. 4, 10; Matth., 26, 7-11) is accused of hypocrisy by many socialists. It is very easy, they say, when one is himself in comfortable circumstances, to represent to the poor that their poverty is a school for heaven, and to preach a contempt for riches etc. They entirely forget, that the first promulgation of the Gospel was made at a time when the worst kind of pauperism prevailed; and that even the Master Himself, and the greater number of His Apostles belonged to the lowest stratum of society. Luke, 9, 58. Many of the Fathers of the Church, however, in their exhortations to benevolence, used language in which modern Socialists have found a rich mine which they have sedulously worked. (Compare Villegardelle, Histoire des Idees sociales, 1846, 61 ff.)
485 Even Aristotle says that what is common to many is a matter of little concern to any one. (Polit., II, 1.) Bastiat remarks: "We compete to-day to see who works most and best. Under another regime, we should emulate one another to see who should work least and worst." (Harmonies Econ., ch. VIII.) When the first settlers of Virginia, in 1611, gave up the system of common labor and of joint-stock companies, as much work was performed in a day as formerly in a week, or as much by three workmen as formerly by thirty. (Purchas, Pilgrims, iv, 1866. Bancroft, History of the United States, I, 161.) Even in New England, therefore among men both steady and accustomed to labor, who for conscience sake had sacrificed so much, a community of goods was accompanied uninterruptedly by famine. A change for the better took place, for the first time in 1623 with the introduction of the institution of private property which was followed in 1624 by the right of inheritance. (Bancroft, I, 340.) The military colonies of Algeria, also, in which husbandry in common was carried on, begged, at the end of a year, that the system should be abandoned, for the reason that it was good for nothing but to generate idlers; and yet, these colonists were all powerful men of about the same age, and accustomed to order and service in common. They were, moreover, assisted by the nation with pay and food. Compare Bugeaud's account: Revue des deux Mondes, June 1, 1848. "The French associations (after 1848), whose object was labor in common, have nearly all died out." M. Chevalier in the Journal des Debats, Feb. 3, 1851. In the United States, sixteen phalansteries of Fourierites, founded between 1840 and 1846, had all collapsed in 1855. (D. Vierteljahrsschrift, October, 1855, 205 ff.)
486 Even in New Harmony, the members considered the task which they had to perform to obtain food, clothing and shelter, as villeinage in the worst sense of the term. (H. Bernhard v. Weimar, Nordamerikan. Reise, V, 134 ff.; 151, 310, ff.) It is very inconsistent in socialists to continue the proprietorship and heirship of the state. To be consistent they should give both these rights only to mankind as a whole. Compare Kiraly, Ueber Socialismus und Comm., 1868, 35.
487 It would not be entirely fair to take a partisan view of the ateliers nationaux of 1848, and claim them as a practical refutation of socialistic utopias, since no serious experiment was made with them. Compare E. Thomas, Histoire des Ateliers nationaux consideres sous le double Point de Vue politique et social, 1848.
488 Socialists generally overlook the fact, that the greater number of enjoyments from which the poorer classes are excluded, by the right of property, would not exist at all were it not for that very right. (Spittler, Politik, 356 ff.) This remark may also be made of Hugo's ingenious objections. (Naturrecht, 208 ff.) One of the most effective pieces of socialistic declamation is that the lower classes have a much shorter average of life than the upper. Hence the institution of private property is charged with being a species of spoliation of the poor of so many years of life, and the entire "present society" condemned on that account. Here again it is not borne in mind, that a few centuries ago the general average of life was probably still smaller; and that it was precisely the growth and development of "present society" that lengthened the days of the poorer classes even, although it may have lengthened those of the rich in a still greater proportion. See 246.
489 But a community of goods would not, by a great deal, accomplish as much as is generally supposed. In Prussia, for instance, in 1867, only about three per cent. of the entire number of families in the community had a yearly income of 1,000 thalers; only nine per cent. had 500 thalers or more, and only 6,465 returned an income of more than 4,000 thalers, while only 590 returned one of 16,000 thalers. (Preuss. statist. Ztschr, 1868, 83. Held, Die Einkommensteuer, 197 ff) How little, therefore, could the poor here gain by the spoliation of the rich! Besides, the purely personal consumption of the rich is, after all, not so great; and if all luxury were abandoned, an innumerable number of men would lose their gains. (Compare Ad. Smith, Wealth of Nations, I, ch. 11, 2.) It would be to kill the hen that had hitherto laid the golden egg in order to divide its flesh a little more equally.
490 Babeuf declared all arts and sciences to be evils. He would have no one learn anything but Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and a little of the Geography of France; and have the strictest censorship enforced to keep every one within these limits. Compare the able criticism of Proudhon, Contradictions, ch. 12.
491 According to Umpfenbach, Nationaloekonomie, 201, where a community of goods obtains, there can be but the alternative, viz.: whether each person or each family shall receive just the same amount. (The former would be more in harmony with principle, but what an over-population would be the consequence!) Precisely so, too, if each person were to come and take his own portion (anarchy!), or if it were parcelled out to each by a board of distributors (despotism!).
492 This expression came into vogue, principally, through L. Blanc, Organization du Travail (1841), the leading ideas in which work are the following: The suppression of competition by the establishment of state industries; equality of remuneration for labor; equality and legislative determination of the rate of interest; the choice of superintendents by the workmen. With many modern socialists, the shibboleth is not so much liberte as solidarite. Besides, Fichte's Naturrecht (1796), and his geschlossener Handelsstaat, are, without doubt, among the most remarkable works favoring an "organization of labor." They aim at the destruction of the present social system, which, at most, needs only to be reformed and rejuvenated; and to galvanize the dead body into a new and different life (Medea's magic cauldron!). Compare Corvaja, Bancocrazia o il gran Libro sociale, 1840.
493 Cabet's Icarian colony in America numbered 298 adults and only 107 children. Yet spite of this condition, so favorable to production, it did but a very sorry business. Its government was very similar to that of a house of correction or a penitentiary. Even in religious matters, spite of all pretended toleration, those members who did not agree with Cabet were described in the official weekly paper as des infames ou des aveugles. (D. Vierteljahrsschrift, 1855, October, 205 ff.)
494 An eastern sage says, that land possesses the ideal of legal security through which a beautiful woman, decked with pearls, might travel without danger. What would such a sage say of a European country, in which even orphan children have their property not only preserved to them, but find it increased from having been placed at interest, as soon as they reach their majority? (Barrow.)
495 "The equality of communism is the worst species of inequality, because it guarantees to one for two hours of poor labor as much as it does to an other for four hours of good work." (Bastiat, Harmonies economiques, ch. 8.)
496 Proudhon, Qu'est-ce que la Propriete, 283, says, very justly, that "a community of goods is the spoliation of the strong by the weak."
497 Called a negative community of goods, by Zacchariae, Vierzig Buecher vom Staate, IV, 146, in contradistinction to the positive and universal community of gain, as desired by the communists.
498 Community of goods and of women among the Ichthyophages on the Red Sea, who lived in caves, went naked for the most part, plundered all shipwrecked people, and never reached an advanced age. Diodor., III, 15 ff. Peripl., Maris Erythr., 12. Concerning the Scythians, see Strabo, VII, 300; the Spaniards, Plutarch, Marius, 6; the Rhetians, Dio Cass. LIV, 22; the Triballi, Isocr., Panath., 237; the Kilici, Sext., Empir. Pyrrh. Hypot. III, 24. Community of goods among the Caribs who performed all their work in common, and had, at least in the case of males, a common table and common stores with supplies. (Petr. Martyr, Dec. VII, 1. Rochefort, II, c. 16. B. Edwards, History of the West Indies, I, 43 ff.) Among the Kuskowimers of Russian America, all the able-bodied men of the tribe live together. (v. Wrangell, Nachrichten, 129.) Among the inhabitants of the Aleutian islands, at least in times of scarcity of food, the produce of the fisheries is divided according to their need. (V. Wrangell, 185.) The organization of labor is rigidly enforced among the Otomacs, on the banks of the Orinoco, and they are, nevertheless, more civilized than their neighbors. (Depons, Voyage, I, 295.) A community of goods must, however, be considered an advance, in the case of an isolated people; and it is an error to look upon it as the most primitive condition, as does, for instance, Ambrosius, De off. Minist. I, 28, and Frederick II, in the preface to his general code. (Allgemein. Gesetzbuche, 1231.) The hospitality of the inhabitants of the Friendly Islands borders on a community of goods. (Mariner, Freundschaftsinseln, 75, 81. Klemm, Kulturgeschichte, IV, 398.) Concerning the beginnings of property among the Esquimaux, See Klemm, II, 294.
499 Οὐκ ἄδοξον ἧν παρὰ τοῖς παλαιοῖς ληστεύειν, ἀλλ᾽ ἔνδξον. (Didym., ad Odyss. II, 73, IX, 252.)
500 In Mexico, the Spaniards found land ownership among the most distinguished of the natives, but only a species of possession in common and common store houses among the peasantry. (Robertson, History of America, VII.) Hence, the agriculture of the country was so unimportant that the little army of the conquistadores frequently produced a famine by their marches.
501 The Tcherkesses considered robbery honorable provided the robber was not caught in flagrante. Compare Koch, Reise in den kaukasischen Isthmus, I, 370 ff. Bell, Journal of a Residence in Circassia, I, 181, II, 201. The organized robber bands of ancient Egypt, when it was so highly civilized (Diodor., I, 80) may, on the other hand, be accounted for by similar conditions actually existing in the large cities of our own day.
502 What a frightful organization of labor we find in Sparta, combined with a community of goods! Let us recall the exposing of children authorized by law, the mode of education which must have cost the life of all whose constitution was weak, the cryptia, the stern hierarchy of age etc. Plut., Inst. Lac. 2, appreciates the bad taste of the black broth at its true value. The Cretan community of goods was based chiefly on the unnatural relation created by the authorities known as paiderastia; and which was a very efficient means to prevent over-population. (Plat., De Legg, I, 636. Arist., Polit. II, 8.)
503 Remarkable reasons therefor in Caesar, Bell. Gall., VI, 22.
504 There are, especially in Russia, a multitude of such institutions among the inhabitants of the country still. See Roscher, Nationaloekonomik des Ackerbaues, 71 ff.
505 In the Corpus Juris Canonici, that crown of medieval theology, politics and jurisprudence, the ideal of a community of goods occupies a place almost as prominent as in the works of modern socialists. The only difference is, that in the former the opposition to private property arises from a one-sided religiousness and contempt of the world, while, in the latter, it arises generally from irreligiousness and over-estimation of worldly goods.
506 This does not include the cost of the schools, churches and benevolent institutions.
507 According to Lassalle, System der erworbenen Rechte, 1861, 259, history shows that law, as civilization advances, curtails more and more the proprietary sphere of private individuals, inasmuch as it tends more and more to place a greater number of objects outside the circle of individual ownership.
508 Saint Simonism is a warning example of this tendency. Saint Simon never lost an opportunity to give vent to his utter contempt for the liberals, and for constitutional government—ce batard du regime feodal et du regime industriel; and to counsel the crown, after the example of Louis XI. to place itself at the head of the working class, and in opposition to the middle class. (Oeuvres de Saint Simon, ed. 1841, 44, 148, 209.) Bazard, Exposition, 76, demanded that all antagonism between the temporal and spiritual powers, all opposition for the sake of freedom, mefiance organisee of parliaments, and all competition, should cease. Even education he would have bestowed according to capacite, which he would have determined by the chefs legitimes de la societe (280). To the criminal court should be referred all cases of delicts, that is, all inopportune acts, even in the scientific and artistic departments. They should be tried after the manner of the "courts of trade;" that is, in a summary way, without appeal, and by experts (317 ff). All the relations of property should be determined by the decision arbitrale des chefs d'industrie (326). Bazard everywhere insists that the reign of genius and of self-sacrifice on the one hand, and on the other of confidence and obedience, is the only true policy (330). Saint Simonism was nearly related to Bonapartism.
509 Schaeffle, Nat. OEk., III, Aufl., I, 61.
510 If we remove in thought, all injurious elements from a community of goods, and add to it all the incentives and restraints necessary to be added, we shall have a state of things entirely similar to that in a nation whose public and private affairs are carried on in accordance with the principles of a healthy system of Political Economy as understood to-day. (Edinburgh Review, January, 1851.)
511 How true freedom is accompanied by what Bastiat calls "true Saint Simonism and true communism," see infra, 210.
512 The experiments of a community of goods, which have proved successful in practice, were all based on the more or less complete celibacy of the members of the societies. Compare Hermann, Staatsw. Unters., II, Aufl., 45.
513 Thus Proudhon (Contradictions, ch. 5) says that the many socialists, who would construct their societies after the type of the family, as the molscule organique, are all wrong. The family has a "monarchical, patriarchal" character. In it, the principle of authority is formed and preserved. On it, ancient and feudal society was based; and "precisely against this old patriarchal constitution, modern democracy protests and revolts." Fourier calls marriage, un groupe essentiellement faux: faux par le nombre borne a deux, par l'absence de liberte et par les dissidences du gont, qui eclatent des le premier jour. (Nouveau Monde, 57.)
514 On the Indians of North America, see Schoolraft, Information respecting the Indian Tribes of the United States, II, 194; on the South American d'Orbigny, Voyage, IV, 220, and passim, on the South Sea Islanders, the Novara-Reise, II, 418; on the ancient Albanians, Strabo, XI, 503.
515 The hereditary transmission of property to posterity has an obvious tendency to make a man a good citizen. It ranges his passions on the side of duty, and induces him to make himself profit the common good, and it assures him that his reward shall not die with himself, but that it shall be handed down to those to whom he is joined by the dearest and most tender feelings. (See Blackstone's Commentaries, II, 11.) Without the right of inheritance, credit is scarcely possible, since with the death of the debtor the only stay of the creditor would cease.
516 Testamentary freedom (which obtained in places there about the beginning of the eighteenth century) prevails completely in England at present, contrary to the principle of the Roman law requiring an obligatory portion (la legitime) to be left to the heirs, which is still binding in France, but in a very much developed form. The consequence is that last testaments are as frequent in England as they are rare in France. There were, in Paris, in 1825, 7,649 judicial, and only 1,081 testamentary partitions of property. (Monnier.) In Great Britain, in 1838, the number of testamentary alienations of property taxed stood to those in which there was no will, in the proportion of 8:3; and the values of the alienated property as 10:1. (Porter.) Among a people noted for their high moral tone, testamentary freedom is a powerful means of strengthening paternal authority on the one hand, and of keeping alive, in the minds of parents, on the other, a sense of responsibility for the future of their children. Compare Helferich, Tuebinger Zeitschr., 1854, 143, ff.
517 Polyb., XX, 6. Hence it was, that all (?) the wealth of Thebes, when it was destroyed by Alexander the Great, was only 440 talents. (Athen., IV, 148.) Drumann, Gesch. Roms. etc., VI, 333 ff. Cicero, Phil., II, 16. Hoeck, Roem. Gesch., I, 2, 118. Sueton., Octav., 66. An especially scandalous instance in Petron., 140. For a masterly theory of legacy-hunting, see Horat., Sat., II, 5. Compare Lucian, Dialogues of the Dead, 5-9. Petronius speaks of a turba haeredipetarum. (124.)
518 Even the revolutionary shibboleth, paternite, really means nothing more than the equal right of inheritance of all, i.e., the abolition of the right of inheritance! (R. Meyer.) The strongest attack, from a scientific point of view, made on the right of inheritance in more recent times, comes from Saint Simonism. The founder himself, after a life rich in experience but poor in action, spent in the search of much but in the finding of little, succeeded only in arraying the industrial and proprietary classes against each other, in declaring the poorest class to be the most important of all, and in basing the new religion of love on the emancipation of labor. His disciples went further. In order to abolish all the privileges of birth, Bazard, Exposition de la Doctrine de Saint Simon, 1831, p. 172, ff., taught that it was not enough to distribute public employments according to merit, and in the interest of the people generally, but that the distribution of property should be made in accordance with the same principle. The inequality of ownership should correspond with the inequality of merit. Every one may, during his life, keep what he had acquired himself, but give it to the state at death. Thus would a reconciliation be effected between the general interest and private interest; and the public revenue, supplied in this way, might easily be employed in place of the revenue raised by such taxation as weighs most heavily on the inferior classes. F. Huet, also, Le Regne social du Christianisme, 1853, III, 5, would have all private property, after the death of the owner, fall egalement a tous les jeunes travailleurs. The practical consequences of this system may now be seen in Turkey. There, the principal military fiefs are held in this way. Hence it is, that the Turkish owner of such a fief builds as little as possible. When one of his walls threatens to fall, it is kept standing by means of props. If it falls in fact, the only consequence is that there are fewer rooms in the house, and the owner settles beside the ruins. (Denon, I, p. 193.) In the Butan, there exists a species of practical Saint Simonism. Robinson, Descriptive Account of Assan, 1841.
519 It was chiefly fear of the consequences of the declamations of the socialists and their declamation against "monopoly" that induced Bastiat to reduce all the value of landed property to that of the capital employed in its manuring, improvement etc. (Harmonies, ch. 9.) We may, however, unreservedly grant him that, as a rule, until the time of its original possession by man, land had no valeur whatever (278).
520 Kant thinks the very contrary: Metaph. Anfangsgruende der Rechtslehre, (Werke, IX, 72 ff). Contra, Grotius, J. B. et P., II, 2. Graswinkel, in his Schriften fuer die Freiheit des Meeres, 1652 ff., in Laspeyres, Geschichte der niederlaendischen N. OEk., 12. Hufeland, Neue Grundlegung, I, 307.
521 "A district of Tartary of ten square miles, in which several hordes pasture their flocks, may contain between 400 and 500 shepherds, who find employment in this mode of production." In Brie, in France, on the same area, 50,000 peasants who own no land, live and draw their sole income from their labors in the fields (J. B. Say).
522 Schubert, Reise durch Frankreich und Italien, I, 188.
523 "Without labor, the earth bestows nothing on man but a stopping place. Hence, the reasons for private property do not extend so far as to prove that the great land and water highways should not be reserved as common property, and as a home to every man." (Zachariae, vom Staate, VII, 43.)
524 This is the practice in Taway. Ritter, Erdkunde, V, 130. And so in ancient Germany. J. Grimm, Rechtsalterthuemer, 92. Right of the "dead fire" in Spain and Portugal during the middle ages. S. Rosa de Viterbo: Elucidario das Palavras etc., I, 470. In many parts of Persia, the land belongs to anyone who has provided it with water by canals or wells. (Fraser, Journey in Chorasan, ch. 7.) Especially after the Mongolian devastation about the beginning of the fourteenth century, it was decreed that land which had remained uncultivated for a long time should belong to the person who made it productive. (d'Ohsson, Hist. des Mongols, IV, 418.) Similarly, in the time of the ancient Persians (Polyb., X, 28, 3), the harvest for the first five years belonged to the person who first irrigated the land. On the upper Euphrates, likewise, the land is very often neither sold nor leased. Anyone who will till it and pay one-tenth of the produce to the bey may have it for nothing. (Ritter, X, 669; compare VIII, 468; IX, 900.) So, too, among the Fulah and Mandingo negroes, and even among the Tscherkessans. (Klemm, Kulturgeschichte, III, 337 ff.) As the latest stages of development so often present instances of a reversion to the earliest, we find that Theodosius and Valentinian decreed that the agri deserti should, after two years' cultivation, belong to the possessor. L. 8, Cod. Just., XI, 58.
525 Thus anyone may burn his own coat or throw it in the water; but no one may set fire to his own house or drown his land by the destruction of a dam. Even the non-user of a large area, in a thickly populated region, would scarcely be permitted. The taking of property by the state, at the present day in times of peace, is confined almost exclusively to land.
526 Thus P. v. Arnim, in a work entitled "Ideen zu einer vollstaendigen landwirthschaftlichen," Buchfuehrung, 1805, a treatise on "agricultural book-keeping," considers the farmer as a state official who should cultivate whatever he believed in conscience, or what the state declared to be, most necessary. He suggests that the state should subject all new purchasers of land to an examination to ascertain whether they are rich and noble enough to act in this way.
527 Thus, for instance, Herbert Spencer, Social Statics, 1851, 114 ff., and to some extent Spinoza, Tract. polit., VI, 2. There are now in England several Land-Tenure-Reform-Associations, some of which would "expropriate" all land and vest the title in the state. The programme of the others embraces not only opposition to the right of primogeniture, to family fidei commissa and the assertion of the right of freedom of trade in land, and of a more democratic use of common lands, but also the appropriation by the state of the increase in the rent of land which is caused by no labor of the landlord, but solely by the increase of population and of the wealth of the community or of the nation. Newmarch, on the other hand, very correctly remarks, that since it is impossible to draw a line of demarkation showing the increase of the value of land growing out of the increase of population etc., the owner of land in making improvements would never know whether he made them for himself or for the state. (Statist. Journal, 1871, 488 ff.) Compare Wolkoff, Sur la Rente fonciere, 1854, and H. H. Gossen, Entwickelung der Gesetze des menschlichen Verkehrs (1854).
528 In Congo and on the gold coast of Guinea the land, in whole villages, is tilled in common and the harvest distributed among the families per capita. Wherever absolutism reigns, the prince is also the owner of all the land. (Klemm, III, 337.) In China, where the original tenure in common of the land by all was broken through in the third century before Christ, all the land of the country now belongs, strictly speaking, to the state; and the possessor of land who permits it to go untilled is punished. (Plath. in the phil.-hist. Sitzungsberichten der Muenchener Akad., 1873, 793 ff.) In Corea, private property in land is unknown; arable land is divided by the state according to the number in a family. (Ritter, IV, 633.) The example, on the largest scale, of a country without private property in land is the British East Indies. Compare the paper by Ch. Campbell, in the Essays published by the Cobden Club; System of Land Tenure in various Countries, 1870.
529 The legal and economic difference between property in land and property in capital is well defined by J. S. Mill, Principles, II, ch. 2, 6. "The reasons which form the justification, in an economical point of view, of property in land, are only valid in so far as the proprietor of the land is its improver. In no sound theory of private property was it ever contemplated that the proprietor of land should be merely a sinecurist quartered on it." He here alludes specially to Ireland. The Fourierist, Considerant, distinguishes accurately between the capital produced by labor and saving, and the increase of the value of land caused by capital and labor, and its original value. Only the first two elements can justly be made property. But as, for prudential reasons, it is necessary to grant individuals the right of private property in land, those who are not such proprietors must, as a compensation for the common property which they have lost, be guaranteed the right to labor. (Theorie du Droit de Propriete et du Droit au Travail.) In England, the opinion that the compulsory support of the poor was introduced in compensation to them for the establishment of private property in land has met with considerable favor. Bishop Woodward, On the Expediency of a Regular Plan for the Maintenance of the Poor in Ireland, 1775. Compare Eden, State of the Poor, I, 413. However, the poor rates, in a country like England, are much more than an equivalent of what its soil could produce without the assistance of capital.
530 The principal classical work on this subject is Nebenius, Der oeffentliche Credit, 1820, 2d ed., 1829. Previously, Salmasius, De Modo Usurarum, 1639; and even Demosthenes, adv. Dionysiod, 1283. Compare further Schaeffle, in the Deutsch. Vierteljahrsschrift, No. 106, II, 289 ff.
531 Compulsory loans by the state, for instance, occupy an intermediate position between taxes and credit-operations, properly so called.
532 Besides loans proper, all payments in advance, or delays made in the payments of earnest-money, all leases and lettings, which Courcelle-Seneuil calls un mediocre degre de credit, insurances and even all contracts for wages where the payment is delayed for a long period of time, are species of credit. For a nice distinction between leasing (Pacht) and letting (Miethe), see Knies, Tuebinger Ztschr., 1860, 180 ff., and the Freiburger Univ. Programm., 9. September, 1862. D. Wakefield, Essay upon Political Economy, 1804, 35, distinguishes between "loan-credit" which is given to a poor man in the hope of his paying it by means of his labor, and "exchange-credit," or credit between property owners. Cieszkowski's definition: le credit c'est la metamorphose des capitaux stables et engages en capitaux circulants et degages. (Du Credit et de la Circulation, 2d ed., 1847.) According to Knies, Tuebinger Ztschr., 1859, 568, every credit-operation is an exchange or sale of services, one of which is to be performed in the present, and the counter-service of the other party in the future. According to Macleod, it is "a sale of debts."
533 Personal credit, of course, preponderates in commerce. Hence it is, that in mercantile life, information concerning the personal status, reputation etc. of his colleagues, plays so important a part with the merchant. This information was made more accessible in England by the Lloyd institution. On similar North American institutions, see Tellkampf, Beitraege, I, 51. Credit given on security is a modification, sometimes of personal and sometimes of real credit. Compare, infra, the theory on bankers, brokers etc.
534 In despotisms, credit is almost entirely personal. Montesquieu Esprit des Lois, L.V., 15. In New York, says M. Chevalier, a merchant with resources worth 200,000 francs, can do a business of from 1,000,000 to 1,500,000 francs. In Paris, under similar circumstances, the same man would find it difficult to be credited to the extent of 500,000 francs. In Holland, two hundred years ago, a person who hypothecated his property was obliged to pay a higher rate of interest than in business (Becher, Polit. Discurs, 1763, 699), while the stationary period, one hundred years ago, made personal credit extremely difficult. In Zurich, it was encouraged by the prohibition of loaning money out of the country. (Buesch, Geldumlauf, III, 40.)
535 Schaeffle, Nat. OEk., II, Aufl., 112.
536 Schaeffle, according to the purpose which it is intended to subserve, divides credit into production-credit (investment of loans in immoveable property and in moveable property engaged in industrial operations), consumption-credit and clearing-credit, or loans made to pay respited purchase and earnest money, inheritances etc. (Kapitalismus und Socialismus, 552.)
537 Pinto, Traite de la Circulation et du Credit, 1771, considers loans bearing interest as new portions of the resources of a country (p. 161), and that government loans not made in excess of its powers are une alchymie realisee dont souvent eux memes qui l' operent n' entendent pas tout le mystere, (p. 338.) Similarly and earlier, v. Schroeder, F. Schatz-und Rentkammer, 238 ff; Melon, Essai politique sur le Commerce, 1734, ch. 6; next, Hamilton, Report to the House of Representatives on the subject of Manufactures, Dec. 5, 1791; Von Struensee, Abhandlungen, 1800, I, 259. See infra, 210. More recently, St. Chamans, Nouvel Essai sur la Richesses des Nations, 1824, 83 ff. To some extent, even Dietzel, System der Staatsanleihen, 1855, 200. This is a dangerous error, since to every credit there is a set-off in the nature of a debit of an equal amount; and the evidences of debt are nothing but claims on the future revenue of the state. This was fully recognized by Cantillon, 291 ff. One of the principal advocates of that view among writers on Political Economy is the vivacious, acute and practically not unskillful, but sophistically superficial Macleod. (Elements of Political Economy, 1858, ch. 3, Dictionary, 1862, v. Credit.) The creditor's assignable right of demand, he considers immaterial capital. While bills of lading, warehouse receipts, dock yard receipts etc., only represent goods, the bank note is new goods. Even metallic money has only a credit-value, inasmuch as it can be used only to effect exchanges. To the - of the creditor may correspond a + of the debtor; but the latter is negative only in the sense that we speak of negative electricity, a negative thermometrical degree. When an estate is leased, the owner has, in his demand for rent, a vendible plus; but the lessee no corresponding minus. (Not so. To the same extent that the proprietor has his future payments on the lease discounted, the present sale-value of his estate is diminished; or if it is not sold, the last party obtaining the discount has made his available capital as much less by the advance as that of the lessor has been increased.) The "discounting of the future," that is, the apparent capitalization of hopes, so much in vogue at the present time, may be a great spur to production as it may also be to baseless extravagance. |
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