remained a boundless extent to be chosen for that purpose, wanting only the improvements which labour had bestowed. -- In the same manner, should a wandering tribe determine to cultivate the ground, and choose an unappropriated tract of land for their settlement, and should another tribe come to dispossess and despoil them of their crops, or of their land, they would not be slow to resist the attempt, and to resent it as one of the very highest injustice, so naturally and so reasonably does the idea of right arise out of prepossession and labour bestowed in cultivating the land. Even tracts which are only traversed by the hunter or shepherd, and which are left by them for months together, and sometimes perhaps for half the year, are often considered by them as their right and patrimony. But here they are evidently in error; for nothing but cultivation or permanent occupation can give any exclusive natural right to property in the land; and it is undoubtedly just in theory, as it will always be found to prevail in practice, that the desert must be resigned to the people who will cultivate. SECTION II. OF THE RIGHT TO LAND. AFTER a people advance beyond the pastoral and migratory state, and begin to apply themselves to agriculture, the land is immediately appropriated. Those who exist at the time, being the whole people, have right to all the land, and may divide it amongst them if they please; and as their numbers must then be but small, compared to what their country, when fully cultivated, could support, it may be imagined that every individual must acquire a large portion of territory. Nor should this circumstance, unavoidable as it must be at the time, necessarily occasion, under a free and just system of laws and government, any inconvenience after wards when population would have increased; for under such a system, every person being at full liberty to turn his property to the best account, their own private interest would naturally lead individuals to divide the land into smaller portions as soon as the interest or convenience of the society required it. Even in the case of these original proprietors being dispossessed by conquest, and the land parcelled out anew, and distributed arbitrarily amongst the conquerors in still more unequal and unmeasured quantities, still, if the property were made absolute, and the disposal of it left free and unfettered by entails or restrictions of any kind, it would necessarily happen, as soon as regular government were again established, that the simple and unforced operation of the principle of self-interest would cause the larger portions to be once more subdivided and broken down into smaller ones as population and wealth advanced, and all remembrance and effects of any injustice or inequality in the original appropriation of the land, or in the subsequent reconquest and arbitrary distribution of it, would be speedily effaced, and every trace of them obliterated in two or three generations. But this would not be the case if strict laws of entail were established whose operation should extend over many generations. Such laws would, by direct and necessary consequence, prevent the land from being divided in such a manner as the convenience or interest of the community might require, and would form an obstruction to the increase of population and wealth. But the increase of population and wealth, taken together, constitute the most important and essential interest of a country. Strict laws of entail, therefore, are directly opposed to that interest. It is, besides, the increase of population and wealth which confers all its value upon the land. Such laws, therefore, obstruct the increase of that value. Such laws are therefore opposed to the interests of all classes of people, and are indeed essentially and radically unjust and injurious, not merely as preventing a man's ostensible property from being applied to the payment of his debts, but much more, as they prevent the land from being applied to its proper uses, keep large tracts of it uncultivated and unimproved, and render the earth comparatively a desert. That no permanent ill consequences would follow from the original distribution and allotment of the land, however partial, unequal, or arbitrary such distribution and allotment might be, provided it were allowed to be freely disposed of afterwards, will be manifest from this, that in such case, namely, where the land were allowed to be freely disposed of, it would naturally happen, that, in proportion as population and wealth increased, the proprietors of large tracts of territory, received at the original appropriation and distribution of the land, or on the subsequent reconquest and new settlement of a country, great part of which remained useless on their hands, would be induced to exchange a portion of their superfluous possessions for some of the superfluous wealth of another description, belonging to other capitalists, as it arose under the hands of productive industry; which, again, would serve the land-proprietors as a disposable fund or capital, wherewith they might cultivate their remaining unimproved domains; and whilst the parties themselves would be thus mutually accommodated, their common country would be improved, and the whole community benefited to the utmost extent that circumstances would permit. For, as it may reasonably be presumed that the purchaser of the land would generally retain in his hands capital sufficient to improve what he bought, there would arise between him and the former proprietor a twofold cultivation and improvement of the soil, a twofold demand for agricultural labour, and a twofold produce; which demand, and produce, and cultivation, would go on constantly and rapidly increasing, until the wealth and population of the country, and consequently the value of the land, should have advanced to nearly their greatest possible magnitude and most improved state,―a state which never could be attained under the paralyzing effects of a system of restrictions or entails. All laws of entail, therefore, or any restrictions calculated to prevent the division and sale or disposal of the land, or the free voluntary conveyance. of it from one possessor or proprietor to another, are unjust and injurious; first, as obstructing and repressing the increase of its value, by setting a premature limit to the increase of population and wealth; and, secondly, as preventing it from going into the hands of those who are most able and willing to make the best use of it, and thus attempting, unwarrantably and unjustly, to perpetuate the original distribution and allotment of the land, which, however just and necessary and advantageous it might have been at the time of its being made, could never have been intended to be permanent or unalterable, and which, when kept up under circumstances entirely different, and which call loudly for extended cultivation, are turned into a grievance and a nuisance of the most intolerable description. It has been supposed, however, that if the land might be freely bought and sold, and conveyed from one person to another, without limit or restriction, and might be equally divided amongst children or legatees, according to the inclination or interest of the parties concerned, it would necessarily happen in process of time that it would be reduced and divided into very minute portions, and that the whole world, or any country, or part of it, where such a practice were allowed, would present in the end the monotonous and miserable spectacle of an interminable congeries of uniformly small properties, each but barely sufficient to maintain only one single individual or family. This, however, it is believed, is a very unwarranted and improbable supposition; and those who make it seem totally to forget that there are in general, in the advanced periods of society, as many per sons who are both able and willing to purchase new properties, and to increase their possessions, as there are of those who are willing to sell or divide them. Under the just and liberal system here supposed, it is to be recollected, wealth would naturally increase very rapidly and to a very great degree. But wherever wealth increases to any great degree, it must necessarily be accumulated into masses or capitals of considerable magnitude in the hands of individuals; and where wealth of other descriptions is possessed in large quantities or capitals, distinct from the land, there the land must be possessed in large quantities or capitals also, because there will always be found the means or ability to purchase it in large quantities. .. It would necessarily happen also where there was great wealth, that the higher and even the middle classes of people would present the example of a liberal way of living; and hence it would naturally follow that the proprietors of small portions of land would, in most instances, be inclined to sell them, as not being sufficient to enable them to live in the and affluent manner, which would then be so very common, that most people of any property would be naturally induced to propose it to themselves as the end of their endeavours. easy But when there existed at one and the same time and place both the power to purchase on the one hand, and the disposition to sell on the other, the very small lots or properties of land, it follows to a certainty, that they would be transferred from one to another, and that they would be added together, and accumulated into larger properties in the hands of the greater capitalists as often as they were separated or divided; and if it should happen that portions or estates of land should be sometimes broken down and partitioned, it would soon follow, and would happen equally often, that they would be reunited and added to other portions or estates; for where the means existed of acquiring |