Henry George

“ The vast majority of the British people have no right whatever to their native land save to walk the streets or trudge the roads. To them may be fittingly applied the words of a Tribune of the Roman People, Tiberius Gracchus:
"Men of Rome, you are called the lords of the world, yet have no right to a square foot of its soil. The wild beasts have their dens, but the soldiers of Italy have only water and air." ”

“ In the obligation under which the military tenant lay to bring into the field such and such a force when need should be, as well as in the aid he had to give when the sovereign's eldest son was knighted, his daughter married, or the sovereign himself made prisoner of war, was a rude and inefficient recognition, but still unquestionably a recognition, of the fact that land is not individual property but is common property. ”

“ Feudal tenure The feudal system, which is not peculiar to Europe, but seems to be the natural result of the conquest of a settled country by a race among whom equality and individuality are yet strong, clearly recognized, in theory at least, that the land belongs to society at large, not to the individual. ”

“ Caesarism, soon passing into an unbridled despotism of the Eastern type, was the inevitable political result, and the empire, even while it embraced the world, became in reality a shell, kept from collapse only by the healthier life of the frontiers, where the land had been divided between military settlers or where the primitive usages longer survived. ”

“ Creation of great estates This is clear - that in Great Britain the right of the people as a whole to the soil of their native country is much less fully acknowledged than it was in feudal times. A much smaller proportion of the people own the soil, and their ownership is much more absolute. The commons, once so extensive and so largely contributing to the independence and support of the lower classes, have, all but a small remnant of yet worthless land, been appropriated to individual ownership and enclosed. ”

“ The very distinction made in legal terminology between real and personal property is but the survival of a primitive distinction between what was originally looked upon as common property and what from its nature was always considered the peculiar property of the individual. ”

“ The great estates of the Church, which were essentially common property devoted to a public purpose, have been diverted from that trust to enrich individuals. The dues of the military tenants have been shaken off, and the cost of maintaining the military establishment and paying the interest upon an immense debt accumulated by wars has been saddled upon the whole people, in taxes upon the necessaries and comforts of life. ”

“ The general course of the development of modern civilization since the feudal period has been to the subversion of those natural and primary ideas of collective ownership in the soil. Paradoxical as it may appear, the emergence of liberty from feudal bonds has been accompanied by a tendency, in the treatment of land, to the form of ownership that involves the enslavement of the working-classes. ”

“ The disintegration of the large feudal estates operated to increase the number of landowners, and the abolition of the restraints by which landowners endeavoured to compel labourers to remain on their estates also contributed to draw away attention from the essential injustice involved in private property in land. ”

“ These classes did not see, and do not yet see, that the tenure of land is the fundamental fact which must ultimately determine the conditions of industrial, social and political life. And so the tendency has been to assimilate the idea of property in land with that of property in things of human production, and steps backwards have even been hailed as steps in advance. ”

“ Chapter XIX Property in land historically considered The treatment of land as individual property is so thoroughly recognized in our laws, manners and customs that the vast majority never think of questioning it but look upon it as necessary to the use of land. ”

“ The commons, in feudal ages, must have embraced a very large proportion of the area of most European countries. The extent of the common land of England during the feudal ages may be inferred from the fact that though enclosures by the landed aristocracy began during the reign of Henry VII, it is stated that no less than 7,660,413 acres of common lands were enclosed under Acts passed between 1710 and 1843, of which 600,000 acres have been enclosed since 1845 ”

“ This recognition of the common right to land did not prevent the full recognition of the particular and exclusive right in things that are the result of labour, nor was it abandoned when the development of agriculture had imposed the necessity of recognizing exclusive possession of land in order to secure the exclusive enjoyment of the results of the labour expended in cultivating it. ”

“ The growth of national power, either in the form of royalty or parliamentary government, stripped the great lords of individual power and importance, and of their jurisdiction and power over persons, and so repressed striking abuses. ”

“ This is now beginning to be strongly felt all over the civilized world in the pressure of an iron yoke, which cannot be relieved by any extension of mere political power or personal liberty and which is mistaken by political economists for the pressure of natural laws, and by workmen for the oppressions of capital. ”

“ Had the form of these feudal dues simply been changed into one better adapted to the changed times, English wars need never have occasioned the incurring of debt to the amount of a single pound, and the labour and capital of England need not have been taxed a single farthing for the maintenance of a military establishment. ”

“ Although the principle of inheritance boon displaced the principle of selection, as where power is concentrated it always must, yet feudal law required that there should always be some representative of a fief, capable of discharging the duties as well as of receiving the benefits that were annexed to a landed estate. ”

“ In the feudal scheme the crown lands supported public expenditures that are now included in the civil list, the church lands defrayed the cost of public worship and instruction, covered the care of the sick and the destitute, and maintained a class of men who were supposed to be, and no doubt to a great extent were, devoting their lives to purposes of public good ”