Awn

“ In his country, to own a piece of land was to be respectable, almost a nobleman. The owner of a little land was regarded as the founder of a family—what you might call a "village dynasty." When they leave their native shores for America, their dream is to become a land owner—to have fields, to own trees, and to listen to the music of their own brooks. ”

“ I must teach these Highland fellows, Clavering, to respect the sacred laws of property! I have as much right to the wood and water, and game, as to anything else. "If the sun goes down on my property," says the Man made of Money, "I have a clear title to that sunset; if the clouds, over my land, are remarkably fine, they are my clouds." ”

“ You glory in a proprietorship over which your plough passes, turning up soil that is all your own, while the nodding grain, golden and pulpy, ripens in your absence for your abundant granaries, while I cultivate this, my small patch, “a tenant at will,” whose harvest of gleaning would be blown to the winds without a painstaking care and watchfulness. You are the lord of acres, while I wander around forbidden enclosures, and look upon many a Castle of Indolence longing but for a yard of ground all my own, upon which to plant a firm foot, to sound the challenge and cry—war! ”

“ Parliament may accept the principle that the creatures which live on and from the land, are the property, if there be any property in them, of the Farmer, at whose cost, and by whose labour, the farm is cultivated. ”

“ A beautiful garden, with weeds overgrown,
And an elegant fish-pond dried up by the sun
Then the house stood convenient enough you may say,
Next door to the whisky-shop over the way.
'Twas a freehold estate, heir at law was myself,
So to law went about it of course with an elf. ”

“ What is the advantage, I say, of having a farm, if all the laws which have been most properly laid down by our ancestors about boundaries, about possession, and water, and roads, may all be disturbed and changed in any manner? Believe me, every one of you has received a greater inheritance in respect of his property, from justice and from the laws than from those from whom he received the property itself. For it can happen, in consequence of anybody's will, that a farm may come to me ”

“ But remember that the warrener pays a high rent, and that therefore his rabbits are as much his property as his sheep. Do not then deceive yourselves with these false distinctions. All property is sacred, and as the laws of the land are intended to fence in that property, he who brings up his children to break down any of these fences, brings them up to certain sin and ruin. ”

“ The starlings fly so swiftly and so straight that they seem to leave a black line along the air. They have a nest in the roof, they are to and fro it and the meadow the entire day, from dawn till eve. The espalier apple, like a screen, hides the meadow from me, so that the descending starlings appear to dive into a space behind it. Sloping downwards the meadow makes a valley; I cannot see it, but know that it is golden with buttercups, and that a brook runs in the groove of it.
Afar yonder I can see a summit beyond where the grass swells upwards to a higher level than this spot. ”

“ The southern blue is luminous—the beams of light flow through it—the air is full of the undulation and life of light. There is rest in gazing at the sky: a sense that wisdom does exist and may be found, a hope returns that was taken away among the books. The green lawn is pleasant to look at, though it is mown so ruthlessly. If they would only let the grass spring up, there would be a thought somewhere entangled in the long blades as a dewdrop sparkles in their depths. ”

“ A schedule of five columns, such we are familiar with, would set forth ‘Owner’s Name,’ ‘Place of Residence,’ ‘Description of Geldable Property,’ ‘Hidage,’ ‘Amount due.’ But the occupier is not always the owner; what is more, there is no absolute ownership. Two, three, four persons will be interested in the land; the occupier will have a lord and that lord a lord; the occupier may be a serf, a villein, a sokeman; there is commendation to be considered and soke and all the infinite varieties of the power to ‘withdraw’ the land from the lord. ”

“ The man’s bush land is his own property, and his ownership includes all trees and growth which may be upon it, and which no other man may cut down, but it does not include game, this being the common property of the community ”

“ I am the owner of an humble homestead claim in a heavily-timbered tract that has appealed to the covetous eyes of the merciless landgrabber. See before you the father of nine motherless children, weeping out in the woods all alone for their devoted father, of whose tender care they are bereft in order that the immutable laws of a great government might be satisfied. ”

“ When the idea of individual ownership, which so justly and naturally attaches to things of human production, is extended to land, all the rest is a mere matter of development. The strongest and most cunning easily acquire a superior share in this species of property, which is to be had, not by production, but by appropriation, and in becoming lords of the land they become necessarily lords of their fellow-men. The ownership of land is the basis of aristocracy. ”

“ The family had gathered to triumph over all this, to give a show of tenacious unity, to illustrate gloriously that law of property underlying the growth of their tree, by which it had thriven and spread, trunk and branches, the sap flowing through all, the full growth reached at the appointed time. ”

“ And you, who are familiar with the frequent eccentricities of old farmers, can understand the explanation. The owner of the land was one of your ignorant, stubborn men, who took such a dislike to the prospectors and speculators, that he refused to let them come near him. ”

“ Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed." This, then, is the original and permanent ground of man's title to property ”

“ We speak in this country of 'mining kings;' he might be denominated an 'agricultural king.' He prided himself upon his hundreds of fertile acres, his miles of forest, his immense dairy, his blooded horses, his magnificent barns and granaries, his beautiful home. ”

“ If the owner of a farm, I don't care how small it may be, would only take time to go over his premises, to examine his fences, his gates, his barn-yard, his stables, his pig-pen, his fields, his ditches, his wagons, his harness, his tools, indeed, whatever he owns, he would find more odd jobs to be done than he has any idea of. ”

“ Delighting me with such pleasing Converse, as to which I was at a Loss, whether the more to admire the ingenious Wisdom, or the Christianlike Kindliness of so worthy a Man, the Proprietor led the Way to the Village of which he appeared to be the Owner—or, I would be saying, rather the Owner of the Villagers; being, as one might say, like to a Slave-owner. ”

“ Now the more I improve my property, the more mouths it feeds. My great-grandfather kept a Field-Book, in which were entered, not only the names of all the farmers and the quantity of land they held, but the average number of the laborers each employed. ”

“ In the grey of the winter dawn, as the stars paled and the whitened grass was stiff with hoar frost, and the rime coated every branch of the tall elms, as the milker came from the pen and the young ploughboy whistled down the road to his work, the spirit of the aged man departed. ”

“ The first step to the cultivation or improvement of land seems to them to get for it a particular owner, and a man’s land is looked on by them as fully and as equitably his, to sell, to lease, to give, or to bequeath, as his house, his cattle, his goods, or his furniture. ”

“ The owner of each plot of land owns a deed for the same, stamped with the magistrate's seal or signed with his name. In many instances where property has been in the same family for several centuries, these deeds may have been lost or destroyed; but if the land is sold, new deeds must be issued. ”

“ Thus foreign speculators in land were excluded, while a class of peasant proprietors was created; its numbers being increased by the custom that, if any man reclaimed a piece of waste land, it became his own property after ten years. ”

“ At a later stage, when lands come to be occupied by settled families and communities, and land-ownership gains definiteness, this union of traits in each head of a group becomes more marked; and, as was shown when treating of the differentiation of nobles from freemen, several influences conspire to give the eldest son of the eldest superiority in extent of landed possessions, as well as in degree of power. ”

“ The preponderance everywhere given to property in land, over wealth in money, trade, or other moveable goods, is a result of the same policy. Indeed it may be said, that the leading principles which govern property in this Kingdom, have their main origin and foundation in the feudal system ”

“ Singing and laughing, they subdue Nature. In a short time, the soil is thoroughly changed; the mellowed earth waits only for the seed. That done, the proprietor pays his laborers, who, on going away, return him their thanks, and grieve that the happy days which they have spent with him are over. ”

“ An air of neatness, warmth and comfort breathes over the whole. It is all in the hands of little proprietors, without the farms being so small as to occasion a vicious and miserable population. Proprietorship is visible in the new-built houses and stables, the little gardens, the hedges, the courts before the doors, even in the crops for poultry and the sties for pigs. ”

“ He sent his son; the husbandmen took counsel with themselves; they said, This is the only heir to all this wealth, and if we take his life the vast inheritance is ours.
11. They took his life and cast him out beyond the vineyard hedge.
12. The days will come; the owner will return to reckon with the husbandmen, and he will seize them every one, and cast them into scorching fires where they shall stay until they pay the debts they owe.
13. And he will place his vineyard in the care of honest men. ”

“ We felt that if we would properly impress the lessons most needed we should own a home, a cow, some chickens, a horse, and a garden; we felt that there should be tangible ownership on the part of the people of some of these things, at any rate. ”

“ In an age when freedom was the exceptional condition, the ownership of land was the mark of a free man, and ample territory the inseparable appanage of rank. No amount of gold or chattel property conferred the franchise: land alone was recognized as the vehicle of all personal privilege, and the basis of civil rank. Centuries have not obliterated these features in their descendants to this day ”

“ We will find such a man, and will let him our farm; there shall be a lease precisely such as that upon which my honorable friend takes his factory. There shall be no clause inserted in it to dictate to him how he shall cultivate his farm; he shall do what he likes with the old pasture. ”

“ Again, all land in England is increasing in value. Why should the ignorant agricultural labourer be induced, by the gift of a few poles of land, to part with the valuable inheritance of his descendants? ”

“ All birds, fowls, and wild beasts of the forest and warren are excepted out of the law and custom of property. No property may be had of them unless they are tame. However, the eggs of hawks and herons and the like belong to the man whose land they are on. ”

“ Now, with us, the younger son of a landed proprietor knows he must push his way in the world, and from the moment his intelligence begins to act he looks about him for openings. Our labourers also, unchained to the soil, go about wherever work may be had. ”

“ We find three classes, owner farmer labourer, clearly marked though not so as to be mutually exclusive. We can only begin with ownership in some form, however rudimentary; for the claim to resist encroachment on a more or less ill-defined area is a phenomenon of even the rude life of hunter-tribes. How private property grew out of common ownership is a question beyond the range of the present inquiry. ”

“ The common reasons for the establishment of private property in land are deduced from the necessity, of offering to individuals sufficient motives for cultivating the ground, and of preventing the wasteful destruction of the immature products of the earth. ”

“ A few months ago I had the honour of passing a day in England with a gentleman of considerable property, who took the trouble of showing me a very extensive park and tillage farm near his manor-house, around which every thing indicated good taste and abundant wealth in the possessor. ”

“ The advent of private property in herds of cattle and articles of luxury led to an exchange between individuals, to a transformation of products into commodities. Here is the root of the entire revolution that followed. ”

“ All persons entitled to the use of lands were declared to be to all intents and purposes the lawful possessors, as much as if the lands had been made over to them by formal grant or conveyance. They became actual owners, with all the rights and all the liabilities of their special tenures. ”

“ Whether, under favourable circumstances and the rare public spirit of private owners, much can be done, or to any wide extent, so long as absolute individual ownership in land and ground values is allowed, seems to me very doubtful. ”

“ A farmer having bought a barn in partnership with a neighbor who neglected to make use of it, plentifully stored his own part with corn, and expostulated with his partner on having laid out his money in so useless a way, adding, "You had better do something with it, as you see I have done."—"As to that, neighbor," replied the other, "every man has a right to do what he will with his own, and you have done so ”