Land confiscation

“ The confiscation of land, in past years freely exchangeable for other property and not generally held to-day by the enjoyers of very much unearned increment, would be resented by the common sense of the people; and the conscience of the needy classes, once weakened as to the validity of the tenure of one kind of property, might, under pressure of want in a commercial panic, indiscriminately attack all. ”

“ Certainly it would not justify the defendants in treating the lands of these Indians-to which, according to the bill, they have a complete and perfect title-as public lands of the United States and disposing of the same under the public land laws. That would not be an exercise of guardianship, but an act of confiscation. Besides, the Indians are not here seeking to establish any power or capacity in themselves to dispose of the lands, but only to prevent a threatened disposal by administrative officers in disregard of their full ownership. ”

“ When the circumstances of the time are such that it is deemed right and proper to abrogate all law, and to establish over the land a reign of terror and of the sword—to pour out, in deference to the paramount claims of the safety of the state, public money, whether obtained from present taxation or the mortgage of posterity, with profusion absolutely uncontrolled—to decree confiscation on a scale of unprecedented magnitude; it is obvious that a reputation for clemency, economy, and respect for the native rights of property, is obtainable under conditions that are not strictly normal. ”

“ Yet, land being invariably included in “means of production” by all authoritative Socialists, it is not easy to see how any real Socialist can promise to exclude farm lands from the general plan of confiscation. ”

“ Thus does a government which is so niggard of its land that it will not part with the fee-simple of the most barren rock for less than £1 an acre, while that £1 an acre law remains in force, alienate millions of acres at one-tenth of the rent which it received on its free grants. The system devised for the preservation of the waste lands will end in their confiscation. ”

“ King, that we are near land nationalization? Don't you think that confiscation of property is unfortunately a long way off yet?"
"I do not think it is far off," replied the chief. "I do not mean that the State will dispossess the proprietors at once by one violent measure, though I wish the people were strong [81] enough to do so; but all is tending the right way at present. You see, Mary, this land nationalization is a very important step indeed. It will be far the heaviest blow that democracy has ever struck at aristocracy. It is land that keeps these great families together. ”

“ The district Soviets of Peasants' Deputies shall take all necessary measures for the observance of the strictest order during the taking over of the land-owners' estates, for the determination of the dimensions of the plots of land and which of them are subject to confiscation, for the drawing up of an inventory of the entire confiscated property, and for the strictest revolutionary protection of all the farming property on the land, with all buildings, implements, cattle, supplies of products, etc., passing into the hands of the People. ”

“ But it amounts to a confiscation of land values by the State, which would be unjust to land-owners, however advantageous to the rest of the community. It means charging everybody rent for the land he now owns. ”

“ They are not ready, perhaps, to sanction his scheme of ruthless confiscation, but they are saying to themselves that at bottom his theory is right, and they are wondering whether land can not ultimately be restored to the community, to which, it is said, it rightfully belongs. ”

“ The whole body of our Land Laws conspires to promote and perpetuate a state of things in which, as in North Dorset, one man can own six parishes and half of six more. No responsible thinker proposes any violent change, any forcible confiscation or redivision of the land—he knows that, even if it could by any possibility be done, the same causes which have produced accumulation once would produce it again. ”

“ He says he does not advocate confiscation, and yet the hints he throws out as to the working of his scheme seem to me to really imply confiscation under another name."
"Of course," said Catherine, "that's just like these cautious politicians; they don't want straightforward confiscation, and yet they are dimly conscious that by confiscation only is land nationalization practical. It requires little thought to come to that conclusion. How on earth could the state possibly afford to compensate the landlords—where would the money come from? Capitalists would be shy to lend at three per cent. ”

“ Their privity forces upon them no knowledge but what has relation to this single tract of land; and even as to that, coming in as they do under an act of confiscation, there can be no reason for requiring of them evidence to such a fact. ”

“ Its advocates do not seem to have stopped to consider, quite apart from the immorality involved in such a wholesale confiscation, how they propose to prevent the inevitable operation of the law of supply and demand, without putting a stop to the very thing they wish to encourage, viz., the free alienation of land ”

“ Insecurity of property is one of the inevitable consequences of civil wars. The products of the land are the common stock of plunder for both parties, and the land itself becomes a prey to confiscation. ”

“ In violation of this pledge, the new constitution gives to each state and territory the right to fix the maximum area of land which any one individual or corporation may own and to compel the owner to subdivide the remainder and offer it for sale at a price to be fixed by the government or, in default of such action on the part of the owner, gives the state the authority to fix the price at which it will take over the land and compel the owner to accept bonds of the state in payment therefor, which would mean absolute confiscation. ”

“ Immoveable private enemy property may under no circumstances or conditions be appropriated by an invading belligerent. Should he confiscate and sell private land or buildings, the buyer would acquire no right [275] whatever to the property. Article 46 of the Hague Regulations expressly enacts that "private property may not be confiscated." But confiscation differs from the temporary use of private land and buildings for all kinds of purposes demanded by the necessities of war. ”

“ Had they been allowed in the first place to take possession of all unimproved land without having to give up the savings of years to some land grabber, whose theft was authorized and sustained by law, and then loaded down with interest obligations, they would have had no more trouble in keeping their land than they would in keeping an arm or a leg. ”

“ For example, when they are talking with the farmer, or other small land owner, who does not wish to have his real estate expropriated, some Socialists are quite willing to admit that their program makes no provision for the confiscation of farm lands. As you have seen, however, the Socialists are quite ready to hide any feature in their scheme that seems likely to arouse opposition in the minds of the small property holders. ”

“ Huxley entered first into the correspondence to point out present and perilous applications of the absolute in contemporary politics. Touching on a State guarantee of the title to land, he asks if there is any moral right for confiscation:—In Ireland, he says, confiscation is justified by the appeal to wrongs inflicted a century ago; in England the theorems of "absolute political ethics" are in danger of being employed to make this generation of land-owners responsible for the misdeeds of William the Conqueror and his followers. ("Times" November 12.) ”

“ The power to confiscate is the power to tax. Give that power to one class and what more does it want? Let that class confiscate land values, which you agree are naturally common property, and you give it the power to rob its victim, not merely to the “limit of their capacity to pay,” but to literal starvation, if they choose to carry the principle of private ownership of land to its logical conclusion. For certainly to recognize the right to private property in land is to recognize the owner’s right to do with his land what he pleases. ”

“ Congress had, by several statutes, of which the act of July 13th was one, defined certain acts, or conditions growing out of the rebellion, which would render property liable to confiscation to the United States. It became evident that in many of these cases loyal citizens might have rights and interests in such property which justice required to be protected. ”

“ The entire farm property to be confiscated, i.e., the live and dead stocks, shall be placed under the charge of the State or commune as the case may be, according to their size and importance, for their exclusive use, without any compensation. Peasants possessing insufficient amounts of land are not affected by the above provision regarding confiscating of farm properties. ”

“ For I fear not to declare, that what I have here given may be regarded as a summary of the very doctrine which, they vociferate, ought to be punished with confiscation, exile, imprisonment, and flames, as well as exterminated by land and sea. ”

“ Indeed, to disregard the riparian rights of the lot owners as shown by the record, it seems to me, will be equivalent to confiscation, and that in reason it cannot be done without imputing bad faith to the illustrious men who so nobly conceived and so admirably executed the foundation of the federal city. ”

“ Should we lose many Kentuckians and Virginians who are now with us, if we boldly confiscated the slaves of all rebels? —and a confiscation of property which has legs and so confiscates itself, at command, is not only a legal, but would prove a very practical measure in time of war. ”

“ If the United States authorities had the right to seize the property, and take it out of the hands of the law, as a preliminary step to proceedings for confiscation, it would nevertheless seem to be the right of the Chancery Court to reassume possession when the confiscation proceedings failed and came to an end. ”

“ Another of the realities of the question is the no less inveterate conviction in the tenants' mind that the absolute power of the landlord was originally a usurpation effected by the sword. Right or wrong, they believe that the confiscations were the palpable violation of the natural rights of the people whom Providence placed in this country. With bitter emphasis they assert that no set of men has any divine right to root a nation out of its own land. ”

“ Therefore Congress passed the act of July, 1862, directing the President to exercise this right, and directed in express terms that the property seized should be 'condemned as enemy's property,' &c. The fact, therefore, that a statute provided for the confiscation, has no more tendency to show that it was a municipal proceeding, than an act of Congress declaring war would. Legislation is only an expression of the sovereign will, and so the character and effect of it must depend upon the nature of the subject upon which it acts, and not upon the fact that it is embodied into a statute. ”

“ I think that the province of law is not to create property, but to protect it, and that it may, instead of protecting it, become the greatest violator of it. This law providing for the confiscation of property cast in wrecks upon a shore, and its forfeiture to the sovereign of the territory, is one of the most striking instances of aggression made by law on the natural and indefeasible rights of man.
In regard to the galley which contained the queens, that having escaped shipwreck, and having safely anchored in the harbor, the king had no pretext for molesting it in any way. ”

“ As the chief motive for an evasion of the laws and the principal cause of their result in land accumulation instead of land distribution is the facility with which transfers are made of the right intended to be secured to settlers, it may be deemed advisable to provide by legislation some guards and checks upon the alienation of homestead rights and lands covered thereby until patents issue. ”

“ And it is agreed, that all persons who have any interest in confiscated lands, either by debts, marriage settlements, or otherwise, shall meet with no lawful impediment in the prosecution of their just rights. ”

“ There is no support for a construction that would restrain the force of the broad language used. Congress was untrammeled and free to authorize the seizure, use or appropriation of such properties without any compensation to the owners. There is no constitutional prohibition against confiscation of enemy properties. ”

“ Where, therefore, lands are acquired in any other way by the United States within the limits of a state than by purchase with her consent, they will hold the land subject to this qualification: that if upon them forts, arsenals, or other public buildings are erected for the uses of the general government, such buildings, with their appurtenances, as instrumentalities for the execution of its powers, will be free from any such interference and jurisdiction of the state as would destroy or impair their effective use for the purposes designed. ”

“ What is the meaning of confiscating the proprietary rights in the soil? We have heard from a noble Lord in 'another place' and it has been stated in the course of the debate here, that this sentence of confiscation refers only to certain unpleasant persons who are called talookdars, who are barons and robber chiefs and oppressors of the people. This is by no means the first time that, after a great wrong has been committed, the wrongdoer has attempted to injure by calumny those upon whom the wrong has been inflicted. ”

“ The demand for the nationalization of the great landed estates was thus not only supported as a social and economic necessity in order to provide the landless population, notably the legionaries, with land, but was, deep in the minds of the people, regarded as a legal rectification of the wrongs suffered through the confiscations which followed the defeat of the White Mountain. ”