The preservation of internal order, the administration of
justice, the construction and care of public works, and, notably, the
observances of religion, all tend in similar manner to pass into the
hands of special classes, whose disposition it is to magnify their
function and extend their power.
But the great cause of inequality is in the natural monopoly which is
given by the possession of land. The first perceptions of men seem
always to be that land is common property; but the rude devices by which
this is at first recognized--such as annual partitions or cultivation in
common--are consistent with only a low stage of development. The idea of
property, which naturally arises with reference to things of human
production, is easily transferred to land, and an institution which when
population is sparse merely secures to the improver and user the due
reward of his labor, finally, as population becomes dense and rent
arises, operates to strip the producer of his wages. Not merely this,
but the appropriation of rent for public purposes, which is the only way
in which, with anything like a high development, land can be readily
retained as common property, becomes, when political and religious power
passes into the hands of a class, the ownership of the land by that
class, and the rest of the community become merely tenants.
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