De la conversion du territoire national en propriétés privées.

CHAP. 10: On the conversion of the national territory into private properties.

The earth is the fecund source that produces all the things we need to feed, clothe, or shelter ourselves; but so long as it remains abandoned to itself, it shows, in its productions, no particular preference for man. Far from showing any predilection for us, uncultivated earth, on the contrary, produces with great abundance only plants that could not immediately serve us as food. It seems that it is, with regard to us, all the more avaricious of subsistence, as at certain times of the year, it is more prodigal of it for most other animals.The men who form a tribe are therefore condemned to live on prey, so long as the land they occupy remains uncultivated, and they have not reduced to a state of domesticity animals fit to nourish them. In such a situation, the only individual properties that exist are instruments of war, hunting, or fishing, spoils of the hunt, huts, and small provisions of food. The land and the rivers of the basin in which each tribe is enclosed form its national territory, and so long as it remains uncultivated, it is not susceptible of being divided.

It is impossible, in effect, to circumscribe fish or wild animals within individual properties or within the fractions of a great basin; there are no other means of reaching them than to pursue them as far as they can go. The limits in which freshwater fish are enclosed are clearly determined by nature, and cannot be crossed; for this class of animals, there is no communication from one basin to another. Terrestrial animals move in a more extensive space; they can, without encountering obstacles, traverse the entire surface of an immense basin, or even pass into another. However, as they have their habits just as men do, and as they are ceaselessly brought back by their needs into the valleys that offer them food and shelter, the mountains that separate nations from one another also serve as a limit to most animals.

If one wishes to conceive how a tribe, even when it has not emerged from the savage state, finds itself, in a way, attached to the surface of a basin formed by a great chain of mountains, one must picture the river that runs through this basin as an immense tree whose trunk rests on the sea, and whose branches extend into the lateral valleys formed by the ramifications of the mountains. The fish are usually found in the trunk and in the main branches; they never rise to the extremity of the twigs. The large game, the only kind that can furnish a certain number of families with sufficient food to subsist, is found in the valleys, because it is only there that it finds abundant pastures, and water to quench its thirst. Men settle where nature has attached their subsistence.

So long as the land is abandoned to its natural fertility, and is useful to men only by the food it furnishes to certain animals, no individual territorial property can therefore be formed. The space that each family needs to subsist is so extensive that one could not enclose it in such a way as to prevent the flight of the animals that would be enclosed therein; and consequently, the enjoyment of the entire territory remains common to all the families of which the horde or the tribe is composed. Not only is its enjoyment common, but the individuals succeed in procuring subsistence only insofar as they go together in pursuit of game. If they did not unite to encircle it, pursue it, or drive it into narrow defiles, they would never succeed in mastering it. Even in the most barbarous state, men can preserve themselves only by means of associations, in which they pool their strength, their skill, and their intelligence [^40].

We have seen, by what precedes, that, in the state of barbarism, a man needs a little more than a square league of terrain to subsist, and that, consequently, a somewhat numerous tribe needs an immense extent of it; that each tribe naturally stops before the barriers that serve as limits to its subsistence, and that it traverses the entire basin in which it has developed; that the land remains a common property for all the families to which it furnishes means of existence, and can be divided only by cultivation; finally, that the men who live in the same basin are obliged to associate among themselves to master the animals on which they can feed.

It now remains to observe how fractions of the national territory are detached from it to be converted into private properties; it remains above all to demonstrate how the men who renounce living on prey to devote themselves to cultivation can appropriate a certain extent of land without snatching anything away from anyone, and even while rendering great services to their fellow men.

If civilized men who are armed with all the means that an advanced civilization can furnish; who are provided with powerful instruments to cut down trees or clear the land; who possess seeds of every kind and provisions for more than a year, encounter countless difficulties, and are obliged to devote themselves to fatiguing labors, when they wish to put into cultivation marshy lands or lands covered with trees and brush, how could savages, who had for instruments of cultivation only their hands, stones, and tree branches, and who, to live, were obliged to pursue their prey in the forests, have been able to put the land into a state of cultivation? How could they have guaranteed their first harvests from the invasion of animals and the pillage of their fellow men?

I have not proposed to give here the particular history of the peoples who were the first to advance in the career of civilization; I do not have, consequently, to investigate what were the first instruments by means of which men emerged from barbarism, nor to describe the labors and sufferings of the first cultivators. Researches of this nature would give us, on a great number of points, only very incomplete, very vague, and, consequently, very unsatisfying results. What we have to observe here are the obstacles that result from the nature of things, the natural means that men have had to overcome them, and the results that their efforts have produced.

Wherever it has been possible to observe peoples at the moment they were beginning to emerge from barbarism, it has been seen that men devoted themselves in common to the cultivation of the land; that the products thereof were deposited in public storehouses, and that each family then received from them in proportion to its needs. This community of labors and of goods was observed by the Romans among several Germanic peoples; it was likewise observed among the tribes of the north of America by the first travelers who visited them; the English who founded the state of Virginia were obliged to resort to the same means to put the land into a state of cultivation, and it is probably thus that the individual appropriation of the land began in all countries.

In the state of barbarism, the individuals who belong to the same tribe hardly differ from one another except by age and sex, or by a little more or a little less strength or beauty. Obliged to associate to procure the food that nature presents to them, and none being able to make a great provision of it without the help of his fellows, they all experience the same dearth, or enjoy the same abundance. It is therefore impossible for one man to possess a great quantity of subsistence, while others are condemned by need to devote themselves to fatiguing occupations. In such a state, none is rich enough to buy the labor of another, and all are poor enough to be obliged to devote themselves to labor to procure their subsistence.

On the other hand, a man who acted alone to pull up trees and clear the land would be so weak; it would be so difficult for him to procure the subsistence he needs each day, and to devote himself at the same time to a labor that is to furnish him with food only at the end of a year; finally, supposing it were possible for him to put a small space of land into cultivation, it would be so difficult for him to put his harvest out of the reach of animals or even of his fellow men, that it is impossible to conceive that in the midst of a barbarous tribe, an individual would devote himself alone to cultivation; all the men must unite their efforts to cultivate a field as to encircle a herd of animals, and this is, in effect, what has been observed in countries that were beginning to emerge from barbarism.

Whenever an industry does not immediately procure means of existence for the persons who devote themselves to it, it can be exercised only by men who possess enough provisions to live until the products of their labor are finished. The Europeans would never have succeeded in founding colonies in uncultivated regions if the men they sent there had had, to exist and to devote themselves to cultivation, only the resources that were offered to them by the soil they were going to seize. Among us, a farmer succeeds in obtaining a harvest from his farm only by furnishing to the persons he employs, seeds, fertilizers, agricultural instruments, and the means to clothe, house, and feed themselves. Each of his workers or his servants has, in the harvest he contributes to growing, a share proportional to the services he renders; but this share is paid to him in very large part by anticipation: it is the head of the enterprise who makes him the advance.

Likewise, a tribe that wishes to put into cultivation a part of the territory it occupies must have provisions to subsist during the labor. It is obliged to divide its time in two; it must consecrate one part to seizing the subsistence that uncultivated nature presents to it; it must consecrate the other to rendering the land fertile, or rather, to directing it in its products. In the regions where civilization begins to develop, it is the men who give the land its first preparation; it is they who make disappear from it the trees, the brush, and all that can harm the development of the plants they propose to multiply. When they have executed these labors, which are always the most painful, they abandon to their wives the ordinary cares of cultivation, and return to the pursuit of game or of their enemies.

We have seen that every nation, whether it be barbarous or civilized, has a territory on which it has developed, and which forms its national property; we have seen that this property is a recognized fact, and that it becomes all the more incontestable as civilization makes more progress. We have observed, on the other hand, that, according to the laws of our nature, a man cannot be the property of another; that his person belongs only to himself, and that any value he creates likewise belongs only to him, if he has not alienated it. These facts being recognized, nothing is easier than to conceive how individual properties that consist in lands are formed.

Let us suppose that a certain number of men, by dint of savings, care, and fatigues, succeed in putting into cultivation a certain extent of land; that they surround it with hedges or ditches; that they build storehouses or dwellings on it; that they sow grains or vegetables on it; that they make fruit trees grow on it; that they raise animals on it; finally, that they render it fertile enough for it to ensure to them and their families sufficient means of existence.

It is evident that in acting thus, they snatch nothing away from men foreign to their nation, since we admit the existence of a national territory. Do they snatch anything away from their compatriots? On the contrary, they abandon to them the greatest part of the lands that was previously necessary for them to exist. When they were reduced to living on fish or game, each of them needed, to subsist, more than a square league of terrain. If, by their labor, they obtain from the thousandth part of this extent more subsistence than the totality could produce, it is evident that they abandon nine hundred and ninety-nine parts of their primitive property. The appropriation of land by cultivation, far from being a usurpation of the property of others, thus has for its result to reduce the man who passes to the state of an agriculturist to an infinitely narrower space, and thus to increase the space reserved for others by all that he abandons. The extent that was barely sufficient to support ten men in a habitual state of distress will give means of existence to ten thousand intelligent cultivators.

A determined space of land can produce food only for the consumption of one man for one day. If the possessor, by his labor, finds the means to make it produce enough for two days, he doubles its value. This new value is his work, his creation; it is snatched away from no one: it is his property. If, instead of doubling it, he decuples it, if he renders it a thousand times greater, it will be no less a thing that is his own. To give to an acre of land the power to produce like a hundred, or to increase its extent a hundredfold without increasing its fertility, is nearly the same thing. The first operation would even be more advantageous than the second; for it would give more facility for making the harvest and taking care of it. The men who, by the capitals they have accumulated and by their industry, render the land more fertile, are therefore no less useful to their fellow men than if they created a new extent of it. If they succeed in fertilizing a land that produced absolutely nothing, or that was even harmful, like certain marshes, they thereby create the property entirely[^41].

What makes the appropriation of land by cultivation so difficult in entirely savage countries are not only the obstacles presented by the trees that must be cut down, the brush that must be destroyed, the land that must be cleared; it is above all the difficulty of having subsistence during the labor, and until the moment when the cultivated land itself nourishes the cultivator. Thus, from the moment a certain space of land has been put into a state of cultivation, and it furnishes the workers with sufficient food to live from one harvest to the next, the neighboring lands acquire by this sole fact a certain value; they can be more easily cultivated. This phenomenon is especially striking in the United States; as cultivation advances toward the uncultivated lands, these lands gradually increase in price, although no labor is executed on them.

From this results a consequence that deserves to be remarked. I have shown that the man who passes from the savage life to the agricultural life, and who converts by cultivation a fraction of the national territory into private property, far from committing a usurpation, renounces the most considerable part of his primitive property. I must now add that in putting into cultivation a fraction of this primitive property, he increases the value of all the lands that surround his own, and that he thus increases the riches of his fellow citizens, without their taking any trouble. This increase in the value of a piece of land, which results from the increase in value given by industry to the surrounding lands, is sometimes so considerable that one would refuse to believe it, if one were not convinced by the evidence of the facts.

In certain quarters of Paris, for example, ten square meters of terrain on which there is no construction are worth about five or six thousand francs, while in others they are worth only two or three hundred francs, and at some distance from the city, the same extent of terrain, taken in the fields, would be worth no more than seven or eight francs. Whence comes this difference in value between lands equal in extent? From a single circumstance, that the lands that surround the first have become considerable properties by the constructions with which they have been covered. Each house that has been built on a piece of land has increased by something the value of the neighboring land; and it is thus that, from one to the next, a piece of land that had only a small value when it was surrounded by fields or meadows has become a considerable property, from the moment it found itself in the middle of a populous city.

But since a piece of land can acquire a great value as a result of the value given to the neighboring lands, would not the men who, by their industry, create the latter, be justified in claiming the increase that the former undergoes? There is always action and reaction in this increase of values or properties; if my neighbor increases the value of the soil that belongs to me when he builds a house on his; I in turn increase the value of his house by building one on mine. It would moreover be impossible, or at least excessively difficult, to ascertain the increase that a man causes the lands surrounding his own to undergo when he adds some value to it.In all nations, even the most civilized, there always exists a certain extent of lands that remain the undivided property of the inhabitants of a commune, a province, or the state. These properties are generally administered by representatives who collect the revenues for the mass of the proprietors, and who employ them in its interest. If, without undergoing any modification, these properties increase in value, as a result of the growth that industry causes individual properties to undergo, it is evident that the increase of the former turns to the profit of all those who are its authors. In the United States, when cultivation approaches a territory occupied by savages, the Government buys a part of this territory and then sells it to private individuals. The value that these lands have, or that they acquire before being cultivated, evidently results from the progress made by the citizens of the United States. Thus, it is to the profit of those who have contributed to giving them this value that the price of the resale is employed.

In an entirely savage country, the number of animals that the earth can support is regulated by the quantity of subsistence it offers them during the most rigorous season of the year, and the number of men, by the quantity of animals that the earth furnishes them annually. From the moment this limit is reached, the population ceases to grow, since its means of existence cannot increase; but as soon as subsistence multiplies by cultivation, the population increases in the same proportion. If the land that furnished food to a family of hunters, for example, is gradually brought into cultivation, the population which was only five or six individuals can multiply up to the number of five or six thousand. Now, when a population has thus developed by the cultivation of a certain extent of land, it considers these lands its properties, in the same way that a nation considers as its national territory the basin in which it was formed. It would perish in a very short time, if it were pushed back onto uncultivated lands, or if these fields were ravaged as it sought to make them fertile.

In the infancy of civilization, no one having great advantages of fortune over others, men are obliged to pool their intelligence, their strength, their skill, to cultivate the land, and they then share its products. In countries where labor and economy have already accumulated more or less considerable riches in the hands of a certain number of persons, things seem to happen differently; however, when one observes them closely, the differences are more in appearances than in reality. Whenever there is liberty, there is an exchange of labors and services, whatever the state of civilization may be besides; one example will suffice to show this, at the same time as it will demonstrate how landed properties are formed in the very midst of the most civilized nations.

France, considered as a nation, has a territory that is its own. There exist, in the midst of this territory, very extensive spaces of land that have not been converted into individual properties. These lands, which generally consist of forests, belong to the mass of the population, and the government, which collects their revenues, employs them or ought to employ them in the common interest. Let them be put up for sale, and let an industrious man buy a part of them, a vast swamp, for example; there will be no usurpation here, since the public to whom the land incontestably belonged receives its exact value by the hands of its government, and is as rich after the sale as it was before.

Workers are employed to drain this swamp, to pull up the trees and brush from it, in a word to clear the soil; they increase its value, they make it a more considerable property. The value they add to it is paid to them by the food that is given to them and by the price of their day's wages: it becomes the property of the capitalist.

Other workers are employed to construct buildings; some quarry the stone, others transport it, others cut it, others put it in place. Each of them adds to the matter that passes through his hands a certain value, and this value, the product of his labor, is his property. He sells it, as he forms it, to the proprietor of the land, who pays him the price for it in food or in wages.

Similar operations are repeated for the carpentry, for the ironwork, in short for all the objects necessary for a house: each class of workers takes certain materials in a state where they have little or no value, and gives them a certain utility for which he receives the price.

The stone before being quarried, the iron before being extracted from the mine, the wood before being taken from the forest, were, in effect, infinitely small properties. If industry makes of them a beautiful house and buildings fit for the exploitation of a farm, they become a considerable property; but the value thereof is distributed to each of those who concur in creating it.

After having had the soil cleared and buildings constructed, the proprietor of the land buys agricultural instruments, seeds, fodder, animals for exploitation. These are new properties that he acquires; but he obtains them only by giving in exchange equal values, that is to say by delivering equivalent properties. There is no usurpation on his part; no one has lost anything.

If, when the operation is finished, the capitalist has spent a sum of two hundred thousand francs, and if he has obtained a property that gives him eight thousand francs of revenue, he is in exactly the same position as if he had bought a land that would have given him four percent of his capital; but the result is not the same relative to the various classes of society; it is infinitely more advantageous for a great number of persons.

It is evident first that, by the transformation of a swamp into a fertile land, no member of society has lost anything, and that those who, by their industry, have concurred in producing it, not only have lived during the operation, but have been able to make some savings; now, there is no one who does not know that most men can live only by exchanging their labor for their subsistence.

In the second place, when an uncultivated land is converted into a farm, a family of farmers is formed on the spot, and as this family needs servants or workers to help it in its labor, this class of the population grows in proportion to the means of existence that are offered to it[^42].

In the third place, the men who are employed in the cultivation of a farm do not consume all the food it produces; they need clothing, linen, agricultural instruments; and they obtain these various objects by means of a part of their own products: a land brought into cultivation is therefore a market opened for manufacturing industry and for commerce; it follows from this that the industrious population of the cities grows by cultivation, at the same time as that of the countryside.

One must add to these various advantages that result from the creation of a landed property, those that result from it for the proprietor and for his family. These consist not only in the enjoyment of the revenue that the land produces; they consist, moreover, in the consideration that is attached to this kind of property, in the influence it gives, and above all in the security it produces for families, relative to their means of existence.

If therefore we admit as an incontestable principle, that all value belongs to him who created it, it will follow that the men who, by cultivation, have converted into individual properties a part of the national territory on which they were formed, have snatched nothing from anyone, and that far from committing a usurpation, they have powerfully contributed to the well-being of their fellow men.

When one casts a superficial glance on even the best-organized society, and sees alongside a great number of men who live from the product of their lands, a still greater number who have only the products of their daily labor to live on, one is tempted to consider the former as adroit usurpers, and the latter as dupes or victims; one would willingly ask that the shares be made anew, so that each might have his own.

This apparent injustice vanishes, at least in large part, when one admits in principle that every man is the proprietor of the values he has created; when one observes the manner in which properties are formed, and the course that the various classes of the population follow in their growth. Fortunes born of fraud or violence are the only ones that morality and justice can condemn[^43].

We have seen, by what precedes, how the individual properties that consist in lands or in buildings have been formed; but we have not been able to see what are the labors, the fatigues, the dangers to which one must devote oneself, to bring into a state of cultivation deserted and savage countries. The travelers who have best observed the mores of the peoples least removed from barbarism have not known or have not wished to teach us by what means and at what price these peoples managed to cultivate the land. We can form an idea of it for ourselves, by observing how several peoples of Europe have managed to found colonies in countries where civilization had never penetrated. It will be seen, by this exposition, that if man creates the value of the lands he appropriates, it is only by devoting himself to cares, to fatigues, and often even to very great dangers.

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Notes

[^40]: Mackenzie, vol. 1, p. 295.— Hearne, ch. IX, p. 299.— Hennepin, p. 122 and 125.—Robin, vol. 2, ch. XXXIV, p. 356 and 367, and vol. 2, ch. LIV, p. 367. [^41]: These observations are far from being new; they are as ancient as the cultivation of the earth itself. The wise men of ancient Etruria expressed them in the form of a tale. "A poor laborer gives as dowry to his eldest daughter a third of his vineyard, and manages so well that, with the rest, he finds himself equally rich. He still gives a third to his second daughter, and he always has as much." Roman History, by M. Michelet, vol. 1, ch. IV, p. 56, 2nd edit. [^42]: "Wherever there is found a place where two persons can live comfortably," says Montesquieu, "a marriage takes place. Nature sufficiently inclines to it when one is not arrested by the difficulty of subsistence." Spirit of the Laws, bk. xxiii, ch. x. This observation of Montesquieu is the foundation of the doctrine that M. Malthus developed in his Essay on the Principle of Population. [^43]: In 1793, at the moment when some men were attacking society to its very foundations, a philosopher, M. Rœderer, posed this question in a public course: