ALTHOUGH this
chapter shows that Mr. Spencer had not fully thought out the question,
and saw no way to secure equality in the use of land, save the clumsy one
of having the state formally resume land and let it out in lots to suit,
the argument is clear and logical, except in one place. This one weak and
confusing spot is the beginning of Section 9:
No doubt great
difficulties must attend the resumption, by mankind at large, of
their rights to the soil. The question of compensation to existing
proprietors is a complicated one—one that perhaps cannot be settled
in a strictly equitable manner. Had we to deal with the parties who
originally robbed the human race of its heritage, we might make short
work of the matter. But, unfortunately, most of our present landowners
are men who have, either mediately or immediately—either by their own
acts, or by the acts of their ancestors—given for their estates equivalents
of honestly earned wealth, believing that they were investing their savings
in a legitimate manner. To justly estimate and liquidate the claims of
such, is one of the most intricate problems society will one day have
to solve.
Taken by itself, this passage seems to
admit that existing landowners should be compensated for the land
they hold whenever society shall resume land for the benefit of all.
Though this is diametrically opposed to all that has gone before and
all that follows after, it is the sense in which it has been generally
understood. It is the sense in which I understood it when, in quoting
from
Social Statics in
Progress and Poverty,
I spoke of it as a careless concession, which Mr. Spencer on reflection
would undoubtedly reconsider. For after even such a man as John Stuart
Mill could say, "The land of every country belongs to the people of that
country; the individuals called landowners have no right in morality and
justice to anything but the rent, or compensation for its saleable value,"
the English writers had seemed to me afflicted with a sort of colourblindness
on the subject of compensation. And that this affliction had suddenly befallen
Mr. Spencer also was the only explanation of this passage that then occurred
to me. Nor, if it means compensation for land, is there any other explanation;
for all along Mr. Spencer has been insisting on the natural, inalienable
and equal right of all men to the use of land. He has not only denied the
validity of all existing claims to the private ownership of land, but has
declared that there is no possible way in which land can become private property.
He has mercilessly and scornfully exposed the fallacy on which the notion
of compensation to landowners is based—the idea that change of hands and
lapse of time can turn wrong into right, make valid claims originally invalid,
and deprive the human race of what in the nature of things is, not at any
one time, but at all times, their inalienable heritage. Nothing but moral
colour-blindness can explain how a writer who has just asserted all this
can in the same breath propose to compensate landlords.
But a more careful reading of
this chapter leads me now to think that the apparent inconsistency
of these sentences it may arise from careless statement, and that
what Mr. Spencer was really thinking of was the compensation of landowners,
not for their land, but for their improvements.
In the context Mr. Spencer has
scouted the idea of force, or acquiescence, or voluntary partition,
or unopposed appropriation, or cultivation, or improvement, or sale
or bequest, or lapse of time, giving any title to private property in
land. But he realises, as we all do (see especially the last two paragraphs
of Section 4), that should the community resume for all the inalienable
right to the use of land, there would remain to holders of improvements
made in good faith an equitable claim for those improvements.
It is evident throughout
Social Statics that no idea of the
possibility of securing equal rights to land in any other way than
that of the state taking possession of the land and renting it out had
dawned on Mr. Spencer. And since in all settled countries the land thus
taken possession of by the state would be land to which in large part
improvements of various kinds had in good faith been inseparably attached,
the matter of determining what equitable compensation should be paid to
owners on account of these improvements naturally seemed to him a delicate
and difficult task—one, in fact, incapable of more than an approximation
to justice.
Keeping this in mind, it is clear
that a few interpolations, justified by the context, and indeed made
necessary by it, will remove all difficulty. Let me print these sentences
again with such interpolations, which I will distinguish by italics:—
The question
of compensation to existing proprietors for their
improvements is a complicated one—one that perhaps cannot be settled
in a strictly equitable manner. Had we to deal with the parties who
originally robbed the human race of its heritage, we might make short
work of the matter, for their improvements we should
be under no obligation to regard. But unfortunately, most of our
present landowners are men who have, either mediately or immediately—either
by their own acts, or by the acts of their ancestors—given for their
estates, which include many inseparable
improvements, equivalents of honestly earned wealth, believing that
they were investing their savings in a legitimate manner. To justly estimate
and liquidate the claims of such for these improvements, is one of the
most intricate problems society will one day have to solve."
Thus understood, these sentences
become coherent with their context. And that this was what Mr. Spencer
had in mind is supported by his more recent utterances; for while he
has allowed these sentences to be understood as meaning compensation
to landowners for their land, yet in the only places where he has stated
in terms what the compensation he has proposed is to be for, he has,
as will hereafter be seen, spoken of it as "compensation for the artificial
value given by cultivation," or by some similar phrase showed that what
was in his mind was merely compensation for improvements. I therefore
gladly make what honourable amend I can for having so misunderstood him
as to imagine that in
Social Statics he intended to give any countenance
to the idea that it was incumbent on men, when taking possession of their
heritage, to pay any compensation to existing landowners for the value
of that heritage.