CHAPTER XVII. REVIEW. REV. RICHARD JONES. AMONG the most recent writers on this subject is the Rev. Richard Jones,* of Cambridge, whose opinions are widely dif ferent from those we have reviewed, as will be seen by the following extracts. "The power of the earth to yield, even to the rudest labours of mankind, more than is necessary for the subsistence of the cultivator himself, enables him to pay such a tribute: hence the origin of rent. A very large proportion of the inhabitants of the whole earth are precisely in the circumstances we have been describing; sufficiently numerous to have resorted to agriculture; too rude to possess any accumulated fund in the shape of capital, from which the wages of the labouring cultivators can be advanced. These cultivators, in such a state of society, comprise always, from causes we shall hereafter arrive in sight of, an overwhelming majority of the nation. As the land is then the direct source of the subsistence of the population, so the nature of the property established in the land, and the forms and terms of tenancy to which that property gives birth, furnish to the people the most influential elements of their national character. We may be prepared, therefore, to see without surprise, the different systems of rents which in this state of things have arisen out of the peculiar circumstances of different people, forming the main ties which hold society together, determining the nature of the connexion between the governing part of the community and the governed, and stamping on a very large portion of the population of the whole globe their most striking features, social, political, and moral.† "When men begin to unite in the form of an agricultural community, the political notion they seem constantly to adopt first, is that of an exclusive right, existing somewhere, to the soil of the country they inhabit. Their circumstances, their prejudices, their ideas of justice or of expediency, lead them, almost universally, to · Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, and the Sources of Taxation. London, 1831. + Page 4. vest that right in their general government, and in persons deriving their rights from it. "The rudest people among whom this can at present be observed, are, perhaps, some of the Islanders of the South Seas. The soil of the Society Islands is very imperfectly occupied; the whole belongs to the sovereign; he portions it among the nobles, and makes and resumes grants at his pleasure. The body of the people, who live on certain edible roots peculiar to the country, which they cultivate with considerable care, receive from the nobles, in their turn, permission to occupy smaller portions. They are thus dependent on the chiefs for the means of existence, and they pay a tribute, or rent, in the shape of labour and services performed on other lands. "On the continent of America, the institutions of those people, who, before its discovery, had resorted to agriculture for subsistence, indicate also an early and complete appropriation of the soil by the state. In Mexico there were crown lands cultivated by the services of those classes who were too poor to contribute to the revenue of the state in any other manner. There existed, too, a body of about three thousand nobles possessed of distinct hereditary property in land.* "The United States of North America, though often referred to in support of different views, afford another remarkable instance of the power vested in the hands of the owners of the soil, when its occupation offers the only means of subsistence to the people. The territories of the Union still unoccupied, from the Canadian border to the shores of the Floridas, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, are admitted in law and practice, to be the property of the general government. They can be occupied only with its consent in spots fixed on and allotted by its servants, and on the condition of a previous money payment.† "We come back, then, to the proposition, that, in the actual progress of human society, rent has usually originated in the appropriation of the soil, at a time when the bulk of the people must cultivate it on such terms as they can obtain, or starve; and when their scanty capital of implements, sced, &c., being utterly insufficient to secure their maintenance in any other occupation than that of agriculture, is chained with themselves to the land by an overpowering necessity. The necessity then, which compels them to pay a rent, it need hardly be observed, is wholly independent of any difference in the quality of the ground they occupy, and would not be removed were the soils all equalised."+ * Jones on the Distribution of Wealth, p. 5. + Page 9. + Page 11. Mr. Jones attributes rent entirely to the monopoly of the soil by governments or individuals, who are enabled to dictate the terms upon which the people must cultivate it, "or starve;" and the varieties of condition among nations to the difference of the terms upon which the owners have granted its use. The monopoly of land in Great Britain and the United States is as complete as in France, Poland, or India. The terms upon which its cultivation is permitted in the two former are much more onerous, if we regard only the amount of rent that is paid, than in the others. An acre of land near London, Liverpool, or New York, will yield as much rent as two or three hundred acres of land near Warsaw, or Madras. The terms upon which the owner grants its use would therefore appear less favourable in the United States and Great Britain than in Poland or India, and we should expect to find prosperity in the latter, where rents are low, and poverty and distress in the former, where they are high. In opposition, however, to this is the fact, that where rents are high the cultivators are prosperous, and are enabled to accumulate property, while where they are low they can barely obtain sufficient to support life. Where the landlord has a large revenue, he leaves a large proportion of the produce in the hands of the producer, whereas, where he has a small one, he leaves an exceedingly small proportion. The reward of labour is great in the United States and Great Britain, where the rental is large; but in Hindostan, where the landlord takes one half of the gross produce, the amount collected from its immense population by the great land owner is short of twenty millions of pounds sterling, and the abstraction of that sum leaves the cultivators in the most abject poverty. If we look to Australia, where land exists in abundance, and where large quantities may be had for the mere trouble of application to the proper office, and where monopoly car of course, have no influence, we find that the proportion demanded of the cultivatort is greater than in Great Britain, where all is monopolized. Further examination would have satisfied Mr. Jones that monopoly would not account for the differences of condition * See page 53, ante. + See page 69, ante. presented by the various countries. He would have seen tha the various species distinguished by the terms ryot, labour metayer, cottage, and money rents, are but steps in the progress towards civilization, marking the progress of different nations. We shall briefly show the causes of these differences. A community find it necessary to have a magistrate, for the purpose of directing the execution of such measures as may be necessary to render person and property secure. They select one, and grant to him and his descendants the right of levying taxes on their property, for his own support and that of the troops he may deem necessary. He commences with a small body of soldiers, and is content with a tax, or rent, of ten per cent. If the people prefer to be themselves the soldiers, they perhaps agree that each man shall do duty for a certain number of days in the year, being a labour rent. In the course of a short time their chief finds that it would be more agreeable to be a captain over thousands than over hundreds, and he embroils his people with some of their neighbours, by which he makes it necessary to have double the number of troops, and to raise the tax, or rent, to twenty per cent., or to call for the services of double the number of his subjects. A further extension of territory makes larger armies necessary and gradually the occupant of the land is compelled to pay a higher tax, until at length "one half of the gross produce," as in India, is taken from him as rent of land, the property of which is unquestionably in him; the consequence of which is, that the people are reduced to the lowest state of poverty; ignorant of their rights, and totally incapable of defending, if they even knew, them; and at length it comes to be doubted whether they ever really possessed a right of property,* or transferable inte * Mr. Jones's reasoning in opposition to the existence of any such rights in India is contained in the following passage. "Are the ryots in Rajast'han practically, as he (Colonel Tod) conceives them to be, freeholders in any sense in which an English proprietor is called the freeholder of the land he owns? I began in the text by remarking, that the ryot has very generally a recognised right to the hereditary occupation of his plot of ground, while he pays the rent demanded of him: and the question is, whether that right in Rajast'han practically amounts to a proprietary right or not. Now a distinction before suggested in the text, seems to afford the only real criterion which can enable us to determine this question fairly. Is the ryot at rack-rent? rest, in the land. A new power, superseding the old, and finding the people in this state, assumes that the people had no rights, and despoils them of the little that had remained to them. Here we have the ryot rents of India. In another community, the chief, as he enlarged his territory, would divide it among his officers, charged with its defence. They would be counts, marquesses, or dukes, and would be bound to appear when called for, with a given number of men, to pay labour rent for their property, by carrying arms. Their sovereign, being fond of glory, calls frequently for their ser has he, or has he not, a beneficial interest in the soil? can he obtain money for that interest by sale? can he make a landlord's rent of it? To give a cultivator an hereditary interest at a variable rack-rent, and then to call his right to till a freehold right, would clearly be little better than mockery. To subject such a person to the payment of more than a rack-rent, to leave him no adequate remuneration for his personal toil, and still to call him a freehold proprietor, would be something more bitter than mere mockery. To establish by law, and enforce cruelly in practice, fines and punishments to avenge his running away from his freehold, and refusing to cultivate it for the benefit of his hard task master, would be to convert him into a predial slave: and this, although a very natural consequence of the mode of establishing such freehold rights, would make the names of proprietor and owner almost ridiculous."* If this view be correct, all that is necessary to do away with private property in land in any part of Europe, is, that the taxes shall be raised so high as to prevent the owner from receiving rent. In some parts of England the poor-tax had risen so high that property was rendered totally valueless; but Mr. Jones would consider it very extraordinary that any Frenchman or German should deny the existence of private property therein on the ground that the occupant paid no rent to the owner. The views of Sir Thomas Munro, are essentially different. It will be seen by the following passage quoted by Mr. Jones,† that he considers the ryot to be the proprietor, subject to the claim of the state for rent or taxes. "Yet with all these views of the difficulty of establishing private property in land, Sir Thomas Munro declares the ryot to be the true proprietor, possessing all that is not claimed by the sovereign as revenue. This he says, while reject. ing the proprietary claims of the zemindars; which he thinks unduly magnified. But the ryot is the real proprietor, for whatever land does not belong to the sovereign belongs to him. The demand for public revenue, according as it is high or low in different places, and at different times, affects his share : but whether it leaves him only the bare profit of his stock, or a small surplus beyond it as landlord's rent, he is still the true proprietor, and possesses all that is not claimed by the sovereign as revenue."— Vol. III. p. 340. * Jones on the Distribution of Wealth. Appendix, p. 36. + Ibid. Appendix, page 40. |
