774 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



From Rousseau's poiut of view, this is, in fact, the only ra- 

 tional conclusion from the premises. The attempt to draw a dis- 

 tinction between land, as a limited commodity, and other things 

 as unlimited, is an obvious fallacy. For, according to him,* the 

 total habitable surface of the earth is the property of the whole hu- 

 man race in common. Undoubtedly, the habitable and cultivable 

 land amounts to a definite number of square miles, which, by no 

 effort of human ingenuity, at present known or suspected, can be 

 sensibly increased beyond the area of that part of the globe which 

 is not covered by water ; and therefore its quantity is limited. 

 But if the land is limited, so is the quantity of the trees that will 

 grow on it ; of the cattle that can be pastured on it ; of the crops 

 that can be raised from it ; of the minerals that can be dug from 

 it ; of the wind ; and of the water-power, afforded by the limited 

 streams which flow from the limited heights. And, if the human 

 race were to go on increasing in number at its present rate, a time 

 would come when there would not be standing-ground for any 

 more ; if it were not that, long before that time, they would have 

 eaten up the limited quantity of food-stuffs and died like the locusts 

 that have consumed everything eatable in an oasis of the desert. 

 The attempt to draw a distinction between land as limited in 

 quantity, in the sense, I suppose, that it is something that can not 

 be imported and other things as unlimited, because they can be 

 imported has arisen from the fact that Rousseau's modern fol- 

 lowers entertain the delusion that, consistently with their princi- 

 ples, it is possible to suppose that a nation has right of ownership 

 in the land it occupies. If the island of Great Britain is the prop- 

 erty of the British nation, then, of course, it is true that they 

 can not have more than somewhere about ninety thousand square 

 miles of land, while the quantity of other things they can import 

 is (for the present, at any rate), practically, if not strictly, unlim- 

 ited. But how is the assumption that the Britons own Britain, to be 

 reconciled with the great dictum of Rousseau, that a man can not 

 rightfully appropriate any part of this limited commodity, land, 

 without the unanimous consent of all his fellow-men ? My strong 

 impression is that if a party-colored 'plebiscite of Europeans, Chi- 

 nese, Hindoos, negroes, red Indians, Maoris, and all the other 

 inhabitants of the terrestrial globe were to decree us to be usurp- 

 ers, not a soul would budge ; and that, if it came to fighting, 

 Mr. Morley's late " hecklers " might be safely depended upon to 

 hold their native soil against all intruders, and in the teeth of the 

 most absolute of ethical politicians, even though he should prove 

 from Rousseau 



Exceedingly well 



That such conduct was quite atrocious. 



* As to Hobbes, but on different grounds. 



