7 8o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



not have endured so long, nor would it have been adopted by all 

 sorts of different races from the ancient Irish to the Hindoos, and 

 from the Russians to the Caffres and Japanese. These circum- 

 stances were in the main as follows : that there was plenty of land 

 unoccupied ; that population was very scanty and increased 

 slowly ; that wants were simple ; that people were content to go 

 on living in the same way, generation after generation ; that there 

 was no commerce worth speaking of ; that manufactures were 

 really that which they are etymologically things made by the 

 hands ; and that there was no need of capital in the shape of 

 money. Moreover, with such methods of warfare as then existed, 

 the system was good for defense, and not bad for offense. 



Yet, even if left to itself, to develop undisturbedly, without 

 the intrusion of force, fraud, or militarism in any shape, the com- 

 munal system, like the individual - owner system or the state- 

 owner system, or any other system that the wit of man has yet 

 devised, would sooner or later have had to face the everlasting 

 agrarian difficulty. And the more the communities enjoyed gen- 

 eral health, peace, and plenty, the sooner would the pressure of 

 population upon the means of support make itself felt. The diffi- 

 culty paraded by the opponents of individual ownership, that, by 

 the extension of the private appropriation of the means of sub- 

 sistence, the time would arrive when men would come into the 

 world for whom there was no place, must needs make its appear- 

 ance under any system, unless mankind are prevented from mul- 

 tiplying indefinitely. For, even if the habitable land is the prop- 

 erty of the whole human race, the multiplication of that race 

 must, as we have seen, sooner or later, bring its numbers up tp 

 the maximum which the produce can support ; and then the in- 

 teresting problem in casuistry, which even absolute political eth- 

 ics may find puzzling, will arise : Are we, who can just exist, 

 bound to admit the new-comers who will simply starve them- 

 selves and us ? If the rule that any one may exercise his freedom 

 only so far as he does not interfere with the freedom of others is 

 all-sufficient, it is clear that the new-comers will have no rights 

 to exist at all, inasmuch as they will interfere most seriously with 

 the freedom of their predecessors. The population question is 

 the real riddle of the sphinx, to which no political CEdipus has as 

 yet found the answer. In view of the ravages of the terrible 

 monster over-multiplication, all other riddles sink into insignifi- 

 cance. 



But to return to the question of the manner in which indi- 

 vidual several ownership has, in our own and some other coun- 

 tries, superseded communal several ownership. There is an 

 exceedingly instructive chapter in M. de Laveleye's well-known 

 work on " Primitive Property," entitled " The Origin of Inequality 



