Q9 



mighty aggregate of conquests, the Roman empire, the various states 

 of modern Europe were founded by invasion and aggression. Nor 

 was force employed only in the formation of states. It was and is 

 still needed, even among peaceably disposed nations, among other pur- 

 poses, for the protection of the national boundaries. Thus it is natural 

 that the state at all times should have regarded the land upon which it 

 had established itself as its own property, and that, whilst granting the 

 possession and use of it to the individuals of which the nation was com- 

 posed, it should have reserved to itself a sovereign right of property. 

 Individual property in land is therefore essentially different in its origin 

 from individual property in moveables. Landed property is always 

 directly or indirectly a grant from the state, and held by the consent of 

 society, subject to such restrictions and burdens as the welfare of the 

 state may seem to dictate. The right to the exclusive possession and 

 enjoyment of the products of skill or ingenuity rests, by a natural law, 

 with the producer ; but land is not the product of human industry, and 

 it was appropriated by society before it was brought into cultivation, 

 before skill and labour had enhanced its value; or, it was forcibly 

 wrested by those who had done nothing to improve it, from those who 

 had spent time and labour in making it productive. 



It is upon these historical and speculative grounds that the legal 

 notions concerning property in land have been based at all times. The 

 state, whilst granting or recognising full private property in moveables, 

 has always claimed for itself an original property in the land, overruling 

 the rights of individuals as necessity, expediency, or policy might dic- 

 tate. In the despotic monarchies of Asia, in China, India, Persia, the 

 great landowner is the state, embodied and represented in the monarch. 

 As the despotism of the East does not admit of an hereditary aristocracy 

 to fill the space between the monarch and the tiller of the land, the 

 latter is brought into immediate contact with the sovereign as his land- 

 lord, and his political subjection is aggravated and perpetuated by his 

 social dependence. In his case it is a matter of doubt, whether what 

 he pays to his sovereign landlord should be called taxes or rent, for in 

 truth it is both the one and the other. 



There is every reason to believe that the arrangement just alluded to 

 has existed in Asia under every successive line of rulers, from time 

 immemorial. The Moguls and Arabs established it at their respective 

 conquests, and the Turks did the same ; but it must not be supposed 

 that they became acquainted with it only in the conquered districts, and 

 that they would not have introduced it if they had not found it established 

 among the people they conquered. The same system must have been 

 familiar to them in their native steppes and deserts ; for what individual 



