PROPERTY. 553 



private land-ownership.* As both changes are accompani 

 ments of a developing industrialism, it follows that in these 

 ways also, the individualization. of property in land is 

 furthered by it. 



At first sight it seems fairly inferable that the absolute 

 ownership of land by private persons, must be the ultimate 

 state which industrialism brings about. But though indus 

 trialism has thus far tended to individualize possession of 

 land, while individualizing all other possession, it may be 

 doubted whether the final stage is at present reached. 

 Ownership established by force does not stand on the same 

 footing as ownership established by contract ; and though 

 multiplied sales and purchases, treating the two ownerships 

 in the same way, have tacitly assimilated them, the assimi 

 lation may eventually be denied. The analogy furnished 

 by assumed rights of possession over human beings, helps 

 us to recognize this possibility. For while prisoners of war, 

 taken by force and held as property in a vague way (being at 

 first much on a footing with other members of a household), 

 were reduced more definitely to the form of property when 

 the buying and selling of slaves became general ; and while 

 it might, centuries ago, have been thence inferred that the 

 ownership of man by man was an ownership in course of 

 being permanently established ; yet we see that a later stage 

 of civilization, reversing this process, has destroyed owner 

 ship of man by man. Similarly, at a stage still more advanced 

 it may be that private ownership of land will disappear. As 

 that primitive freedom of the individual which existed before 

 war established coercive institutions and personal slavery, 

 comes to be re-established as militancy declines ; so it seems 

 possible that the primitive ownership of land by the com 

 munity, which, with the development of coercive institutions, 

 lapsed in large measure or wholly into private ownership, will 



* In our own case the definite ending of these tenures took place in 1660 ; 

 when, for feudal obligations (a burden on landowners) was substituted a 

 beer-excise (a burden on the community). 



