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countries, and beginning to be raised and lil^ely at some time 

 to become prominent with us, concerning the tenure of land, 

 and the extent, especially, of the right of private property in 

 it. It is fundamental in your calling. The earth is given to 

 the race of man. It belongs, subject only to necessary and 

 reasonable limitations, equally to all. This premise of the 

 socialist and the radical can not be overturned ; and it is not 

 properly his alone, but it is in many ways involved in our 

 public law. It is of importance, then, for the farmer living 

 upon land he calls his own, to be able to show, as I think he 

 can, that that mode of distribution of this common inheritance 

 in the earth by which, subject to various limitations from 

 powers reserved by the body of society, he is allowed to take 

 and hold and transmit as his own a certain portion of land, is 

 in accordance with natural justice, and is for the general good, 

 and is practically that distribution by which, on the wl\ole, 

 every man, of every occupation, may receive the largest return 

 from the productive powers of the earth, and may really enter 

 most fully into his own share in its possession.* 



* The abuudance and clioapness of land in our country has thus far prevented 

 any considerable discussion of this question. It will not be so indefinitely in the 

 future. And it is time now that the true moral foundation of the legal right, as 

 it exists among us, should be distinctly understood. Many persons would be 

 inclined at first to deny that the earth belongs in substantial equality to all men. 

 But that denial can not be maintained, and ought not to be. The true course is 

 to admit that general ownership, and then, as intimated above, to make the issue 

 upon the manner of the apportionment. It can then be made to appear that the 

 interests of all men are really i^romoted by the existing arrangement. 



Great numbers of men are not able to occupy for themselves any part of the 

 soil of the earth, being busied with other jjursuits. Their interest in it is to be 

 able to buy most clieajjly its products. This they can best do when each man 

 tilling the soil is allowed to own the land he tills ; as experience and reason show. 

 But this title of private ownership is by no means an absolute one. It is quali- 

 fied first by the legal reservations held by the body of the community in the right 

 of eminent domain — a right of far more extensive practical ajjplication than most 

 peoide are aware of — api)earing even in the matter of the power of taxation, and 

 of the creation of a i)ublic debt, which becomes a lien on the land ; and secondly 

 by the moral conditions of the case, which make the private owner really a kind 

 of trustee for all mankind. 



It is plain, too, that a man ought not to be allowed to own and hold, against 

 occupation by those who would settle upon and till it, vast areas of land. It 

 may be that there will be needed with us no legal provisions against this evil, 

 beyond what are involved in the rules now existing with respect to the distribution 

 of estates at the owners' death and the virtual prohibition of entails. But care 

 should certainly be taken in this respect in the disposal of the public lands. 



