LAND NATIONALIZATION 259 



or neighbourhood, belongs at all times to the living inhabi- 

 tants of the said country or neighbourhood in an equal 

 manner. For, as I said before, there is no living but on land 

 and its productions, consequently what we cannot live with- 

 out we have the same property in as our lives." 



Spence further opposed centralized government as much 

 as any individualist of our day, and advocated a system of 

 free communal home-rule, every parish owning its own land 

 and managing its own affairs. 



A few years later, in 1782, Professor Ogilvie published 

 anonymously, " An Essay on the Right of Property in Land " 

 (a volume of 120 pages). He lays down the principle that 

 no right to property in land can justly arise except through 

 occupancy and labour upon it, and even this must be limited 

 by the equal rights of every other individual. And after 

 discussing the various laws and circumstances of modern 

 civilized communities, he shows how the laws can be amended 

 so as to bring about a just distribution of land. This is a 

 thoughtful, well-reasoned, and clearly written work, yet it 

 remained almost unknown to successive generations of 

 reformers. 



A few years later than H. Spencer (in 1856), but apparently 

 quite independently of him, a very remarkable work was 

 published in London, under the title " On the Evils, Impolicy, 

 and Anomaly of Individuals being Landlords and Nations 

 Tenants," by Robert Dick, M.D. This was a very compre- 

 hensive work, anticipating the main thesis of Henry George, 

 as shown by the following passage from the introductory 

 chapter : " My design, in short, is to show that wealth, 

 accumulated in individuals and classes, necessarily implies 

 poverty elsewhere, in like manner as exemption from labour 

 by some men and classes, of necessity implies double, treble, 

 quadruple labour in others." He then lays down a number 

 of fundamental propositions, which are so brief, clear, and 

 forcible, and go so directly to the root of all those social 

 problems which demand solution to-day even more peremp- 

 torily than they did a century ago, that I will give the more 

 important of them here: — 



