482 History of the English Landed Interest. 



taken root in America, where, whenever municipal improve- 

 ments increase the vahie of suburban property, the proprietors 

 are subjected to a graduated tax. There is no telling how 

 soon the same process may be introduced into this country, 

 so that it affords us a good example, both of the direction 

 in which Mill's genius was working, and the powerful and 

 lasting influence it exercises on the human race. 



By means of a Sorites^ we are led link after link along the 

 chain of his argument. First, we have a definition of private 

 property ; next, we have subtle distinctions drawn between 

 different kinds of property ; then we have landed property 

 singled out as subject to laws and rights different from those 

 of other sorts of property ; and, lastly, the attack on seignorial 

 monopolies unmasks itself. Each person, it is contended, 

 has " a right of exclusive disposal of what he has produced 

 by his own exertions, or received by gift or fair agreement, 

 without force or fraud, from those who produced it." And, 

 farther, though nothing ought to be treated as private pro- 

 perty which has been acquired by force or fraud, yet, possession 

 which has not been legally questioned within a moderate 

 number of years ought to be a complete title. Mill's next 

 point is to show that the right of exclusive ownership cannot 

 be applied to all kinds of property. The raw material of the 

 earth is -not the produce of labour, and if it were possible to 

 separate the gifts of nature from the productions of human 

 industry, he would hand over the former to the community, 

 only allowing the individual owner to retain the latter. 

 Though the land itself is not the produce of industry, most of 

 its valuable qualities are ; and, so long as its proprietor is its 

 improver. Mill suffers him to exist. He will, however, have no 

 sinecurist quartered on the soil ; maintaining that private 

 property under such circumstances fails to fulfil the original 

 conditions by which he had defined it. With admirable skill 

 the great utilitarian turns this piece of reasoning into an at- 

 tack on the system of family settlements, pointing out how an 

 English landloid is by this process severed from the pecuniary 

 resources which would enable him to improve his property, 

 and is forced to depend on borrowed capital for the funds re- 



