THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. T45 
THE SCIENCE OF ECONOMICS. 
Synopsis of a paper read before the Philosophical Section, March 18th, 1893. 
BY JAS. T. BARNARD. 
Man, the creature of God, is himself by divine appointment a 
creator and a king. To him has been given mental capacity to plan, 
and to acquire skill to perform. His abode, the earth, abounds 
with material on which he must expend his powers to obtain things 
necessary for bodily needs and comfort. 
Man, endowed with life and entrusted with its maintenance, 
needs this earth. He is an earth-child. From it he has come and 
to it he shall return, and from it alone can he draw the means of 
preserving and sustaining the life given him in trust. 
Man’s right to life is alone supreme on earth. No other 
animal shares that supreme right with him. Reason and revelation 
unite in declaring that man is monarch absolute, and that other 
beings retain life only during his will and pleasure. Man may fell 
his ox even as he fells a tree and do no wrong. The life of both must 
be yielded up to minister to man’s needs. _ Killing an ox is not slay- 
ing a man, but every Cain is a murderer. 
As man’s life is an individual possession, so his right to the use 
of that which alone can maintain and preserve it is an individual right 
—his birthright, his possession till death. His right to the use of 
the earth for life maintenance is unassailable and inalienable. This 
right never trenches on that of all others. The limit of each man’s 
right to the use of the earth is the equal right of all other men. In 
the matter of life and the sustaining of life, all men are born free 
and equal. 
Equal rights to the use of the earth mean continuous free op- 
portunity to all men to produce according to their mental capacity, 
strength and manual skill. They mean also that each man has 
an equal title with all others to the use of the choicest locations or 
sites. This equality of right is easily and naturally maintained and 
practically recognized so long as there is an abundance of choicest 
