ORIGIN OF THE RIGHTS OF PROPERTY. 66 7 



some material things, such as lands, houses, money, corn, cattle, 

 etc. But that is not the true and original meaning of the word 

 property. 



" Property, in its true and original meaning, is not any mate- 

 rial substance, but the absolute right to something/' 



It is in the same sense that the socialists use the word. When 

 they demand the abolition of property they do not mean the abo- 

 lition of lands, houses, etc. They are as anxious as anybody that 

 wealth shall be increased. But they want it to be ours, not mine 

 or thine. Wealth which belongs to the whole people is not prop- 

 erty in the economic sense of the term. It is conceivable, though 

 not practically ascertainable, that property might be totally abol- 

 ished without any diminution of wealth. So property may be in- 

 creased without any increase of wealth. There would be just as 

 much land-surface on the earth if nobody owned a rood of it. 

 There were as many negroes after as before the abolition of prop- 

 erty in man. The abolition proclamation did not obliterate a 

 single acre of land, a house, a shred of clothing, or a mouthful of 

 food. But it did obliterate a vast amount of property ; so does 

 a commercial panic. " And yet," says Prof. Newcomb, using the 

 panic of 1837 as an illustration, " if we look at the case from a 

 common-sense point of view, we shall see that no wealth was de- 

 stroyed. There were just as many suits of clothes in the country 

 the day after the crisis as there were before, and they were just 

 as well fitted for wearing. The mills and factories were all in as 

 good order, the farms as fertile, and the crops as large after the 

 supposed hurricane as before. The houses remained standing, 

 the wood was in the wood-sheds ready for burning, and the food in 

 the larder ready for cooking, just as it had been left. In a word, 

 every appliance for the continued enjoyment of the fruits of labor 

 remained as perfect as it ever was." 



Prof. F. A. Walker, in calling attention to the distinction be- 

 tween wealth and property, says that "the neglect of this dis- 

 tinction has caused great confusion." But he soon dismisses the 

 subject with the remark that " we might say that f property ' is 

 not a word with which the political economist has anything to do. 

 It is legal, not economical, in its significance." I can not concur in 

 that opinion. I think the socialistic theory, which relates prima- 

 rily to the institution of property, is an economic theory, as truly 

 as monometalism, or free trade, or Malthusianism. The whole 

 subject of distribution, to which Prof. Walker devotes a hundred 

 pages, and which is certainly one of the most important in this or 

 any other science, is a question of whose shall be the wealth pro- 

 duced ; that is, it is a question of the distribution of property in 

 the wealth, rather than of the wealth itself. Whether two fisher- 

 men jointly carve out a partnership boat, or whether one furnishes 



