cially required security of tenure. The tiller of the soil, therefore, had every inducement to claim the ownership of the land he occupied and to seize the land of his neighbour if he felt himself powerful enough to do so. If the domestication of animals awakened the lust for gain and started slavery on its long career, the tillage of the soil strongly confirmed both tendencies. In the pastoral stage the slave had been employed as cowherd, swineherd and shepherd, but this work did not call for a large labour-force. With agriculture, however, it was different. Labour was in much demand and the cheapest kind was enforced labour. Hence a large use of and possibly a considerable traffic in slaves sprang up as soon as exchange of the surplus products of the soil became possible. The ownership of lands and slavery grew up together and both were based on force or seizure rather than on what we now call justice, but at least it may be said that through this seizure of land and labour by the powerful, a stable society was evolved out of the primitive chaos of unorganized nomad hordes.

The evolution of private property in land did not take place in all countries with equal rapidity nor did it go through the same stages everywhere. In most countries yet it is more difficult to buy or sell land than movable property. In Russia, for example, the communal system was only beginning to break up before the great war. In the Southern States the old system of large plantations individually owned worked by slave-labour and superficially cultivated prevailed down to eighteen hundred and sixty. In England property in land began with the manorial system, passed through the feudal stage, and finally in the eighteenth century, through enclosures of the common lands by the large land-owners, issued in a semi-feudal system whereby the land is held largely by a few great landlords but in such a form of tenure that it has been difficult to sell or transfer it. Even in countries where the free ownership of land is completely established, its sale or transfer is made more or less difficult by requiring the consent of the wife to the sale and by the formalities in connexion with the registering of the deed. Only in Australia as yet have these formalities been reduced to a minimum, but it is probably only a question of time before it will be possible

in all civilized countries to buy and sell land as freely as any other property.

The right of property, as we have seen, has undergone a long evolution with respect to its object. A similar evolution has taken place with reference to its attributes. Owners of property have not always had the same freedom to do what they liked with it which they have to-day. Each so-called attribute has had its history. Probably the right to use or exploit property to the owner's advantage was the first one to be seized or granted. But even this right is limited by the law of 'eminent domain' and the law which prevents one from using the property so as to create a nuisance for his neighbour. The right to sell and lease, though they may seem to us now to be involved in the very notion of ownership, were not acquired along with the right to use but were gained only after a long struggle. So long as property belonged to the whole family, any attempt on the part of an individual member to sell was regarded as impious. strong motive to sell so long as the cient, for, then as now, the ultimate purchase. Sale for a long time was exceptional and abnormal, and was kept within strict bounds by unusual formalities and wide publicity-sale in open market-in order to protect the community from the stranger. The right to bequeath was still later in being established, especially the right to bequeath land. That right ran counter to the interests of the family, and accordingly has been limited in all countries-in France by the Civil Code, in Anglo-Saxon countries by the dower right of the widow and, to an ever-increasing degree, by inheritance-taxes in almost all industrial nations.

Nor was there any family was self-suffipurpose of sale was

From this brief sketch we may see, then, that the right of property has been subject to a long evolution. The content of the term 'property' has passed through many changes. It has meant property in human beings such as slaves, wives and children; property in herds and flocks; property in roads and highways; property in personal goods; property in movable objects; property in land; property in copyright and patentrights; property in bonds and stocks; property in trade-marks and franchises, and even property in the good-will of a busi

ness or of a professional man. The right to hold property has also been subject to evolution. At one time only the sovereign could hold it; at another time only the head of a family. At one time the right was denied to slaves, strangers and women; now it is granted to all, even to so-called 'legal persons' such as firms, corporations and foundations. Finally the right to use, to give away, to sell or lease and to bequeath have been limited in some respects in all ages and in all countries and some of them are now being challenged more and more by the State through 'eminent domain', the police-power and income and inheritance taxes.

What, then, is the upshot of our brief historical inquiry? At least it seems clear that whatever the basis of private property may be, it is not what has been called a natural right to property. It is surely absurd to clap the word property on all the different objects to which it has been attached in the past and then contend that the right of property is always absolute, inalienable and inviolable. That is what the slaveowner claimed for the institution of slavery but his claim was denied. We do not defend private property but only invite easy refutation when we advance such extreme claims. The right to property is no part of the law of nature. No such law controls the animal-world. No such law prevailed in primitive human society. We have civilized our human relations only by escaping from the law of nature, the law that might is right, that "he may take who has the power and he may keep who can." In the sense in which the word 'natural' is used in this connexion private property is unnatural and, if you will, artificial or at least man-made, for it is not found in a state of nature at all. We must take the word 'natural' in this context in an entirely different sense. The instinct of sex, the instinct of self-assertion and the instinct of pugnacity are all natural but no one would claim that he had a natural or absolute right to exercise these instincts entirely without reference to the consequences for society. So the collecting or acquisitive instinct is natural but the right to exercise it is limited by the equal rights of all the other members of the community. The whole doctrine of 'natural rights' has been transformed in the last half century under

the influence of the idea of evolution and the new historical attitude which that idea has rendered inevitable.

Nevertheless, there is an element of permanent value in the doctrine of the natural right to property when it is adequately stated. Man is so constituted by nature that he needs a multiplicity of things to realize his powers. If you were to provide the animals with beautiful clothes, furnished homes, books, musical instruments, tools and utensils, automobiles and other transportation facilities, they could make no use of them so as to become greater than they now are. They can become all that it is possible for them to become without any of these forms of property. But man cannot become a real man without an increasing dominion over things. Rob the human race of its clothes, houses, productive capital, transportation facilities and other material possessions, and you not only force all men back into a state of subjection to the elemental forces of nature, but you also make it impossible for them to become persons. Property is essential to the realization of personality. If it is legitimate to say that man's end in this world is to achieve personality, it is equally legitimate to say that he has a right to the means by which alone personality can be achieved, namely, property. In this sense it is true that man's right to property is natural and as such prior to the laws and institutions of any particular society. One may go so far as to say that the worth of any particular society is determined by its success in guaranteeing to individual men and women the opportunity and the means to become persons, that is, by its success in creating and diffusing an adequate amount of private property. But of course this argument cuts two ways. It can be used not only in a conservative campaign to uphold the property-rights of the present holders of property, but also in a progressive campaign to extend the privilege of the ownership of property to all the adult members of society. On the one hand, it is an acknowledgement that property is indispensable to personality. On the other hand, it is a demand that every human being shall have the opportunity to become a person if he wishes to avail himself of it. But when we combine both sides of the argument, it is a permanently valid one. From the individual's

point of view, the moral justification of private property is the right of every human being to become a person and, therefore, to have access to the means for the achievement of personality, namely, private property. How much each one needs would be, of course, difficult to say, but at least it may be said that each one's need ought to be determined by the nature and variety of his interests and the significance of the social function he is performing.

The individual as such needs private property in order to become a person. But society or the group of interdependent individuals also profits from the possession of property by the individual. Society's first need is abundant production of economic goods and services-a fact that the moral idealist does not always see. He is generally more interested in just distribution than in abundant production. He concentrates on abuses to which private property has led,-the excessive rent, profits and interest which the holders of private property have often been able to exact, the appalling inequalities and injustices which have grown out of the system-and as he studies these abuses he becomes persuaded that a just distribution of wealth is our first social need. But the community as a whole has always been more interested in abundant production than in an ideal distribution. The demand for goods and services is so great that the productiveness of an economic system rather than its equity is the first test of its social value. It may be possible to make communism look attractive on paper to a few, but the general community, which is little interested in paper-programmes, is sure to estimate its value by the abundance and cheapness of the goods it produces. On this basis no historical student of economic systems can hesitate to affirm the social utility of private property. There can be no doubt that some people have always suffered at those periods when the economic system was passing from one stage to another but there can be just as little doubt that the community as a whole ultimately benefited by the changes. The passage from the pastoral to the agricultural stage meant increased and more irksome labour for a large part of the community but it made possible a larger population and a securer economic basis for life. The passage from kinship to