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CHAPTER XL.

OF CIRCULATION.

§ 1. WITH land abounding, our early colonist possessed no wealth having none of that material capital, and little of the mental, required for directing the natural forces to his service. Nature, herself, being strong for resistance to his efforts, and he being weak, he was wholly dependent on her bounty for supplies of food. Monarch of all he surveyed, he was still her slavebeing yet destitute of power resulting from combination with. others like himself. The larger his territory, the less, necessarily, was the power of association, and the greater the obstacles to his acquisition of wealth and power.

Discovering, at length, that he has a neighbor, he finds that instead of his wife and himself being its sole occupants, and he, himself, sole proprietor, he owns but half of it- his possessions being thus diminished. Is he, or is his neighbor, poorer than before? On the contrary, both are richer having acquired increase of power, resulting from the ability to combine their efforts for overcoming resistance that, thus far, had proved an overmatch for their divided efforts. Each now profits by the distinctive qualities of the other. One excelling in fishing, and the other in taking birds or rabbits, both are enabled to obtain larger supplies of food.

Their sons growing up, the land is again divided, with large increase of force. Their numbers further increasing, new divisions are required land thus decreasing in its ratio to population, while wealth and power as steadily increase. Consumption now more rapidly following production, individuality becomes more and more developed-with growing power of accumulation.

§ 2. In the early ages of society, land is wholly valueless. Men then hunt and fish their only property consisting of bows

and arrows, skins, and the little food they may have saved in summer, as provision against the wants of winter. Later, we find them in the shepherd state their flocks being numerous, and constituting their only wealth. value, is unhesitatingly abandoned exhausted. The community being voluntary circulation there is none himself compelled to move when others move, and thus producing the extraordinary emigrations recorded in Greek and Roman history.

Land being still without when the pasture becomes still but nature's slave, of each of its members finding

In this condition of society it is, that centralization most exists —the few who are strong of arm, or intellect, then exercising the largest amount of influence over the floating mass of which the community is composed. Poor, and often suffering for want of food, the latter are always ready to follow in the train of men like Brennus or Vercingetorix, Tamerlane or Bajazet, Genghis Khan or Nadir Shah — gladly aiding in stopping the circulation of society among others more advanced in wealth and power than themselves.

Later, they seek to obtain, by means of cultivation, increased supplies of food-land then acquiring some slight estimation, and the proportion borne by movable to fixed property, tending slightly towards diminution. Small communities then are seen appropriating land, to be temporarily divided among its occupants, as was the case in Gaul, in the days of Cæsar. So was it, too, in India. So is it now, as the reader has already seen, under the communistic system prevalent in Russia. Communism and semi-barbarism travel thus together-giving precisely the system recently urged upon the people of France, by philosophers holding that association and individuality are opposing principles.*

As a rule, however, those possessed of strength of arm have constituted themselves proprietors of extensive tracts of land

That the errors of modern Socialism are but a reproduction of those of French writers of the last century, is shown by M. de Tocqueville (L'Ancien Régime, chap. xv.) - the doctrines of "community of property, rights of labor, absolute equality, universal uniformity, mechanical regularity of individual movements, tyrannical regulations on all subjects, and the total absorption of the individual in the body politic," being as fully exhibited in Morelly's Code de la Nature, as in any of the writings of Proudhon, or Louis Blanc.

compelling those who were weak of body, or of mind, to expend their labor upon them, and giving in return such portion of the product as may seem required for preserving the slave in working order. This being the barbarous condition of society, wealth consists in movables- being reckoned by the number of beasts of burden, called men, women, and children, as is now the case in Carolina, Brazil, and Cuba. Land being held in vast tracts, it finds no circulation, and has little value. Man being then held

as property, he has no right of circulation among his fellow-men. At times, he is tied by law to the land- becoming adscriptus glebo. Yet earlier, he is liable to purchase and sale, apart from the land-circulating then, only in virtue of special permission granted by his master; as was the case in Norman England, and now is so, in Russia and Carolina.

Population and wealth further increasing, and employments becoming diversified, with increase in the power of association, and in the development of the various faculties of man, the blacksmith, the carpenter, the shoemaker, the miller, and the trader, come together to form the nucleus of the future town; and now it is, that land begins to be divided sometimes to be held in absolute ownership, and at others, on condition of the payment of yearly contributions to its owners, as compensation for its use.

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The town increasing, land becomes more and more divided each new house carrying with it a right to the exclusive occupation of the soil on which it stands. Wealth and power growing, property and person become more secure, with constant increase in the value of land, and in the freedom of man; and as constant decline in the value of the material property that in earlier days was held as the only wealth. Mind now gradually acquiring power over matter mental force is taking precedence of that which is purely physical and man is becoming less the slave of nature and of his fellow-man. Towns now become places of refuge men who have been held as slaves, seeking, in association with their fellow-men, the free exercise of the faculties by which they are distinguished from the brute.

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With every stage of progress, individuality becomes more and more developed men who have heretofore been limited to the single pursuit of tillage, now becoming carpenters and blacksmiths, masons or millers, and circulating among each other —

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freed from the obligation to ask permission of their masters. The various products of the earth becoming more and more utilized, the value of commodities declines, while that of land and man still further rises the slave becoming free, and his late master, the land-owner, becoming rich-and the beautiful harmony of natural laws being thus established.

§ 3. Circulation becomes more rapid as men become more free. Men become more free as land becomes more and more divided. Land becomes divided as wealth accumulates, and land, itself, acquires value. The rapidity of circulation is, therefore, in the direct ratio of the tendency in capital to become fixed and immovable.

Cedric

Seeking evidence of this, we may turn to England of the days of Cœur de Lion, when serfs were almost the only propertyGurth being then allowed the privilege of circulating among his fellow-men, only in consideration of wearing a collar testifying that he was "the born thrall of Cedric of Rotherwood." himself then ate from a table formed of rough-hewn planks - sitting, too, in a room half filled with smoke, protected against the weather only by a roof somewhat similar to those of the poorest of modern pig-styes being composed of the rudest planks, covered with thatch.*

*Ivanhoe, vol. i. chap. iv.

That the facts of early England are being reproduced in the nineteenth century, is shown by the following picture of the cabin of a Red River plantation-yielding, annually, sixty bales of cotton, whose worth may be taken at $3000:

"The house was a small square log-cabin, with a broad, open shed or piazza in front, and a chimney, made of sticks and mud, leaning against one end. A smaller detached cabin, twenty feet in the rear, was used for a kitchen. A cistern under a roof, and collecting water from the three roofs, stood between. The water from the bayou was not fit to drink, nor is the water of the Red River, or of any springs in this region. The people depend entirely on cisterns for drinking water. It's very little white folks need, however-milk, claret, and whisky being the more common beverages. "About the house was a large yard, in which were two or three Chinatrees, and two splendid evergreen Cherokee roses; half a dozen hounds; several negro babies; turkeys and chickens; and a pet sow, teaching a fine litter of pigs how to root and wallow. Three hundred yards from the house was a gin-house and stable, and in the interval between were two rows of comfortable negro cabins. Between the house and the cabins was a large post, on which was a bell to call the negroes. A rack for fastening horses stood near it. On the bell-post, and on each of the rack-posts, were nailed the antlers of a buck, as well as on a large oak-tree near by. On the logs of the kitchen a fresh deer-skin was drying, On the railing of the piazza

How trivial was then the value of land, is shown by the conditions of early leases all proving, that its use was obtainable in return for an annual contribution, that now appears to us entirely insignificant. As population increased, towns grew in number and in size-becoming strong to afford protection to those who sought it at their hands. Land steadily advanced in value wealth thus increasing with the diminished proportion borne by land to man. Division kept steady pace with wealth— the number of actual proprietors having been, in the days of Adam Smith, no less than 200,000, and the average proprietorship but 150 acres. Adding to these, those persons who had acquired permanent rights in lots in towns and cities, we should obtain perhaps twice that number - giving an owner for every 75 acres, and more than one for every five of the adult males; whereas, in the days of the Plantagenets, descendants of Norman knights held manors that counted by hundreds, and the Church was chief proprietor.

The circulation of landed property had, of course, much increased. While it remained in the hands of the Church, or of great barons, there could be none. So soon, however, as it passed from their hands, either by permanent division among heirs or purchasers, or by the grant of leases of long duration, it became a thing that could readily be bought and sold. The circulation of services, too, became more rapid. So long as the land continued thus locked up, but few exchanges could be made without the intervention of its proprietors, as rent-receivers, or as owners of the land, and of the serf by whom it was occupied. The land becoming divided, the class of free proprietors increased in number and in power-gradually freeing themselves from the necessity for paying rent for the use of land employed in raising

lay a Mexican saddle with immense wooden stirrups. The house had but one door, and no window, nor was there a pane of glass on the plantation.

Entering the house, we found it to contain but a single room, about twenty feet by sixteen. Of this space, one-quarter was occupied by a beda great four-poster, with the curtains open, made up in the French style, with a strong furniture-calico day-coverlid. A smaller camp-bed stood beside it. These two articles of furniture nearly filled the house on one side the door. At the other end was a great log fire-place, with a fine fire. The outer door was left constantly open to admit the light. On one side the fire, next the door, was a table; a kind of dresser, with crockery, and a bureau stood on the other side, and there were two deer-skin-seated chairs, and one (Connecticut-made) rocking-chair.”—OLMSTED: Texas Journey, p. 47.

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