Property, its duties and rights, historically, philosophically and religiously regarded

Preface To Second Edition

k NEW edition of this volume of essays offers oppor- ;uiiity for some words of preface, suggested by experimce connected with the former one.

Appreciative as was the reception generally accorded our undertaking, there were certain criticisms of its !Cope which showed that the idea governing its plan n the writers ' minds was not always equally present to hose of its readers. Complaint was made that it dealt lither with too many aspects of Property or with too lew. In particular, separate treatment of the legal and jhe economic sides of the subject was desired. As bgards the legal aspect, its omission was due simply to jircumstances ; and now what was always part of the ichem.e is happily supplied in the new essay by Profes- 5or W. M, Geldart. This falls naturally into the argunent and strengthens the proof of our general thesis, )y showing the essentially relative character of the ight of property even on its legal side. It has no privilege in our law to protect it against the control of he community, which, acting through the sovereign egislature, has power to re-fashion, to abridge, and to jinnu].. It is not one and immutable, but finds its place n a world of rights, public and private, to each of ^hich varying boundaries are assigned from time to ime in accordance with changing views of public policy. Sven at any one time it will exist under diverse forms, vi PEOPERTY

designed to further the ends, now of the individnai now of groups which have a narrower or wider socia^ significance. To add such an essay is strictly germani to the whole scope of the volume.

On the other hand, to include a discussion of th'i application of our root idea to the actual economic situation, with all its complexities and disputable dataf is quite another matter. *^One thing at a time" is jf sound maxim in such a connection. The primary tasl'^ is to discover the true idea of property by a wide sunf vey of the facts of past experience and theory, in ordei* that it may guide our thinking as a regulative principle' when we come to analyse the existing social and eco: nomic order and consider how it may be made more just for all. It makes a vast difference in the long rui whether a man has at the back of his mind in all hij judgments the principle, ' ^ One has a right to do as oni likes with one's own," in the crude sense of what is h one 's power, and may so remain, without breach of tht| law of the land ; or, on the other hand, the idea of prop^ erty as a social trust or stewardship. Change of atti) tude here is the most ** practical" thing that can happeif to men. It will set each to think out for himself his o^vii obligations under existing conditions; and this effort in turn will create the atmosphere in which publi( measures of reform can be devised and carried out to the best effect. Accordingly it seemed sound in theory and practice not to include in the present volume an essay, however tentative, containing any particulai plan of economic reconstruction.

Since the Essays were written a European "War ha^i' burst upon us : but it has only enhanced the relevancei

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION vii

md urgency of their main idea. Indeed, it has afforded % most impressive object-lesson of its truth, in that we lave seen both public legislation and the spontaneous vorking of the individual's conscience acting instinctvely upon it. Thus in furnishing a reasoned justificaion of the principle of the relativity of private property

i"o the common weal, this volume can claim attention as I tract for these grave times. In so saying one has not phieiiy in mind the demands made upon each by the jeeds of his fellows-countrymen during the war. Comparatively few, one hopes, will overlook or shirk these, jven under the influence of an inadequate theory as ;o the social nature and obligations of property. One |hinks rather of the days yet to come after the war, hen the long and more prosaic task of repairing he fabric of society and meeting the awful wastage )f resources in material and vital wealth will make pt severer because more sustained demands upon patriotism.

J There is around us at this hour a new sense of the lormal place of sacrifice in life, and of the enhanced jneaning and dignity which it gives to manhood and ^omanhood, especially when it becomes the pervasive jitmosphere of a whole nation 's being. The recognition hat our daily life is a campaign for a high common 3ause, mth its constant call for loyalty and discipline jind self-sacrifice, and its lesson that individual rights in property are all relative to dutiful use in that cause, is 3eing burnt into us by experiences which must leave pach and all either more sensitive or more callous the solidarity of human life in a nation. It is in

such a day as this that we reissue the reasoned plea viii PKOPEETY

which these essays in their unity amid diversity vir-- tually constitute, to reconsider the social basis and character of property and its consequent obligations. One immediate and appropriate result of a discerning perusal of this volume should be a fresh readiness in the! economically strong to shoulder the burdens of thej weak — the phenomenon of the cheerful tax-payer. That' would be a good beginning. But many further applica-j tions of its principle of social and economic justice will be necessary, if we are to reap to the full the abiding; fruits of that new vision of unity and mutual depend-' ence which flashed on us early in August 1914.

J. V. B.

Contents

INTEODUCTION

FACE

By Charles Gore, D.D., D.C.L., LL.D., Bishop of

Introduction

By the Bishop of Oxford

I THINK that I shall best justify my appearance as introducing this volume of Essays if I explain the circumstances of their origin. Dr. Bartlet, of Mansfield College, Oxford, had written a letter to the British WeeMy strongly urging upon Christians the duty of reconsidering their ideas about property in the light of the Bible doctrine of stewardship — the doctrine that Grod the Creator is the only absolute owner of all things or persons—that **all things come of Him" and are ^^His own," and that we men hold what we hold as stewards for the purposes of His Kingdom, with only a relative and dependent ownership limited at every point by the purpose for which it was entrusted to us. He was good enough to send me his letter and to suggest that we might combine to issue some literature of a popular kind about the duties and rights of property based on this Biblical doctrine.

Naturally I felt a cordial sympathy with the idea, but I said that before anything of a popular kind was issued, I thought that we needed some more thorough or philosophical treatment of property in idea and history. The Bible doctrine by itself makes an appeal of tremendous force to the individual conscience. But the individual, however deeply stirred in his conscience, ^^ however fully convinced that he must not conform himself to the ideas of property which happen to be cur-

xi xii PEOPEETY

rent in society but mnst assert the Christian principle, finds himself in fact in the bonds of an organized system of property. By himself he can do very little. As a consumer, as a shareholder, as a tradesman, as an owner of land, as a shop assistant, as a clerk, as a workman, he finds himself paralysed by the system of which inevitably he forms a part. The system is not unalterable. It has altered profoundly in more directions than one within recent history, and is altering. But at every stage it holds the individual in its grasp. Not even by *' going out of the world,'' not even were he to do so strange a thing as to become a monk, can he get out of it. The clothes he wears, the food he eats, the railways he travels by, the books he buys, the State he belongs to, hold him in the grip of the system. What he cries out for, when his conscience is awakened, is not merely personal guidance, but also ideas which can be applied to society; not merely again schemes for law-making, but ideas such as must lie behind law-making and without which law-making is in vain. He wants an ideal of property, a principle of property, such as will tend to form a corporate conscience, at first among those who are consciously dissatisfied with things as they are and consciously in want of a theory, and then more widely in society as a whole.

The Lord Chancellor, Lord Haldane, has just^ been speaking noble and suggestive words to the lawyers of the American Bar Association on the power of a common mind, or common feeling as to what is legitimate and illegitimate, when it has become instinctive and dominant in a society. But this common mind about property is conspicuously lacking amongst us. We are groping in the dark. We are familiar with the traditional cry of *Hhe rights of property," and we are pain-

1 September 1, 1913.

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fully familiar also with the disastrous wrongs which the law and custom of property as it exists among us has inflicted and is inflicting. But we want a theory, a principle to guide us. We cannot act with any power as ^ mere individuals without a corporate mind and conscience on the subject; and we can form no corporate mind and conscience without a clear principle. It was this principle, tiiis philosophy of property, in which, when I listened to Dr. Bartlet's appeal, I felt myself lacking. Without it I cannot play my part effectively as a citizen and still less as a moral teacher. Any moral teaching which is to grip men's minds requires it as a background. Therefore, before engaging in a popular propaganda, I needed to clear up the principle of property.

So I felt : so I knew others were feeling. And, Dr. Bartlet agreeing, we set to work to get written a volume of essays on property in which the subject should be treated both from the standpoint of philosophy and of religion. Divisions of the subjects were easily suggested, and names of willing writers were finally forthcoming; and the present volume is the result of our efforts. Mr. Leonard Hobhouse begins with a statement of the early history of property and its later developments. Dr. Rashdall and Mr. Lindsay deal with the principle of property from the side of philosophy, historically and critically. Dr. Bartlet, Dr. Carlyle, and Mr. Wood give us the history of the treatment of property in Christendom from the side of religion. Dr. Holland concludes with an essay on the aspect of the .natter which the previous essays have shown to be of the first importance — ^the relation of property to personality. Some differences, of emphasis at least, will be felt between different writers, but not such as to interfere with a marked unity of tendency and result.

xiv PEOPERTY

After reading these essays, I ask myself, How far have I and those who share my need for guidance towards a working principle of property got what we sought? I answer the question for myself by saying that the writers give me the impression of having got to the root of the matter ; they write with thorough and adequate knowledge and genuine impartiality; and as a result they help me most effectively to a standing-ground on certain dominant ideas or constructive principles by which I can guide myself and feel assurance in seeking to guide others, ideas and principles such as ought to have power to form a corporate conscience or common mind about property in the men of to-day — to act both as a secure basis of policy in promoting reform and as a ground of appeal to the Christian conscience.

Mr. Hobhouse shows the way in his distinction between property *^for use" and property **for power.'' This is a most fruitful distinction. Aristotle was the first to make the familiar appeal on behalf of private property that it is necessary for the free development of the higher life in the individual, and is the most effective stimulus to character and personal exertion. We are all familiar with the argument, and we feel its force to the full. The average man wants the sphere which he can call **his own" to stimulate him to develop himself, to get room to move freely and realize what he is capable of. Now Aristotle is able calmly to contemplate this self-realization as the privilege of the few — the freemen or citizens — ^while the larger mass of the inhabitants of his city are to be slaves, men conceived to exist not for themselves but for their masters. To us this distinction is intolerable. We are bound to believe that, whatever inequalities must subsist among men, every man has the divine and equal right to realize himself. The success of a civilization for us must be

INTEODUCTION xv

measured not by the amount and character of its products or material wealth, nor by the degree of well-being which it renders possible for a privileged class, but by the degree in which it enables all its members to feel ^ that they have the chance of making the best of themselves, to feel that an adequate measure of free self-realization is granted them. On this ground then our civilization is open to the most serious indictment. Property **for use'' — what a man needs for true freedom, what even at the utmost he is able to use — is a very limited quantity on the whole. Very speedily, as it expands, it becomes ^^ property for power": it becomes at last the almost unmeasured control by the few rich, not of any amount of unconscious material, but of other ^ men whose opportunity to live and work and eat becomes subject to their will. That is where property has so manifestly gone wrong. In our own civilization we find vast masses of men and women who cannot be reasonably described as having any adequate measure of property for use. They cannot go out into life with the security of free men. They cannot, within reasonable limits, control their own destiny. They cannot realize themselves. They are ** hands" for other men to use. The conviction rises in our mind as we contemplate the facts that something has gone very wrong with our tenure of property : that we need by peaceful ^ means, and, if it may be, by general consent, to accomplish such a redistribution of property as shall reduce the inordinate amount of *^ property for power" in the hands of the few and give to all men, as far as may be, in reasonable measure ^^ property for use." Then we ask ourselves. Are we in entertaining such an ambition violating any sacred right of property? We interrogate the philosophers, and we find under Dr. Eashdall's guidance that we can discern no absolute right of propxvi PEOPEETY

erty. "Ifs justification must depend upon no a prion

\ principle but upon its social effects." We may say that

a man has a divine right to realize his being : and this

involves a certain right of property. But this goes but

a very little way. Moreover, from the first man is a

social animal. He realizes himself in connnunities.

Property is made possible and seciired^by the commu

nity, which becomes in developed society the State.' The

State exists to enable its members to develop a worthy

, human life. A State must be judged, and should judge

itself, by its tendency to generate in all its citizens s

worthy type of life — to make them happy and progres

sive beings who feel that life is worth living. If at an^

stage it finds that the institution of property, as i1

exists, is fostering luxury and exaggerated power in i

few, and enslaving or hindermg the many, there h

nothing to prevent it rectifying what is amiss. Prop

^ erty is relative to character : it is a means towards i

good life, and a good life for all men. The State is

free to alter its laws or its methods so as to secure it;

better distribution. As it is only the State whicl

enables a man to become rich, so, if wealth prove;

inimical to the general development, the possessors o

wealth have no legitimate claim to urge against th^

State taking measures to redress the balance, provide(

that the end which the State has in view is the true enc

— the real welfare of all its citizens. No doubt, as Mi

Lindsay shows, it is a difficult process to guard thi

sacred right of personal freedom against State tyranni

on the one hand, and on the other to prevent the exces

of individualism which means in practice the enslave

ment of the many to the few. But because it is difficul

to direct human life aright individually or socially, w

must not, therefore, abandon what alone makes huma:

life worth living — the effort to realize a worthy idea"|

INTEODUCTION xvii

And what has religion — the Christian religion which exists to teach men that the end of their being is to serve the glory of God and the real good equally of themselves and of their fellows — to say to the institution of property! The Old Testament, on which Christianity is based, describes the theocratic community; and its moral principles have, as the Christian is taught to believe, a permanent validity — to be developed and not to be superseded. Well then, a man cannot read the law and the prophets from the point of view of one who would think rightly about private property, without seeing how, alike in the institutions of the law and in the teaching of the prophets, the intention is to recognize it, indeed, as having God's sanction, but to restrain it by a peremptory insistence on the right of God, the only absolute owner, and the rights of our fellow men, especially the weaker and poorer members of the State. Much that we are accustomed to hear called legitimate insistence upon the rights of property, the Old Testament would seem to call the robbery of God, and the grinding of the faces of the poor.

Later the teaching of Jesus Christ about the worth of each individual, the poorest /and the weakest, expressed itself in the Christian idisa of brotherhood, and the institution of the Church as a body in which ''ii I one member suffer, all the members suffer with if ' This idea and institution carried with it a doctrine of 1 property, which echoed our Lord's strong disparagejment of wealth, and was in theory and practice highly ^communal. The Christians were a persecuted body, who had no power of controlling the law or practice of [the society of the Empire ; but within their own **volun- ^tary'' society the claim of the brethren was paramount. :The scoffer, Lucian, notes this as their characteristic: '** Their leader, whom they yet adore, had persuaded xviii PEOPERTY

them that they were all brethren : in compliance with his laws they looked with contempt on all worldly treasures and held everything in common," or (as this is morei accurately expressed), '*It is incredible with what alacrity those people defend and support their conunon interests — the interest of any of their number — and! spare nothing, in short, to promote it." Thus thei Christian church became a corporation for mutual support, refusing the idler who would not work, but for the rest accepting the maxim that they ''must provide one! another with support, with all joy : furnishing those who: lack occupation with employment, and thus with the necessary livelihood. To the workman, work; to him who cannot work, mercy (or alms)."^ There is no doubt that this profound sense of the communal claim on private property and this practically effective sense of brotherhood produced an economic condition in thej Christian community which was one main cause of its; progress. The Fathers use the strongest languagej against any ''right of property," which resists the claim of the needs of the brethren. Dr. Bartlet writes with a studied moderation about all this, and shows no little insight in accounting for the disappointing fact that when Christianity became the established religion, it did so little to impress its ideal of property upon the! law and custom of the later Empire. But certainly the church bore the strongest witness to the idea of property as a trust for the common good. And in no way is this more strikingly shown than in its identifican tion of "charity" — that is, charity in the narrower sense of almsgiving — ^with justice.^ The needy can claim our alms as a matter of justice : to retain morei

2 Pseudo-Clement, Ep. 8; see Harnack, Expansion of Christianity (Williams & Norgate), i. p. 218. i

3 This is especially but not exclusively characteristic of the Weaternsi —Cyprian, Lactantius, Ambrose, etc.

INTEODUCTION xix

property than we strictly need is a violation of justice, and not merely a failure to perform a work of supererogation. Lord Hugh Cecil has recently drawn a strong distinction between charity and justice. He says ** originally the relief of the poor was based on the duty of Christian charity, and not on any supposed right of justice,''* As far as Early Christianity is concerned the distinction here drawn would be repudiated. To withhold charity is to refuse justice. And when we pass from the Early Christian period to the Middle AgeSp when the whole fabric of society was in Christian hands we find the old principle asserted. Charity in the form of tithe, and more generally distribution of wealth to need, is still asserted to be justice and the withholding of it injustice. *^No man has really the right to hold for himself more than he needs." And the Stoic principle of a law of nature behind and controlling the law of the State, is adopted in dealing with property. Private property, and laws maintaining the rights of private property, are necessary as a protection against the lawlessness of fallen human nature; but behind the laws is the original principle by which all things are common, which gives to every man his right to what he needs, so that even stealing, St. Thomas maintains, is no stealing if the need is sufficiently urgent, and property has no claim which is valid against the natural or fundamental right of every man to enjoy the bounty of the Creator. It ought to be added that in mediaeval society a very large share of property was held by the religious houses, who at their best maintained in practical action the principle of voluntary poverty, and at their lower level exhibited on the largest scale the principle of communal ownership within their own membership and for the sake of the poor.

^ Cofisei'vatism (Williams & Norgate), p. 172.

XX PEOPEETY

Amongst the Eeformers there were some who maintained the old Christian instinct unimpaired. No nobler practical insistence on the trne conception of property can be found than is to be found in the sermons of Hugh Latimer; but, on the whole, the candid reader of Mr. Wood's most interesting essay, with its valuable catena of quotations, will feel that Protestantism in general, and not least our English Protestantism, embodied an excessive individualism,^ as in other respects so also in regard to property. It abandoned much of the content which the Bible or earlier Christianity had given to the commandment, ^^Thou shalt not steal.'' It ushers in the epoch in which the doctrine of the right of property is largely stripped of its old limitations.®

What are we to say, then, about the still dominant individualism, the assertion of an almost unlimited right of acquiring, retaining, and perpetuating property, which breaks out against either any strongly urged moral claim for voluntarily giving better conditions to the poorer workers as an act of justice, or

5 It may be the case that the greater individualism in the conception of property which characterizes Protestant literature would be found to be more or less characteristic of the thought of Europe generally, whether Protestant or Catholic, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and to be due, not only to Protestant tendencies, but to a widespread change in the economic structure of society.

6 But out of the heart of the eighteenth century we do well to recall that Bishop Butler, in defending the right of the lay holder of what had formerly been Church property to retain his property with a good conscience, does so on grounds which involve the principle that there is no absolute or perpetual right of property. "Property in general is, and must be, regulated by the laws of the community. . . . Every donation to the Christian church is a human donation and no more; and therefore cannot give a divine right, but such a right only as must be subject in common with all other property to human laws. . . . The persons who gave these lands to the church had themselves no right in perpetuity in them, consequently could convey no such right to the church. But all scruples concerning the lawfulness of laymen possessing these lands go upon the supposition that the church had such a right in perpetuity in them; and therefore all those scruples must be groundless as going upon a false supposition." See a letter of Bishop Bmtler's in Fitzgerald's edition of the Analogy, Preface, p. xciii.

INTRODUCTION xxi

against any action of the State wMcIl tends in the direction of a more equitable distribution of the proceeds of industry?

We are bound to say that, looking at the matter philosophically, it has no validity. The particular laws which at any moment regulate the holding of property, or determine the burden which it is to bear for the public good^ are laws of the State ; it is the State which alone enables property to be gathered and held ; and there is no legitimate claim which property can make against what appears to be the welfare of the State. It is hardly possible to state the principle too strongly. We are only saying the same thing in other words if we say that the tenure of property in any community must be judged by its tendency to promote what alone is the real end of civil society — that is, the best possible life for man in general and all men in particular. If it appears that the conditions of property-holding at any particular period sacrifice the many to the few, and tend to starve the vitality or destroy the hope or depress the efforts of masses of men and women, there is no legitimate claim that property can make against the alteration of conditions by gradual and peaceable means.

Can such a charge be made out against the present conditions under which in our country property is acquired and held or handed on ? I fear that it can be made out and pressed home.

The stimulus of unlimited acquisition, it is sometimes pleaded, is necessary to bring out of men their greatest capacity and energy. If you restrain a man's freedom to acquire, you damp his energy. But what about the energy of the masses of men who can acquire no property or no sufficient property to give them secure status and hope ? If you go some way towards equalizxxii PEOPERTY

ing opportunity, as between one man and another, will you not stimulate a thousand energies and interests to one which you may cheek?

The most formidable form of this plea is that which represents to us that in modern industry the most important factor is the brain of the great organizer ; that this will only work under the stimulus of unlimited acquisition of wealth and personal power; and that if in our own country this power of unlimited acquisition is restricted, the men of greatest initiative will go to countries where no such restrictions exist, and our own industrial life will suffer. This is a terrible argument — the argument that what is most powerful in men cannot be induced to act in the public interest but only on the motive of unrestricted selfishness. There are many experiences in modern industrial life to be set against it. It may, however, be a motive for proceeding gradually in reforming industrial conditions, and a ground for strengthening international fellowship among reformers, so that similar tendencies may be apparent in all countries. But it can never be a ground for tying the hands of justice ; and it leaves altogether out of account the stimulus to industry which is to be anticipated in any country in which more and more men in the industrial world can feel that it is worth while to do their best.

Property in some sense is necessary for personality. That is certainly true. Let us therefore be careful to guard against any invasion of the real liberty of persons, let us maintain the right of property **for use.'' But how overwhelming is the indictment against present conditions in their bearing on personality, the personality of the mass of our countrymen. On this line Dr. Holland brings the series of essays to a conclusion with an argument which seems to me to be of over-

INTEODUCTION xxiii

whelming force. And he calls attention to the root fact abont personality that it is in its fundamental vbeing a social thing — a relation of one individnal to another ; and that a legitimate development of personality involves a legitimate development of fellowship. The Eoman poet contrasts the extravagance of individual wealth in his own time with what he discerns to have been the ancient Eoman ideal :