.
| Patrick
Edward Dove, 1815-1873 |
Part I
THE AUTHORITIES
Chapter 3 |
PATRICK EDWARD DOVE was born in Lasswade, near Edinburgh, Scotland,
July 31, 1815. He came of an old and distinguished Scottish family. As a
young man he traveled widely and lived for a time in Paris and in
London. About 1840 he came into the family property in Ayrshire,
Scotland. There he lived on his estate the life of a bachelor squire
until 1848, when an unfortunate investment wiped doubt his fortune.
Shortly after this he married and went to live in Darmstadt, Germany
where he studied, wrote, and lectured. In 1850 he published his Theory
of Human Progression. The work appeared in a limited edition
published simultaneously in London and Edinburgh. It was read and
praised by distinguished scholars, but never attracted general public
attention. In his introduction to the edition of the book brought out in
1895 in New York, Mr. Alexander Harvey states:
Carlyle read and praised the volume. He is quoted as
acclaiming it the voice of a new revolution, an education and
economics. Sir William Hamilton, the great philosopher, pronounced the
book epoch-making, and calculated to rally mankind to great reforms.
Professor Blackie likewise praised it highly. Our own Charles Sumner
was so impressed by it that he circulated many copies in the United
States and persuaded Dove to write in behalf of the emancipation
movement.
For all that the book failed to make its way and
before many years was utterly forgotten. It became very scarce in
time, and the demand for it on the part of a few scholars was supplied
with difficulty. What Dove did for scholars, George achieved for the
masses.
After publishing his book Dove left Germany and lived in Edinburgh
for a time, later in Glasgow. He wrote somewhat extensively on economic,
philosophic, and religious subjects. In his later years he interested
himself actively in military science. In 1860 he was stricken with
paralysis. He traveled to Natal in a vain search for health. He returned
to Glasgow where he spent his last years in retirement, dying April 28,
1873.
The Theory of Human Progression[1]
is a somewhat ambitious contribution to the science of politics. It was
the author's name to formulate the principles by which the relations
between man and man ought to be regulated. The work shows a peculiar
mixture of intellectual characteristics. There runs through it a vain of
naive piety side-by-side with a lode of freethinking. The style is
marked by prolixity and repetition but in certain passages reaches
heights of vigorous eloquence.
His treatment of the land question, to which he naturally gave large
attention, also exhibits the effects of 18th-century teaching. He
remarks that "the land produces, according to the law of the
Creator, more than the value of the labor expended upon it, and on this
account men are willing to pay a rent for the land." This is the
old delusion of a magic property in the soil which rolls off a "net
product," and thus gives rise to economic rent. Again, in another
passage, he speaks of rent as "the profit that God had graciously
been pleased to accord to human industry employed in the cultivation of
the soil." Dove had, in fact, little comprehension of the nature of
ground rent as essentially a social product.
Dove's discussion of the land question, which is outlined in our
extracts from his book, might be summed up in three propositions as
follows: (1) The land is a free gift of the creator to all men, and, as
such should be common, not private property; (2) It is not practicable,
however, to enforce this right of common property by dividing the land
into equal shares and apportioning it among the inhabitants according to
their number; (3) The solution of the problem lies in the taxation of
rent, or, the appropriation of the annual value of the land.
Extracts from The Theory of Human
Progression
(1) Arraignment of existing land laws. --
Under the present system of land occupancy, combined
with labor taxation, want and starvation are the natural consequences.
They may excite compassion, but they need excite no wonder. And until
the present system is broken up, root and branch, and buried in
oblivion, the laboring population of Britain and Ireland must reap the
fruits of a system that first allocates all the soil to thirty or
forty thousand proprietors, and then places the heaviest taxation in
the world on the mass of inhabitants. [Chap.
III, p. 244.]
(2) Right of the nation to change the land laws. --
There is no such thing as "the rights of landed
property" separated from the mere dictum of the law, which the
nation has an undoubted right to alter or abolish whenever it shall
see fit to do so. And if the nation were to resolve the to resume and
take back all lands which had been granted by the crown (with
considerations affecting those individuals who had purchased), the
nation would not be guilty of any crime, or wrong, or impropriety; but
would be exactly in the same position as it is when it abolishes laws
against witchcraft, or laws in favor of the slave trade, or laws which
make it a legal crime to be a Jew or a Catholic.
Superstition, on this point, may endure for a few years longer; but
no truth can be more certain than that God gave the land for the
benefit of all; and if any arrangement interfere with, or diminish
that benefit, then has man as man, as the recipient of God's bounty,
an undoubted right to alter or abolish that arrangement, exactly as he
alters his arrangements in agriculture, in medicine, in mechanics, or
in navigation. No more crime, and no more wrong that catches to his
alterations in the one case then in the other. [Chapter
III, pp. 275 -- 76.]
(3) Problem of the equitable disposition of the earth. --
Is it equitable that any arrangements of past
generations should cause one man now to be born heir to a county, or
half a county, or quarter of a county, while the other inhabitants of
that county are thereby deprived of all rights to the soil, and must
consequently pay a rent to the one individual who naturally has not
one particle of right to the earth more than they have themselves? And
if such an arrangement be not now equitable, most undoubtedly it
ought not to be allowed to continue; and if any government (instead of
administering the laws of equity) use the armed power of the nation
for the purpose of enforcing such arrangements, such government has
departed from its proper intension, and is not entitled to obedience.
If, then, we admit that every generation of man has exactly the same
free right to the earth, unencumbered by any arrangements of past
ages, the great problem is to discover "such a system as shall
secure to every man his exact share of the natural advantages which
the Creator has provided for the race; while at the same time, he has
full opportunity, without let or hindrance, to exercise is labor,
industry, and skill, for his own advantage." Until this problem
is solved, both in theory and in practice, political change must
continually go on. [Chapter 3, p. 303.]
(4) The answer to the land question. --
The solution we propound (and which we hope to defend
more at large at some future period) is the following, although, of
course, there is no supposition that any general solution can be
immediately applicable to the circumstances of this or any other
country.
1st. Reason can acknowledge no difference of original rights between
the individuals of which the human race is composed.
2nd. Equality of rights cannot be sacrificed by any arrangements
which one generation of men make for succeeding generations; but
equality of rights is perpetual, inasmuch as that equality derives
from the human reason, which varies not from age to age.
Even if it were true that there ought to be an inequality of rights
among individuals of the human race, it would be absolutely impossible
to determine which individuals of the race should be born to more
rights, and which individuals to fewer rights, than their fellows. And
inequality of rights can only be based on superstition, and the very
moment reason is substituted for superstition in political science (as
it has been in physical science), that moment must men admit that no
possible means are known by which an inequality of rights could
possibly be substantiated. Even if it were true, for instance, that
there should be an aristocracy and a serfdom, there are no possible
means of determining which individuals should be the aristocrats and
which individuals the serfs.
3rd. The state of England, then, would present a soil (including the
soil proper, the mines, forests, fisheries, etc. -- in fact, that
portion of the natural earth called England) which was permanent, and
a population that was not permanent, but renewed by successive
generations.
4th. The question then is, "What system will secure to every
individual of these successive generations his portion of the natural
advantages of England?" Of this problem, we maintain that there
is but one solution possible.
5th. No truth can be more absolutely certain as an intuitive
proposition of the reason, than that "an object is the property
of its creator;" and we maintain that creation is the only means
by which an individual right to property can be generated.
Consequently, as no individual and no generation is the creator of the
substantive, earth, it belongs equally to all the existing
inhabitants. That is, no individual has a special claim to more than
another.
6th. But while on the one hand we take into consideration the object
-- that is, the earth; we must also take into consideration the
subject -- that is, man, and man's labor.
7th. The object is the common property of all; no individual being
able to exhibit a title to any particular portion of it. And
individual or private property is the increased value produced by
individual labor. Again, in the earth must be distinguished the
permanent earth and its temporary or perishable productions. The
former -- that is, the permanent earth -- we maintain, never can be
private property; and every system that treats it as such must
necessarily be unjust. No rational basis has ever been exhibited to
the world on which private right to any particular portion of the
earth could possibly be founded.
8th. But though the permanent earth never can be private property
(although the laws make call it so, and may treat it as such), it must
be possessed by individuals for the purpose of cultivation, and for
the purpose of extracting from it all those natural objects which man
requires.
9th. The question then is, upon what terms, or according to what
system, must the earth be possessed by the successive generations that
succeed each other on the surface of the globe? The conditions given
are -- First, That the earth is the common property of the race;
Second, That what ever individual produces by his own labor (whether
it be on new object, made out of many materials, or a new value given
by labor to an object was form, locality etc. may be changed) is the
private property of that individual, and he may dispose of it as he
pleases, provided he does not interfere with his fellows. Third, The
earth is the perpetual common property of the race, and each
succeeding generation has a full title to a free earth. One generation
cannot encumber a succeeding generation.
And the condition required is, such a system as shall secure to the
successive individuals of the race their share of the common property,
and the opportunity, without interference, of making as much private
property as their skill, industry, and enterprise would enable them to
make.
The scheme then appears to present itself most naturally is, the
general division of the soil, portioning it out to inhabitants
according to their number. Such appears to be the only system that
suggests itself to most minds, if we may judge from the objections
brought forward against an equalization of property. All these
objections are against the actual division of the soil; and certainly
such a division is theoretically erroneous, especially when the
fractional parts are made the property of the possessors. But
independently of this, the profits are rising from trade, etc., would
induce many individuals to forsake agriculture, and to abandon their
portion to those who preferred the cultivation of the soil to any
other pursuit. A purely agricultural population is almost impossible
at any period; but when men have made considerable advances in the
arts, etc., a general return to agricultural pursuits is a mere
chimera, a phantom. Men must go forward, never backwards. To speak of
a division of lands in England is absurd. Such a division would be as
useless as it is improbable. But it is more than useless -- it is
unjust; and unjust, not to the present so-called proprietors but to
the human beings who are continually being born into the world and who
have exactly the same natural right to a portion that their
predecessors have had....
The actual division of the soil need never be anticipated, nor would
such a division be just, if the divided portions were made the
property (legally, for they could never be so morally) of individuals.
If, then, successive generations of men cannot have their fractional
share of the actual soil (including mines, etc.), how can the division
of the advantages of the natural earth be effected?
By the division of its annual value or rent; that is, by making the
rent of the soil the common property of the nation. That is (as the
taxation is the common property of this state), by taking the whole of
the taxes out of the rents of the soil, and thereby abolishing all
other kinds of taxation whatsoever. And thus all industry could be
absolutely emancipated from every burden, and every man would reap
such natural reward as his skill, industry, or enterprise rendered
legitimately his, according to the natural law of free competition.
This we maintain to be the only theory that will satisfy their
requirements of the problem of natural property..... We have no
hesitation whatsoever in predicting that all civilized communities
must ultimately abolish all revenue restrictions on industry, and draw
the whole taxation from the rents of the soil. And this .... because
the rents of the soil are the common produce of the whole labor of a
community. [Chapter III, pp. 305 -- 311.]
FOOTNOTE
[1] Footnote not yet added to text.
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