CHAPTER I
PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS
The subject of property is the key-stone that completes the fabric
of political justice. According as our ideas respecting it are crude
or correct, they will enlighten us as to the consequences of a
simple form of society without government, and remove the prejudices
that attach us to complexity. There is nothing that more powerfully
tends to distort our judgement and opinions than erroneous notions
concerning the goods of fortune. Finally, the period that must put
an end to the system of coercion and punishment is intimately
connected with the circumstance of property's being placed upon an
equitable basis.
Various abuses of the most incontrovertible nature have insinuated
themselves into the administration of property. Each of these abuses
might usefully be made the subject of a separate investigation. We
might enquire into the vexations of this sort that are produced by
the dreams of national greatness, and the sumptuousness of public
offices and magistrates. This would lead us to a just estimate of
the different kinds of taxation, landed or mercantile, having the
necessaries or the luxuries of life for their subject of operation.
We might examine into the abuses which have adhered to the
commercial system; monopolies, charters, patents, protecting duties,
prohibitions and bounties. We might consider the claims of the
church: first fruits and tithes. All these disquisitions would tend
to show the incalculable importance of this subject. But, excluding
them all from the present enquiry , it shall be the business of what
remains of this work to examine the subject in its most general
principles, and by that means endeavour to discover the source, not
only of the abuses above enumerated, but of others of innumerable
kinds, too multifarious and subtle to enter into so brief a
catalogue.
The subject to which the doctrine of property relates is all those
things which conduce, or may be conceived to conduce, to the benefit
or pleasure of man, and which can no otherwise be applied to the use
of one or more persons than by a permanent or temporary exclusion of
the rest of the species. Such things in particular are food,
clothing, habitation and furniture.
Upon this subject two questions unavoidably arise. Who is the
person entitled to the use of any particular article of this kind?
Who is the person in whose hands the preservation and distribution
of any number of these articles will be most justly and beneficially
vested?
The answer to the first of these questions is easy upon the
principles of the present work. Justice has been proved to be a rule
applicable to all the concerns of man. It pronounces upon every case
that can arise, and leaves nothing to the disposal of a momentary
caprice.(1*) There is not an article of the kinds above specified
which will not ultimately be the instrument of more benefit and
happiness in one individual mode of application than in any other
than can be devised. This is the application it ought to receive.
We are here led to the consideration of that species of rights
which was designedly postponed in an earlier division of this
work.(2*) Every man has a right to that, the exclusive possession of
which being awarded to him, a greater sum of benefit or pleasure
will result than could have arisen from its being otherwise
appropriated. This is the same principle as that just delivered,
with a slight variation of form. If man have a right to anything, he
has a right to justice. These terms, as they have ordinarily been
used in moral enquiry, are, strictly and properly speaking,
convertible terms.
Let us see how this principle will operate in the inferences it
authorities us to make. Human beings are partakers of a common
nature; what conduces to the benefit or pleasure of one man will
conduce to the benefit or pleasure of another.(3*) Hence it follows,
upon the principles of equal and impartial justice, that the good
things of the world are a common stock, upon which one man has as
valid a title as another to draw for what he wants. It appears in
this respect, as formerly it appeared in the case of our claim to
the forbearance of each other,(4*) that each man has a sphere the
limit and termination of which is marked out by the equal sphere of
his neighbour. I have a right to the means of subsistence; he has an
equal right. I have a right to every pleasure I can participate
without injury to myself or others; his title in this respect is of
similar extent.
This view of the subject will appear the more striking if we pass
in review the good things of the world. They may be divided into
four classes; subsistence; the means of intellectual and moral
improvement; inexpensive gratifications; and such gratifications as
are by no means essential to healthful and vigorous existence, and
cannot be purchased but with considerable labour and industry. It is
the last class principally that interposes an obstacle in the way of
equal distribution. It will be matter of after-consideration how far
and how many articles of this class would be admissible into the
purest mode of social existence.(5*) But, in the meantime, it is
unavoidable to remark the inferiority of this class to the three
preceding. Without it we may enjoy to a great extent activity,
contentment and cheerfulness. And in what manner are these seeming
superfluities usually procured? By abridging multitudes of men to a
deplorable degree in points of essential moment, that one man may be
accommodated, with sumptuous yet, strictly considered, insignificant
luxuries. Supposing the alternative could fairly be brought home to
a man, and it could depend upon his instant decision, by the
sacrifice of these to give to five hundred of his fellow beings
leisure, independence, conscious dignity, and whatever can refine
and enlarge the human understanding, it is difficult to conceive him
to hesitate. But, though this alternative cannot be produced in the
case of an individual, it will perhaps be found to be the true
alternative, when taken at once in reference to the species.
To the forming a just estimate of costly gratifications, it is
necessary that we should abstract the direct pleasure, on the one
hand, from the pleasure they afford us only as instruments for
satisfying our love of distinction. It must be admitted in every
system of morality not tainted with monastic prejudices, but adapted
to the nature of intelligent beings, that, so far as relates to
ourselves, and leaving our connection with the species out of the
consideration, we ought not to refuse any pleasure, except as it
tends to the exclusion of some greater pleasure.(6*) But it has
already been shown(7*) that the difference in the pleasures of the
palate, between a simple and wholesome diet on the one hand, and all
the complexities of the most splendid table on the other, is so
small that few men would even think it worth the tedium that attends
upon a change of services, if the pleasure of the palate were the
only thing in question, and they had no spectator to admire their
magnificence. 'He who should form himself, with the greatest care,
upon a system of solitary sensualism, would probably come at last to
a decision not different from that which Epicurus is said to have
adopted in favour of fresh herbs, and water from the spring.'(8*)
The same observation applies to the splendour of furniture, equipage
and dress. So far as relates to the gratification of the eye, this
pleasure may be reaped, with less trouble, and in greater
refinement, from the beauties which nature exhibits to our
observation. No man, if the direct pleasure were the only thing in
consideration, would think the difference to himself worth
purchasing by the oppression of multitudes.
But these things, though trivial in themselves, are highly pried,
from that love of distinction which is characteristic of every human
mind. The creditable artisan or tradesman exerts a certain species
of industry to supply his immediate wants. But these are soon
supplied. The rest is exerted that he may wear a better coat, that
he may clothe his wife with gay attire, that he may have not merely
a shelter, but a handsome habitation, not merely bread and flesh to
eat, but that he may set it out with suitable decorum. How many of
these things would engage his attention if he lived in a desert
island, and had no spectator of his economy? If we survey the
appendages of our persons, there is scarcely an article that is not
in some respect an appeal to the good will of our neighbours, or a
refuge against their contempt. It is for this that the merchant
braves the perils of the ocean, and the mechanical inventor bring
forth the treasures of his meditation. The soldier advances even to
the cannon's mouth, and the statesman exposes himself to the rage of
an indignant people, because he cannot bear to pass through life
without distinction and esteem. Exclusively of certain higher
motives which will hereafter be mentioned,(9*) this is the purpose
of all the great exertions of mankind. The man who has nothing to
provide for but his animal wants scarcely ever shakes off the
lethargy of his mind; but the love of honour hurries us on to the
most incredible achievements.
It must be admitted indeed that the love of distinction appears,
from experience and the past history of mankind, to have been their
ruling passion. But the love of distinction is capable of different
directions. At present, there is no more certain road to the general
deference of mankind than the exhibition of wealth. The poet, the
wit, the orator, the saviour of his country, and the ornament of his
species may upon certain occasions be treated with neglect and
biting contempt; but the man who possesses and disburses money in
profusion can scarcely fail to procure the attendance of the
obsequious man and the flatterer. But let us conceive this erroneous
and pernicious estimate of things to be reversed. Let us suppose the
avaricious man, who is desirous of monopolizing the means of
happiness, and the luxurious man, who expends without limitation, in
pampering his appetites, that which, in strict justice, is the right
of another, to be contemplated with as much disapprobation as they
are now beheld by a mistaken world with deference and respect. Let
us imagine the direct and unambiguous road to public esteem to be
the acquisition of talent, or the practice of virtue, the
cultivation of some species of ingenuity, or the display of some
generous and expansive sentiment; and that the persons who possess
these talents were as conspicuously treated with affection and
esteem as the wealthy are now treated with slavish attention. This
is merely, in other words, to suppose good sense, and clear and
correct perceptions, at some time to gain the ascendancy in the
world. But it is plain that, under the reign of such sentiments, the
allurements that now wait upon costly gratification, would be, for
the most part, annihilated. If, through the spurious and incidental
recommendations it derives from the love of distinction, it is now
rendered, to many, a principal source of agreeable sensation, under
a different state of opinion, it would not merely be reduced to its
intrinsic value in point of sensation, but, in addition to this,
would be connected with ideas of injustice, unpopularity and
dislike. So small is the space which costly gratifications are
calculated unalterably to fill in the catalogue of human happiness.
It has sometimes been alleged, as an argument against the equal
rights of men in the point of which we are treating, 'that the
merits of men are different, and ought to be differently rewarded' .
But it may be questioned whether this proposition, though true, can
with any show of plausibility be applied to the present subject.
Reasons have been already suggested to prove that positive
institutions do not afford the best means for rewarding virtue, and
that human excellence will be more effectually forwarded by those
encouragements which inevitably arise from the system of the
universe.(10*) But, exclusively of this consideration, let us
recollect, upon the grounds of what has just been stated, what sort
of reward is thus proposed to exertion. 'If you show yourself
deserving, you shall have the essence of a hundred times more food
than you can eat, and a hundred times more clothes than you can
wear. You shall have a patent for taking away from others the means
of a happy and respectable existence, and for consuming them in
riotous and unmeaning extravagance.' is this the reward that ought
to be offered to virtue, or that virtue should stoop to take?
The doctrine of the injustice of accumulated property has been the
foundation of all religious morality. Its most energetic teachers
have been irresistibly led to assert the precise truth in this
respect. They have taught the rich that they hold their wealth only
as a trust, that they are strictly accountable for every atom of
their expenditure, that they are merely administrators, and by no
means proprietors in chief.(11*) But, while religion thus inculcated
on mankind the pure principles of justice, the majority of its
prosessors have been but too apt to treat the practice of justice,
not as a debt, which it ought to be considered, but as an affair of
spontaneous generosity and bounty.
The effect which is produced by this accommodating doctrine is to
place the supply of our wants in the disposal of a few, enabling
them to make a show of generosity with what is not truly their own,
and to purchase the submission of the poor by the payment of a debt.
Theirs is a system of clemency and charity, instead of a system of
justice. It fills the rich with unreasonable pride, by the spurious
denominations with which it decorates their acts; and the poor with
servility, by leading them to regard the slender comforts they
obtain, not as their incontrovertible due, but as the good pleasure
and grace of their opulent neighbours.
NOTES:
1. Book II, Chap. II.
2. Book II, Chap. V.
3. Book III, Chap. III.
4. Book II, Chap. V.
5. Chap. VII.
6. Book IV, Chap. XI.
7. Book I, Chap. V.
8. Book I, Chap. V.
9. Chap. VI.
10. Book V, Chap. XII; Book XI, Chap I.
11. Mark, Ch. X, ver. 21; Acts, Ch. II, ver. 44, 45. See also
Swift's Sermon on Mutual Subjection.
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