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director of a state or public association could do. The same may be said of many private occupations and enterprises. The private capitalist is, in short, the best director and the most trustworthy economic official of the community. Chronologically, all things are held in common in a rough fashion at first; separate private rights succeed; and collective properties, coexisting with the private, are in course of time formed by commercial companies, co-operative bodies, the commune, and the state, respectively.

Private property then is justifiable on the ground that it is serving the public interest, and only so long as it continues to do so. Now, in order to this, its egoistic and monopolizing tendencies must be kept within bounds. And this may be and is effected to some extent by competition, and not, as communists demand, by resorting to the exclusive establishment of collective property by state authority.

This closes our consideration for the present of the relative importance of the various forms of property in their historical development. We would now add a few remarks on the several modes of vindicating the rights of property on philosophical principles. There are three ways of doing this, all more or less faulty in an economic point of view.

Some derive this right from the act of taking original possession (res nullius cedit primo occupanti). But this act is purely accidental, and by far the greater portion of property now does not belong, as a matter of fact, to the original occupant. Others derive the right of possession from law, as Hobbes; or from a contract, as Grotius. But the will of the law varies with the legislator; and a contract is no valid ground by itself for the rights of possession, and unless the transaction can be otherwise justi

fied it has no claim for general acceptance.

Political economists following Locke hold a third opinion, according to which every labourer has a right to possess the product of his own labour and to save it up for his own future use. M. Thiers, the typical representative of the bourgeoisie in France, adopts this vindication of private property.

But this justification is unsatisfactory for several reasons. (1) There exists a great deal of property which indisputably was not got by the labour of its present owner; it is obtained by a pure accident from the heir's point of view. It may be handed down ab intestato without any clear design on the part of him whose labour produced it. To vindicate inherited property therefore as the reward of labour is a rather artificial and stilted mode of defence, inadmissible on economic principles. (2) Millions of property in times past have been gotten by violence and abuse of power, and in modern times by colossal frauds. It is in vain to try and persuade unprejudiced lookers on that those millions pocketed at the exchange by gentlemen, generals, ministers, bankers, and jobbers, are the products of labour pure and simple. And (3) According to the existing system in social economy, any given integral part of property got by labour is immediately the product of not one person but of many. It is paid for in money, and thus wages, interest, and profit pay the labourer, the capitalist, and the enterprising speculator respectively, according as each of them has had a share in the production of the purchased article. Here then is room for disputes whether or not the rewards are meted out in proportion to the rendered service, or whether, as socialists maintain and labourers readily believe, the profit of enterprising capital is out of all due proportion, and the property so amassed is in

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truth so much taken from the labourer in order that the capitalist may make sure of his lion's share in the profits. Hence property has been called theft, and hence too the danger arising to the greater part of property in the present day, if this philosophical theory of founding the rights of property on the "product of labour" be pushed to its extreme logical conclusion.

Similarly the modern theory of Trendelenburg, taken from Aristotle, that private property is the gradual "formation" of commodities as further instruments of personal life, still leaves the question unanswered, "who has formed wealth in any given quantity ?" Surely not the millionaire who makes millions of profit through his directors, nor the large landed proprietor who collects immense rents from his broad acres. All the abovementioned theories seem to start from the same false position. They take for granted that the resources provided by nature have no limit, which is true to some extent of colonies with a spare population, but not of countries where the proletarian question has already arisen.

To us it appears plain from purely economic principles that private property is both justifiable and necessary, because it is, and so far as it continues to be, the most effective form for administering the external resources for the production of national wealth, and the most effective form of providing the necessary supplies in order to the most complete satisfaction of individual consumers. thus may effect the highest possible development of individual labour power, and counteract by the right of inheritance, to some extent, over population. And in the form of taxes it contributes towards the principal objects of public utility.

It

And now, to enter into a few details of this important subject, let us remark with regard to the originating of

private property, that it becomes the ruling motive of all economic processes of estimating commodities as to their true values, producing them at the least cost price, and securing the greatest value in use in the acquisition of articles of consumption. For in all these processes the margin of profit left yields ultimately that independent private income, whether in rent or interest, which is the great motive force that incites man to activity and economical frugality.

Superior abilities, or powers of calculation and selfrestraint, secure thus a larger share of private income. An artisan of superior skill, for example, obtains twice or thrice the amount of wages of a less skilled working man; a judicious speculating capitalist, who invested six years ago in 6 per cent. United States bonds, when they stood at 39, whilst at present they have risen to 92, has secured 15 per cent. for his safely invested money; so the corn-dealer who shrewdly foresees the coming dearth and speculates accordingly, and the inventor who takes out a new patent for his discovery, or the builder who makes a wise choice in the site of the houses he erects,-all these make extra profits and procure for themselves a competent revenue as the reward of superior industry and prudence. But take away the prospect of this ultimate reward by abolishing the right of acquiring private fortunes, and the springs of action will at once disappear, and the whole community will thereby suffer. Efforts whereby all more or less profit will no longer be made, if the premiums for exertion are no longer held out to the aspirants.

It is true these rewards are not always the same for the same quantity of labour or skill; there are many social anomalies, so that personal merit and good fortune do not always go hand in hand. All we maintain is,-no

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better and more effective mode for bringing out the talents and activity of men could be devised, or at least has not been suggested up to the present moment. Remedies may be discovered for the removal of glaring injustice and for the prevention of accumulating illgotten wealth; only we must not value things solely with regard to the amount of nerve and muscle exhausted in their production. Much depends too on the mental acts of speculators and dealers; and their personal ability and organizing genius often lay the foundation of the so much envied vast private fortunes of modern times.

If we proceed now to consider the right of bequest which facilitates the transmission of acquired property, we may defend it on the ground that property may, so to speak, become individualized personal life (i.e., when absorbed in the individual for the development of the person). Thus, for example, a farm, a factory, or a commercial house has been founded by the savings of the present owner, who is the very soul of the business, and as such the best manager of it in the interest of all. He is bound up with it, and it becomes a part of himself. In the next generation his son carries on the business for which he has been schooled during his father's lifetime; he has become identified with it, or, in other terms, the property has become individualized in the son as formerly it was in the father. If the son is not the right person in the right place the business will be ruined, and personal inability will become the cause of personal loss; so closely dependent on one another are the individual and the property. But not only the immediate successor, but the whole family, depend for the individualization of every member of it on the property of their head. Previously acquired property is necessary for their maintenance, in proportion to their social rank and early