THE DIFFUSION OF PROPERTY.
THERE are so many anti-social theories in the air, and a doubt is so clearly arising as to the ultimate right of holding property, that Mr. Phelps's lecture at Edinburgh on
Saturday will be read with a sort of personal interest. It is only a restatement in admirably lucid and cogent language of the thesis, old as the Decalogue, that the possession of pro- perty is an inherent right ; that Governments exist for its maintenance, as well as for the protection of life and liberty ; and that an invasion of it in the supposed interest of the poor always ends in making the burden of the poor heavier upon them. There is nothing new in that ; but never- theless it is most useful that the representative of the greatest and freest Republic in the world should state it so strongly, and should, as an advocate of equality, affirm his belief that property cannot, in the very nature of things, be unequally protected ; that if anybody is to possess anything, the millionaire must keep his own, as well as the poor man. If your police is to be supported by moral feeling, you must protect the Duchess's diamonds as well as the workman's tools. To assail the millionaire's right, says Mr. Phelps, because he misspends, is " like trying to stay the rain from heaven because it falls equally upon the just and the unjust, or like impugning the beneficence of the Almighty because under his impartial rule the wicked man still flourishes for a time." That doctrine, always attacked and always reviving, needs to be preached again in our time, when the just pity for the poor tends to extinguish the sense that even the rich have rights. The notion that the right to superfluity rests on some different basis from the right to competence is spreading so fast, that it is well to have an official reminder that the freedom and prosperity
of the United States have proceeded from a directly contrary idea. They have protected Dives and Lazarus equally, and so have bestowed on Lazarus the power, as well as the desire, himself to become as Dives in all material things. One of the first objects of the Constitution which has been so successful, is the protection of property, whether held in morsels or in the largest aggregations the world has yet seen.
The weak point in the American Minister's address, as in almost all addresses in which the argument for property is boldly stated, is that enough is not said about the expediency in the broadest and highest sense of a wider and quicker diffusion of property. If one man could honestly acquire all England, his right would be as perfect as if he owned an acre; but his existence might easily be an intolerable nuisance, and, in any case, he would be felt to be a result de- monstrating the imperfection of our property laws. The concentration of property in few hands is nearly as great an evil as its aggregation in one, and it does not receive nearly enough attention from reformers. The political advan- tage of diffusion is beginning to be understood, because we are governed by numbers, and statesmen perceive and deprecate the danger involved in the fewness of the propertied class ; but they do not recognise fully the addition that fewness makes to the general mass of discomfort. Rich themselves, or living among the rich, they learn to think in large figures, and hardly perceive the difference in the position of a man who possesses £500 and £2 a week in wages, and that of a man who has only the £2. The former is only a fourth richer, as far as spending-power is concerned, and pro- bably finds it no easier to obtain work ; but in every other respect, what a difference there is ! The workman with £500 can be sick for five years without ruin, an advantage which of itself makes him a different man. He can afford to be out of work for a time, he can travel to seek work, he can emigrate without making of his exile an irretrievable step, he can place out his children without pinching ; above all, he can leave his widow with the means of facing the baker. He is practically independent, and this on a much smaller sum than the £500 which to statesmen seems to make so slight a difference. There are millions of men on the Continent with small capitals, and in some countries, notably France, the number of men who own land or securities, yet work all day, is so great that the whole physical force of the State may be said to be in their hands. They often own but little, their lives are usually hard, and they are often possessed by a demon of penuriousness ; but they are independent, and, in the main, content. The number of such men here is great, too, probably far greater than is believed„ the Savings-Bank returns furnishing a most imperfect test, but it is not nearly so great as it ought to be. If we could multiply it by five, and especially if we could enlarge the number of women who hold morsels of property, not only would all possessions be safer—in itself a source of prosperity to the community—but an immense proportion of the population would be made distinctly happier, and the whole level of English society would be raised. We should have, say, two millions of contented families, instead of half a million. That is a great object for statesmen to pursue, and one that, in this country and America, is far too much neglected.
There exist, of course, no means of making a change like this at a blow, but there exist means of doing it slowly, and
our wonder is that statesmen consider those means so little. They encourage thrift in a certain degree by giving a State guarantee for savings entrusted to the State, but they are slow to make morsels of land easily saleable ; they do not cheapen, as they might, the transfer of houses ; they do not make of the post-offices, as they might, agencies for the purchase of State Securities ; and, above all, they do not reconsider the existing laws of bequest. They fancy that freedom of bequest is a British dogma, and refuse even to inquire whether rules in- tended to facilitate, or even to compel subdivision, would be unpopular or bad. In fact, they prevent subdivision in- directly, levying on every legacy left outside the closest family group the severe, if not prohibitory, tax of 10 per cent. Suppose, instead of imposing that duty, they levied a heavier per-tentage whenever property was not divided. We do not think that the country is prepared for the Con- tinental system, which, with certain reserves, compels pro- perty-owners to leave the bulk of their possessions to their children, either at once or, as in some parts of Germany, after the mother's death ; but we are by no means certain that division into portions regulated by the number of the children, or the amount of the property, or both, would be summarily rejected. Still less are we convinced that the pressure of the Death-duties might not be made to weigh heavily in favour of distribution, which, again, in cases of intestacy, might be reasonably made much wider. It is use- less, of course, to propose such changes while opinion is incurably hostile; but nobody can say what the opinion of the new electors is, and the gain to be obtained through a great reform, if it is obtainable, is beyond dispute. If every second man and woman in England possessed a little property, it would be a different place to live in, even for those who possess none, for the pressure of competition on them also would become by degrees perceptibly lighter. We may misread the way opinion is going ; but we should be little surprised to find a year or two hence that the great fluid mass of semi-socialist opinion which is now becoming visible had solidified itself into a definite belief that freedom of bequest requires, in the public interest, certain limitations. The abolition of primo- geniture, though perfectly right and wise, will secure no end of itself.
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