Forbes on Article XXXVIII: Of Christian men's Goods, which are not common

AN investigation into the origin of the notion of property is one of great interest, not only on philo sophical and literary, but on practical grounds also. Such questions as the measure of relief to which the able-bodied poor are entitled, or the proportion of remuneration to be allotted to labour as against capital, bring the matter before our thoughts in a way that appeals to all. Yet it is difficult to lay

down a comprehensive statement of the question ; for jurists generally assume the idea of property as a pos tulate, use it as the foundation of law, deal with it as an ultimate fact, and confine themselves to the modifications and restrictions enforced by society on its unlimited use. The old civil law brocard, ” Quod nullius est, fit occupantis,” is tacitly assumed as in disputable.

” God bestowed on mankind in general a right over the inferior things of nature immediately after the Creation, and again at the Flood. All things, says Justin, were undivided and common to all, as if all had one patrimony. Hence it was that every one might take to his uses what he pleased, and consume what was to be consumed ; which use of the universal right was then instead of property, for what any one had so taken, another could not without injury take away from him. Thus, Ciceroa says, ‘a theatre belongs to all, yet the place possessed by any one may be called his own/

” It was not impossible that this condition of things could continue, if men continued to live either in great simplicity, or in a certain mutual charity. Communion, by reason of an exceeding simplicity, may be observed in some tribes of America; the other, the communion of charity, the Essenes practised, and then the Chris tians at Jerusalem, and now not a few who lead the ascetic life.

” The simplicity in which man existed at first, was

a De Fin., iii.

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shewn by his nakedness ; there was in him rather the ignorance of vice than the knowledge of virtue… . But in this simple and innocent life men persisted not, but applied their minds to diverse arts. ’ God made man up right, but they have found out many inventions V The most ancient arts appeared in the first brothers. From the diversity of their courses arose emulation and then slaughter, and at length when the good were infected by the conversation of the bad, the giant life of violence prevailed. The world being washed by the Flood, there succeeded the desire of pleasure, to which wine minis tered, and hence arose unlawful loves. But concord was more broken by ambition, at Babel; after which men parted asunder and severally possessed the various parts of the earth, yet so that afterwards there re mained a community not of cattle, but of pastures. This lasted, till the number of men and cattle so in creased that lands everywhere began to be divided, not among nations as before, but many families also ; but wells in a thirsty land, every one made his own by seizure.

” Hence we learn wherefore men departed from the primitive community; 1st, of moveables, and, 2ndly, of immoveables also ; viz., because when, no longer content to feed upon what grew of itself, to dwell in caves, to go naked, or clad in bark or skins, they had chosen a more artificial life, there was need of industry, which every one must use.

“The reason why the fruits of the earth were not

b Eccles. vii. 29.

brought together for common use, was, 1st, the dis tance of places whereby men are separate, and, 2nd, the failure of justice and love, whereby it came to pass, that neither in labour nor in the consumption of those fruits due equality was preserved. Thus we learn how property arose, not only by an act of the mind (for they could not know the thoughts of one another, what every one would have to be his own, that they might abstain from it, and many might desire the same thing,) but by a certain covenant, either express, as by division, or tacit, as by occupation. Community of goods being given up, and no division being made, an universal agreement must be supposed, whereby each one should have belonging to himself what he occupied. * It is allowed,’ says Cicero, ’ that every man may prefer himself before another in getting things useful for his life, nature not being repugnant hereunto/ To which is added the saying of Quinc- tilian; ’ Granting that what is come into a man’s pos session is his own, certainly whatsoever is possessed by right is taken away by wrong/ And the ancients when they called Ceres, Legifera, and her rites, Thezmophoria, signified this, that by the division of fields came up the original of a certain new right c.”

Yet a knowledge of the manners and customs of cer tain nations, and the history of religious and philoso phical speculation on these subjects, shew that the pos tulate of the existence of property has been disputed.

c Hugo Grotius De Jure Belli et Pads, cap. ii. vol. ii. p. 53, ed. Laus., 1751.

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For example, the notion was very much modified among the Celtic races. Their possessions accrued not to one, but to the tribe. Sismondi shews this with regard to the Highlands of Scotland ; and the recent publication of the Brehon laws in Ireland, exhibits to us the picture of a simple state of society, not without its civilization, in which tribal possession forms a most important con stituent. Analogous to this is the village-system in India, in which from time immemorial there has been a joint occupation and possession by the ryots. Dynasty after dynasty of conquerors, often foreign conquerors, utterly ignorant or regardless of this peculiar insti tution, have ruled in India ; laws, such as those made by Lord Cornwallis in misunderstanding of what was dearest to the feelings of the poor villagers, have been enacted, but still the old system has survived to this day. Neither can this be said to be the character istic of the Indo-European race, for the recent war in New Zealand, so deeply to be regretted on every ground, has arisen from an ignorance on the part of the British authorities of these peculiar tenures.

But, furthermore, the idea of property has been chal lenged both on theological and philosophical grounds ; on the first by the Anabaptists, as indicated in the Ar tide ; on the latter by such communists as St. Simon, Fourier, and Proudhon, who boldly state the matter on the apparent paradox that it is property that is the theft.

With regard to the first, one cannot do better than quote the weighty words of Lord Stair, the eminent

Scottish Jurist : ” It is a false and groundless opinion which some hold, that man by his fall has lost his right to the creatures, until by grace he be restored, and that the sole dominion of them belongs to the saints, who may take them by force from all others. For by the whole strain of the law of God, He still alloweth do minion and property of the creatures in man, with out distinction, and prohibiteth all force or fraud in the contrary, which sufficiently cleareth that subtilty of man’s forfeiture ; for though sin maketh men ob noxious by way of obligation to punishments by God’s exterminating him from the use and comfort of the creatures ; yet that obligation doth not infer the actual ceasing of man’s right, much less the stating of the rights of mankind in a small part of them d.”

Nothing is so irritating for religionists, as to be out stripped in the course upon which they have entered, or to have their principles, by them often held in solu tion, precipitated and carried out into inconvenient results. Something of this kind was experienced by the Lutherans in the case of the earlier Anabaptists. At first they agreed entirely with them, except on the subject of infant-baptism, the rejection of which was only a legitimate consequence of Luther’s dogma which, connecting the efficacy of the Sacraments with faith, rendered the baptism of infants wholly irrational. But soon this alliance became a deadly hatred. A fearful fanaticism drove these men into every species of violence; they were implicated in the war of the d Bk. II. chap. i. p. 166.

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peasants, and at last the outrages at Minister shewed to what terrible results sincere ill-guided zeal may lead men.

They had strong millenarian expectations. After foretelling the utter extirpation of all the ungodly, they announced the kingdom of Christ as immediately thereafter established upon earth. A new and perfect life, in common among Christians, would then be esta blished, without magistrate or external law. Even the Bible was to be abolished ; for the perfect children of God needed it not. Perfect equality und community of goods would prevail, and even marriage be no longer contracted. Of course war was unlawful, and oaths un necessary, in this glorious kingdom of Christ. These high and ideal notions cannot but extort our admira tion, but the Anabaptists wished to force these on men unprepared, and by violence. Many other errors were held by them, and it is to be feared that Antinomianism especially prevailed amongst some of them. ” In the first Anabaptists we discern, beside the simplicity of the child, the fury of the wildest demagogue, who, to create a happy and holy world, destroyed in the most unholy and calamitous manner the actual one ; and, as a blind instrument, ministered to the ambition, the avarice, and all the basest passions of the repro bate men, whom we so frequently meet with in the early history of the sect e.”

The speculations of the Anabaptists are things of the past ; but the questions which they raised are still e Moliler, ii. 161.

unsolved. After the dark ages, with the very first dawn of intelligence, hungry mouths began to ask, ” Why are we hungry ?” Many of the heretical sects had social as well as religious errors in the cata logue of their opinions. In the ages of faith every question took a religious form, and therefore political economy expressed itself in the language of the soul. Begardi, the good men of Lyons, the Albigenses, and many others, thought that they were reforming the Church when they were only stating their political grievances. In the opinions of Huss and Jerome of Prague many of the propositions condemned are sim ply economics ; for they endorsed the propositions of Wicliffe.

That the tyranny of the feudal system should gene rate such sentiments, or that God should seek to alle viate the sorrows of men by raising up the Franciscan Order to console the poor, are circumstances not to be wondered at. At a time when the oppression was at its worst, and when industrial wealth was beginning among the Lombards and Genoese to occupy a new place as a power in the world, Francis of Assisi by proclaiming the holiness of poverty on which he founded his order, and Jacopone da Todi by becoming the poet of the unfortunate, were made the instruments of God’s goodness. The Seraphic Order in all its branches ever maintained a traditional recollection of the causes of its rise. It has ever been the poor man’s friend, and has escaped much of the odium which has fallen upon other religious associations.

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But after the institution of the Franciscans, with their various reforms, nothing was done for the poor. To burn Huss and Jerome of Prague was no real solution of the question. A terrorism might silence complaint ; but the complaint was there still, and so the evil went on till the Reformation. It would be curious to trace the political causes of that event. In all countries it was influenced thereby. Calvinism made Holland and Geneva republican ; it became the element of political disturbances in Scotland, the weakest of all royalties ; and the Stuarts with their pet dictum, “no bishop no king,” put strongly and truly the democratic element of the new system. It was the same in England, modified by the strong will of the Tudors, and the greater strength of the monarch ical principle. In Germany, where the nobility were stronger than in any other country in Europe, the rise of the Anabaptists saved them by precipitating the element of communism that was held in solution, and giving the nobles an easy victory over them. In Italy and Spain, (with the exception of Venice,) the elements of Protestantism got trodden out simul taneously with those of political freedom ; while in France, the struggle of the two principles was fought out in internecine feud, more than one half of France, nobility and all, being Protestant. The massacre of St. Bartholomew was a piece of cruel State-craft, as well as of religious persecution, — the revocation of the Edict of Nantes expelled with Protestantism the last efforts of political free-thought of France. Mean-

while, the absenteeism caused by the crushing of the political power of the nobility, and the consequent en forcement of their attendance at Court, added to the extravagance of the kings after the time of Mazarin and Richelieu, established a spirit of alienation be tween the ranks in society, and an impoverishment of the lower classes, which resulted in the first Re vo lution. The good side of that movement was a vindi cation of the rights of man as man ; the misery was a denial of his rights as the creature of God. A poli tical economy which eliminates God as the main factor in life is Sciolism.

The economic side of the democratic question was differently treated in England. The destructive Wars of the Roses prevented a surplusage of population, and the Commons were comparatively well fed. The nobility and squirearchy lived very much on their estates, the parochial system was strongly developed, and a kindly feeling existed between the different ranks of society. The immense mass of land, too, held in mortmain by the abbeys, while it prevented the full development of the resources of the country, had this effect, that a great many of the commons held their farms on easy terms, while the ready dole at the con vent-gate afforded a subsistence for the poorer sort. As a matter of fact, no poor-law was required till the reign of Edward VI. Representative Government kept tyranny in check, if it did nothing directly to ame liorate the condition of the poor. The introduction of foreign trades, though at the time viewed with

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jealousy by the people, in reality was a boon to them. The national resources were not taxed by the existence of great standing armies, and therefore the outbursts of popular misery were few, and the demand for the solution of the questions affecting the rights of la bour and capital respectively, never came to a bloody arbitrement.

It has been reserved to the nineteenth, century, when industry has been developed to a degree that our fathers never dreamt of, when the discovery of gold has upset for a time the whole measure of prices, when increased locomotion has indefinitely thrown open markets, to call up all these questions again. For in spite of all material advancement, a hideous pauperism menaces society, and the enlightenment of the age is thereby terribly reminded of that Biblical truth it would fain deny or invalidate, that ” the poor shall never cease out of the land.” And the awful thing is, that the pauperism of an industrial civiliza tion is more hopeless, more incurable, more degraded, than that of any prior state of things. When an oriental sovereign could compel a whole nation to build a pyramid, when the daughters and goods of the vassal were not safe from the lust and rapacity of the overlord, it was simply the misfortune of the unhappy ones, and their cry entered into the ear of the Lord God of Sabaoth; but now the pauperism of the age is the result of moral degradation, and drink, and every kind of sin, and the squalor of the external circumstance is the symbol of the foulness of that which exists within.

Poverty is one thing, pauperism is another. Poverty is the momentary or even permanent deprivation of the enjoyments of means; it is the state in which man is condemned to work for the necessaries of life : but pauperism is a chronic, normal, almost fatal state of misery, which hands over a notable portion of living humanity to moral degradation and physical suffering, while a small and privileged class live in the most unexampled luxury. For here is the awful fact, that pauperism is measured by the advance of industry, and progress in wealth goes on side by side with pro gress in misery.

A great man has said, ” There is not a sadder sight than that which Great Britain offers, between a wealth and a luxury without bounds, and the exhaustion to which ten thousand of the poor, shut up in cellars, without light or air, are exposed. Misery, famine, and degradation, in the presence of our sumptuous abodes and our exhaustless profusion, strikes us more than any other misery in the world.”

The chief causes of this disastrous state of things are, 1. the exaggerated preponderance of industrial over agricultural production, and the abnormal dis placement of the powers of labour, so that on the oc currence of a crisis great distress is produced. 2. The separation of interest between master and workman, and the existence of combinations on either side for mutual aggression and protection. 3. The cessation of work at home, and the aggregation of labour in great workshops, and hence the creation of great in dustrial towns to the prejudice of the moral and phy-

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sical health of the people. 4. The extreme division of labour, which makes man more and more of a machine, and impoverishes him mentally and morally. Lastl}7, the hideous mixture of the sexes in the workshops, and the abuse of the young, which produces in some cases a corruption unheard-of in Christian times.

No wonder that all this produces pauperism, that pauperism is misery, and misery cries aloud, Why should these things be? No wonder that, unable to detect that much of its misery is of its own making, poverty should claim a hearing in the presence of inordinate wealth, and demand in the accents of de spair, For what end has property been instituted ?

It has been said that every heresy is the intellectual vengeance of some suppressed truth ; in any case, there is often an underlying truth at the bottom of each aberration. What we have said of the image of God not being entirely obliterated by the Fall will induce us to acknowledge the fact that man still hankers in a feeble way after the Good and the True, does not naturally take up with the evil and the hideous, so that his errors are disguised in some specious form of virtue ; otherwise error would not be so nearly synony mous with sin.

Now what was the underlying truth which lay at the bottom of the Anabaptist theories, which gave point to the paradox of Fourier and Proud hon ? It was that in the eyes of God all property is held in trust for our neighbour. While in the order of nature and of civil polity, that state is most firmly established where the individuality of ownership is most strictly

recognised and respected ; in the order of grace it is otherwise. God permits the existence of property, but only as a necessary evil. To avoid a dead level of unprogressive barbarism, He allows one man to have, another to want ; but in allowing this apparent injustice, He corrects the disparity by the sense of responsible stewardship. The children of the king dom must have nothing selfish about them ; their citizenship being in heaven, they must use what God has given them, for His glory, and for the benefit of His creatures. Civil society being His ordinance, has its claims on man ; there is something due to the position of each rank and class of life. But there is beside and beyond this the kingdom of God and His righteousness, the interests of Christ and His mem bers, and the sense of stewardship connected with these interests.

It will be seen how all this affects the luxury, the industrial power of modern civilization. That a cer tain refinement and grace of life, is not only not sinful, but actually a help heavenward, cannot be de nied; that an industrial progress is compatible with the development of the resources of a Christian nation must also be admitted. But beyond such admission, it is very difficult to see one’s way to lay down canons of right on such a question. While a well-appointed establishment, rich dresses, costly wines, circulate money and foster trade, one asks oneself, in spite of oneself, how many poor children would the same cost feed, clothe, and educate ? While the development of in dustry gives work and wages to many a poor creature,

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and brings the necessaries of life by cheapness of pro duction within the reach of the poor, it is awful to think of the terrible race which competition causes, the neglect of immortal souls in the training of those who by a horrid sarcastic truth are termed ” hands,” and the countless evils which spring from the system, not to mention the mutilations by machinery, the pre mature exhaustion of the physical powers, the creed- less unlovely life, and the solitary workhouse-death.

It is needless to deplore evils which we cannot mend. At least, each one in his station should try and do his duty, and so mitigate the evils conse quent on the necessary permission of property. Mat ters will not be mended by revolution, though we know from an awful experience, that evils of this kind neglected, are apt to end in revolution, and a country where its nobles and capitalists betray their trust is apt from time to time to be regenerated in their blood. The true course is, that each one in his station should live according to the rule of the ” Ser mon on the Mount :” live a Christ-like life on earth, the life of the brethren of Him who laid down His life for His friends ; love his brother as himself, render to all their due, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous ; so shall one step be gained towards the reign of righteousness and charity. The rest must be relegated to the great compensation day. “Son, re member that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things/’

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