factures until agriculture is developed to the highest possible degree.
Ogilvie's scheme is not so much a scheme for the recovery of the lost rights to land as the purely utilitarian one of maintaining the ascendancy of agriculture. The agricultural society of the later Middle Ages is his ideal, a society of small landholders held in the bonds of mutual dependence and mutual obligations.
The veteran Thomas Paine (1737–1809) has an equally utilitarian purpose. The title of his work, published in 1797, is a résumé of its contents: "Agrarian Justice, opposed to Agrarian Law and Agrarian Monopoly, being a plan for Meliorating the Condition of Man by creating in every Nation a National Fund, to pay to every Person, when arrived at the Age of 21 Years, the Sum of £15 Sterling, to enable him or her to begin the World; and also £10 Sterling per annum during life to every Person now living of the Age of 50 years and to all others when they shall attain that Age."
The gist of Paine's argument was that the majority of mankind had lost its rights in the land. It was impolitic to try to recover the land itself, but the owners of land could be compelled to compensate the dispossessed out of their revenues. This compensation fund would be raised out of a succession duty of 10 per cent upon inheritances passing in the direct line, and of twice as much upon those passing to collateral heirs. A fund of 5¾ millions would thus be raised annually, which would be sufficient for the purposes indicated. Similar proposals had already found a place in Paine's Rights of Man. Paine's underlying idea—that the landowners ought to compensate the common folk for the loss of their rights in the land—was seized upon by Cobbett as the basis of his opposition to the Poor Law of 1834. Cobbett regarded the Poor Rate as the compensation fund, and taught that the receipt of relief was a right and not charity.
Closely allied with these three agrarian reformers, and standing, too, under the influence of Rousseau and the Rights of Man, is Charles Hall. Hall's book, however, by its greater economic insight, as well as the incisive attack upon the developing industrial system, forms a transition between the criticism of the agrarian system and the anti-capitalistic teachings which followed the publication of Ricardo's work in 1819. It was published in 1805 under the title
Effects of
