66 PROPERTY IN LAND.
power which its reduction to ownership gives of com- manding labor or the results of labor without paying any equivalent. The recognition of the right of property in wealth, or things produced by labor, is thus but a recog- nition of the right of each human being to himself and to the results of his own exertions ; but the recognition of a similar right of property in land is necessarily the impairment and denial of this true right of property.
Turn from principles to facts. Whether as to national strength or national character, whether as to the number of people or as to their physical and moral health, whether as to the production of wealth or as to its equitable dis- tribution, the fruits of the primary injustice involved in making the land, on which and from which a whole people must live, the property of but a portion of their number, are everywhere evil and nothing but evil.
If this seems to any too strong a statement, it is only because they associate individual ownership of land with permanence of possession and security of improvements. These are necessary to the proper use of land, but so far from being dependent upon individual ownership of land, they can be secured without it in greater degree than with it. This will be evident upon reflection. That the existing system does not secure permanence of possession and security of improvements in anything like the degree necessary to the best use of land, is obvious everywhere, but especially obvious in Great Britain, where the owners of land and the users of land are for the most part distinct persons. In many cases the users of land have no security from year to year, a logical development of individual ownership in land so flagrantly unjust to the user and so manifestly detrimental to the community, that in Ireland, where this system most largely prevailed, it has been deemed necessary for the State to interfere in the most arbitrary manner. In other cases, where land is let for
�� �
