attempt the attainment of these economic ends. Originally the occupation of most countries was effected by conquest and settlement, and since then the sword has sufficiently often modified the existing distribution of property. When the State began to legislate as to rights of possession, it was generally content to sanction actual relations with a few unimportant alterations; so that it is easy to see how our property law, being the outcome of quite other than economic conceptions, seeks neither to secure to the labourer the full produce of his labour, nor to guarantee to existing wants the greatest feasible satisfaction. Our present law of property which centres in private possession does not, in the first place, guarantee to the labourer the whole product of his labour. By assigning the existing objects of wealth, and especially the instruments of production, to individuals to use at their pleasure, our law of property invests such individuals with an ascendancy, by virtue of which, without any labour of their own, they draw an unearned income which they can apply to the satisfaction of their wants. This income, for which the legally-favoured recipients return no personal equivalent to society, has been called rent by the St. Simonians; by Thomson and Marx,
