The right of proprietorship in land is the first principle to examine. The relation between land and life in its simpler aspects is clear and definite. All classes of land animals—man included—are immediately dependent for subsistence upon the produce of land, and when man emerges from slavery, another element, namely, labour, enters into the conditions of his life and becomes, with land, essential to his existence. Of food, fitted for the nourishment of man, uncultivated land produces little save some wild fruits and edible roots, and many wild animals, which he may eat if in hunting them down they do not eat him. But land placed under the additional forces of man’s physical and intellectual energies produces an immense variety of objects—a perfect wealth of raw material, vegetable, animal, mineral—which, yielding to further elaboration through his efforts and genius, all help to create for him a civilized life. This raw material, in short, supplied man with food, shelter, clothing, with the comforts and luxuries his developing nature demands, and with all necessaries to the existence of literature, science, and art. Passing over the primitive forms of associated life—the nomad and pastoral—we come to the agricultural stage, when labourers on the land are manifestly the all-important social units. They sow, till, and reap the fields. They tend domestic animals, whose skins and wool are made into garments by other members of the group. But the latter depend for food and the raw materials of their industry on the cultivators, who are, if I may so express it, the foundation stones of the simple social structure. To whom does the land belong? To the whole group, and an annual division amongst the families for purposes of cultivation takes place, whilst weapons, fishing-boats, tools and other movables are the property of individuals.