Harmonies of Political Economy: Translated from the Third French Edition, with a Notice of the Life and Writings of the AuthorBastiat, Frédéric
Philosophy
Harmonies of Political Economy: Translated from the Third French Edition, with a Notice of the Life and Writings of the Author
Bastiat, Frédéric
Economics
But do you not see that landed property has not waited for your
injunctions in order to be a million times more generous? for to what
is your demand limited?
In the primitive state, your four rights of fishing, hunting,
gathering the fruits, and pasturing, maintain in existence, or rather
in a state of vegetation, amid all the horrors of destitution, nearly
one man to the square league of territory. The usurpation of the
[p280] land will then be legitimate, according to you, when those
who have been guilty of that usurpation support one man for every
square league, exacting from him at the same time as much activity
as is displayed by a Huron or an Iroquois. Pray remark, that France
consists of only thirty thousand square leagues; that consequently,
if its whole territory supports thirty thousand inhabitants in that
condition of existence which the savage state affords, you renounce
in behalf of the non-proprietary class all farther demands upon
property. Now, there are thirty millions of Frenchmen who have not an
inch of land, and among the number we meet with many—the president of
the republic, ministers, magistrates, bankers, merchants, notaries,
advocates, physicians, brokers, soldiers, sailors, professors,
journalists, etc.—who would certainly not be disposed to exchange
their condition for that of an Ioway. Landed property, then, must
do much more for us than you exact from it. You demand from it the
‹Right to Employment›, up to a certain point—that is to say, until it
yields to the masses—and in exchange for a given amount of labour,
too—as much subsistence as they could earn in a state of barbarism.
Landed property does much more than that—it gives more than the Right
to employment—it gives Employment itself, and did it only clear the
land-tax, it would do a hundred times more than you ask it to do.
I find to my great regret that I have not yet done with landed
property and its value. I have still to state, and to refute, in
as few words as possible, an objection which is specious and even
formidable.
It is said,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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