general characteristic—they all rest upon APPROPRIATION and EXPLOITATION.
Wherever the fiction of political property has been allowed to become carried into practice, there slavery, in some form or other, is found to underlie the social structure. It may be a primitive form of chattel slavery, where the unfortunate toiler is bartered as so much merchandize by those who have deprived him of his natural heritage in the world’s wealth; or it may have developed into a form of feudalism, where he becomes part of the soil he cultivates and is bought and sold along with it by the baron who owns him; or it may have still further developed into the modern system of landlordism, where the disinherited is free to work for the proprietor, upon the latter’s terms, but with the only alternative of starvation if he refuses. It is ever the same in effect; those who have appropriated the world to which all are justly entitled, hold in slavery the millions whom they have expropriated and live upon the results of their toil. Mulhall[1] estimates that in the countries of Europe, with the exception of some holding very small areas, only 6 in every 100 of the population own the land in many instances; 14 in one instance; 4 in every 100 in three cases; and in the United Kingdom, only 1 in every 200. In Australasia,[2] a similar monopoly of the land prevails. Out of a population of three million people, there are 167,000 landowners and 19,011 squatters in possession of the land, of which 64,100,000 acres are held freehold, and 539,040,000 acres are used as sheep runs, while the remaining 1,365,119,840 acres are held by the respective governments, who keep them for the most part in idleness. There is a situation for a newly-settled community to be placed in! Only 6% of the population owning land in Australasia; or 117 of the entire population possessing ⅓ of the entire soil! Of course, from such a tree, we must expect unpleasant fruits. The many, who have not a share in this monopoly must reward those who have, in order to obtain access to the soil from which they must necessarily draw their subsistence. For the privilege of being permitted to work, they pay to those who have stolen their birthright a part of what they produce by their exertions, and it is called rent. Rent is the amount paid by the laborer to the usurper for the right to use the soil which he has appropriated. And the State holds guard behind him, and with all the machinery of law, police, and executive, compels him to render up the blackmail which the idle proprietor extorts from him.
- ↑ Mulhall's Dictionary of Statistics, 1886, p. 267.
- ↑ These figures and a number that follow are taken from Hayter’s Victorian Year Book, 1886-7.
