THEORIES OF PROPERTY.*
OF some books one reads that they "end upon a note of interrogation," a phrase that may be the refuge of a baffled reviewer. In the case of this composite work of eight • Property : its Duties and Eights. Essays by Various Writers. London ; Macmillan and CO. [Is, net.] distinguished students and teachers, the Bishop of Oxford concludes his introductory essay With the question : "Are we, as Christians, ready for a deep and courageous and corporate act of penitence and reparation P" The seven essays which follow leave it unanswered; nor do they tell us what form such an act might take. In six of them we have short treatises of great academic interest upon the history and philosophy of theories of property, and in the last the Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford deals with the effects of property on personality, mainly in England to-day. The six writers take us from traditions of barbarism to the Mosaic law, to Plato and Aristotle, and through early Christian days to the Schoolmen, past the Reformation to Puritanism and the Evangelical Revival. The whole forms a striking synopsis of the development of civilization and private property in the closest connexion. No sermons on the responsibilities of wealth could be more eloquent than this instruction in the teaching of great tnen of all ages. But are the words of the essayists aimed, as were the words of Christ and the best of Christian preachers, at individual souls P Do they call upon personal responsibility ? One is haunted throughout by the dread that Bishop Gore's word " corporate " really means " universally compulsory." The writers nowhere say so, but they give the impression that legislation never intended to, and should not, sanction private property except for personal use, and that collective or State ownership should be enormously extended. They grant that private ownership builds and develops character, and their admission should satisfy those who believe that the State is based on individual character. There is no other sure foundation, and on the large issue we emphatically disagree with such a reading of history as the book implies. In detail the history is above reproach, but we must protest against Bishop Gore's serious approval of Horace's sentimental lines, Privatus illis census erai brcvis, Commune magnum. For when Rome was emerging from her pastoral stage and private incomes were small, the public revenue, too, was small, and, by the way, entirely used for aggressive purposes against her neighbours ; the days when public magnificence, shown by mighty publics buildings, amphitheatres, baths, and so forth, was conspicuous throughout the Roman world were the days of Roman decadence. Such a thought might temper for us and for Bishop Gore our immediate and obvious delight at the passing of a Stafford House.
When Professor HOW:owe tells us of the common property of a tribe in a state of primitive savagery, is be merely recounting history, or is he urging us to return to barbarism in the particular sphere of nationalized land P When he writes of the Russian mir, would he warn the most backward man in Europe, the Russian rural peasant, that he is wrong in following (as he is following) the more advanced nations by substituting private property for the village communism which our Anglo-Saxon forefathers began to throw off like painful shackles in the dawn of modern civilization P When Professor Bartlet writes of the voluntary communism of the early Church in Jerusalem, a small, struggling body consumed by zeal for their belief against the world, does he think it com- parable to compulsory communism to-day P If the whole world or the population of Jerusalem had accepted Christianity before the capture of the city, does he suppose that com- munism would have prevailed as a binding Christian custom P Such questions arise when we try to find the ultimate purpose of most of the essayists, though less in the case of Professor Rashdall than of the others : he deals solely with the philo- sophical theories of property from Plato to T. H. Green and Professor Bosanquet, an intensely interesting summary, but he concludes by stating the chief social advantages of private property, and by saying that " the justification of property must not depend upon any a priori principle, but upon its social effects," presumably those for which Bishop Gore asks for reparation. Several of the writers emphasize the doctrine that property for use is justifi- able, while property for power or control of others is not. Locke's support of the theory that a man may not hoard from the use of others what he cannot use himself may be accepted as morally justified by conscience. A man may claim what he has produced if he can use it, and let us include as use, not only immediate consumption, but storing in order to facilitate further production. But since primitive life was left behind, nothing has so greatly contributed to the material progress of the world as production, not for use, but for exchange. Is no man to claim property that he has pro- duced for that purpose ? Legislation could intrude none of its hard-and-fast lines here. If it touched the subject of property for use as against property for power, it would either be ineffective, or would eventually enact that Box when asleep must not restrain Cox from wearing his trousers. Seriously, these things must be matters for the individual conscience. Besides neglecting the point of pro- duction for exchange, our authors, when deploring the state of the toolless wage-earner, point to no glory in his emancipation from serfdom and vastly increased freedom of contract. When they come to the Reformation and Puritan influence, we regret that they show little enthusiasm for the new spirit which, by emphasizing each man's direct responsi- bility towards God for the use of property, lessened in pro- portion the apparent social responsibility. Yet it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the increase of the one will only be shown effectively by an increase in the other. Mr. H. G. Wood evidently has more sympathy with the efforts of the saintly Baxter to restrain the tendency to laiisez-fair e : he quotes his approval of prices fixed by authority, as attempted in days of mediaeval Socialism and of Tudor or Stuart monopolies, and his statement : " It is a false rule of them that think their commodity is worth as much as anyone will give." To use a man's straits for extortion is morally iniquitous, but, alas ! a better understanding of economics was shown by the unsaintly knight who asked :—
"For what is worth in anything But so much money as 'twill bring ?"
Canon Scott Rolland in the final essay on "Property and Personality" raises some hope of a partial solution of the problem when he mentions co-operation ; for voluntary co-operation can mitigate many present evils. We regret that his only example is the Trade Union. In theory a Union has all the merits of Friendly and Co-operative Societies in extending small capitalism, but Unionists, whose fundamental patriotism is as unselfish as any in time of need, have in days of prosperity shown a coercive spirit, pervading even the use of their money ; but the members have undeniably some of the advantages of property. It may be seen that the book is full of useful history, though weighted unequally in one direction ; it makes a noble appeal to the individual conscience; and it suggests unlimited dangers to liberty and society.
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