land is
common property, the property of the whole people, and that it cannot
be alienated from the people without producing the most fearful
consequences. No man is free who is debarred in his right, to so much
of the soil of his country as is necessary to support him in his right
to life, for without the inherent right to unrestrained access to the
soil he cannot support life, except in primitive society where land is
plentiful, population sparse, and industry undiversified. As
population becomes denser and land becomes scarcer from having been
monopolized by the more far seeing, or more fortunate, and industry
becomes more diversified, mankind begins to feel the pressure of
population described by Malthus, and the scarcity of subsistence;
caused, not by this pressure of population, as Malthus maintains, but
by the restricted production of subsistence caused by the monopoly and
concentration of the soil, which inhibits the producing agency from
the production of the increased subsistence necessary to the increased
number of mouths to be fed. There can be no such thing as
overproduction when there are hundreds and thousands who perish for
food; there can be no pressure upon population when there are hundreds
and thousands of acres of arable land locked up in a deed purchase, or
entail, or primogeniture, upon which alone beasts are allowed to
trespass. The idea is preposterous. And yet men who are regarded as
standard authority upon economic questions impose this sophistry of
overproduction and pressure of population upon mankind, and are
applauded for their ignorance, or the cupidity which makes them to
pervert the truth.

Monopoly of land is the curse of the race in every modern government.
Being the one great source from which all wealth must and does spring,
its concentration in the hands of a few men not only impoverishes the
people, but seriously cripples the operations of government (the one
and the other being substantially identical) by curtailing the
productive energies of the people and diverting into the coffers of
individuals rental which should flow into the common treasury as
taxes, thus lifting from the shoulders of the people the enormous
burden of the maintenance of government which falls upon them.

Monopoly of land was the prime element which hastened the decay of
Roman greatness and strength, because when the people no longer had
homes to fight for they ceased to be patriots, ceased to be virtuou