hat have arisen to society by passing from the natural to that
which is called the civilized state.

In taking the matter upon this ground, the first principle of
civilization ought to have been, and ought still to be, that the
condition of every person born into the world, after a state of
civilization commences, ought not to be worse than if he had been born
before that period. But the fact is, that the condition of millions, in
every country in Europe, is far worse than if they had been born before
civilization began, or had been born among the Indians of North America
at the present day. I will shew how this fact has happened.

It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural
uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, _the common
property of the human race_. In that state every man would have been
born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with the
rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions,
vegetable and animal.

But the earth in its natural state, as before said, is capable of
supporting but a small number of inhabitants compared with what it
is capable of doing in a cultivated state. And as it is impossible to
separate the improvement made by cultivation from the earth itself, upon
which that improvement is made, the idea of landed property arose from
that inseparable connection; but it is nevertheless true, that it is
the value of the improvement only, and not the earth itself, that is
individual property. Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated land,
owes to the community a _ground-rent_ (for I know of no better term
to express the idea) for the land which he holds; and it is from this
ground-rent that the fund proposed in this plan is to issue.

It is deducible, as well from the nature of the thing as from all the
histories transmitted to us, that the idea of landed property commenced
with cultivation, and that there was no such thing as landed property
before that time. It could not exist in the first state of man, that
of hunters. It did not exist in the second state, that of shepherds:
neither Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, nor Job, so far as the history of the
Bible may be credited in probable things, were owners of land. Their
property consisted, as is always enumerated, in flocks and herds, and
they travelled with them from place to place. The frequent contentions
at that time, about the use of a well in the dry country of