Patrick Edward Dove
Charles B. Fillebrown
[Reprinted from the book, Natural Taxation,
published 1917.
Part I / The Authorities / Chapter 3]
PATRICK EDWARD DOVE was born in Lasswade, near Edinburgh, Scotland,
July 31, 1815. He came of an old and distinguished Scottish family. As
a young man he traveled widely and lived for a time in Paris and in
London. About 1840 he came into the family property in Ayrshire,
Scotland. There he lived on his estate the life of a bachelor squire
until 1848, when an unfortunate investment wiped doubt his fortune.
Shortly after this he married and went to live in Darmstadt, Germany
where he studied, wrote, and lectured. In 1850 he published his Theory
of Human Progression. The work appeared in a limited edition
published simultaneously in London and Edinburgh. It was read and
praised by distinguished scholars, but never attracted general public
attention. In his introduction to the edition of the book brought out
in 1895 in New York, Mr. Alexander Harvey states:
Carlyle read and praised the volume. He is quoted as
acclaiming it the voice of a new revolution, an education and
economics. Sir William Hamilton, the great philosopher, pronounced
the book epoch-making, and calculated to rally mankind to great
reforms. Professor Blackie likewise praised it highly. Our own
Charles Sumner was so impressed by it that he circulated many copies
in the United States and persuaded Dove to write in behalf of the
emancipation movement.
For all that the book failed to make its way and before
many years was utterly forgotten. It became very scarce in time, and
the demand for it on the part of a few scholars was supplied with
difficulty. What Dove did for scholars, George achieved for the
masses.
After publishing his book Dove left Germany and lived in Edinburgh
for a time, later in Glasgow. He wrote somewhat extensively on
economic, philosophic, and religious subjects. In his later years he
interested himself actively in military science. In 1860 he was
stricken with paralysis. He traveled to Natal in a vain search for
health. He returned to Glasgow where he spent his last years in
retirement, dying April 28, 1873.
The Theory of Human Progression[1]
is a somewhat ambitious contribution to the science of politics. It
was the author's name to formulate the principles by which the
relations between man and man ought to be regulated. The work shows a
peculiar mixture of intellectual characteristics. There runs through
it a vain of naive piety side-by-side with a lode of freethinking. The
style is marked by prolixity and repetition but in certain passages
reaches heights of vigorous eloquence.
His treatment of the land question, to which he naturally gave large
attention, also exhibits the effects of 18th-century teaching. He
remarks that "the land produces, according to the law of the
Creator, more than the value of the labor expended upon it, and on
this account men are willing to pay a rent for the land." This is
the old delusion of a magic property in the soil which rolls off a "net
product," and thus gives rise to economic rent. Again, in another
passage, he speaks of rent as "the profit that God had graciously
been pleased to accord to human industry employed in the cultivation
of the soil." Dove had, in fact, little comprehension of the
nature of ground rent as essentially a social product.
Dove's discussion of the land question, which is outlined in our
extracts from his book, might be summed up in three propositions as
follows: (1) The land is a free gift of the creator to all men, and,
as such should be common, not private property; (2) It is not
practicable, however, to enforce this right of common property by
dividing the land into equal shares and apportioning it among the
inhabitants according to their number; (3) The solution of the problem
lies in the taxation of rent, or, the appropriation of the annual
value of the land.
Extracts from The Theory of Human
Progression
(1) Arraignment of existing land laws. --
Under the present system of land occupancy, combined with
labor taxation, want and starvation are the natural consequences.
They may excite compassion, but they need excite no wonder. And
until the present system is broken up, root and branch, and buried
in oblivion, the laboring population of Britain and Ireland must
reap the fruits of a system that first allocates all the soil to
thirty or forty thousand proprietors, and then places the heaviest
taxation in the world on the mass of inhabitants. [Chap.
III, p. 244.]
(2) Right of the nation to change the land laws. --
There is no such thing as "the rights of landed
property" separated from the mere dictum of the law, which the
nation has an undoubted right to alter or abolish whenever it shall
see fit to do so. And if the nation were to resolve the to resume
and take back all lands which had been granted by the crown (with
considerations affecting those individuals who had purchased), the
nation would not be guilty of any crime, or wrong, or impropriety;
but would be exactly in the same position as it is when it abolishes
laws against witchcraft, or laws in favor of the slave trade, or
laws which make it a legal crime to be a Jew or a Catholic.
Superstition, on this point, may endure for a few years longer; but
no truth can be more certain than that God gave the land for the
benefit of all; and if any arrangement interfere with, or diminish
that benefit, then has man as man, as the recipient of God's bounty,
an undoubted right to alter or abolish that arrangement, exactly as
he alters his arrangements in agriculture, in medicine, in
mechanics, or in navigation. No more crime, and no more wrong that
catches to his alterations in the one case then in the other. [Chapter
III, pp. 275 -- 76.]
(3) Problem of the equitable disposition of the earth. --
Is it equitable that any arrangements of past
generations should cause one man now to be born heir to a county, or
half a county, or quarter of a county, while the other inhabitants
of that county are thereby deprived of all rights to the soil, and
must consequently pay a rent to the one individual who naturally has
not one particle of right to the earth more than they have
themselves? And if such an arrangement be not now equitable, most
undoubtedly it ought not to be allowed to continue; and if any
government (instead of administering the laws of equity) use the
armed power of the nation for the purpose of enforcing such
arrangements, such government has departed from its proper
intension, and is not entitled to obedience.
If, then, we admit that every generation of man has exactly the
same free right to the earth, unencumbered by any arrangements of
past ages, the great problem is to discover "such a system as
shall secure to every man his exact share of the natural advantages
which the Creator has provided for the race; while at the same time,
he has full opportunity, without let or hindrance, to exercise is
labor, industry, and skill, for his own advantage." Until this
problem is solved, both in theory and in practice, political change
must continually go on. [Chapter 3, p. 303.]
(4) The answer to the land question. --
The solution we propound (and which we hope to defend
more at large at some future period) is the following, although, of
course, there is no supposition that any general solution can be
immediately applicable to the circumstances of this or any other
country.
1st. Reason can acknowledge no difference of original rights
between the individuals of which the human race is composed.
2nd. Equality of rights cannot be sacrificed by any arrangements
which one generation of men make for succeeding generations; but
equality of rights is perpetual, inasmuch as that equality derives
from the human reason, which varies not from age to age.
Even if it were true that there ought to be an inequality of rights
among individuals of the human race, it would be absolutely
impossible to determine which individuals of the race should be born
to more rights, and which individuals to fewer rights, than their
fellows. And inequality of rights can only be based on superstition,
and the very moment reason is substituted for superstition in
political science (as it has been in physical science), that moment
must men admit that no possible means are known by which an
inequality of rights could possibly be substantiated. Even if it
were true, for instance, that there should be an aristocracy and a
serfdom, there are no possible means of determining which
individuals should be the aristocrats and which individuals the
serfs.
3rd. The state of England, then, would present a soil (including
the soil proper, the mines, forests, fisheries, etc. -- in fact,
that portion of the natural earth called England) which was
permanent, and a population that was not permanent, but renewed by
successive generations.
4th. The question then is, "What system will secure to every
individual of these successive generations his portion of the
natural advantages of England?" Of this problem, we maintain
that there is but one solution possible.
5th. No truth can be more absolutely certain as an intuitive
proposition of the reason, than that "an object is the property
of its creator;" and we maintain that creation is the only
means by which an individual right to property can be generated.
Consequently, as no individual and no generation is the creator of
the substantive, earth, it belongs equally to all the existing
inhabitants. That is, no individual has a special claim to more than
another.
6th. But while on the one hand we take into consideration the
object -- that is, the earth; we must also take into consideration
the subject -- that is, man, and man's labor.
7th. The object is the common property of all; no individual being
able to exhibit a title to any particular portion of it. And
individual or private property is the increased value produced by
individual labor. Again, in the earth must be distinguished the
permanent earth and its temporary or perishable productions. The
former -- that is, the permanent earth -- we maintain, never can be
private property; and every system that treats it as such must
necessarily be unjust. No rational basis has ever been exhibited to
the world on which private right to any particular portion of the
earth could possibly be founded.
8th. But though the permanent earth never can be private property
(although the laws make call it so, and may treat it as such), it
must be possessed by individuals for the purpose of cultivation, and
for the purpose of extracting from it all those natural objects
which man requires.
9th. The question then is, upon what terms, or according to what
system, must the earth be possessed by the successive generations
that succeed each other on the surface of the globe? The conditions
given are -- First, That the earth is the common property of the
race; Second, That what ever individual produces by his own labor
(whether it be on new object, made out of many materials, or a new
value given by labor to an object was form, locality etc. may be
changed) is the private property of that individual, and he may
dispose of it as he pleases, provided he does not interfere with his
fellows. Third, The earth is the perpetual common property of the
race, and each succeeding generation has a full title to a free
earth. One generation cannot encumber a succeeding generation.
And the condition required is, such a system as shall secure to the
successive individuals of the race their share of the common
property, and the opportunity, without interference, of making as
much private property as their skill, industry, and enterprise would
enable them to make.
The scheme then appears to present itself most naturally is, the
general division of the soil, portioning it out to inhabitants
according to their number. Such appears to be the only system that
suggests itself to most minds, if we may judge from the objections
brought forward against an equalization of property. All these
objections are against the actual division of the soil; and
certainly such a division is theoretically erroneous, especially
when the fractional parts are made the property of the possessors.
But independently of this, the profits are rising from trade, etc.,
would induce many individuals to forsake agriculture, and to abandon
their portion to those who preferred the cultivation of the soil to
any other pursuit. A purely agricultural population is almost
impossible at any period; but when men have made considerable
advances in the arts, etc., a general return to agricultural
pursuits is a mere chimera, a phantom. Men must go forward, never
backwards. To speak of a division of lands in England is absurd.
Such a division would be as useless as it is improbable. But it is
more than useless -- it is unjust; and unjust, not to the present
so-called proprietors but to the human beings who are continually
being born into the world and who have exactly the same natural
right to a portion that their predecessors have had....
The actual division of the soil need never be anticipated, nor
would such a division be just, if the divided portions were made the
property (legally, for they could never be so morally) of
individuals.
If, then, successive generations of men cannot have their
fractional share of the actual soil (including mines, etc.), how can
the division of the advantages of the natural earth be effected?
By the division of its annual value or rent; that is, by making the
rent of the soil the common property of the nation. That is (as the
taxation is the common property of this state), by taking the whole
of the taxes out of the rents of the soil, and thereby abolishing
all other kinds of taxation whatsoever. And thus all industry could
be absolutely emancipated from every burden, and every man would
reap such natural reward as his skill, industry, or enterprise
rendered legitimately his, according to the natural law of free
competition. This we maintain to be the only theory that will
satisfy their requirements of the problem of natural property.....
We have no hesitation whatsoever in predicting that all civilized
communities must ultimately abolish all revenue restrictions on
industry, and draw the whole taxation from the rents of the soil.
And this .... because the rents of the soil are the common produce
of the whole labor of a community. [Chapter
III, pp. 305 -- 311.]
FOOTNOTE
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