Thomas Paine on Agrarian Justice

Thomas Spence

[ An Excerpt from the essay by Spence, The Rights of Infants, 1796]

"BUT stop, don't let us reckon without our host; for Mr Paine will object to such an equal distribution of the rents. For says he, in his Agrarian Justice, the public can claim but a Tenth Part of the value of the landed property as it now exists, with its vast improvements of cultivation and building. But why are we to be put off now with but a Tenth Share? Because, says Mr Paine, it has so improved in the hands of private proprietors as to be of ten times the value it was of in its natural state. But may we not ask who improved the land? Did the proprietors alone work and toil at this improvement? And did we labourers and our forefathers stand, like Indians and Hottentots, idle spectators of so much public-spirited industry? I suppose not. Nay, on the contrary, it is evident to the most superficial enquirer that the labouring classes ought principally to be thanked for every improvement.

Indeed, if there had never been any slaves, any vassals, or any day-labourers employed in building and tillage, then the proprietors might have boasted of having themselves created all this gay scene of things. But the case alters amazingly, when we consider that the earth has been cultivated either by slaves, compelled, like beasts, to labour, or by the indigent objects whom they first exclude from a share in the soil, that want may compel them to sell their labour for daily bread. In short, the great may as well boast of fighting their battles as of cultivating the earth.

The toil of the labouring classes first produces provisions, and then the demand of their families creates a market for them. Therefore it will be found that it is the markets made by the labouring and mechanical tribes that have improved the earth. And once take away these markets, or let all the labouring people, like the Israelites, leave the country in a body, and you would immediately see from what cause the country had been cultivated, and so many goodly towns and villages built.

You may suppose that after the emigration of all these beggarly people, every thing would go on as well as before: that the farmer would continue to plough, and the town landlord to build as formerly. I tell you nay; for the farmer could neither proceed without labourers nor find purchasers for his corn and cattle. It would be just the same with the building landlord, for he could neither procure workmen to build, nor tenants to pay him rent.

Behold then your grand, voluptuous nobility and gentry, the arch cultivators of the earth; obliged, for lack of servants, again to turn Gothic hunters, like their savage forefathers. Behold their palaces, temples, and towns, mouldering into dust, and affording shelter only to wild beasts; and their boasted, cultivated fields and garden, degenerated into a howling wilderness."

The author of the following analysis of the criticism of Paine by Spence is unknown and was discovered online while doing some research. The School of Cooperative Individualism hopes to determine the name of the writer in order to properly provide attribution.

Thomas Paine [in Agrarian Justice] derived an important rule: "The first principle of civilization ought 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" (§ 8). But that did not mean restoring the actual property a person would have possessed in the state of nature. Instead, he asserted that "every proprietor … of cultivated lands owes to the community a ground-rent for the land which he holds" (§ 12) and that each person should receive a one-time payment of £15 in compensation for the loss of their natural rights and an annual payment of £10 in old age (§ 21, 22). Paine emphasized (§ 20) that these payments were a matter of justice, not charity.

A. Dispute among the Radicals

Thomas Paine's proposal in Agrarian Justice occasioned a response by Thomas Spence in an essay entitled The Rights of Infants (1797).[1] Spence criticized Paine on two levels: practice and principle. On the practical level, he regarded the benefits Paine proposed as woefully inadequate ("contemptible and insulting"). The reason they were to be so low was that Paine's tax would be imposed only upon death (an estate tax), instead of annually (as in Spence's proposal).[2] In addition, Paine recommended a tax-rate of only ten percent, leaving ninety percent in private hands. That was the point at which the principled conflict arose.

On the level of principle, Spence attacked Paine for treating personal property as part of the commons from which funds might be drawn. This premise directly violated Spence's belief that common property consisted exclusively of God's gift of nature. Paine's reasoning on this subject was rather convoluted. He accepted the Lockean principle of a natural right to land, but he also believed, as a practical matter, that it would be impossible to separate the original value of soil from improvements added by labor.[3] If the rental value of land alone could not be taxed (as Spence had proposed), consistency of thought left Paine no source of funding for his plan. Thus, Paine introduced the idea that most value from labor is created socially, from which he derived the conclusion that government might treat the value of all goods as common property, not just value derived from nature.[4] Paine did not realize that once one accepts that premise, there is no logical boundary to what the state (on behalf of society) may take. All property, except a few home-produced vegetables and crafts, belong to society. This consequence flew in the face of the principle Paine had tried to establish in his other writings -- namely, that government power needs to be limited to avoid tyranny. The great irony is that Paine took great pains to show that his plan could reduce the size of government. Spence, on the other hand, saw that the actual consequence of Paine's proposal would be to expand government power.[5] All of that was the unwanted consequence of expanding the definition of natural rights to include produced goods -- which Paine himself had defined as individual property.

NOTES

1. The Rights of Infants is described in Horne (123). It is also reprinted in the 1907 edition of The Single Tax Review, the preface on pp. 40-41 and the body on pp. 11-16.
2. Actually, Paine contradicted himself. At one point, he proposed funding his proposal from a revenue flow (annual "ground-rent" in § 12). Later he proposed a capitalized source of revenue (a one-time payment of an estate tax in § 72). The latter was the basis of his benefits calculation.
3. "And as it is impossible to separate the improvement made by cultivation from the earth itself, … the idea of landed property arose from that parable connection; but it is nevertheless true, that it is the value of the improvement, only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property" (Agrarian Justice, §11). Paine may have been influenced by the ambiguity of Locke's own formulation. Recall that Locke originally believed that private property could be carved out of the commons only if there was enough and as good for others and no waste ensued. At a later point in his argument, he allowed unlimited accumulation of land. Paine was perhaps confused by Locke's sleight of hand.
4. "Personal property is the effect of society; and it is as impossible for an individual to acquire personal property without the aid of society, as it is for him to make land originally. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came" (Agrarian Justice, §§58-59).
5. "All the complexities of the present public establishments, which support such hosts of placemen, will not only still continue, but also the evils of them will be greatly enhanced by the very system of Agrarian Justice" Spence, The Rights of Infants.