mate and sole dominion of and over their allotted shares. And, although the right so obtained is of man's origination, it is nevertheless valid and inviolable. It imposes on others, by the rules of natural justice, the duty of respecting it. Analogy serves to illustrate. The mutual dominion of husband and wife is also of human origin. A wife belongs to her husband, and he to her, by virtue of their common choice or consent. Nevertheless, a profanation of the conjugal rights of either is opposed to the most elementary precepts of nature and reason. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his house, nor his field, . . . . nor anything that is his." (Deut. 5:21.)

The practice of dividing the soil by an impartial general rule, so as to assign to individuals the sole dominion over specified portions of it, is universal among the leading nations of mankind. The comprehensive conclusion of men's combined reason, declaring that "the land of the earth should be divided," appertains to that species of human law which the Roman jurists styled "Jus Gentium,"

It is law which comes down to us from venerable antiquity. It is in accordance with the dictates of right reason. Mankind in all ages from very primitive times have seen its expediency, and its peculiar necessity for well-ordered civil societies. To this law are referred the bringing into general use of ordinary buying and selling; the introduction of exclusive ownership of land and other property; and the establishment of many other fundamental institutions of organized society.

To attack the legitimate vested rights of individuals to the ownership of land, the most important object of property, would

1 These terms of Justinian jurisprudence have, in this paper, been translated by "The Common Law of Nations." To render them literally by "Law of Nations" would be equivocal, and understood to mean International Law, something widely different from the Jus Gentium. In Roman juristic philosophy, these Latin words are used to define certain general laws of equity and expediency. They prevail in all, or nearly all the nations of the earth by way of universal customs founded on identical and universal needs. The general conditions which give rise to them are everywhere similar. "Quod naturalis ratio inter omnes homines constituit, id apud omnes gentes peræque custoditur, vocaturque jus gentium."

The excellent authority of the learned Jesuit, Rev. W. H. Hill, has been followed in using the phrase, "The Common Law of Nations." The student who desires to perfect his knowledge of this matter is referred to Father Hill's " Ethics, or Moral Philosophy." In that excellent work will also be found, luminously defined, the manner in which separate ownership in every species of property first originated; how it justly became vested in particular persons. The subject in all its important relations is discussed conformably to the methods of the old masters of thought and truth; that is, to the depth of its absolute and immutable principles.

William Whewell, D.D., in the "Editor's Preface" to his "abridged translation" of "Grotius on the Rights of War and Peace," says that the ancient Roman meaning of the expression, Jus Gentium, was, " The Law common to most Nations."

be surely destructive of the peace, order, and justice whereby civil society preserves its existence. Were communism of the soil possible to be realized, its speedy and disastrous effect would follow. Rightful individual prerogatives may not be interfered with, save for recognized and real purposes of public necessity; and then, only by the proper authority acting by prescribed and lawful methods. The State has the right of eminent domain.

Yet there is another aspect of these reflections. The system of private ownership of land and other property is the product of human legislation. Could it not, then, be abolished by the same authority which brought it into being? It must be admitted that, speaking merely of what is within the absolute limits of human government and law, it could be abolished. Yet not arbitrarily. It could, if there were adequate reasons on account of which the public welfare required so radical a change, and if the abolishment of the system were effected by methods which would be equitable and legal, including the due compensation of expropriated owners. The case is extreme and hypothetical. These reasons cannot exist until the universal moral character of mankind be wholly transformed and elevated from its inperfect state. Human nature cannot, unless it be entirely transfigured, attain to those conditions which would render a return to common property in land or other objects practicable or expedient. To expect that such a change, such a consummation, will be brought about, is to entertain a hope which is simply chimerical.

Still, it must be conceded, by the requirements of speculative truth, that the abrogation of exclusive ownership would not be an act which simply exceeded the boundaries of human law. It would indeed be wholly beyond the range of men's legislation, did each person hold his particular possessions by a title vested in him immediately by the natural law. But this he does not. His title is a human title.

It was the Jus Gentium which decreed that it was expedient to divide the goods of the earth. The actual allotment of land and other kinds of property in equitable proportions to individual persons was regulated by the special civil laws of each country. "Dominium et prælatio introducta sunt ex jure humano." (St. Thom. Sum. Th., Q. 10 a. 10.)

No human law is absolutely unchangeable. Even the common law of nations, more stable than any other species of men's enactments, is not exempt from mutation. Instances are not wanting in which important changes actually occurred in the Jus Gentium. Anciently, it was in accordance with it for prisoners of war either to be put to death or made slaves, at the option of their captors.

But, by present international law, it is made illicit either to put prisoners of war to death arbitrarily or to make slaves of them.

Slavery has been gradually done away with by a change in men's manner of judging it; by greater refinement of the higher sentiments; not by any change in the manner itself which the law regarded, except as consequent upon the diversity wrought in men's ideas. Civilized peoples have also changed their judgment respecting the right to execute at will captives of war.

These are changes in the common law of nations proving that it is mutable, or that men can judge its principles differently at different times. It is by superior enlightenment that we now abhor some things authorized by the Jus Gentium in other days. It is because of better knowledge of the same matter; more definite and correct ideas of what is reasonable, becoming and humane. Our greater refinement and perfection of laws, correlative with the spread among us of highly cultured and humane feelings, have brought about the abolishment of property in human beings. The supernatural principles and influences of the Christian religion should also be present in thought to appreciate adequately the causes which, in the Evangelical periods, produce orderly changes in the direction of what is noble and beneficent.

Slavery is not in itself, or intrinsically, evil. The obligation of refusing to allow the practice of it is created and imposed on civilized peoples by positive, not by natural law. Consequently, it should not be concluded that, in introducing it, men were sanctioning or practising a system inherently wrong. Human laws, like everything else which is human, are of necessity variable and amendable.

It follows, therefore, that even the Jus Gentium is not necessarily immutable, as is the natural law. We find that what was once allowed by it is now contrary to it;, and this, without any change in the matter to which the law pertains. Take the case of the prohibitory rule which once forbade the charging of interest on money lent, whereas the charge is now licit, the matter itself of the law having changed. For capital has altered the nature of money as representative of values, and has made a different object of it. Money is no longer merely what it was in the days of St. Thomas Aquinas, an object whose chief, if not only, function was to be a medium of necessary exchanges. It is now adapted to investment. The intelligence of men, as time went on, devised new commercial conditions not foreknown by the generations of the past.

It is true that the system of private property in land is directly contrived by man, not nature. Nevertheless, there is no valid reason for concluding, with Mr. George, that it should be abolished.

Far less is there any reason for supposing that the system is essentially "iniquitous." There are, on the other hand, positively fatal objections to absolute communism of land. For it is an impracticable scheme when intended as the universal rule. It is contrary to the established usages of all the leading and prosperous nations of the earth. The accumulated experience of all generations attests that, in the interests of peace, order, and abundance, the land, as well as other things, should be divided amongst nations and individuals, so as to give to them the exclusive ownership of their respective shares.

It is also a fundamental principle of Mr. George's reasoning that exclusive ownership can be legitimately acquired only by labor or production. “There can be to the ownership of anything no rightful title which is not derived from the title of the producer, and does not rest upon the natural right of the man to himself.” ("Progress and Poverty," bk.7, chap. 1.) Hence the importance which he attaches to the difference between land and other species of property. The latter is the result of human production; the former is the gift of nature.

Consequently, he deduces the injustice of individual and exclusive ownership of land, forasmuch as the soil is not the product of human industry.

Moreover, if exclusive individual ownership of the soil is intrinsically unjust for the reason that the individual person does not produce the land, so must it be unjust for any nation to have exclusive ownership of the territory which they inhabit, and over which they exercise the sole proprietorship, the sovereignty and jurisdiction; for this particular part of mankind thereby excludes all the other nations of the earth from the benefit and use of that same territory. A nation of men no more produces the land which it occupies than the individual produces the piece of ground whereon he dwells. The one as much as the other is the endowment of nature. And, if by any reasoning derived from the fact of non-production the title of an individual to land can be shown to be spurious and “iniquitous," by exactly similar reasoning can a nation's exclusive dominion over its territory be proved to be fictitious and unrightful. Mr. George, it would seem, does not decline to draw this conclusion: "Nor have I ever asserted, but on the contrary have expressly denied, that the present population of . . . . any . . . . country have any exclusive right of ownership in the soil, or can in any way acquire such a right." (The "Reduction to Iniquity.")

Thus does Mr. George hold the absolute communism of the land. His desire, indeed, to alleviate the evils of the suffering poor is generous and honorable. and honorable. But the remedy does not consist

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in attempting to disprove by a "reduction to iniquity" the right of private property in land. In affirming that the soil may not be divided and subjected to exclusive ownership, Mr. George attacks the fundamental principles of Christian jurisprudence, and ranges himself in opposition to the universal judgment of enlightened mankind.

The essay has been made to refute Mr. George's special theory of communism by maintaining that exclusive ownership of land originates in mere "occupancy." The individual is accordingly said to be empowered by natural right to appropriate vacant land just as he chooses, as to site and quantity. Society, it is held, is not free to refuse its ratification to such exercise of dominion by the particular person. It is even the duty of public authority to declare the validity of the individual's act. But the governing power has no right to limit or define the quantity of land to be “occupied” or “appropriated" by any human being. This is wholly within the scope and exercise of indefeasible personal rights. Any limitation set to them, any determination of their range by the power which represents all the people, would be an arbitrary usurpation of inalienable individual liberty.

So runs the theory. It is evident that the will of the supreme authority in society is, by these principles, subordinated to the will of each individual. This theory has therefore been styled very aptly the theory of "absolute individualism." It is the unconditional autonomy of the particular person. He is a law unto himself. Is he not, sui ipsius, sui juris, possessed of dominion over self, invested with the complete ownership of his own free operations? The individual will is the last rule of action, to the exclusion of any equitable public law framed for the general good and the protection of the common rights of all. "Sic volo, sic jubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas."

But notwithstanding all this, the principle is indubitably as well as metaphysically true that the common good of an entire people is an object of greater solicitude and moment than the good of a single individual. "Bonum multitudinis," says St. Thomas Aquinas, "majus est et divinius quam bonum unius." But by the doctrine of individualism even the right of any one person is made to transcend the rights of all the persons composing the whole. community or nation. Indeed, the aggregated rights of all mankind would be as nothing compared to the paramount prerogative of any individual man. Supreme civil power would be in abeyance before the arbitrary and still more authoritative power of the individual. This theory accepted in practice would operate to the utter extinction of human society.

Communism is not per se opposed to the natural law. It would