The Private Ownership of Land [pp. 125-147]

THE PRINCE TON RE VIEW.
thing outside of himself? In the beginning certainly one can
lay exclusive claim to nothing but himself-his own soul and
body. Every other man around him has the same right to
every material substance that he has, and may use whatever he
can lay his hand on as he pleases. How then can anything
become the exclusive property of an individual? All will admit
that he who puts forth his own powers to produce something
becomes thereby its owner. Perhaps no intuition of the soul
is simpler or more primitive than this. But no one can produce
anything by such an exertion of his powers, unless he expends
that effort upon some material thing. Accordingly a man
selects some one of the numerous objects around him as best
fitted to serve the end he has in view, and exerts his powers
upon it till he has rendered it fit to subserve his ends and promote his happiness. If then he is the exclusive owner of the
product of his own labor, he must in like manner have an exclusive right to that material substance on which that labor has
been expended. As Mr. Locke said long ago, he has mingled
his labor with the material substance, and must therefore own
that with which it has become united. If any one denies this,
he denies that one can in any way become the owner of any
material substance, and even that one can in any practical sense
own the products of his own labor; for he does not admit that
one can own the only thing on which he can exert it. He puts
himself on record as denying the right of private property altogether, and undertakes to maintain that any other man has just
as good a right to enjoy the products of any man's labor as he
has himself; for in no way can a man own the products of his
own labor, except by owning that upon which that labor has been
exerted.
This is of course said upon the presumption that the labor
has been employed on a substance to which no other person had
previously acquired a claim by labor bestowed. If one labors
upon a substance to which such a claim has been previously
established, he will not acquire ownership till he extinguishes
that claim by an equivalent, to the satisfaction of the previous
owner. It is only acquired by labor bestowed on that which
before was free to all, whereby it has been rendered serviceable to human well-being as it was not before.
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