Section LXXXVII.. Landed Property.

Landed Property.

As land, in its uncultivated state, has neither been produced by man, nor can be entirely consumed by him, the above demonstration of the necessity of private property cannot without any more ado, be extended to land.(519) Hence, individual property in land is everywhere much more recent than individual property in capital.(520)

But a certain expenditure of capital and labor is necessary that land may be used productively, and, in most instances, this employment of capital and labor is of long duration, irrevocable in the very nature of things, and one the fruits of which can be reaped only after some time has elapsed. Now, this cooperation of capital and labor is such, that no one would undertake to employ them in the cultivation of the land, had he not the strongest assurance of possessing it. Hence, agriculture in its most rudimentary stage supposes ownership of the land, at least from the time that it is “tickled with the hoe,” until it “smiles with the harvest;” or, to express it more accurately, all the time intervening between the work of the plow and the labor of the sickle. The more, afterwards, population and civilization increase, the more products must be wrung from the soil. But this can be accomplished only by means of its more intensive cultivation (higher farming), by lavishing a greater amount of capital and labor on it, and, as a rule, by extending the circle of agricultural operations by means of combinations more and more artificial. Hence, the progress of civilization demands an ever increasing fixity, and a more pronounced shaping of landed property (the specification of jurists), in the interests of all who share in this progress, and even of those who own no landed property themselves. Were there no property in land, every one would find it more difficult and laborious to gratify his want of agricultural products;(521) and the products themselves would be of an inferior kind.

Thus, for instance, in Camargo, the lackmus was formerly prepared from plants to be had “free” in the woods. It was then, however, much dearer than it is now that the plants are artificially raised on landed property.(522) It is otherwise with the fisheries. The appropriation of rivers or seas would not tend to increase the abundance of their products, and hence this appropriation is, on the whole, rare.(523)