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Typos — p. 54: incontravertible [= incontrovertible] - p. 53 - VII The Sanctity of Private Property When amid much confusion Europe gradually made the discovery that its ruler castes could not be trusted and need no longer be obeyed, it struck very few people as fantastic that certain bright sparks among the intelligentsia should be propounding the doctrine that, in matters of politics, Jack was as good as his master — if not slightly better!         The populace, suffering under intolerable injustices, were in no mood to be too critical of the hair-raising innovations which this reversal of political rôles implied. The invitation henceforth to believe that no difference really worth considering existed between men; that freedom meant that no subject was too abstruse or complex for the average man's understanding; that there was nothing sacred about private property because everywhere its sanctity was being blatantly desecrated; that heredity and the alleged transmission of innate gifts were deliberate fictions, seeing that in countless cases they had proved a delusion; finally that the notion of a family tradition as a means of building up precious lineal virtues was a pure myth — all these beliefs, extravagant though they were, the ill-informed majority accepted without demur.         And this was the more surprising, especially in the case of the last, because it was propounded in an Age when the populace everywhere was chiefly agricultural and therefore aware of the possibility of preserving family qualities in livestock and of the methods employed to do it.         Private Property, for instance, had evidently needed defending even in Aristotle's day (See Politics II, Bk. II, 1263a to 1264b); whilst the Romans had abused the institution so shockingly that the Communism discernible in early Church teaching was probably only a reaction to the plutocratic abuses of the period. Throughout the Middle Ages the institution continued to be degraded by the affluent and, from St. Gregory - p. 54 - who, in the sixth century argued that in our gifts to the poor "we do but restore to them that which is their own," and St. Thomas Aquinas who, some six centuries later, advocated robbery as a means of relieving destitution, down to Lenin who, in April 1917, incited the people of St. Petersburg to plunder by urging them to "Rob back that which has been robbed", there is an unbroken tradition of revolt against plutocratic vices.         In England, the peasant uprisings of 1381, 1450 and 1549, mentioned in a previous chapter, owed their doctrinal backing to the shallow ideas of the "intellectuals" of the Age. For, as in the modern world, so in the past, no matter how inarticulate the long-suffering masses might be, there were always glib and hare-brained agitators to hand who with unwavering self-confidence posed as champions of the oppressed, and placed before them half-baked schemes of reform and "progress" which seemed self-evident and incontravertible. John Ball, who led the first large peasant revolt, acknowledged that he derived his teaching from John Wycliffe, a typical fourteenth century intellectual. It has been contended that because the works containing Wycliffe's Communistic views were in Latin, they were inaccessible to the common herd. But his many disciples and sympathisers could easily have conveyed his ideas to the people; and as for John Ball, as he was a priest he probably understood Latin and could read it. At all events he admitted that he derived his subversive ideas from the famous reformer.         And here we may well pause a moment to consider Wycliffe's views about Private Property and the way he attacked it as an institution. He maintained that righteousness was the sole indefeasible title to it; consequently that no sanctity could appertain to the private possessions of the unrighteous, which amounted to declaring such possessions were open to confiscation.         Wycliffe's claim can however hardly be sustained. It may be wiser and more realistic than many of the pleas advanced in more recent times in favour of Private Property, but it has only to be put to the test to be found wanting. For it overlooks that one feature of Private Property which in all circumstances establishes its Sanctity; i.e. its appropriateness to its owner. Asked what constitutes the sanctity or inviolability of a private possession we can but reply: that attribute which makes it - p. 55 - impossible to confiscate it without irreparable loss and not merely the loss suffered by the owner, but above all that suffered by the possession itself and thus indirectly by the society in which the possession as a form of wealth exists. In short, its sanctity resides in its relation to its appropriate owner. Now this may have little to do with righteousness, because the most worthless villain may own an object which has value and usefulness only in his hands. One example will illustrate the principle.         Imagine a child owning a box of lead soldiers and a virtuoso owning a violin. The moment the two proceed to an act of mutual confiscation the sanctity of their property is at one stroke violated because in each case it has become quite worthless. True, the owners have been despoiled; but society is concerned only with the sanctity which is imparted to possessions when they are in proper hands. The fact that the exchange in our illustration reduces both possessions to the rank of mere junk, amounts to the desecration of the Sanctity of the objects in question as property, and society suffers a dead loss in consequence.         This is the aristocratic valuation of Private Property, and no other possesses any cogency.         Wycliffe's statement of the case — and he was one of the first Englishmen to state it thus — overlooks the essential factor, and was therefore one of the earliest European attempts to undermine the aristocratic view of wealth. It helped to vulgarise this view and suggested a wrong reason for the right to confiscate private possessions — a reason repeatedly advanced for the spoliation of its victims by the Spanish Inquisition.         In the modern world there appears to survive but one vestige of the aristocratic view of the Sanctity of Private Property, and it consists in the practice in agricultural areas of dispossessing a bad farmer of his land. For although not explicitly stated, this deprivation means that the land in question has lost its Sanctity as Private Property by being inappropriately owned.         The fact that an enormous amount of Private Property at present consists of funded capital which in countless cases is inappropriately owned, hardly requires stating. But it is quite another matter to discover means by which the Sanctity of such property, or its lack of Sanctity, could be determined.         At all events, what is wholly beyond doubt is the fact that - p. 56 - the failure to grasp and abide by what constituted the Sanctity of Private Properly inevitably vulgarised the notion of possession. It degraded ownership and the riches owned, and naturally led to our present state in which it is considered quite unexceptionable, not only to tax everybody indiscriminately, irrespective of their relationship to their possessions, but also blindly to impose graduated taxes and graduated Death Duties also regardless of the Sanctity possibly appertaining to any of the Property thus confiscated.         The difference between such actions and the Communist policy of regarding the State as a wiser disposer of property than any individual owner, is purely theoretical; and people who acquiesce in such spoliation and yet denounce Communism have exaggerated confidence in their thinking powers.         Owing to their egalitarian convictions and inveterate pessimism, the Liberals have always tended arbitrarily to demolish every institution which has foundered through bad management, exactly as if it had been wrecked by its own inherent imperfections. And, owing to these two failings, Liberals have always drifted suspiciously close to Anarchy and Communism. They have always been free with other people's money in order to promote their doubtful policies. Never having properly understood the Sanctity of Private Property they have always been to the fore in advocating the doctrine that the State is the best spender of the people's wealth. But pardonable as this lack of insight may have been in respect of mere financial possessions, it is wholly reprehensible in regard to more characterful property.         Yet it was the Liberals who in England at least, in 1894 and 1907, drove the last nails into the coffin of that kind of property which still has some legitimate claim to Sanctity. When Sir William Harcourt introduced his Bill to legalise Graduated Death Duties and to increase income tax, he at one stroke abolished the often beneficent nexus existing between landlord and farmer, which had done so much to maintain both English agriculture and above all the quality of English livestock at a high level. Lord Roseberry who was Prime Minister at the time, tried to open his eyes to the disastrous consequences his Bill would be likely to have. But the Chancellor was unconvinced and his Bill became law. It was followed in 1907 by another Liberal measure which not only introduced a graduated - p. 57 - income tax, but also increased Death Duties — an enactment that finally wrecked what the 1894 Bill had left standing.         Commenting on the former Bill, Mr. Stanley Leathes says: "Owing to agricultural depression many old families had been forced to sell or let their residences and domains. And if an estate changed hands several times at short intervals, the charge was more than many estates could bear. The decay of old families was hastened, old ties of landlord and tenant, of squire and peasantry were dissolved, and in many cases the place of the old landlords was taken by those who inherited no traditional obligations to the land or its occupants." (The Cambridge Modern History, Vol. XII, Chap. III).         A correct view of the Sanctity of Private Property would have put a brake on these developments even if it did not prevent them altogether. But it should not be forgotten that most unfortunately the liberalised Conservatives of the day who as a Party in Opposition were bound to oppose Harcourt's measure, had no better understanding of the Sanctity of Private Property than that professed by Harcourt and later by Lloyd George.

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