FREEDOM AND PROPERTY

...The economic superpowers of the future will almost certainly possess private fortunes of every size, in abundance, and the legal protection that alone underwrites their value...

...The only hope of change was revolution, often leading to more oppression...

...I would like to see the great political parties bring the spread of ownership, and its defense, right to the center of their programs, and compete with each other in how to achieve these objectives...

...The question remained to be settled, however: Was the king subject to the rule of law, as much as anyone else...

...Individual “adventurers” fitted out their own expeditions, as Sir Walter Raleigh did with the first settlement of Virginia at Roanoke...

...Only when property is widespread, and outside the direct 2 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R M a R c H 2 0 0 8 P a u l j o H n s o n control of the state, is the sovereign power truly subject to law...

...M a R c H 2 0 0 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R 2 3 f R e e d o M a n d P R o P e R T y The Norman “Conquest,” as it came to be known, and the arrival of a form of feudalism did nothing fundamental to change this connection between freeholding and constitutional government...

...As Charles I put it: “A King and a Subject are plain different things...

...The connec- power and the enjoyment of freedom...

...Washington took a landowner’s view of the crisis...

...they own, or are in the process of acquiring...

...Never in the history of human institutions has the connection between individual property and individual liberty been so surely and openly demonstrated...

...To be sure, the companies operated under Crown license, and the Crown might appoint governors...

...Either way, freedom is the first casualty...

...The reaction to anarchy, under Henry II, saw the introduction of a formidable series of constitutional laws, which the king was careful to enact at a series of Great Councils, where the freehold landed interest was fully represented...

...Pacific and taking the entire continent...

...Elsewhere, where poverty is too deep, widespread, and endemic, as in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the political process is regarded with incomprehension by the impoverished majority, for whom survival is more important than government...

...For without property of their own, voters have no fixed interest in conserving the property of others, and therefore no reliable commitment to political stability...

...It became the first of the Statutes of the Realm, which continue to this day, and is also and promised that ing to his condition, son’s rights, accordanteed every per - did likewise...

...s It is w e idely the right to vote...

...The true slogan for the future is “Assets for all...

...The phrase “a property-owning democracy” goes back to the 1880s...

...The settlement of both Virginia and Massachusetts was undertaken by commercial companies, setting a pattern followed for a century...

...Under this, millions of immigrants to America, They saw themselves as the natural successors of the arriving without property, were able in one generalanded gentry who resisted Charles I and raised tion to acquire by borrowing, and eventually own troops of horses at their own charge to fight him...

...In his own way he was a “manifest destiny” believer, and that is why he took up the sword...

...Property is now owned by the many, and ought to be universal...

...It is carved in granite, at least in the English language, where the words “freedom” and “freehold” come from the same root and have impinged on and interrelated with each other through many centuries, from the most distant origins of Anglo-Saxon communities in the Dark Ages...

...The Crown had neither the money, power, or will to rule its American colonies, as Portugal, Spain, and France ruled theirs, and by the time it formed the inclination to exercise authority, in the late 17th century, it was too late: The American colonies were, in effect, selfgoverning...

...The , nificant case occurred as recently as the early 1950s, Louisiana Purchase, to the American government in in Churchill’s postwar government...

...If the answer was “yes,” then property was safe, protected by the courts...

...ently, especially in two respects...

...Tturies...

...It was written in the form of a statute, which the king was obliged to sign, and all his leading men of property everyone should be judged by his equals...

...They are likewise to be found, in even larger numbers, though with a much smaller Wergild, in the laws of Ine, King of Wessex, at the end of the century...

...Below: Witena gemot assembly...

...The survey itself was carried out by expert commissioners, summoning local juries of freemen to provide the sworn facts, and was conducted and recorded throughout in a highly responsible manner, indicated that the rule of law was taken very seriously indeed...

...This, in turn of course, enabled colonies thus founded to proceed from the start to govern themselves and found representative institutions...

...They will also enjoy, as do the United States and Britain today, free institutions...

...In doing so, they will accomplish more for freedom than any conceivable legislation to further “human rights...

...But in the meantime, the Supreme Court under John Marshall, and the wisdom and energy of Marshall himself, had laid the juridical and legal basis of American capitalism, which in time produced a vast property-owning citizenry in America’s burgeoning towns and cities, thus reinforcing freedom and democracy by ownership of non-landed assets...

...In Greek societies, and in Rome after the overthrow of the Republic, private rights were subordinate to the public power, so representative institutions withered or never developed at all...

...In both fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, currency controls and heavy punishment of any infringement of them, real or imaginary, were the favorite method...

...Thus Marten not only got his land back but won a much larger battle...

...The magic characteristic of property, especially its core, homeownership, is that it is not abstract but concrete...

...Instead the land was transferred to the Ministry of Agriculture, which in turn let it to a tenant...

...Even men of not only principle but wealth to give principle during the reign of Henry VIII (1509-47), England’s the sharp edge of power...

...If “no,” then it was insecure...

...When the central power was wea n e c o w r f r o h e f e d a t a e h w he it h kin i G s g C r ont l in n ued d to re rule ld e in s c o on t junction k - , as under the disputed reign of Stephen, 1130-54, anarchy ensued, teaching the lesson that individual ownership must be balanced by crown authority to ensure that the rule of law would be upheld in courts capable of guaranteeing owners’ property rights...

...But one-person-one-vote democracy co-exists happily with tyranny in many parts of our world...

...The war had 1803 for a paltry sum...

...Slavery had virtually disappeared in Anglo-Saxon England, and the Normans, who were themselves rooted in the relatively free societies of Scandinavia, did nothing to reimpose it, though various forms of unfree tenure persisted for many centuries...

...This is one of many reasons why China’s progress to wealth and widely based prosperity is likely to be overtaken in due course by India, which enjoys the protection of the rule of law, first established by its British rulers, and where the rich can use their fortunes as they please, even against the government...

...This was the real cause of the Civil War of the 1640s, and the issue was posed even before it broke out, when Charles exacted Ship Money (to pay for the navy) by his own decree...

...The series is supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation...

...But the absence of a rule of law that can be relied on to protect the individual and his assets against the state, and the obstacles raised to prevent their transfer abroad, keeps private property tame and harmless: no Hampdens there as yet...

...Since the Industrial Revolution of the 1780s, total wealth has increased many times, and is increasing faster than ever...

...A third, perhaps the most important object, homeownership, was pushed into the background— and even impeded until recently by the belief among socialists that the working classes were best served by publicly subsidized housing-to-rent...

...Parliament might be subservient but it still functioned, and represented the consensus of property owners, so the rule of law continued to be upheld...

...The major freehold landowners attended parliament by individual writ of summons, but they were joined by “Knights of the Shires,” two from each county, elected by minor landowners with property not less in value than 40 shillings a year...

...Tforming a tripod of power—king, lords, and the liberty and property of the Kingdom, and rescue t based on private property ownership, and and what he was that durst at his own charge suppo h w ng r u q n i n a m y r e ev , e r u g fi l a n i t a n c l o y s he existenCe, in enGland, of a parliament to mb pay t i he tax o and his figh “ t in the courts m i ad i e him r o a commons, upon which sovereignty rested—was in his country from being made a prey to the Court...

...Moreover, when the great majority of people own their homes, they are likely to be much more resistant to an intrusive state, and more tenacious of their rights...

...Take the case, in France, of Nicholas Foucquet, Superintendant des Finances to Louis XIV and a younger contemporary of John Hampden...

...It is a grim fact that the poor are less inclined to vote than the affluent, and the very poor most unlikely to vote at all...

...He eventually got an inquiry, which after much legal expenditure, found in his favor...

...This is the first great recorded political and economic event in English history, and shows the overwhelming importance of individual landed property in society and government...

...In present-day Russia, where the rule of law is not yet firmly established, the new breed of financial oligarchs who have looted the country’s natural assets, and flaunt their wealth in international society, are scarcely more secure than Nicholas Foucquet...

...That no longer applies in China, where huge fortunes are being amassed and many millions of the new bourgeoisie now possess substantial assets...

...The powers over persons and property, and Parliament was slow to revoke this...

...Then when George III and his ministers imposed the Stamp Duty, they were seen as acting as usurpers and innovators, overthrowing an unwritten constitution of immemorial antiquity, and the king could easily be portrayed as another King John or Charles I. The wealthy men who financed the original settle ment tended to be radicals in religion and in politics: those who believed in constitutionalism and representation...

...King William I’s barons gave him, in theory, knight- service in return for their lands, which were not, therefore, strictly speaking freehold...

...Charles le Brun, and the architect Louis le Vau...

...This was refused...

...dition the development of liberty and permanent representative institutions was impeded by the In many soCieties outside the Anglo-Saxon trainsecurity of ownership...

...These “forty-shilling freeholders” remained the basic constitutional unit in the country till the Great Reform Bill of 1832, and the 80 or so County Members carried more weight in Parliament than the burgesses from the towns...

...2 2 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R M a R c H 2 0 0 8 Freedom and Property or should we say, wealth and property, without which there can be no freedom or rule of law...

...He wanted to serve without pay, both as general of the forces and later, as president, because he believed men of individual wealth had a duty to defend and promote freedom— in other words, richesse oblige...

...contrast to most European countries, and explains Had Hampden been a poor man he could never have why the English-speaking peoples developed differ- done it...

...A century later, executing his wives, like Anne Boleyn and Catherine denouncing George III’s similar attempt to impose Howard, and ministers, such as Sir Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell...

...At a lower level freeholders were summoned to serve on juries, to judge facts and give evidence, by which process law was enforced...

...Afreedom once its citizens have been granted d e v i h c a ha r t n c ha y d o t d m u a n s d s the e lesson a ne t eds t t a o be o u lear y ned...

...But the principles of representation and self-government applied from the start...

...As Hampden himself said: nearest approach, in the whole of her history, to a “He would be content to lend as well as others statist tyranny, the king was always careful to pro- but feared to draw upon himself that curse of the ceed through Parliament, both in enacting laws Magna Carta which should be read twice a year which repudiated the papacy and Catholicism, and in against those who impinge it...

...Louis XIV, envious and competitive, promptly had Foucquet arrested and imprisoned for the remaining 19 years of his life, confiscated all his property, and used it, together with the design-team, to begin the building of Versailles...

...At the end of the war, Commander Marten, head of the family, asked to buy the land back...

...But his particular objection was the royal ordinance, which might, if enforced, prevent Americans from occupying and exploiting land beyond the Appalachians...

...The problem is greatly aggravated if extreme poverty is concentrated in an easily distinguishable minority...

...At left: Domesday Book and detail...

...As Clarendon, an eyewitness, wrote in his great History of the Rebellion, his refusal John Hampden’s example is a classic case of which we need men of not only principle but wealth to give principle the sharp edge of power...

...Here, the organic connection between freehold and freedom applies just as forcibly to the 21st century urban masses as it did in Dark Age Europe...

...In the running of the colonies, the connection between private wealth in land, personal fortunes, and the holding of office was continually emphasized...

...This process one of them put it, “they rummaged in Rushworth’s was accompanied by, and also promoted, the extenCollections [documents about the Civil War of the sion of the vote, initially to some, soon to many, even1640s] to find precedents...

...In Communist countries, the private sector had virtually no existence...

...When royal tyranny, as opposed to baronial anarchy, threatened to upset the national consensus and the rule of law, as under Henry II’s son, King John, the property-owning nation, which of course included the church and the emerging towns, was forced to come together to bring him to reason...

...Outstanding among them was George Washington, not only because of his height (6’3”) but also because of his landed possessions, which were enormous, and which he farmed and exploited with industry and skill, then and later, to make himself one of the richest men in the hemisphere...

...But one-person-one-vote democracy co-exists happily with tyranny in many parts of our world...

...The Marten family, considerable landowners in Dorset, had been forced to sell land at Critchel Down in 1940, to the Royal Air Force...

...Paul johnson is the author of many books, including A History of the English People, Modern Times, and A History of the American People...

...The colonists noted, too, that when the English twice dispossessed the monarch, first in 1688 when James II was replaced by his daughter Mary and his son-in-law William III, and then in 1715 when the Stuart line was effectively replaced by the Hanoverians, the effective leaders in both moves were the great Whig landowning families, such as the Russells, the Cavendishes, and the Spensers...

...As without encumbrance, sizable farms...

...In Britain the figure is over 60 percent, and in the United States over 50 percent, so the object is attainable...

...The seCond way in whiCh the English-speaking peoples developed differently from their Continental neighbors was in using the principle of private property to further overseas expansion...

...Many of them were prominent in Parliament in resisting James I and Charles I. Hampden himself, for instance, was one of the 12 men to whom the Earl of Warwick granted in 1631-2 a large tract of land in what is now the state of Connecticut...

...There was no redress in a regime where a mere lettre de cachet, sealed with the king’s privy seal, could lead to perpetual imprisonment without trial, or exile...

...R h t , e i a m r t ha l d l o s n o l o p a N r o r e p m E e t - g i s A i m s o t u b c i o h c o n e v h n e m r o p es o to fight a unjust auth e ority t in ub cases t. where p h olicy, until in due c e ourse, in a a l m t omen e t of m n ad d n ess e e m a s e h t d e t p o d , g n i k a e s l d a o r b , n w o r c h c n e r F iCh men have Continued to use their resourcsions of the so vereign y w p ho retain a ed all rights...

...The whole affair was an example of bureaucratic arrogance...

...In the century-and-a-quarter since then, some progress has been made in giving it reality...

...and representation...

...Nations that adopted democratic institutions in the 20th century proceeded immediately to one-person-one-vote methods of election, rather than going through the intermediate stage—which in England lasted half a millennium— in which property ownership was the criterion for the right to be represented in Parliament...

...It was a different story among the Germanic tribes, which began to settle in the British Isles from the early 5th century...

...The king’s great barons met three times a year, at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, in the Great Council, to give advice and consent, this taking over the function of the Witena gemot...

...It guar - therefore the prototype for the enactments of Congress...

...The great major- expanded inland, it adopted, and pursued on an ity of those who created the American Revolution in enormous scale for over a century, a cheap land polithe 1770s owned freehold land, often in large parcels...

...Obviously where private fortunes supplied the finance for the colony, private views would determine its government...

...No, but the payout of half twenty shillings, on the principle it was demanded, would have made him a slave...

...The very poor own virtually nothing, and to them the democratic apparatus of the state is meaningless, if not actually hostile...

...This policy, whose social consequences have been on the whole disastrous, has now been largely abandoned...

...Thus in Zimbabwe, where every adult theoretically has the right to vote, but where real power and property belong to the dictator and the leading members of his party, voting can change nothing...

...by paul Johnson and the individual ownership of property is one of the great certitudes of human society...

...Unlike Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, and Madison, he had a vision that went beyond mere liberty from England to a vast, property-owning nation, based on almost unlimited land...

...Those reasons are connected, as history shows...

...There, too, where private property could not be used to promote reform, the foreseeable end was popular uprising and the massacre of the royal family...

...In this respect the Stuart kings were quite clear that they were above the law...

...He saw that America’s long-term future was in thrusting across to the The wealthy men who financed the original settlement [of the colonies] tended to be radicals in religion and in politics: those who believed in constitutionalism I f ership of freehold land, in the progress of liberty land leads directly to participation in the exercise o l o h e e r f f o i s s e s o p e h t , s e of that unique form of private property, the own- Anglo-Saxon societ e p x e l i r t i H mpossible, then, to exaGGerate the importance to gras s p i o ts p ca otentia i r l. ience show s s tha on t, at least in d among the English-speaking peoples...

...Hampden continued to use his freehold wealth to support freedom, rais ing a regiment of green- jacketed infantry when the Civil War began, and dying from wounds received at the head of it in 1643...

...The problem is its distribution, on a permanent, self-sustaining basis...

...This key conjunction becomes more specific when early Anglo-Saxon England emerges in the documents...

...The book itself—I have held it in my hands and it is remarkably light, being written on parchment, not paper—was the first key State Paper in English history, and is still the central pride and joy of the Public Records Office in London...

...In effect he claimed he was not bound by the Magna Carta but could impose taxation according to his judgment of national need...

...Hampden’s fortune...

...The Minister of Agriculture, Sir Thomas Dugdale, who had been misled and lied to by his civil servants, felt bound in honor to resign, and his parliamentary secretary, Lord Carrington (later a distinguished Foreign Minister), tried to do likewise, but was persuaded to remain by Churchill, who was greatly perturbed by the bureaucratic tyranny revealed by the affair, and promised to speed up the repeal of all such wartime infringements of liberty...

...By far the best form of property, from a psychological and therefore a political viewpoint, is realty or real estate, above all the home in which the voter lives...

...First, it enabled His example is a classic case of which we need England to preserve the rule of law more surely...

...He was a man of considerable wealth, and this is important for it enabled him to take on all the power of the Crown and its lawyers, in a case that was fought through the courts high and low from 1635 to 1638...

...Marten, a man as obstinate as Hampden and as wealthy, fought the case...

...Indeed in the case of Massachusetts, the first 2 6 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R M a R c H 2 0 0 8 P a u l j o H n s o n constitutional meeting took place while the Mayflower was still at sea...

...tually to all male citizens...

...Even in the United States and Britain we witness a connection between poverty and a loss of trust in democracy...

...The colonists followed closely and profited from the events of the Civil War, and its aftermath...

...Poverty, or more correctly the consciousness of poverty, depends not just on income but on possessions...

...At the same time there are indications that freeholders met with local kings in the assembly known as the witan (“wise man,” the title bestowed on its members) to make or amend laws...

...Hampden’s wealth enabled him to fight the case vigorously and make its details universally known, so that while judgment in 1638 went to the John Hampden M a R c H 2 0 0 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R 2 5 f R e e d o M a n d P R o P e R T y met two years later, one of its first actions was won a moral victory, and when the Long Parliament king by majority (the judges being divided), Hampden to declare the judgment “against the laws of the realm, the rights of property and the liberty of the subject...

...For if private wealth promotes freedom in a lawful society, so in turn freedom promotes yet more wealth...

...Of course he objected to “taxation without representation...

...He had this vision because he had visited more of America than any other of the revolutionaries, and had penetrated further into it, so as M a R c H 2 0 0 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R 2 7 f R e e d o M a n d P R o P e R T y Ownership of land, as the most politically significant form of personal property, continued to be the mainspring of the American economy, as the impulse behind the growth of its democracy and freedoms, to the middle of the 19th century...

...Would there were rich men today ready to carry out his intentions, for the curse of bureaucracy has never been heavier, the number of regulations more numerous, or the cost of resisting any injustice more ruinous...

...As Anglo-Saxon England was united, from King Alfred’s day onwards, the great Witena gemot (assembly of wise men) developed as the consultative council of the country, distant ancestor of Parliament and of the American House and Senate...

...The ConneCtion between politiCal liberty The propensity of private property to promote freedom only functions when ownership rights are enforced by the rule of law...

...The laws of Aethelbert of Kent in the early 7th century reveal the existence of large numbers of free peasants with a Wergild or death value of 100 golden shillings each...

...The opposition to this unauthorized tax was personified in John Hampden (1594-1643), a Buck ing hamshire landowner and member of Parlia ment, whose family had been squires of the village of Hamp den and its neighborhood since Anglo-Saxon times...

...The latter were chosen by a variety of franchises, but 2 4 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R M a R c H 2 0 0 8 Magna Carta P a u l j o H n s o n all were based on individual ownership of property, and inevitably MPs from the richest cities—Bristol, Norwich, and above all London—carried more authority...

...It was not so much that private property was rare as that there was no guarantee the courts would defend it in opposition to the state...

...And were all to enjoy assets, the chances are they will enjoy freedom too...

...But that idea is out of date...

...It is real, as the term “real estate” implies...

...More usually, a commercial company was formed, in which men—and women— took shares and divided the profits accordingly...

...This sprang from the need to raise money to keep the king’s government going, for the king could no longer “live from his own” (i.e., from the Crown estates), so special taxes were imposed, and that could be done only with the consent of those taxed, i.e., the owners of property, whether real (landed) or mercantile and financial...

...In Portugal and Spain, forerunners in the field, the state did all and financed all, and the crowns of the two countries treated colonies as the personal posseswork of voyaging, exploration, and settlement was left entirely to private enterprise...

...If we are to underpin democratic freedom economically, we should aim at a society in which more than three-quarters of the population live in homes It is widely assumed today that a country has achieved freedom once its citizens have been granted the right to vote...

...This was the story behind the Magna Carta (1215), the second great event in the evolution of the English form of sovereignty...

...Thus Queen Elizabeth herself had shares in Sir Francis Drake’s great voyage round the world, reaping a splendid harvest of profit...

...taxes upon the Americans, Edmund Burke underlined the moral point beneath the financial issue: “Would twenty shillings have ruined Mr...

...Priority was given, of course, first to the spread of universal suffrage, second to establishing minimum living standards...

...This is for two preeminent reasons: the absence of a rule of law, and the restriction of private property to a small and often self-perpetuating elite...

...But knight-service was gradually commuted to money-payments, and once land was bought and sold on the market, however primitive, true freehold developed...

...When the propertyless are a majority they either withdraw from the political process altogether, or invest their hopes in some kind of radical revolutionary change—hopes that call forth brutal repressive measures from those who stand to lose from any change to the status quo...

...Among them—as we can surmise, though we have no direct written evidence— rudimentary forms of freehold were widespread, and leaders tended to take important decisions after consulting widely with freeholding followers...

...Perhaps this is one reason why such democracies have proved so fragile...

...From the Magna Carta onwards, there was a tendency to enlarge Great Councils into parliaments, in which towns as well as the landed interests were represented...

...The opinions expressed in this series are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation...

...Alas, he died, aged 65, soon after...

...Politicians have fought shy of the issue because “property” is associated with the few...

...He amassed a great fortune, and built the magnificent chateau of Vaux-le-Vicomte, using the team of the landscape gardener André le Nôtre, the painter Historical exprience shows that, at least in Anglo-Saxon societies, the possession of freehold land leads directly to participation in the exercise of power and the enjoyment of freedom...

...He saw himself as setting an example for all property owners...

...invested government with all kinds of extraordinary The English approach was quite different...

...M a R c H 2 0 0 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R 2 9...

...Unfree regimes both in the recent past and today have employed a variety of devices to prevent private individuals either from acquiring substantial property, or from using it to promote liberties...

...As America tion continued in American history...

...Royalty might participate, but as individual shareholders, on exactly the same terms as their subjects...

...Hence in France under the ancien régime, the landed classes and wealthy merchants were seldom if ever tempted to use their assets to advance public liberties, taking rather the easy path of sharing the spoils with the royal government...

...They turned a monarchy founded on the “divine right of kings” into one founded on the sovereignty of “the King in Parliament...

...And only when there is a rule of law can private property spread among the people, without the risk of confiscation by the state...

...In Russia the tsar alone enjoyed liberty of thought and action, and his property alone was secure...

...He made the mistake of entertaining the king there and displaying its splendors...

...In 1068 William embarked on the Domesday survey, determined at the Christmas Great Council, when the king “held very deep speech with his council about [England]—how it was peopled and with what sort of men...

...This essay is the second in a new ten-part series being published in successive issues of The American Spectator under the general title, “The Future of Individual Liberty: Elevating the Human Condition and Overcoming the Challenges to Free Societies...

...Sir James Goldsmith, the billionaire, told me, not long before his death, that he intended to devote his life and fortune to fighting instances of government oppression of individuals who were too poor to fight for themselves...

...Parliament as a whole constituted a representative assembly of property ownership of all kinds, in which mere head-counting of persons only very slowly became of significance, and was not formally acknowledged until 1832...

...That is the lesson history teaches...