Thomas Paine, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
It is a demand of justice, and the pamphlet is written to keep property standing, not to pull it down. I titled the tract Agrarian Justice to distinguish it from Agrarian Law, and I said plainly that nothing could be more unjust than an Agrarian Law in a country improved by cultivation.1 A man is joint proprietor of the earth in its natural state; it does not follow that he is joint proprietor of cultivated earth.
The value added by cultivation became the property of those who made it, or inherited it from them, or purchased it, and it had originally no owner. So while I plead for those thrown out of their natural inheritance, I equally defend the right of the possessor to the part that is his.1 Then where does the debt arise? Trace the thing to its origin.
The earth in its natural state was, and would ever have continued to be, the common property of the human race, and every man born into it would have been born to property.2 But the improvement cannot be separated from the soil it is made upon, and from that inseparable connection the idea of landed property arose. It is the value of the improvement only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property; and so every proprietor of cultivated land owes the community a ground-rent for the land he holds.2
Man did not make the earth. Neither did the Creator open a land-office from which the first title-deeds should issue.3 The landed monopoly that came with cultivation has dispossessed more than half the inhabitants of every nation of their natural inheritance without providing the indemnification that ought to have been made, and has created a species of poverty that did not exist before.4
That is why I say it is a right and not a charity that I plead for.4 Nor do I lay the fault on the present possessors. The fault is in the system, which stole imperceptibly upon the world, and it can be made to reform itself by successive generations without diminishing or deranging the property of any present possessor.5 Look at the remedy itself, and you will see whether it abolishes anything.
It is a national fund, paying fifteen pounds sterling to every person at twenty-one, and ten pounds a year for life to every person at fifty and after.6 It is paid to rich and poor alike, to prevent invidious distinctions, and because it is in lieu of the natural inheritance, which belongs to every man over and above the property he has created or inherited.5
A scheme that leaves every estate in the hands of its holder and pays a debt out of a portion of it is a settlement of accounts, not a confiscation. I take personal property into the calculation on a different principle. Land is the free gift of the Creator in common to the human race; personal property is the effect of society. Set a man alone on an island or a continent and he cannot acquire it, he cannot be rich.
All accumulation beyond what a man's own hands produce is derived to him by living in society, and he owes a part of it back, on every principle of justice and gratitude, to the society from which the whole came.7 The charge that this is the thin end of the wedge gets the matter backward. Where more than half of a nation have been shut out of the inheritance and left poorer than the Indian of North America, property is not secure; it is only unchallenged until the dispossessed find their voice. Pay the debt, and the proprietor holds what is his with a clear title.
The earth in its natural uncultivated state was and ever would have been the common property of the human race; cultivation gave the cultivator a right to the improvement and to nothing else, and the landed property that followed took from every man his natural inheritance without indemnifying him.89 The proprietor therefore owes the community a ground-rent, and the remedy is not to take the land, which cannot be done without greater injustice, but to pay the rent: a national fund, raised from a tenth of every inheritance, to give every person fifteen pounds at twenty-one as a start in life and ten pounds a year after fifty, as a right and not as charity. It is justice, not charity; it defends property by making it bearable.
I have entitled this tract Agrarian Justice, to distinguish it from Agrarian Law. Nothing could be more unjust than Agrarian Law in a country improved by cultivationThe Writings of Thomas Paine Vol 3, 1791-1804
it is the value of the improvement only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated land, owes to the community a _ground-rent_The Writings of Thomas Paine Vol 3, 1791-1804
neither did the creator of the earth open a land-office, from whence the first title-deeds should issue.The Writings of Thomas Paine Vol 3, 1791-1804
In advocating the case of the persons thus dispossessed, it is a right, and not a charity, that I am pleading for.The Writings of Thomas Paine Vol 3, 1791-1804
The fault, however, is not in the present possessors. No complaint is intended, or ought to be alleged against them, unless they adopt the crime by opposing justice.The Writings of Thomas Paine Vol 3, 1791-1804
To create a National Fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterlingThe Writings of Thomas Paine Vol 3, 1791-1804
Land, as before said, is the free gift of the Creator in common to the human race. Personal property is the effect of societyThe Writings of Thomas Paine Vol 3, 1791-1804
On the other hand, the natural state is without those advantages which flow from agriculture, arts, science, and manufactures. The life of an Indian is a continual holiday, compared with the poor of Europe; and, on the other hand it appears to be abject when compared to the rich.The Writings of Thomas Paine Vol 3, 1791-1804
The value of the improvement so far exceeded the value of the natural earth, at that time, as to absorb it; till, in the end, the common right of all became confounded into the cultivated right of the individual. But there are, nevertheless, distinct species of rights, and will continue to be so long as the earth endures.The Writings of Thomas Paine Vol 3, 1791-1804
The proposal that places him at the origin of the modern welfare state and the basic income, attacked in his own day as too much and as too little, and still read both ways.