 Individualism, a reader, edited by George H. Smith and Marilyn Moore, narrated by James Foster. 17. From the Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted, Thomas Hodgskin. The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted, London, B. Steele, Peter Nosterow, 1832. The Englishman Thomas Hodgskin, 1787-1869, was one of the best libertarian theoreticians of the 19th century. Although not as well known as his younger contemporary Herbert Spencer, Hodgkin's approach to libertarianism was more consistent. Hodgkin's books include Travels in the North of Germany into Volumes and Popular Political Economy. His best-known, if least satisfactory work, Labour Defended Against the Claims of Capital, has led to a common misconception that Hodgkin was a socialist, whereas he was, in fact, an individualist libertarian who staunchly defended Lausée Faire and the rights of private property. In our excerpt from The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted, his greatest work, Hodgkin builds from Lockean premises to the conclusion that our sense of property is inextricably linked to our sense of individuality. Allow me at once to declare, as there have been in almost every age individuals such as Bacaria and Rousseau and sex some existing at present such as Mr. Owen's Cooperative Societies, the St. Simonians in France and the Moravians who have asserted that all the evils of society arise from a right of property, the utility of which they have accordingly and utterly denied, allow me to separate myself entirely from them by declaring that I look on a right of property, on the right of individuals to have and to own for their own separate and selfish use and enjoyment the product of their own industry with power freely to dispose of the whole of that in the manner most agreeable to themselves as essential to the welfare and even to the continued existence of society. If therefore I did not suppose with Mr. Locke that nature establishes such a right, if I were not prepared to show that she not merely establishes but also protects and preserves it, so far as never to suffer it to be violated with impunity, I should at once take refuge in Mr. Bentham's impious theory and admit that the legislator who established and preserved a right of property deserved little less adoration than the divinity himself. Believing however that nature establishes such a right, I can neither join those who vituperate it as the source of all our social misery, nor those who claim for the legislator the high honor of being the author of the finest triumph of humanity over itself. I heartily and cordially concur with Mr. Locke in his view of the origin and foundation of a right of property. Every man he says has a property in his own person that nobody has any right to but himself. The labor of his body and the work of his hand are his property. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature heth provided and left it in, he heth mixed his labor with it and joined to something that is his own and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature heth placed it in, it heth by this labor something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men. For the labor being the unquestionable property of the laborer, no man but he can have a right to what that is joined to, at least where there is enough and as good left in common for others. Thus the principle Mr. Locke lays down is that nature gives to each individual his body and his labor and what he can make or obtain by his labor naturally belongs to him. Though I cannot make this principle any clearer by repeating the statement in my own way, yet as different minds are affected by different means the object I have in view may perhaps be promoted by putting it in a somewhat different even if it be not so clear a form. The power to labor is the gift of nature to each individual and the power which belongs to each cannot be confounded with that which belongs to another. The natural wants of man particularly of food and clothing are the natural stimulus to exert this power and the means of gratifying them which it provides is the natural reward of the exertion. The power to labor and the natural wants which stimulate labor are generally found together. Thus we see that the motive to labor, the power to labor and the produce of labor all exist exclusive of all legislation. Nature, not the legislator, creates man with these wants and conjoins with them the power to gratify them. The unpleasant feeling of hunger may be properly called a command or admonition to labor. Nature gives also to each individual and her separate gifts as for example the fish she bestows on him who baits a hook and watches the line can no more be confounded with those she gives to another than the distinct and separate wants they are intended to gratify. The commodities which labor acting in obedience to this command creates or obtains, nature or God, for it is better to use the latter term than the former bestows on labor and he gives to labor if violence and wrong interfere not whatever it can make. On the naked savage and on him alone the Almighty primarily bestows the wild fruits he gathers and the game he kills. To him exclusively the creator gives the branch he rends from the parent's stem and confirms it in his possession while he fashions it into a club by the stone hatchet he has previously made and therefore calls his as well as guarantees its use to him by the wish and power he continually engenders to retain and use it. A savage stronger than the laborer or more cunning may undoubtedly take the fruit of his industry from him by force or fraud but antecedently to the use of force or fraud and antecedently to all legislation nature bestows on every individual what his labor produces just as she gives him his own body. She bestows the wish and the power to produce she couples them with the expectation of enjoying that which is produced and she confirms in the laborer's possession if no wrong be practiced as long as he wishes to possess whatever he makes or produces. All these are natural circumstances the existence of any other person than the laborer not being necessary to the full accomplishment of them. The enjoyment is secured by the individual's own means. No contract, no legislation is required. Whatever is made by human industry is naturally appropriated as made and belongs to the maker. In substance I would fain hope there is no difference between this statement and that of Mr. Locke but I wish to mark stronger than I think he has done the fact that antecedently to all legislation and to any possible interference by the legislator nature establishes a law of appropriation by bestowing as she creates individuality the produce of labor on the laborer. Mr. Locke says that every man has a property in his own person. In fact individuality which is signified by the word own cannot be disjoint from the person. Each individual learns his own shape and form and even the existence of his limbs and body from seeing and feeling them. These constitute his notion of his personal identity both for himself and others and it is impossible to conceive it is in fact a contradiction to say that a man's limbs and body do not belong to himself for the words him, self and his body signify the same material thing. As we learn the existence of our own bodies from seeing and feeling them and as we see and feel the bodies of others we have precisely similar grounds for believing in the individuality or identity of other persons as for believing in our own identity. The ideas expressed by the words mine and thine as applied to the produce of labor are simply then an extended form of the ideas of personal identity and individuality. We readily spread them from our hands and other limbs to the things the hands sees or fashion or create or the legs hunt down and overtake. Nor is this extension limited to material objects were it not the practice to despise the sententious wisdom of proverbs I might quote several such as this as you make your bed so must you lie in it to show that these ideas are generally extended to the immaterial consequences of our actions. In the popular creed the pleasure or pain that results from an individual's conduct his hopes or his despair his remorse or his self-approbation are properly deemed to belong to him equally with the book he writes or the game he kills in fact the material objects are only sought after for the immaterial pleasure they bestow. By the operations of nature then it being indeed the necessary consequence of existence there arises in every individual unwilled by any lawgiver a distinct notion of his own individuality and of the individuality of others. By the same operations we extend this idea first for ourselves and afterwards for others to the things we make or create or have given to us including the pleasure or pain resulting from our own conduct. Thus the natural idea of property is a mere extension of that of individuality and it embraces all the mental as well as all the physical consequences of muscular exertion. As nature gives to labour whatever it produces as we extend the idea of personal individuality to what is produced by every individual not merely as a right of property established by nature we see also that she takes means to make known the existence of that right. It is as impossible for men not to have a notion of a right of property as it is for them to want the idea of personal identity when either is totally absent man is insane. This has been Individualism a Reader edited by George H. Smith and Marilyn Moore narrated by James Foster copyright 2015 by the Cato Institute production copyright 2015 by the Cato Institute