Note 255 — Chapter IV · AGRICULTURAL TRIBES.

A tribe or nation cannot subsist without labour (though the amount of labour required is sometimes small); but, besides this, material resources are always necessary. The resources which man uses to procure his subsistence are of two kinds: gifts of nature, and products of human labour. The latter are commonly termed capital; their supply is always limited. Most of the former (air, water, the heat of the sun, etc.) exist in unlimited quantity, i.e. there is so much of them that nobody wants to appropriate them. Land is also a gift of nature, and in some very thinly peopled countries, where there is much more fertile ground than can be cultivated, it has not any more value than air and water. But as all land has not the same properties, it soon comes to pass that the most fertile and most favourably situated land is appropriated by some men to the exclusion of others. This is the origin of rent. Finally, when the less valuable grounds have also been appropriated, free land no longer exists; there is no piece of land but has its definite owner255. This last state of things has social consequences very similar to those which exist where subsistence depends on capital. In both cases indispensable means of production are in the hands of definite persons; therefore a man destitute either of land or of capital (according as subsistence depends on the former or the latter), cannot subsist independently of the owners, but has to apply to them for employment. Moreover, in both cases more than a limited quantity of labour cannot be profitably employed: the owner of capital, or of a limited space of land, cannot derive any profit from employing more than a certain number of labourers. Therefore in either case slavery, as an industrial system, is not likely to exist.