The Unpopular Review | Page 6

resist by fair means, but if he is intelligent, he will keep his
skirts clear of foul. If his establishment is closed, he is not left, a ruined
and desperate man, to project methods for carrying on his trade illicitly.
On the contrary, the act of compensation has placed in his hands funds
in which he might be mulcted if convicted of violation of the law. And
if natural perversity should drive him to illegal practices, he would not
find himself an object of sympathy on the part of that considerable
minority that resent injustice even to those whom they regard as
evil-doers.
There can be little doubt that by the adoption of the principle of
adequate compensation, an American commonwealth could extinguish
any property interest that majority opinion pronounces anti-social. We
may have industries that menace the public health. Under existing
conditions the interests involved exert themselves to the utmost to
suppress information relative to the dangers of such industries. With
the principle of compensation in operation, these very interests would
be the foremost in exposing the evils in question. It is no hardship to
sell your interest to the public. Does any one feel aggrieved when the

public decides to appropriate his land to a public use? On the contrary,
every possessor of a site at all suited for a public building or
playground does everything in his power to display its advantages in
the most favorable light.
And with this we have admitted a disadvantage of the compensation
principle--over-compensation. We do pay excessively for property
rights extinguished in the public interest. But this is largely because the
principle is employed with such relative infrequency that we have not
as yet developed a technique of compensation. German cities have
learned how to acquire property for public use without either
plundering the private owner or excessively enriching him. The British
application of the Small Holdings Acts has duly protected the interests
of the large landholder, without making of him a vociferous champion
of the Acts.
Progressive public morality readers one private interest after another
indefensible. Let the public extinguish such interests, by all means. But
let the public be moral at its own expense.
A revolting doctrine, it will be said. Because men have been permitted,
through gross defect in the laws, to build up interests in dealing out
poisons to the public, are they to be compensated, like the purveyors of
wholesome products, when the public decrees that their destructive
activities shall cease? Because a corrupt legislature once gave away
valuable franchises, are we and our children, and our children's children,
forever to pay tribute, in the shape of interest on compensation funds,
to the heirs of the shameless grantees? Because the land of a country
was parcelled out, in a lawless age, among the unworthy retainers of a
predatory prince, must we forever pay rent on every loaf we eat--as we
should do, in fact, even if we transformed great landed estates into
privately held funds? Did we not abolish human slavery, without
compensation, and is there any one to question the justice of the act?
We did indeed extinguish slavery without compensation to the slave
owners. But if no one had ever conceived of such a policy we should
have been a richer nation and a happier one. We paid for the slaves, in
blood and treasure, many times the sum that would have made every
slave owner eager to part with his slaves. Such enrichment of the slave
owner would have been an act of social injustice, it may be said. The
saying would be open to grave doubt, but the doctrine here advanced

runs, not in terms of justice, but in terms of social expediency.
And expediency is commonly regarded as a cheap substitute for justice.
It is wrongly so regarded. Social justice, as usually conceived, looks to
the past for its validity. Its preoccupation is the correction of ancient
wrongs. Social expediency looks to the future: its chief concern is the
prevention of future wrongs. As a guide to political action, the
superiority of the claims of social expediency is indisputable.
VII
In the foregoing argument it has been deliberately assumed that the
interests to be extinguished are, for the most part, universally
recognized as anti-social. Slavery, health-destroying adulteration, the
maintenance of tenements that menace life and morals, these at least
represent interests so abominable that all must agree upon the wisdom
of extinguishing them. The only point in dispute must be one of method.
It is the contention of the present writer that when even such interests
have had time to become clothed with an appearance of regularity, the
method of extinction should be through compensation. By its tolerance
of such interests, the public has made itself an accomplice in the
mischief to which