Agrarian Justice

Paine's plan to pay every citizen a lump sum at twenty-one and a pension at fifty, as rent owed for the earth.

English, the original language, and your language

First published: 1797(aged 60)
Original language: English

Overview

The idea of a basic income, money paid to every citizen as of right, is often traced back to this pamphlet. Thomas Paine wrote it in Paris in the winter of 1795–96 and then let it lie, unsure whether to publish while France and Britain were at war. What moved him to print it in 1797 was a sermon by Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, the churchman who had just answered The Age of Reason; its title praised the wisdom and goodness of God in having made both rich and poor. Paine replied that God made male and female and gave them the earth as their common inheritance, and that people made the rich and the poor. Farming, he granted, required private ownership, because the improvement of land by cultivation cannot be separated from the land itself. But whoever holds land has taken over a share of what once belonged to everyone, and owes the rest a ground-rent for it. He put a figure on the debt: a national fund, raised by taking a tenth of every inheritance, would give each person £15 on reaching twenty-one and £10 a year to everyone over fifty, at a time when a farm labourer might earn around £23 a year. It was to go to rich and poor alike, and Paine insisted it was a right, not a charity. He addressed the pamphlet to the French legislature and to the Directory, the Republic's five-man executive, and used the dedication to warn them about their new constitution: by tying the vote to payment of a direct tax, he wrote, it had handed a grievance to François-Noël Babeuf, whose plot to seize the government had just failed.

Key concepts

What is the ground-rent that landowners owe, in Agrarian Justice?

It is the payment owed for holding a share of what once belonged to everyone. Paine accepts private ownership of cultivated land, because the improvement cannot be separated from the land itself; but the land beneath it was part of a common inheritance, and whoever holds it has taken over others' share. The ground-rent compensates them, not for any wrong the owner did, but for what the arrangement took.

What does Paine mean by the earth as a common inheritance?

That the earth in its natural state belonged to everyone, and still grounds a claim for everyone born. Paine set this against Bishop Watson's sermon praising God for making rich and poor: God made male and female and gave them the earth together, and people made the rich and the poor. The inheritance is not cancelled when land is taken into ownership; it becomes a debt owed by those who hold it.

Why does Agrarian Justice pay for the fund out of inheritances?

Because a tenth of every inheritance is the fund's whole source, and taking it when property changes hands leaves every living owner's labour untouched. The fund would pay £15 to each person at twenty-one and £10 a year to everyone over fifty, when a farm labourer might earn around £23 a year. The debt to the landless is collected from wealth passing to heirs, not from anyone's wages.

What does Agrarian Justice say about the vote and political stability?

That shutting people out breeds the conspiracies a state then fears. Dedicating the pamphlet to the French legislature and the Directory, Paine warned that the new constitution, by tying the vote to payment of a direct tax, had handed a grievance to François-Noël Babeuf, whose plot to seize the government had just failed. Exclusion from the vote, like exclusion from the land, gives the excluded a reason to reject the whole order.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

God Made the Earth; People Made the Rich and Poor

Is poverty part of the order of things, as a bishop had just preached, or something people made? Paine answers that God gave the earth to all, and people made the rich and the poor.

Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, had preached on the wisdom and goodness of God in making both rich and poor. Paine replied that God made male and female and gave them the earth as their common inheritance; the division into rich and poor came later, and people made it. He did not ask for the land back. Farming required private ownership, because the improvement of land by cultivation cannot be separated from the land itself. But whoever holds land has taken over a share of what once belonged to everyone, and owes the rest a ground-rent for it.

poverty
inequality
wealth inequality
economic inequality
civilization
land ownership
land
property
property rights
labor

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A Right, Not a Charity: Everyone's Share Paid Out

If the landless are owed a share of the earth, how is the debt to be paid, and to whom? To everyone as of right, Paine answers, out of a tenth of every inheritance.

Paine put a figure on the debt. A national fund, raised by taking a tenth of every inheritance, would give each person £15 on reaching twenty-one and £10 a year to everyone over fifty, at a time when a farm labourer might earn around £23 a year. It was to go to rich and poor alike, which is what made it a right and not a charity: nobody would have to prove need to be paid what was already theirs. He also warned the Directory that tying the vote to a direct tax had handed a grievance to Babeuf, whose plot had just failed.

inheritance
social welfare
public finance
taxation
natural rights
distributive justice
compensation
social justice
economic justice
poverty prevention
youth
old age
charity
social obligation
political stability
suffrage
conspiracy

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Within this work

passages held: 28
distinct concepts: 62
by passages held, corpus-wide: #742

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “inheritance” and “public finance”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 4 concepts, joined by 6 pairings. 20 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
inheritance	public finance	5
poverty	social welfare	3
poverty	public finance	2
public finance	social welfare	2
inheritance	poverty	1
inheritance	social welfare	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1776 Common Sense
The book that made Paine's name, so much so that he signed the Crisis papers of the following years with its title.
EN
1776 The American Crisis
A serial rather than a book: papers issued one at a time between December 1776 and December 1783, whenever the war's news called for one, each under the title The Crisis.
EN
1782 Letter Addressed to the Abbé Raynal on the Affairs of North-America (Letter to the Abbe Raynal)
Ten months after the victory at Yorktown, with the war winding down, Paine set out to put the record of the Revolution straight for European readers.
EN
1791 Rights of Man
Paine's contribution to the pamphlet war that Burke's Reflections set off in Britain; the writer Mary Wollstonecraft had answered Burke first, in November 1790.
EN
1793 Reasons for Wishing to Preserve the Life of Louis Capet (Reasons for Preserving the Life of Louis Capet)
Second of the three speeches Paine gave in the Convention on the king's fate: the first, in November 1792, argued that Louis should be tried; the last pleaded for a reprieve.
EN
1794 The Age of Reason
Between the two stretches in which it was written, Paine spent ten months in a Paris prison; it is his one sustained book on religion, and the one that cost him most.
EN
1795 Dissertation on First Principles of Government
Here Paine's political principles are condensed into a few dozen pages, in his last attempt to shape a French constitution from inside the Convention.
EN
1797 Agrarian Justice you are here EN
1797 The Existence of God
Addressed to the Theophilanthropists, the Paris society whose creed matched Paine's own, it gives the positive side of the case that The Age of Reason made against revealed religion.
EN
1807 Examination of the Prophecies
A companion to The Age of Reason, giving the Gospels' use of prophecy the same close reading that its second part gave the authorship of the Bible.
EN

— or open another of their works