I sincerely hope, for the sake posterity, that they will be content to be stationary long before necessity compels them to it."[1]
Mill goes on to say:—
"It is scarcely necessary to remark that a stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There would be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress; as much room for improving the Art of Living, and much more likelihood of its being improved, when minds ceased to be engrossed by the art of getting on Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being. They have enabled a greater population to live the same life of drudgery and imprisonment, and an increased number of manufacturers and others to make fortunes."[2]
In another page of the same work the writer says:—
"The exclusive right to the land for purposes of cultivation does not imply an exclusive right to it for purposes of access; and no such right ought to be recognized except to the extent necessary to protect the produce against damage, and the owner's privacy against invasion. The pretension of two dukes to shut up a part of the Highlands, and exclude the
- ↑ Principles of Political Economy, by John Stuart Mill, vol. ii., p. 331, sixth edition. London: Longmans and Co., 1865.
- ↑ Ibid.
