It is a beneficent incident of the ownership of land that a pioneer who reduces it to use, and helps to lay the foundations of a new State, finds a profit in the increasing value of land as the new State grows up.

Sumner is often seen as a proto-libertarian. He was a polymath with numerous books and essays on American history economic history political theory sociology and anthropology. William Graham Sumner (October 30 1840 – April 12 1910) was an American academic and "held the first professorship in sociology" at Yale College.