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FOURTH EDITION. 
 
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INDEX 
 
 HAPTE 
 
 AFTER 1 
 \s OF HIST 
 
OUR 
 
 MOTHER EARTH: 
 
 A SHORT STATEMENT OF THE CASE 
 
 FOR 
 
 LAND NATIONALISATION. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LANDED AND OTHER PROPERTY. 
 
 The object of the following pages is to state a case for the 
 nationalisation of the land as fully and clearly as it is possible 
 to do in so small a pamphlet, to remove a few leading mis- 
 conceptions on the subject, and to give those who have not 
 time or inclination to go very deeply into the matter some idea 
 of the overwhelming importance of the land question. 
 
 It has been beautifully said that as God is our heavenly 
 Father, and breathes life and soul into us, so the earth is our 
 material mother, that supplies us with all our earthly 
 necessities, comforts, and pleasures, and indirectly with our 
 spiritual and intellectual joys. If this be true, no crime surely 
 can be worse in its ultimate consequences than that of depriving 
 our fellow men of the right of direct appeal to their mother 
 earth for all that she will give them in return for their labour. 
 
 The old saying that God helps those who help themselves, 
 being interpreted, means that nature or the earth helps those 
 only who will work and do their share. If they will plough 
 and sow the seed, she will work night and day to bring it to 
 maturity. If, however, man cannot get at the earth, nature 
 cannot help him. In this way, by depriving men of nature's 
 help, you also deprive them of the right to help themselves, 
 and make them absolutely dependent on those who, unlike 
 themselves, have direct access to the earth. Thus agricultural 
 labourers and farmers can get a living only when it answers 
 the purpose of the landowner that they shall, and then they do 
 not get the reward of nature for their work, but only such part 
 of it as the landowner is obliged or pleased to let them have. 
 
 This is not true in agriculture only ; it is true in every walk 
 of life, in every industry, the only difference being that its 
 effects are more direct and more obvious in some than in others. 
 We are essentially land animals, and everything we eat, drink, 
 
 169963 
 
use, and enjoy comes from the land. In public works we can't 
 improve a street, cany out sewage or waterworks, lay out a 
 park in private undertakings we can't get coal, iron, or stone 
 without dealing with the landowners whose property we touch. 
 To what extent these public or semi-public undertakings 
 are taxed, delayed, spoilt, prevented altogether, or ruined by 
 the action of the landowners and their agents none but those 
 who have had practical experience can have an adequate con- 
 ception. The landowners are the masters of the situation, 
 and they very naturally let us know it in every walk of life. 
 
 That landed property differs essentially from other property 
 is so obvious that it is only surprising that intelligent men 
 should be found to maintain that it does not. The word " land," 
 used in its economic sense, means that which exists without 
 the effort of man, whether it be earth, water, or natural 
 forces. Ground rent is the value given to this by the 
 community as a whole, independently of the individual effort of 
 the occupier. Personal property is that which is created by 
 the effort of man, made possible in the first place by the 
 existence of the land, and helped in the second place by the 
 facilities supplied by the community. 
 
 For the upholders of so-called rights of property to 
 argue then that if a man has no moral right to 
 the absolute ownership of the land, which was made by 
 a superhuman power before mankind existed, he therefore 
 has no right to the exclusive use of personal property 
 is a practical absurdity. At this rate there would be no 
 difference between the raw materials paint and canvas are made 
 of, and the finished production of an artist, between the iron 
 ore and coal lying in the bowels of the earth and the finished 
 machine. The ownership of land, so far from protecting the 
 individual's right to the results of his labour, necessarily takes 
 it away, and here it is that the wrong comes in. 
 
 The difference between landed and personal property is 
 simply this. God made the land. Man made collectively and 
 individually other sorts of property out of the land. Since 
 God never sold or gave the land to any individual, it follows 
 that property in land is the reward of robbery, while property 
 in other things is the reward of industry. Can any distinction 
 be clearer ; can both forms be logically defended ? Can we on 
 the one hand assert man's right to the production of 
 his industry, and on the other the right of landowners to 
 take it away without any return ? 
 
 The plea that we are free to escape payment by 
 declining to use the land cannot be supported. We might as 
 
well say that we may please ourselves whether we pay taxes or 
 not. We are obliged to pay rent and taxes either directly or 
 indirectly as soon as we pay for anything. The first article we 
 buy, the first bed we pay for, includes in its price the rent and 
 taxes paid in the production. 
 
 The simple question before us is whether we are to legislate 
 for idlers or workers. People do not yet recognise that all 
 this unearned increment, this undeserved wealth, means at 
 least a corresponding amount of unearned and undeserved 
 poverty, that every West-end square has its counterpart in its 
 East-end slum. 
 
 Those who reap what they have not sown, reap what others 
 have sown, and the sowers thus deprived of the fruits of their 
 industry are not the idlers, paupers, drunkards, or thieves, but 
 necessarily the hard-working honest poor. The criminal and idle 
 classes are but the creation of a system that breaks the hearts 
 and blights the lives of so many of those that attempt to earn 
 a living by honest work. 
 
 Natural inequalities of wealth brought about by differences 
 of ability, enterprise, industry, and desire for. wealth 
 appear to be inevitable, and in comparative wealth and 
 poverty of this sort there need be no injustice or evil. But 
 who can justify the creation by law of unnatural inequality of 
 the grossest description possible, and the consequent establish- 
 ment not of comparative wealth and poverty, but of inordinate, 
 excessive, and dangerous wealth on the one hand, and hopeless, 
 degrading, miserable poverty on the other ? This is not surely 
 a desirable state of things. And yet, as it will be the endeavour 
 of this pamphlet to show, it is a state of things established 
 by our land laws, and which nothing can justify. 
 
 They establish wrong and inequality by dividing the people 
 into landed and landless men. They have recognised successful 
 usurpation, and perpetually and increasingly reward the heirs 
 of the usurpers. We are told it is natural for man to be 
 selfish : True, and all the more reason why the landed 
 classes should not have a monopoly 1 Why not allow" 
 the landless to have their share, just enough to enable 
 them to claim their rights, and put an end to the laws 
 which have robbed them in the past and continue to do so 
 now ? I have no desire to " confiscate " (as it is called) the land, 
 but the question really is not whether it is just to punish 
 such men as the Duke of Bedford, for instance, for the sins 
 of his ancestors, who grabbed Covent Garden and Long 
 Acre, but whether we are bound everlastingly and continually 
 increasingly to reward them. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 LESSONS OF HISTORY. 
 
 It will perhaps help us to judge to what extent our present 
 land laws are worthy of our support, if we take a rapid glance 
 at their history, and see how they came about. 
 
 What is known as the Feudal system was not created by 
 William the Conqueror, as is commonly supposed. It was but 
 a slight modification of the old manorial system, which had 
 been developing centuries before the Norman conquest. All 
 that William did was to re-organise it, and give the people 
 Norman, instead of Anglo-Saxon and Danish lords. The system 
 Was a pyramid, with the king, who represented the nation, at 
 the top. All got their title to the land from him, and very 
 freely in early days did the king take away, or give the land 
 to his vassals. 
 
 The Domesday survey which William ordered showed the 
 country divided into 9,250 separate manors or villages, most 
 of which had a resident "lord," who lived in the Manor house, 
 and held the land more or less remotely from the king, generally 
 through some great noble, who would be the superior lord of 
 many manors. 
 
 Below the lords of the manor, in the village, who held and 
 farmed a lion's share, were thevilleins, who held about 30 acres 
 of land, and the cottas, who heldfrom 5 to lU. These two classes 
 of tenants were bound to the land, and obliged to give personal 
 service on the estate of the lord of the manor, and also to pay 
 tribute in various forms ; they were not, however, liable to 
 military service, as were another class, the free tenants, who 
 although more independent inother respects, not being bound 
 to the land nor yet obliged to give any personal p^-vice on the 
 estate of their superior lord, were nevertheless constantly 
 called to arms. All, from the king downwards, had rights of 
 pasturage over the common, waste, and forest lands. 
 
 There were also a few slaves, about 9 per cent., at the time 
 of the conques-t, who held no land. But we find that even these 
 had disappeared about a century later. 
 
 The great feature of the Feudal system was that every ono 
 had land, and every one a lord. The lords had, however, their 
 duties, and the tenants, who could not be dispossessed, their 
 rights. A landless man was outside the pale of social life, and 
 was of no account. All, from the king downwards, were 
 tenants (but as a matter of convenience I shall in future 
 speak of the lords as landowners, which they afterwards" 
 practically became) ; all had their tribute to pay and 
 
work to do, as a condition of holding the land. There was no 
 idea of provision for idle men, nor of the irresponsible holding 
 of land. Thus in these days, which were far from wholly 
 barbarous, the right of the people to the land and the necessity 
 of the land to the people were legally recognised, and the 
 country roughly divided amongst them, with due regard to 
 local authority and the subjection of a conquered people. The 
 arable land was, indeed, literally re-divided every year amongst 
 the inhabitants of the manor according to their rights and 
 numbers. 
 
 Under this system the peasantry steadily improved their 
 position for about 300 years after the Conquest (1066 to 1350), 
 and in the middle of the fourteenth century we find the tenants 
 had largely bought themselves free from personal service and 
 many of the more vexatious forms of tribute by payments 
 made to their superior lords in times of pecuniary difficulty, 
 which were constantly occurring through the silly, wasteful 
 wars on which the lords were perpetually squandering their 
 substance. 
 
 The burdens of the peasantry, it must be borne in mind, 
 however irksome, were for the most part fixed, so that any 
 advantage that these workers got from time to time could not 
 be absorbed in a higher rent, as is at present the case. Under 
 these circumstances it was natural and inevitable that the 
 workers should gradually improve their position, so long as 
 they were strong enough to hold their own against the 
 never-ceasing attacks of their superior lords, for the land- 
 owners were continually trying to force back the people 
 into their former servitude, and rob them of the rights they 
 had sold them. But up to the reign of Henry VII. the people 
 proved a match for them, and by repeated revolts and sturdy 
 resistance managed on the whole to hold their ground. 
 
 Thus we find in the middle of the fourteenth century the 
 peasantry in a highly-prosperous condition, relieved of most of 
 their burdens, and largely holding their land as copyhold, 
 paying a hardly more than nominal quit-rent, in addition to a 
 few fines. This state of things lasted for about 150 years 
 (1350 to 1500), and this period is agreed upon by all students 
 as the golden age. Wages were so high that Professor Rogers 
 tells us 15 weeks' work would provide the same necessities 
 of life as it takes the agricultural labourer 52 weeks to obtain 
 now. The prosperity and condition of the people and the 
 reasons for it, are well described by Chief Justice Sir John 
 Fortescue at the time : " Every inhabitant is at his liberty 
 fully to use and enjoy whatever his farm produceth, the fruits 
 
of the earth, the increase of his flock and the like ; all the 
 improven ents he makes, whether by his own proper industry 
 or of those he retains in his service, are his own to use and 
 enjoy without the let, interruption, or denial of any. If he be 
 in any wise injured or oppressed he shall have amends and 
 satisfactions against the party offending. Hence it is that the 
 inhabitants are rich in gold, silver, and in all the necessaries 
 and conveniences of life. They drink no water unless at 
 certain times and by way of doing penance. They are fed in 
 great abundance with all sorts of flesh and fish, of which they 
 have plenty everywhere ; they are clothed throughout in good 
 woollens ; their bedding and other furniture in their houses 
 are of wool, and that in great store. They are also provided 
 with all other sort of household goods and necessary implements 
 for husbandry. Every one according to his rank hath all 
 things which conduce to make life easy and happy." 
 
 Now, mark, the period thus glowingly described was one in 
 which to our modern ideas the people lived under every dis- 
 advantage. The system of agriculture was extremely primitive, 
 and produced the most miserable results. Wheat did not 
 yield a quarter as much as it does now, and there was no winter 
 keep for the cattle. The times were most turbulent, the roads 
 almost impassable, production was absolutely unaided by any 
 of the machinery and appliances of modern days. Our foreign 
 and even internal trade was insignificant. But in spite of all 
 this there was rough plenty for all classes, for one and one 
 reason only. They held the land in their own right, and 
 enjoyed the fruits of their own industry. 
 
 These days of prosperity came to an end in the reign of 
 Henry VIII., who instituted a system of robbery and violence 
 which gradually, and with the utmost cruelty, reduced the 
 most independent, prosperous tenantry in the world into the 
 state of helpless chronic misery in which we find them at the 
 beginning of this century. 
 
 This revolution was brought about by depriving the peasants 
 of their land and common rights, and the gradual substitution 
 of the principle of private ownership for the old feudal system, 
 which recognised the rights of the people to the land. Through- 
 out the whole of the Golden Age the landowners had been 
 trying by legal enactment to reduce the wages, and by lawless 
 oppression to reinforce personal service. They naturally very 
 much objected to paying such high wages, and having parted 
 with their rights to forced labour, felt themselves fairly 
 cornered. But so long as the peasantry managed to keep 
 possession of their land all the efforts of their superiors to 
 
impoverish them were fruitless. The only way by which the 
 landowners could bring them on their knees was to dispossess 
 them of their holdings. This they at last managed to accom- 
 plish by dint of the most dogged perseverance, and aided by 
 favourable political circumstances, economic development, and 
 foreign mercenaries. 
 
 This successful campaign against the rights and property of 
 the common people was opened by King Henry VI II., who 
 wanting money and a divorce from his wife, suppressed the 
 monasteries and confiscated all their lands, giving most of them 
 to court favourites, who breaking all customs and recognising no 
 rights, exacted for the first time in English history competitive 
 rents. Wool being dear, a great deal of land was let to large 
 sheep farmers. From that day the principle on which the 
 institution of private ownership in land is founded began to 
 take possession of the minds of the upper classes. That 
 principle is : that the best use which the land can be put to, is 
 not that which will enable the workers to live in the greatest 
 comfort, happiness, and independence, but that which will 
 enable the landowners to gather the most with the least 
 trouble. 
 
 After Henry's first sally there began a determined and 
 ultimately successful effort, all along the line, on the part of the 
 landowners to free themselves of their tenants, and enclose the 
 common fields. I need hardly say that they did not do this 
 by legal enactment, which would have disclosed their designs, 
 and brought the people down upon them from one end of the 
 kingdom to the other. The work was accomplished by a 
 system of continued persecution, force, and fraud, wherever an 
 opening presented 'tself. The peasantry constantly revolted, 
 but were always worsted by force of arms or treachery, and it 
 is in this period that I believe we first hear of the regular use 
 of foreign mercenaries for the suppression of the people in 
 England, long as the system had flourished abroad. 
 
 This is what the good Sir Thomas More says : 
 
 " Therefore that one covetous and insatiable cormorant 
 and very plague of his native country may compass 
 about and enclose many thousands of acres of ground 
 together within one pale or hedge, the husbandmen be 
 thrust out of their own, or else by coveyn and fraud, 
 or by violent oppression, they be put besides it, or by wrongs 
 and injuries they be so worried that they be compelled to sell 
 all : by one means, therefore, or by other, either by hook or by 
 crook, they must needs depart away poor, silly, wretched 
 souls, men, women, husbands, wives, fatherless children, 
 
8 
 
 widows, woeful mothers with their young babes, and their 
 whole household, small in substance, and much in number, as 
 husbandry requireth many hands. Away they trudge, I say, 
 out of their known and accustomed houses, finding no place to 
 rest in. All their household stuff, which is very little worth, 
 though it might well abide the sale, yet being suddenly thrust 
 out, they be constrained to sell it for a thing of naught. And 
 when they have wandered about till that be spent, what can 
 they then else do but steal, and then justly, pardy, be hanged, 
 or else go about a begging. And yet then, also, they be cast 
 into prison as vagabonds, because they go about and work not ; 
 whom no man will set a work though they never so willingly 
 proffer themselves thereto. For one shepherd or herdman is 
 enough to eat up that ground with cattle to the occupying 
 whereof about husbandry many hands were requisite. And this 
 is also the cause why victuals be now in many places dearer." 
 
 The process has been long and cruel, and is hardly 
 completed yet, millions of families having been driven 
 to penury, vagrancy, and death. Most of the rough work was 
 done in the time of the Tudors, but there were also terrible 
 doings at the end of last century and the beginning of this, 
 when the long-continued high price of wheat, due to the 
 French wars and protection, together with the great improve- 
 ment in agriculture, and the high value of wool, gave a fresh 
 impetus to land grabbing ; 7,000,000 acres of common land 
 were enclosed during this period, the proportion given to the 
 poor being one in 300. Scotch dales were literally cleared of 
 their inhabitants at one stroke. Chiefs whose loyalty to the 
 English crown had been bought by giving them absolute 
 possession of the soil which belonged to their clans, drove off 
 their own clansmen by the aid of the British bayonet. In 
 Ireland the same thing was going on with, if possible, greater 
 cruelty. As many as 700 people were sometimes turned out 
 of their homes in a day, with nowhere to go, the sick and 
 dying dragged out of their cottages and their home burned 
 down before their eyes, till a whole country side would be 
 ablaze at once. Some of the acts were pure robbery, 
 some legal, as at this time our landowners' parliament framed 
 acts of enclosure by the score, there being little to fear from 
 the country people, who had long since lost all their power of 
 self-defence. Anyone would think that fierce barbarians were 
 laying waste the country with fire and sword instead of 
 English gentlemen acquiring their landed rights. 
 
 Amongst the most notorious were the Sutherland evictions, 
 which began in 1807, when a population of 15,000 were almost 
 
all forcibly evicted and replaced by 39 sheep farmers and their 
 shepherds. Here is an account by an eye-witness. Donald 
 M'Leod :- 
 
 " In former removals tenants had been allowed to carry away 
 the timber of their old dwellings to erect houses on their new 
 allotments, but now a more summary mode was adopted by 
 setting fire to them. The able-bodied men were now away after 
 their cattle or otherwise engaged at a distance, so that the Imme- 
 diate sufferers by the general house-burning that now commenced 
 were the aged and infirm, the women and children. . . The 
 devastators proceeded with the greatest celerity, demolishing 
 all before them, and when they had overthrown all the houses 
 in a large tract of country, they set fire to the wreck. Timber, 
 furniture, and every other article that could not be instantly 
 removed was consumed by fire or otherwise utterly destroyed. 
 The proceedings were carried on with the greatest rapidity and 
 the most reckless cruelty. The cries of the victims, the 
 confusion, the despair and horror painted on the countenances 
 of the one party, and the exulting ferocity of the other, beggar 
 all description. . . . Many deaths ensued from alarm, 
 from fatigue, and cold, the people having been instantly 
 deprived of shelter, and left to the mercies of the elements. 
 Some old men took to the woods and to the rocks, wandering 
 about in a state approaching to, or of absolute insanity ; and 
 several of them in this situation lived oiry a few days. 
 Pregnant women were taken in premature lab ur, and several 
 children did not long survive their sufferings." 
 
 It was in the time of the Stuarts that the Act of Frauds 
 was passed, and the practical abolition of the land tax was 
 accomplished, and that the lords of the manors relieved 
 themselves of the last remaining dues to the king, while care- 
 fully keeping them on their tenants, thus gradually throwing 
 off all burdens from above, as they heaped them on those 
 below. By the Statute of Frauds, which was passed in Charles 
 II. 's reign, all the small freeholders who could not show clear' 
 titles were deprived of their land Now, as many had inherited 
 their holdings from centuries back when custom was law, they 
 naturally never had any titles, and many others had lost them. 
 It would be interesting to know how many of their lords could 
 have found titles for half their possessions. There was some- 
 thing peculiarly and revoltingly mean in this Act. 
 
 It hardly needs the saying that these acts of oppression and 
 injustice were accompanied by the most inhuman criminal 
 code, directed against the resistance, crime, and vagrancy 
 inevitably created. Throughout the whc/le of the Tudor period 
 
10 
 
 a succession of the most barbarous acts were passed against 
 "sturdy beggars," otherwise evicted tenants. They were to be 
 flogged, branded, enslaved, and hanged. Nor were these a dead 
 letter. In Henry VIII. 's reign alone there were from 70,000 to 
 80,000 vagrants hanged, and this out of a population of under 
 3,1)0-0,000, equivalent to the hanging of nearly a million of our 
 present population in course of little over a generation. 
 Of the brutal criminal code existing at the early part 
 of this century, with its 140 capital offences, we all know. 
 
 One gleam of sunshine there was, however, something over a 
 hundred years ago, on the eve of the introduction of machinery 
 and the final swoop on the common lands. Cloth being all 
 made by hand could not be made fast enough, and gave 
 employment to any number of weavers, who, making their own 
 piece of cloth with the aid of their family, and generally being 
 surrounded with a few acres of land, lived in considerable 
 comfort. Prosperity in trade had, in fact, for the moment 
 checked the power of the landowning classes to keep wages 
 down to starvation point, just as it does in the case of skilled 
 labour at present. But there were other contributing causes 
 as well at this period. There had been great improvements in 
 agriculture, and much labour was required and money spent 
 on the large estates to improve them. So what with the great 
 demand for their labour and their still-possessed common 
 rights, the agricultural labourers shared the general prosperity, 
 and wages were very much higher in most parts of the country 
 than they are even now. 
 
 Alas, this silver age, as we may call it, lasted but about one 
 generation. The introduction of machinery soon turned the 
 prosperous weavers and their families into factory slaves. 
 Money was made much faster than before, but it went into 
 heaps. The American and French wars sent up wheat to 
 famine prices, which were kept up by protection after their 
 close, and this, in addition to excessive taxation on all articles 
 of consumption, and the rapid enclosure of 7,000,000 acres of 
 land, which the high price of wheat made worth while, brought 
 all classes of labourers down to a state of starvation and misery 
 which it is too painful to dwell 011, and out of which they only 
 began to rise about 1850, about which time the Corn Laws were 
 repealed and many other reforms passed, placing some restric- 
 tion on the merciless power of capital over the helpless and 
 starving multitude. 
 
 There has been no improvement in the land laws worth 
 mentioning during the last 40 years. Whatever improvement 
 there has been in the condition of the people has been made in 
 
11 
 
 spite and independently of them. High rents and insecure terms 
 of tenancy have within the last 20 years ruined a generation of 
 farmers and depopulated our villages. Thousands of our poor in 
 London are spending half of their wretched earnings in rent for 
 miserable cellars or garrets which in Soho run from 5s. to 10s. 
 a week. The landowners are taking more than ever. The 
 sole reason for our comparative prosperity is that trade and 
 reform have for the moment gone too fast for the landowners 
 to absorb the benefit all along the line, successful as they 
 have been in keeping well up in some parts. 
 
 For 350 years, from 1500 to 1850, the struggle between 
 the landowners to filch the land, and the people to keep it, had 
 been going on. It ended in the complete triumph of the land- 
 owners. During the whole of this period, broadly speaking, had 
 trade, manufacture, and rents been increasing, but the position 
 of the working classes deteriorated till it reached a climax in 
 that awful period of misery between about 1780 and 1850. 
 During the French war trade actually doubled, but the rich 
 had been getting richer and the poor poorer. 
 
 In this period, unlike the golden age, the poor were 
 surrounded by good farmers, labour-saving machinery, and 
 advantages of every description which their forefathers had 
 never dreamed of, but they shared none. The whole went to 
 those above them who held the land ; all the labourers had to 
 do was to work at starvation wages, and live for the most part 
 in cottages not nearly as comfortable as the stable provided 
 for their master's horses. 
 
 Private ownership and large estates were fairly established 
 in place of the old Feudal system, which had broken down as 
 it was bound to do. It was altogether too inelastic to 
 accommodate itself to changing economic development, and the 
 fact of the peasants all having their lords, with their rights 
 and privileges over them, was of course a standing menace 
 which was bound to work the ruin of the labourer sooner or 
 later. Apart from this, the Feudal system was incapable of 
 absorbing the gradually growing manufacturing and wage- 
 earning classes, so that independently of the oppression and 
 fraud of the landowning classes in the country, a landless class 
 must have inevitably grown up in the towns. 
 
 I have attempted to sketch as clearly as possible in the brief 
 space I have, the rise and fall of the Feudal system, together 
 with the establishment of private ownership and the effect on 
 the labouring population. We have seen that the institution 
 of private ownership in land has taken about 350 years fully to 
 mature, and has been the production not of carefully matured 
 
12 
 
 laws by wise and humane legislation, but of lawless cruelty 
 and intolerable wrong during the whole of that period. Tearing 
 up and trampling down at every step, it has taken its baneful 
 course, like a great Jagannath rolling over writhing, agonised 
 humanity, sacrificed at its feet, and littering all around its 
 inhuman course ruined homes and blighted hopes, broken 
 hearts and joyless lives ; feeding the workhouses, jails, and 
 gallows, starving the poor, fattening the rich, establishing 
 bitter, degrading poverty on the one hand, and dangerous 
 corruption and inordinate wealth on the other, persecuting the 
 weak, aiding the strong. In its very essence it is nothing 
 more or less than the legal recognition and perpetual reward 
 of successful robbery. It is a vast engine to take from 
 producers and give to non-producers, and its power of absorp- 
 tion grows with the amount there is to absorb. And yet we 
 find good people defending this institution as if it were sacred, 
 and sincerely believing that it can only be tampered with at 
 the peril of all rights of property and of the existence of our 
 civilisation. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE WAY TO MANAGE THE LAND AND GIVE ALL MEX ACCESS 
 TO NATURE'S BOUNTIES. 
 
 We have been speaking about the early history of England 
 only in the last chapter, but as a matter of fact, in 
 all primitive communities the common right of the people to 
 the land is recognised and acted upon. The land itself 
 is divided in some sort, and if there are any who have no right 
 to the land they will be slaves. But as civilisation advances 
 and the people, instead of being purely agricultural, begin to 
 have different occupations and to congregate in cities, the old 
 system of dividing the land and rights of pasturage amongst 
 the whole population becomes impossible, and the powerful, 
 always ready to take advantage of their opportunities, begin to 
 add field unto field as fast as economic changes, poverty, death, 
 or successful war allow. Thus the land gradually gets into 
 the hands of the few, while the many are left landless, poor, 
 and dependent. " By force or fraud or violent oppression 
 these poor people needs must go." 
 
 On looking calmly at the whole question it appears inevitable 
 that the institution of private ownership in land in more or less 
 absolute form should have taken its place in the evolution of 
 
is 
 
 civilisation. Its growth is natural in certain crude stages. To 
 prevent it requires an advanced development of political life that 
 does not exist, and a scientific knowledge of economic problems 
 which it is impossible should precede the very existence of the 
 problems themselves. Doctors cannot study and find out 
 remedies for diseases before they are known, neither can 
 politicians remove an abuse before it shows itself. 
 
 True, the abuse of private ownership in land has shown 
 itself long, and the history of civilisation, properly written, is 
 largely made up of a huge struggle between the many to keep 
 their right to the land and the few to take it from them. But 
 the many blundered and were without method, or at any rate 
 that which they had was unpractical. They had not the whole 
 question before them, and did not rise en masse against the 
 whole system, but in part against particular acts of oppression 
 and hardship. They were naturally worsted by the few, who, 
 having political power and economic change ever on their side, 
 won all along the line, though not, of course, without sanguinary 
 conflict and temporary defeats. 
 
 In this nineteenth-century Western European civilisation of 
 ours, however, the balance of power is fast changing hands. 
 The development of political liberties, the education of the 
 common people, and the very complication of civilised life all 
 tend in the same direction. Our great landowners, although 
 providing an object-lesson of how the people are robbed, have 
 not the power to injure and oppress individuals which they 
 used to have, and are, comparatively speaking, unable to 
 terrorise them into voting and speaking to order. The people 
 now have the power to right themselves, and are daily acquiring 
 the necessary knowledge and the inclination to use it ; for with 
 the continually increasing acknowledgment of the inalienable 
 rights and the common brotherhood of man, comes the ever 
 deepening conviction of the utter incompatibility of the institu- 
 tion of private ownership of land with the realisation of this 
 noble view of human life. 
 
 If one may judge from what many people say, the first and' 
 in many cases the only thing that occurs to them when they 
 hear of the equal rights of man to the earth, is the country 
 being cut up into equal pieces, all men being turned into 
 peasant proprietors, land being forced on people who do noc 
 want and who will not use it, and taken away from those w r ho 
 do want and can use it. They imagine all the parks cut 
 up into patches, and then end up by saying triumphantly, 
 " And then when you have done all this, how long would it 
 last? Why, if you divided it to-day, it \vov.!d be unequal 
 
u 
 
 to-morrow, and in a few years things would be as bad as 
 ever again." 
 
 Now if anything like this were really proposed, it would be 
 just as preposterous as these people think, but nothing of the 
 sort is involved in restoring to all men their equal rights to the 
 use of the earth. If a number of men had equal shares in a ship, 
 for instance, they would not divide the ship into equal parts, nor 
 would they think it necessary that all, or indeed, any of them, 
 should work on the ship, but they would manage it for their 
 common benefit, and would equally divide the profits. 
 Thus, if we recognised that all men had an equal right to the 
 land, we should do exactly the same sort of thing ; we should 
 manage the land for the benefit of all, give all equal opportunities 
 to use the earth, but divide the rent not the land equally 
 amongst the people ; which would in practice mean that the 
 rent would take the place of rates and taxes, and would be 
 used for the benefit of the community. 
 
 People often say that they are in favour of municipalising 
 the land but not of nationalising it. As a matter of fact, the 
 one is necessary to the other in any reasonable scheme. 
 
 Nationalised the land always has been, is now, and ever will 
 be, in this much, that the nation cannot part with its ultimate 
 control of the land, or the making of the laws that regulate its 
 use, nor yet its power to draw its revenue from this source, or 
 of appropriation for national purposes. If it parted with these 
 rights it would cease to be a nation. The thing has never been 
 suggested by the wildest reactionist. Now in this sense I 
 Jo not propose to nationalise the land to any greater extent 
 than it is at present, but only to induce the nation to alter the 
 laivs that regulate its use. 
 
 On the other hand, municipalised the land must be, in so 
 much as the management and letting of the land must, in all 
 cases, be in the hands of the municipalities themselves. They 
 would collect and receive the advantages of the ground-rent 
 and work their district, as it were, for their own benefit. The 
 central government would merely make a rate for imperial 
 purposes on the ground-rents. Each district would therefore 
 be under its own responsible management, losing or gaining 
 comparatively, as this was good or bad, without interference 
 from the Imperial Government, more than that it must 
 manage the land according to the laws of the country. No 
 other rates or taxes would be necessary, the ground rent 
 being more than sufficient for all imperial and local expendi- 
 ture ; and the vast economy effected in collection, together 
 with the redemption of the national debt and the reduction 
 
15 
 
 or abolition of many other imperial expenses that exist at 
 present, would soon bring the imperial rate down to but a 
 few shillings in the pound. 
 
 The idea of a corrupt, incapable centra, management being a 
 necessary accompaniment of land nationalisation is natural 
 enough, but an entire misconception. Nor would the local 
 authorities have any opportunity for jobbery, favouritism, mis- 
 management and waste in providing, building and carrying out 
 improvements on their tenants' land. They would not, in this 
 way, manage the estate as a great landowner does now. They 
 would si.mply claim the ground-rent or value of the site that 
 they allowed the tenant to use, everything else would be 
 done by the individual, subject, of course, to such general and 
 sanitary laws as were thought necessary for the benefit and pro- 
 tection of the public. Thus, although the land would be nationa- 
 lised and the latent authority that the nation possess at present, 
 by law, would at last be used to its full extent for the benefit 
 of the people, as far as the direct control, management, and 
 and benefits were concerned, it would be municipalised. I use 
 the word " nationalised " in these pages simply because it is 
 inclusive. 
 
 Th^re is but one way of fairly letting the land, and that is 
 the simplest and most workable. It must be let to those who 
 are willing to pay the most rent for it, as it is now \ or in other 
 words the holders of land must pay the market yearly value of 
 the sites they occupy. 
 
 We have the cruelties of enforcing a " rack " or strictly 
 competitive rent on a peasantry, who have no alternative but 
 to take the land or starve, so strongly impressed on our minds, 
 that we are obliged to pause a little to clear our vision and 
 balance our judgment, before we see the difference between a 
 competitive rent that is simply an engine to extort the last 
 farthing out of a helpless and dependent population, and the 
 same competitive rent as a means of apportioning national 
 wealth and natural opportunities fairly amongst the people 
 In the one case the rent is taken away from the workers, in 
 the other it is divided amongst them. Is theie no difference 
 between these ? 
 
 Then, again, it is difficult to understand how any clear- 
 minded person, who will take the trouble to think, can help 
 seeing that nothing short of a rent levied on competitive 
 principles rationally carried out can prevent privilege y and 
 favouritism. If the highest bidder is not to have the land, 
 who is ? Either the man in possession or the one in influence 
 or favour with the authorities. In the one case a privileged 
 
16 
 
 and landed class would be established, in the other the flood 
 gates would be opened to favouritism, jobbery, and corruption. 
 
 Land thrown on the " market " might be let by public 
 tender or auction. In the case of building land a board might be 
 put up stating the best prices offered up to date, and informing 
 the public that it would be let on an appointed day. The man 
 who lost it could take the next plot ; there would be plenty 
 for all who wanted. The land should be let on such 
 conditions, however, that when once obtained a man might use 
 it exactly as if it were his own ; the board only claiming 
 rent for the site ; it need have nothing to do with any 
 buildings or other improvements, which should be the property 
 of the tenant, and which he should be able to sell whenever he 
 liked. No one need be disturbed except for public purposes, 
 when he might have compensation given. The ground rent 
 of an individual need never be pushed up by the direct competi- 
 tion of a greedy and covetous neighbour, for the simple reason 
 that no one ought to have a chance of making a bid for a piece 
 of land unless it happened to be in the market ; the rent would 
 gradually rise or fall, as the case might be, by the rent obtained 
 for land thrown into the market from natural causes ; periodical 
 revisions being ordered from time to time, according to the 
 necessities of the case. 
 
 There would be nothing revolutionary in this. The State 
 tenant would be as secure in his holding as the present owner, 
 who only holds the land on certain conditions first, that he 
 obeys the sanitary and other laws, secondly, that he pays his 
 rates and taxes of all descriptions ; if he fails to do this, he will 
 first have anything he has got on the land sold by Government, 
 and he will then have the land itself sold. The State tenant 
 would hold his land under exactly similar conditions ; he must 
 obey the sanitary laws and must pay his ground rent, otherwise 
 similar proceedings would be taken against him to those which 
 would be taken against an owner at present. The State tenant 
 would pay only for the site that he was monopolising. He would 
 not have to pay extra taxes on every improvement he made as he 
 does now, being, in fact, fined for making good use of the land, 
 while his neighbour, who acts the dog in the manger, neither 
 making good use of his land, nor yet allowing anyone else to 
 do so, is practically let off all taxation, and thus encouraged to 
 do nothing. 
 
 Rent, and a market-rent, is a necessary medium of justice 
 is a necessary and perfect means of giving us all, whether we use 
 much or little land, our equal rights to it. It is a market-rent, 
 and that only, that can find out the fittest to have the land, 
 
17 
 
 that can decide who is to have the best situation in the town 
 and who the worst, who is to have the farm in the fertile vale 
 and who that on the arid mountain side. If a man no longer 
 thinks it worth his while to pay this rent, he can sell his tenant 
 right as he can his house now and allow some one else to step 
 in his place. All, whether paying rent direct or not, will be 
 deriving the benefit of this communal fund spent for the 
 common good. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 GROUND RENT. 
 
 THE POWER OF LANDOWNERS TO ABSORB NATIONAL WEALTH 
 
 Ground rent, so long as it is fairly charged, is a natural 
 and beautiful instrument for separating public from private 
 funds, for taking from the individual occupier of a site 
 that Avhich, although passing through his hands, really belongs 
 to the public. 
 
 Every political economist admits that ground rent is created 
 by the public as a whole, by their numbers and industry, and 
 not by the individual occupiers of the land who pay it. So 
 long as we require public funds for public needs, what can 
 be more unjust, not to say insane, than to allow this public fund 
 made by and belonging to the community to be absorbed by 
 private individuals, and then set to work to tax private 
 individuals on what is undoubtedly their private property, in 
 twenty clumsy, wasteful ways, to make up the deficiency? It 
 is not even common sense. 
 
 Those who have in no way studied political economy may ask 
 to be shown first that ground rent is created by the public and 
 not by the individual occupiers who pay it. The following 
 examples will perhaps make this clear. 
 
 A tradesman looking about for a site to build his shop on, is 
 offered two of the same size and frontage, one in the outskirts of 
 the town, at a ground rent of five pounds per annum, one in 
 the centre at fifty pounds. Having plenty of capital and 
 energy he choscs the fifty pound site, because he considers that 
 he will be surrounded by so many more customers and con- 
 veniences that, after having paid the extra forty-five pounds a 
 year, he will have more left over for himself in the expensive 
 site than in the cheap. Clearly, the extra forty-five pounds, in 
 spite of its going through his hands, is earned by the com- 
 munity and not by him. If he could earn it by his own indi- 
 vidual effort he ould earn it as well in one site as in another , 
 
18 
 
 but as a matter of fact he can earn it only with the help and 
 co-operation of the community. Apart from this, it is only fair 
 that if he is allowed to monopolise such a good situation he 
 should pay for it ; and pay for it to whom 1 Asa matter of 
 course to the people who make the position so good. 
 
 A few years ago there was a quantity of land sold in the 
 Transvaal at public auction for 2^d. per acre. At the same 
 time an Aerated Bread Company gave 14s. per square foot 
 ground rent per annum for the leasehold of a site off the 
 Strand. It would have its shop to build and, in addition to this, 
 its rates and taxes to pay and at the end of the lease would 
 have its building confiscated to the owner of the land. Thus 
 we have the one piece of land worth over fifty-eight million times 
 as much as the other. None of this difference is made by the 
 respective landowners, yet the London ones take the whole of 
 the advantage. The difference is made by the fact of the 
 London site being surrounded by five millions of people working 
 and trading and the Transvaal having, perhaps, only twenty in 
 the same area. 
 
 In the same way in agriculture, the excessive rents given for 
 patches of land close to towns, and the difference of the value 
 of land close to good markets and of that which is so far away 
 that the carriage comes to nearly as much as the produce is 
 worth, are manifestly made by the community and not by the 
 individual occupier. 
 
 In advocating the rights of the people to the ground rent 
 we ask simply a nation's right to its own, by which alone 
 individuals can be secured in full ownership of what is right- 
 fully theirs. Surely there is nothing for honest men and 
 patriots to dread in this. 
 
 It is curious that although everyone admits that a fair rent 
 is a fair thing, and that a man who wants to get a better site 
 than his neighbour without paying for it is wanting an unfair 
 advantage, people have been absolutely careless as to where this 
 fair rent went to. Centuries of usurpation have blinded us to 
 the most barefaced robbery of this, our public fund, which is 
 going on in broad daylight all around us. We wax indignant 
 when we hear of a few perpetual pensions, we talk loud of the 
 expenses of royalty, while we quietly allow landowners to take 
 perpetual and ever-increasing pensions out of us to the amount, 
 say, possibly of 200,000,000, certainly of 150,000,000 a 
 year, which latter sum comes to about 4 per man, woman, 
 and child, or 20 a family per annum all round. This sum 
 would pay much more than all our imperial and local taxation, 
 would pay double the amount, after deducting interest, of the 
 
19 
 
 National Debt and numerous other charges that never had any 
 business to exist. 
 
 Landowners are, in fact, given the power to tax their fellow 
 countrymen, and the more an average tenant can make the 
 more the landowners can take. Their power of absorption is 
 absolutely unlimited, as is shown by the fabulous prices and 
 rents obtained for land in our large towns. Clearly this value 
 is communal wealth, and yet it all goes to individuals, while the 
 masses of the people, whose lives and homes it ought to brighten 
 and enrich, live and die all around, starved in mind, body, and 
 soul. 
 
 Theoretically, landowners might conduct all the business of 
 the country themselves, if they chose, making all landless men 
 their servants, but practically it is more convenient and profit- 
 able for them to let most of the land. They are therefore 
 obliged to allow their tenants to work by the piece and cannot 
 prevent the cleverest and luckiest of them from making fortunes, 
 especially when aided by privileged professions and monoply 
 businesses, but they can grind down the masses of workers to 
 the lowest possible wages in the long run ; although, occasion- 
 ally, through changes in industry, a flush of trade, or unusual 
 facilities for emigration, this power is temporarily checked, and 
 for the moment, the labourer may get somewhat higher wages. 
 The capitalists are also servants to the landowners, and are not 
 allowed long to obtain more than a certain amount of interest, 
 but they, of course, like others, work by the piece, and 
 in spite of the rent or royalty being the utmost that the average 
 man can pay, the cleverest of them can make money. 
 
 It is all important that this should be thoroughly under, 
 stood, and that it should be seen that the worker is in no 
 sense a partner of the landowner, but is simply his servant. 
 More profit to the landowner does not mean more wages to the 
 worker ; indeed, the rent has no influence on the rate of wages 
 paid in many cases wages are actually lower on very produc- 
 tive, than on comparative unproductive land. 
 
 Fo" distance, in the Lowlands of Scotland, where a few 
 years ago land was letting at 5 an acre, the labourers were 
 as miserably paid as any in the country, simply because they 
 were dependent on the farmers for employment, while in 
 Northumberland, where the land was only worth about a 
 quarter as much, the labourers were about the best paid, 
 because they were comparatively independent, and could get 
 work in the mines and elsewhere. 
 
 Then, again, thirty years ago, in Norfolk, where rent had 
 risen through an improved system of agriculture, from 2s. 6d. 
 
20 
 
 and 5s. an acre to 20s. and 30s. on light land, and where 
 farmers were driving their carriage and pair, the wages of 
 the labourers were only 7s. to 11s. a week. They had not 
 risen at all with the increased value of the land. They only rose 
 about 1871, when the state of trade in the manufacturing and 
 mining districts enabled the labourers for a time to demand more 
 wages, and it has been notable that in spite of the long depres- 
 sion in agriculture the wages, with possibly a few exceptions, 
 have, since then, only fallen in the districts where the 
 labourers are entirely dependent on the farmers for employ- 
 ment. 
 
 The amount landowners can gain from the land, then, has 
 nothing to do with the wages they will give. Wages are solely 
 regulated, and always will be, by the amount labourers are 
 able to "demand," and they will never be able to demand a 
 fair wage until the equal right of man to the land and to the 
 profits accruing from its use are recognised. 
 
 It matters not where you look, the same results are seen. If 
 a new process is introduced in agriculture which makes the 
 land more productive, if a new use is found for ironstone which 
 makes it more valuable, if a town grows up on the site of a 
 farm, docks where mud used to be, or a beautiful watering 
 place where formerly there was but a desolate seashore, neither 
 the labourer nor the capitalist gets the advantage for long. 
 The owner of the land will sooner or later step in and take it 
 all. It is true he is always a little behind, but his advance is 
 none the less certain for that, and what he loses in a rising 
 market when the farmer makes a little money before the rent 
 is clapped on, he gains in a falling market, which absorbs a 
 great part of the farmer's capital before he reduces the rent. 
 
 It came out in the Royal Commission lately held on the 
 Crofter question, that the Duke of Argyle had during the last 
 30 years doubled the rent of one of his islands, and that during 
 the same period the population had been reduced to one-half, 
 so that the people now have to pay four times as much rent 
 per head as they had before. Now what difference does it 
 make to these orof ters what the taxes are, so long as they are 
 under the absolute control of the Duke, who can take all from 
 them that the taxgatherer leaves? What difference does it 
 make to the people whether they pay the money to the Duke 
 or the Crown 1 Is it not plain that this Duke had the legal right 
 to a tax, not of a fixed amount, but as much as the people could 
 pay, and the taxes are not spent for their good and protection, as 
 the taxes of the Crown are supposed to be, but for the sole' 
 good of the Duke, who need not, and often does not, return a 
 
penny in any form. This must be clear enough to anyone, but 
 what people don't recognise is that this power to tax is in no 
 way diminished by the land being divided up amongst a 
 number of smaller landowners. The small men are generally 
 harder tax masters than the large, and it is no compensation 
 to the taxpayer that he is supporting a small instead of a big 
 landowner. 
 
 In London, the ground rent comes to many millions a year, 
 over twenty ; a great deal of this goes from the East to the 
 West, goes from the poor children who are working in noisome 
 garrets, with their tiny fingers numbed with cold in the winter, 
 without hope, without relaxation, without sufficient air, light, 
 food, or clothing, it goes from these poor children and equally 
 ill- paid adults, to idlers who spend as much in food and dress 
 in a day as these poor things earn in a year. This money, 
 when, wrung out of the incessant toil of these poor people, is 
 flung about for their personal gratification by those who have 
 nothing to do with making it, but who have inherited or pur- 
 chased the " right " to extract it from thousands. 
 
 But I am told that at any rate a good many get advantages 
 out of the system. Advantage ! and out of whom ? Not out of 
 the comparatively well-to-do, they get at least their share 
 under the present system ; not from the idlers and people 
 who won't work, that we hear spoken of with such virtuous 
 indignation by their high-class comrades, nor yet from the 
 criminal classes ; it is quite evident that these people do not 
 supply the luxuries of life. The advantage is got, then, out of 
 the "hard-working, honest poor," and from them alone is the 
 money extracted. 
 
 Out of the poor town labourers, working for 16s. a week, out 
 of the agricultural labourer at 10s. a week, when he can get it ; 
 out of children who are making matchboxes at 2Jd. a gross, 
 and women who make trousers at 2|d. a pair, and earn Is. in 
 a day of 1 7 hours. It is out of these people fathers, mothers, 
 sons, and daughters slowly dying, starving for want of food, 
 clothes, warmth, air, a little relaxation aud change. It is the 
 land laws that are responsible for all this ; it is these laws that 
 first defraud, then degrade, and then debauch the people, as 
 Michael Davitt so truly puts it. 
 
 Is there any language strong enough to condemn the 
 institution which perpetrates such pitiless robbery ? 
 
 People do not recognise that undeserved wealth means a 
 corresponding amount of undeserved poverty, that the unearned 
 increment so glibly spoken of does not come from the moon 
 but from the toils of the poor, and is taken as mercilessly as 
 
as 
 
 Shylock would have had his pound of flesh according tc 
 "bargain." Indeed, so long as the poor are placed in so pitiable 
 and helpless a position that they are obliged to compete one 
 aga^kist the other for the right to earn a bare living and dwell in a 
 house, it is difficult to see how it can be otherwise. If a bene- 
 volent landowner remitted the rent no permanent good would 
 result, a middle-man or someone else would derive the benefit, 
 as the cause of the evil which is the helplessness of the people 
 and not the greediness of the landowner would have been 
 undisturbed. It is the system, not the individual, that is to 
 blame. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SLAVERY. 
 
 Landless men are, according to law, absolutely dependent on 
 landed men who could, by combination, so far as the law is 
 concerned, turn them all out of the country, bag and baggage, 
 doing collectively only what they have so often done individually 
 when clearing Scotch valleys for deer parks or destroying 
 Irish homes for cattle graziers. English noblemen have bought 
 large districts in the United States where they can deal with 
 American subjects as they like and keep them off the land 
 altogether if they choose, and Americans have returned the 
 compliment by buying up Scotch glens and clearing them of 
 British subjects, the only man entitled by English law to live 
 on the soil being the American citizen who purchases it. 
 
 Of course, as a matter of practice, although landowners clear 
 islands and districts of their population, they could not clear a 
 country like England, the fountain-head of legislation, even if 
 it were their interest to do so. The progress they have made in 
 this direction, however, in the agricultural districts in the High- 
 lands of Scotland and almost all over Ireland is surprising, and 
 does more credit to the capabilities of the landowner than to 
 the spirit of the people for quietly submitting. 
 
 If you read the terms of a building lease in a large town, or 
 a royalty lease, you will find all dictation and take on one side, 
 and submission and pay on the other. The landowner risks 
 nothing and lays out nothing, the tenant pays all and risks 
 all. In these leases, therefore, as in the petty, mean 
 tyranny and paternal government that prevails in so many of 
 our agricultural villages, the ugly word slavery is distinctly 
 branded. " Take my terms or go " or " Go, I offer you no 
 
23 
 
 terms. w The principle of private ownership in land is the 
 principle of slavery, of dependence of one man on another; 
 and this shows itself in practice as plain as daylight when 
 opportunity affords, however much the personal power to 
 oppress may sometimes be hidden behind the general power to 
 tax. 
 
 The terms which the masters are able to exact from their 
 slaves vary, however, very materially ; where the estates are 
 very large and the slaves so poor and dependent that they 
 practically cannot move, the slavery is nearly as absolute as 
 personal slavery. In many instances the landowners make 
 and administer their own laws according to their own fashion, 
 and if the laws will not cover any particular offence it matters 
 little, as they have other ways of punishing the people who 
 belong to them. They can boycott them and deprive them of 
 all chance of earning a livelihood, break their hearts, starve 
 their families, and end perhaps, after turning them out of 
 their cottages, by sending them to prison for loitering about in 
 search of game, or being found sleeping in an outhouse without 
 visible "means of subsistence." They can make an example of 
 them in fact. This power they have, and this power they 
 often use ; and this is slavery. It is as idle to justify it because 
 the extensive use of this power is not usual, as it is to justify 
 personal slavery because extra barbarity on the part of the 
 masters may in some countries have been the exception. When 
 people are dependent on the chance cruelty or benevolence of 
 others, they are slaves. 
 
 This power of governing and punishing the people cannot be 
 carried out when the landowners are numerous, and where 
 commercial principles creep in. In these cases, the slaves may 
 do pretty much as they like so long as they pay for the right 
 of the use of the earth. All that the landowners in the towns 
 care about and can exact of them is money ; the slave can defy 
 and insult him, and refuse to work for him, and sue him for 
 assault, but he cannot get out of paying him tribute, he cannot 
 live in a house, manufacture or buy an article, without paying 
 blackmail at every stage. Political, social, or religious slavery 
 is changed only for the grinding tyranny of money. The 
 latter state is, in many respects, worse than the first ; public 
 opinion, restrictive laws, and personal benevolence on the part of 
 the landowner all modify and ameliorate the former description 
 of slavery, but nothing of the sort has much effect on the latter. 
 Rise in value, as it is called in towns, that is the increased 
 power of the landowner to take from the worker, and the 
 increased dependence of the latter on the former, drifts along 
 
with all its attending evils independently and in spite of personal 
 effort. The destitution and misery of our poor in London 
 garrets and cellars would bring public odium to any individual 
 personally responsible. But when the responsibility can be put 
 off the individual on to the social system, it is regarded as one of 
 the inevitable dispensations of Divine Providence. 
 
 The North American slaves were freed, but the slave owners 
 were left in possession of the land, and as a consequence the 
 slaves are as dependent on their masters as ever. The masters 
 are, however, freed from much burdensome responsibility, and 
 get more work out of their slaves than they did before. Henry 
 George says it is acknowledged amongst the negroes that they 
 are worse off materially now under the pitiless social system 
 which casts them adrift to look after themselves without the 
 means of being independent, than they were as slaves when 
 the masters were bound by law to feed and look after them, 
 and were held personally responsible for their well being. 
 
 We have heard a great deal of indignation about boycotting 
 in Ireland, from a class who have practised boycotting them- 
 selves in all ages. An instance appears in the Democrat of 
 March 20th, 1888. Allan Gilmour, a Scotch laird, prosecuted ten 
 men for poaching, but the case was dismissed by the Sheriff's 
 substitute. Allan Gilmour then writes thus : "I have inti- 
 mated to the committee for distributing charity that I shall in 
 future withdraw all subscriptions towards any charitable 
 purpose whatever in the village, if any assistance is given by 
 them to any of the under-named or their families." The names 
 then follow. " I am requesting every tenant on the estate to 
 with-hold all occupation or employment from the above-mentioned 
 ten men. Other names will be added as occasion requires." 
 This is a little barefaced and thorough, certainly, but it in no 
 way differs from the sort of thing that has gone on and does 
 and always will go on where the people who live on the land 
 are dependent on the men who own it. 
 
 We boast that we have perfect religious liberty in England ; 
 the members of our National Church go further, and say we 
 have perfect religious equality. Here is an example of the 
 sort of religious liberty and equality that some of our villages 
 have. In 1879, Mr. McAulay, a Wesleyan minister, was 
 trying to get permission from Mr. Langhorne Barton for the 
 continuation of religious services in the village of Bay Enderby, 
 in Lincolnshire, which had been suddenly interdicted, although 
 they had been held for 30 years. After referring to Mr. 
 McAulay's proposal to continue the meetings in a cottage, Mr. 
 Barton writes thus : " The result of such a step on your part 
 
25 
 
 would probably be the removal from Bay Endcrby of all the 
 members of your body, who are of little value to me as tenants. 
 I .have a wish to have as tenants none but thorough Church 
 people, and consider myself quite at liberty to choose such as I 
 like without being dictated to by anybody. . . . Your 
 letter I have placed in my rector's hands, and beg to state in 
 conclusion that I will write to you again should occasion 
 require it." I admire this man, he is straightforward. 
 
 The landowners tell us that we are free, but that everything 
 that is necessary for our existence belongs to them. We may 
 please ourselves whether we make use of the land or not, just 
 as the man who has fallen into the sea may please himself 
 whether he makes use of the boat which belongs to someone 
 else. He is perfectly free ; he has the happy alternative of 
 making a bargain with the man in the boat or getting 
 drowned. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 EFFECT ON LABOURER, FARMER, AND AGRICULTURE GENERALLY. 
 
 In an ordinary " close " village, the agricultural labourer has 
 no social status whatever ; he has no rights to opinions of his 
 own. Only two or three people in the village have. 
 He is of no account except as a labourer. He cannot 
 provide himself with employment or with a home. The 
 employment provided for him by others is far from regular, 
 miserably paid, and he is often thrown out of work in the 
 winter, just when his expenses are most and the need for food 
 and fire the greatest. When he is ill he gets on somehow with 
 the kindness of squire, parson or farmer ; when he is out of work 
 he gets on nohow. Without hope, holiday, relaxation, or any 
 share in the comforts and luxuries he is enabling others to enjoy, 
 he works through summer's heat and winter's tempests to a 
 pauper's allowance and grave. Is it any wonder that ht is 
 often slow and spiritless, and that he takes no interest in his 
 work, as is so often complained of? 
 
 The difference between the positions of the landowner and the 
 labourer is simply that one holds the land and the other does 
 not. Since the law has taken it from the one arid given it to 
 the other, the law of the land only is responsible for all this. 
 It follows, then, that if the law were altered and the labourer 
 had as good a right to the land as the present landowner, 
 instead of having a village with a few idlers living in luxury 
 
and many workers in poverty, we might have none but 
 workers all living in independence and comfort, according to 
 their respective abilities and industry. 
 
 Unnatural differences being abolished instead of created by 
 law, natural and healthy differences only would remain. The 
 total income would, moreover, be vastly increased by the 
 better use which the land would be put to and the superior 
 labour of a free and prosperous man working for himself. 
 
 In order to put the labourer in a position to demand a fair 
 wage, he must be in a position to work on the land for himself 
 on the same just conditions as his would-be employers. A 
 cottage farm of five or six acres would enable a man to provide 
 himself with all the first necessities of life, and with the help of 
 outside wages, put him in a thoroughly comfortable position, 
 as I have shown in my pamphlet, " Village Politics and Cottage 
 Farms." Such a farm, a labourer ought to be able to get 
 from the local authority, at nearly the same rent as the 
 farmer pays for similar land and on such conditions and 
 security that he could use it as if it were his own, build his 
 cottage, plant his fruit trees, manure and drain his land, with 
 the knowledge that he would neither have his rent raised on 
 his own improvements, nor yet be disturbed so long as he 
 paid it, and that at any time he could sell his tenant-right, that 
 is, his buildings and improvements to the highest bidder, did 
 he want to leave. 
 
 The result of such a change in the laws would not make all 
 labourers cottage fanners, but by giving to all the opportunity 
 and right, it would leaven the whole of society, practically put 
 an end to the " unemployed," and enable those who worked for 
 the farmers to make a fair bargain, and say, " You must pay 
 me so much, or I will work on the land on my own account 
 instead of yours. If your machinery, capital, and method will 
 not leave you a profit after paying the same rent for the land 
 as I do, and giving me the same wages that I can earn for 
 myself, there is no room in social economy for you, nobody 
 wants you and you must find another occupation." As a 
 matter of fact, I think there will always be a most useful 
 sphere for large farmers to supply the wholesale markets. 
 Bearing in view how enormously ordinary manufactures are 
 facilitated by being carried on in large concerns, where alone the 
 best machinery and the most economical division of labour are 
 possible, it is difficult to believe that farming should form 
 altogether an exception to the rule. 
 
 There are, however, and, as far as we can see, always will be 
 some smaller industries, where personal superintendence and 
 
hand labour are indispensable, that will be best carried on 
 in a small way. For the same reason it appears likely that 
 there will always be some forms of agriculture carried on as 
 well or better in a small way than in a large. We cannot yet 
 conceive of machinery gathering fruit, pruning trees, or setting 
 out strawberry runners, for instance, and as long as this must 
 be done by hand, the hand that belongs to the man most 
 interested in the result will do it the best. 
 
 Then, again, there is a great difference between growing for 
 the market and growing for oneself, so that much of the 
 disadvantage of cultivating small holdings would be balanced 
 where the produce was consumed on the spot, instead of 
 passing through the hands of several middlemen, with expenses 
 and profits added to the cost with each transfer, and by a 
 little combination among, say, a dozen cottage farmers in a 
 team of horses, implements and machinery, other disadvantages 
 of small culture would largely disappear. 
 
 I do not, however, urge the opportunity of cottage farming 
 being given to the labourer because it is the best system of 
 cultivating the land, although in many instances this may be 
 the case, but as a simply invaluable means of giving him an 
 opportunity of an independent livelihood, of putting him in a fair 
 position to make a bargain and demand a fair wage, of putting in 
 the bottom rung of the ladder, which Mr. Bright said was taken 
 out for the agricultural labourer. 
 
 Nor need we be afraid of there not being land enough ; there 
 is plenty for all classes of farming. There are, roughly 
 speaking, two acres for every inhabitant in the United 
 Kingdom, or ten acres for an average family of five. Thus if 
 a quarter of the population were agriculturalists instead of less 
 than a twentieth as is the case now, we should have forty acres 
 a family, or thirty acres after allowing twenty-five per cent, off 
 for town roads, wastes, etc. It will thus be seen that, after all 
 who wanted had had their five or six acres allotted, there 
 would be plenty left for larger farms. 
 
 As for farmers, they are workers like labourers, and the interests 
 of all workers are the same. They simply want justice and oppor- 
 tunity given to work to the greatest advantage, with security 
 for the products of their industry. It is idlers only that 
 require injustice to enable them to secure the productions of 
 others. 
 
 The only conditions under which agriculture can be 
 continuously carried on with success are simple and obvious 
 enough. 
 
 First, the farmer should be owner of what we will call the 
 
28 
 
 ''tenant-right;" that is, all improvements which are due to 
 individual industry. This tenant-right he should be able to 
 sell to the highest bidder whenever he likes. 
 
 Secondly, he should have security of tenure at a fair but 
 revisable rent. Under these simple conditions depression in 
 agriculture would cease, a farmer would be secure of his capital 
 and would never be driven to discharge his men; if he 
 improved his tenant-right he would be the gainer, if he 
 depreciated it he would be the loser, and it would therefore be 
 his interest to keep his land in good condition. 
 
 The revisable rent is perhaps the most important thing ot all, 
 for is it not true that ever since the days of Joseph, we have 
 been having, metaphorically speaking, seven fat years followed 
 by seven lean, and that we are always likely to have these ups 
 and downs 1 We have not only the variable bounty of Nature 
 to contend with, but the variable price of the produce we grow, 
 as well as that most important modifier of rents, the shifting 
 and growth of population. With our present system, during 
 the seven fat years rents go up and all goes well, the farmer, 
 at any rate, getting his share of the profit ; but when the 
 pinnacle is reached, and the lean years set in, what then ? 
 Why, the landowners who have raised their standard of 
 living during the fat years, will not lower the rents until both 
 the farmers and the land are ruined, labourers dismissed, 
 tradesmen left unpaid, and depression of trade spread over 
 the whole country. 
 
 Is it not obvious that we ought to follow Joseph's example, 
 and sove up during the seven fat years, that we may give out 
 during the lean ? Is it not obvious that, as soon as the lean 
 years set in, the rent ought to drop, not only immediately, but 
 sufficiently ; and that if that were the case, the farmer could go 
 on as usual during the lean years, could keep his men 
 employed, his land well cultivated and manured, and his 
 tradesmen paid, the only difference being that he would pay, 
 roughly speaking, as much less rent as he received less for his 
 produce ? Trade would go on as usual, agricultural labourers 
 would not flock to the towns to compete with the labourers 
 there, and the country would not be depopulated. This can only 
 be done by nationalising the land, when the community with 
 its large and variable income from other sources would be able 
 without inconvenience to take less rent on agricultural account 
 as occasion demanded, even if it did not actually save up 
 during the fat years as Joseph did. At present too many 
 landowners not only consume all in prosperous times, but 
 increase their scale of living and the charges on their estates, to 
 
29 
 
 such an extent that a return to the old rents is little less than 
 ruin in many cases. Under these circumstances it is 
 natural and inevitable that nothing short of the compulsion 
 brought about by the impoverishment and bankruptcy of 
 their tenants will force them to materially reduce their 
 rents. Until these simple truths are realised and acted 
 upon, farmers will always be periodically in great distress, and 
 their distress will be followed by that of the labourers, tradesmen, 
 'artizans, landlords, and in feet, all classes of the community. 
 
 People conversant with agriculture only can fully realise 
 what ruin an excessive rent brings on. When a farmer 
 pays in rent ,100 without return, instead of spending it 
 in labour and manure, in which case there would be a 
 return, or is obliged to sell his stock at a disadvantage or 
 refrain from keeping or buying stock that the laud ought to 
 have on it, he not only loses the 100, but at least another 
 ,100 in indirect losses, and this, of course, increases year by 
 year. In this way, the ignorance, greediness, or necessities of 
 the landowners ruined thousands of capable farmers and 
 impoverished and threw out of cultivation millions of acres of 
 land between 1876' and 1886. 
 
 It has been calculated that during these ten years the 
 farmers of England lost one hundred million pounds of their 
 capital, and that during the same period the landowners 
 received six times that amount in rent. Assuming this 
 estimate to be correct, it follows that if the landowners had 
 taken five hundred millions instead of six hundred, and made 
 the reduction soon enough, and on the right lands, the farmers 
 might have retained their capital, and all would have been 
 going smoothly. In times of depression, it is not that 
 agriculture does not pay, but that the sleeping partners are 
 taking too much. They get helped first instead of last. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 EFFECT ON TOWNS AND THE MANUFACTURING POPULATION. 
 
 Any reform which enabled the agricultural population to 
 find plenty of employment, and to live in comfort and indepen- 
 dence without drawing the belt of privilege around them 
 without giving them any advantages that all were not equally 
 welcome to enjoy, would inevitably have an instantaneously 
 beneficial effect on the urban population. 
 
 The country people would no longer work in industrial 
 
30 
 
 villages, making clothes, for instance, at prices that are 
 starvation for the townsfolk who must compete with them, 
 and little better for themselves. Nor yet would the less 
 skilled workers in the towns be driven down tc the pitiable 
 wages they are now by the grim competition of the unemployed, 
 struggling for existence with numbers daily augmented from 
 the country. 
 
 The rural population would migrate into the towns by 
 inclination only, instead of force ; and although young men 
 would, no doubt, still often seek a town life and learn a town 
 occupation, their parents would no longer be driven from a 
 home they loved and an occupation they understood, to compete 
 for the lowest wages, the most precarious occupations, and the 
 vilest dwellings that disgrace civilisation. There would also be 
 a not inconsiderable emigration from the town into the country, 
 of grown men who understood and liked agriculture, and of 
 lads who longed for pure air and a country life. 
 
 The direct raising of wages is, however, only a part of the 
 work to be done. A matter of more than equal importance is 
 to improve the surroundings of the working population, to put 
 health, beauty, and hope within the reach of all ; to raise the 
 standard not only of comfort but of self respect and the respecta- 
 bility of the working classes; to make a man ashamed, for 
 instance, of walking the street at night, unchanged and 
 unwashed ; and more than all, to make possible and encourage 
 higher and nobler views of human life and aims, without which 
 no material prosperity can be of any lasting good. To do this, we 
 must surround a man with something better than miserable rows 
 of shabby, dirty cottages, relieved only by a public-house here 
 and there, without a solitary attempt at anything beautiful or 
 cheerful any influence to elevate him, or any pastimes to 
 invigorate him and afford him that enjoyment so necessary for 
 the development of a healthy mind and body. 
 
 It is difficult to see how any material rise in the wages of the 
 better paid of our workpeople is going to benefit any but a few, 
 so long as the surroundings are such as to suggest little but 
 demoralising ways to spend their extra earnings. 
 
 There is, in the nature of things, nothing very costly and 
 nothing more than we can well afford, in making even the por- 
 tions of our towns where working men dwell, healthy and beauti- 
 ful, dotted all over with public gardens, with space for such 
 games as lawn-tennis and bowls, with play-grounds, gymnasiums, 
 and baths, and at greater distances, recreation grounds or parks ; 
 with pleasant, well-f urnished assembly rooms and halls, and roads 
 made cheerful with trees and bright looking houses. In these 
 
31 
 
 and countless other ways, quite out of the scope of this short 
 pamphlet to dwell upon, would the people be made richer, 
 not by having more money to spend, but by being surrounded 
 with advantages free, that large incomes even can hardly secure 
 now. The reason these things are at present impossible is 
 simply that that blighting institution, private ownership of 
 land, stands in the way. Its action is two-fold. It first 
 demands such an exorbitant price for the land that the cost is 
 out of the question ; it next deprives us of the constantly 
 increasing ground-rent, which is the natural fund for providing 
 and supporting all things that benefit the public. 
 
 If the land belonged to the nation, a public garden placed 
 where the Bank of England now stands, or any other valuable 
 place in London, would cost us not the present ground-rent of 
 the position, say about 50,000 per acre, but simply the 
 agricultural value, of perhaps 2 an acre. True, we should be 
 losing 50,000 in ground-rent that we could have obtained for 
 that particular spot, but, all the land belonging to the nation, 
 it would not matter whether we got it off that particular spot 
 or not, so long as we got it. The great banking and other 
 houses would be in London all the same ; they would simply 
 be a step farther out, with their rent-paying capacity enhancing 
 the value of the part of the town next nearest to the centre, the 
 effect of which would gradually decrease, with distance, 
 as a ripple would on the smooth surface of a lake. 
 When the outskirts of the town were reached, the only 
 difference would be (other things being the same) that another 
 acre of agricultural land would be used for building. The 
 ground-rent would be the same as before, minus the agricultural 
 value of that piece of land. If the community would look after 
 its own business and claim its own property, it could thus 
 have any spaces it Jjked in the towns at nominal cost. 
 
 All improvements in our towns could be carried on with the 
 greatest ease and economy, the cost of widening a road or 
 clearing a space for any other public purpose simply being the 
 value of the property to be pulled down, plus, say, ten per cent., 
 which it would only be fair to pay for disturbance. In many 
 cases of real improvement, the ground-rent might actually be 
 enhanced in the town as a whole, in spite of extensive clearances. 
 A remarkable instance of this is furnished by Birmingham, the 
 corporation of which bought up, at excessive valuation and 
 enormous cost (between 300,000 and 400,000 more than 
 its value, according to the evidence of Mr. Chamberlain before 
 a Royal Commission) a great district in the centre of the town 
 and made a financial success of it. The citizens are already 
 
32 
 
 deriving a handsome revenue from this source, for this one 
 reason : they had enough pluck to buy a sufficient area, so 
 that they would derive the advantages of their own improve- 
 ments instead of allowing neighbouring landowners to profit by 
 them, as is usually the case, and they had foresight enough not 
 to part with the land obtained, thus securing the future 
 unearned increment. 
 
 We are huddled together, with no gardens, or playgrounds, 
 or any sort of public spaces, not in order that the landowners, 
 as a whole, shall get the uttermost farthing out of us, but in 
 order that those at the centres of population shall do so. 
 With a more extended township, and those ugly gaps of 
 unused land waiting for buyers filled up on the outskirts, the 
 total ground-rent would probably be more than at present, and 
 small towns, at any rate, might be at least as convenient and 
 compact for business purposes. If we allowed as much as a 
 quarter of an acre for a family even, and twenty per cent, for 
 the public, there would be a population of 10'240 to a square 
 mile. 
 
 The more we look into the matter and compare the ease with 
 which improvements of the most vital importance to the health, 
 morals, and enjoyment of the people, could be carried out by 
 state ownership and municipal management of the land, the 
 stronger must be our condemnation of the present stupid, 
 bungling, wasteful system that a people, supposed to be 
 intelligent and free, still allow to continue. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 TRADE, CAPITAL, AND COMPETITION. 
 
 I confess I am no Socialist in the ordinary acceptance of 
 the term. I do not advocate any direct attempt to nationalise 
 capital and am even old-fashioned enough to have the greatest 
 dread of state interference or management of business except 
 those which in their nature are monopolies, such as gas 
 and water woms, electric lighting, railways, canals, docks, 
 tramways, postal and telegraphic service, which should 
 of course belong to, and be managed by the community 
 they affect. I love individual freedom and independence 
 that is one reason why I am so ardent a land nationalist 
 and like the poor wild creatures who starve in the slums 
 
33 
 
 rather than enter the workhouse, I feel that I would rather 
 have liberty even with hardship than be well-fed and housed 
 under perpetual law and order and officialdom. At the same 
 time 1 admit that with the growing complexity of society, 
 and industrial development, it is highly probable that we 
 should work and very likely live to a large extent in 
 co-operative societies of some sort. 
 
 Under the existing state of things, competition instead of being 
 honourable is for the most part nothing but a greedy struggle to 
 get trade from others ; and freedom in our industrial system 
 means little more than the liberty of the strong to trample on 
 the weak. But is all this because honourable competition to 
 excel in business and the necessary freedom to go your own 
 way and make your own bargains are in themselves wrong, 
 or is it that they have never yet had fair conditions to work 
 under, or a clear course for a trial 1 To place men on land and 
 tell them to make the best use they can of it, and that the 
 better they do, the better off they will be, is one thing, but to 
 take the land away from them and then say, " Now scramble 
 for it and see who can pay the most for the privilege of using 
 it," is quite another. 
 
 Put ten men into a clay field to make bricks and build them- 
 selves houses ; so long as the field belonged equally to all, and 
 so ipng as there was plenty of clay for all, could the man who 
 built himself a beautiful mansion be said to be stopping the 
 man who only built himself a hovel from doing likewise ? So 
 far from doing this he would by his example be giving the man 
 with the hovel a better chance of building the mansion than he 
 would have, had the mansion never been built. If, however, 
 the men had not an equal right to the field, or if they were 
 placed on it with the understanding that the most successful 
 man would be able to buy the field, it would be very different. 
 The successful man would buy up the opportunities of the 
 weaker ones, and by doing this would make it impossible for 
 them to build at all without his leave ; so the successful in this 
 case not only would not help his weaker brother, but he would 
 be able to crush both him and his children ; he would be able 
 to perpetuate and multiply the original differences between his 
 labour and that of his less industrious or clever brother. The 
 competition of capital means one man having something 
 instead of another. The competition of labour, aa long as all 
 have the same field to work on, is the same as the competition 
 of boys at school ; it is a competition of who can learn the 
 most for himself, not at the expense of his neighbour, but by 
 his own exertions. It is honourable emulation instead of 
 
34 
 
 ignoble forestalling. The boy who reads the best, so far from 
 preventing the other boys from reading well, gives them a good 
 example and helps to stimulate better reading, so long as the 
 teaching is the same ; if, however, the boy who could read the 
 best could monopolise the master for the future, the case would 
 be quite different, and by his success he would deprive his 
 schoolfellows of all chance. 
 
 Competition of labour without monopoly would be as helpful 
 to the hindermost as with monopoly it is destructive ; the 
 hindermost could take advantage of all the knowledge possessed 
 by the leaders, and would at all times have equal access to 
 natural opportunities. 
 
 What irony to ask a lot of landless men to show a spirit 
 of independence and self-reliance and enter into honourable 
 competition as to who amongst them can pay the most 
 rent. 
 
 Under the present conditions, the faster civilisation can 
 run, the greater its handicap. Double ths wealth-creating power, 
 and the scramble to obtain a livelihood is greater than ever, the 
 landowner simply walking behind and taking up the advantage 
 in rents and royalties, In this way have great landowners' 
 incomes been increased from tens to hundreds of thousands. 
 
 There a^9 three things necessary for production, viz. : land, 
 labour, and knowledge. It is nonsense to say that capital is a 
 necessity. Capital is only a help, it is the creation of the other 
 three and must have been anticipated by them. If capital 
 had been necessary to production nothing would ever have been 
 produced. Of these three, labour belongs to the individual ; 
 knowledge, which is fast being nationalised, is the result of 
 unknown ages of human progress and development ; but land, 
 the precursor of both labour and knowledge, without which 
 neither could have existed at all land which so far from being 
 the creation of man, has taken a supreme and superhuman power 
 countless ages to develop into a form useful to, and possible 
 for, the existence of man land which is in itself even incom- 
 plete and incapable of supporting life without the light and 
 heat of that marvellous blazing orb the sun, the vastness and 
 activity of which entirely surpasses human comprehension 
 land, I say, is still private property, actually parcelled out by 
 right of bits of parchment to individuals, and this not by 
 savages without a moral religion, but pre-eminently by 
 Christian governments who profess to believe in the common 
 brotherhood of man and fatherhood of God, by those who 
 profess and, no doubt, think that we are all equal before our. 
 Maker, and ought to be equal before the law. 
 
35 
 
 By such is the institution of private ownership of land 
 supported, which deprives the great mass of men of their 
 birthright by forbidding them any right of access to the 
 bounties of nature. 
 
 Under the dark shadow of this institution, countless 
 cruelties and injustices are daily perpetrated by men who 
 would never dream of doing such things even if they had the 
 power, had not the system under which they lived hardened 
 them to it, and trained them in the fixed belief, latent if 
 unexpressed, that the best use to which land can be put, is 
 not that which will conduce most to the health, happiness, and 
 morality of the people, but that which will enable the owners 
 to extract most out of the necessities of their fellow men with 
 the least trouble. 
 
 To follow up the argument, if we nationalise the land, the 
 first necessity of production, and recognise that we have a 
 right to use the earth only, and not to own it, the result will 
 be that capital (which although vast in itself, compared with 
 knowledge and land is but a drop in the ocean, but the 
 creation of one momant to decay the next) would take 
 its natural place as servant and helper of labour, its creator, 
 instead of its master and tyrant. 
 
 Capital has no natural power to oppress, but it has artificial 
 and legal power given to it when it is allowed to buy man's 
 first necessity, the land, not to speak of other natural 
 monopolies, just in the same way that it had the 
 power to enslave men when the slave trade and slavery were 
 legal in America. It could then rig out ships and enslave men 
 who were before free. But people who disapproved of slavery 
 did not attack capitalists but boldly said, " We ought to tell 
 the legislature plainly and strongly that no man has a right to 
 property in man, and that there are 800,000 individuals 
 sighing in bondage under the intolerable evils of West Indian 
 slavery who have as good a right to be free as we ourselves 
 have." This, bear in mind, was considered quite as prepos- 
 terous in those days as the idea that no man has a right to 
 property in land is in these. 
 
 It was the unjust land laws that supplied the factory slaves 
 to the manufacturers to work to death in the early age of 
 machinery, and it is these that supply the miserably paid 
 labour of to-day. It is unjust land laws that deprive men of 
 natural independence and ability to make a fair bargain. It is 
 these that drive men to the vain endeavour to make up for the 
 loss of their natural power of self-defence by unions and 
 strikes, a pitiable alternative indeed, however excusable and 
 
 \ 
 
36 
 
 necessary it may be, in the present state of things, in order to 
 allow a disinherited people to show their teeth. 
 
 The advocates of laisser faire, the disbelievers in strikes, the 
 supporters of the rights of capital, would work heart and soul 
 for land nationalisation had they their eyes open, for the 
 present failure of their pet theories is so patent and disgraceful 
 that forces are gathering to assail their whole position in 
 numbers that make success, as far as the destruction of the 
 laisser faire, inevitable, whatever else they may fail in. If the 
 Manchester School believe in their theories, they had better give 
 them a fair field to work on by leaving men alone to 
 make use of nature's bounties, instead of first depriving them 
 of their mother earth and then leaving them alone to scramble 
 for it. The more they are able to pay, the more they are 
 charged, the plum being always held well out of the reach of 
 all but the strongest. The Manchester School have yet to 
 learn that it is a wicked thing first to take away the land from 
 the people and then to starve them, and that no comfortable 
 theories in political economy can make it right. 
 
 Anything that would more equally distribute wealth would 
 improve trade. Good and regular earnings for the working 
 classes mean good and regular trade ; they at least have natural 
 investments for their wages, for they have wants which 
 need satisfying, of feed, houses, clothes, and furniture, 
 wants which could easily be satisfied if access to land 
 was not denied. Many of the rich, on the contrary, 
 have satisfied all their wants already, and therefore 
 look out for fresh investments for the extra millions that come 
 rolling in, and for extra trade with foreign parts to make 
 those investments remunerative. This leads to the wildest 
 speculation and alternate inflation and depression of trade, the 
 latter, of course, accompanied by many fortunes lost and 
 homes ruined, to say nothing of the thousands of working men 
 who are thrown on the verge of starvation. 
 
 Periodical depression in trade was unknown before the intro- 
 duction of machinery, and over-production was unheard of. 
 What the so called over-production really means is that the 
 enormously increased means of producing wealth caused by 
 machinery were not accompanied by such rise of wages as would 
 give the workers a corresponding power to consume ; so far 
 from this being the case, their wages were actually reduced. 
 The inevitable result of this was that, so long as the masters 
 were not able to consume all the surplus themselves, the 
 market would be glutted. Thus we find the Manchester 
 School pushing open foreign markets by foul means as well as 
 
37 
 
 fair, in order to sell the very goods which their own work- 
 people were starving for at home. 
 
 At this time the capitalists, with the aid of landlordism, 
 were masters of the field and were making cent, per cent, 
 profit. Had the people been able to demand their own, how- 
 ever, which I maintain they could have done under a just land 
 system, and kept say, 75 per cent, more of production of their 
 own industry, for their own use, there would have been no over- 
 supply and no foreign commercial wars would have been necessary. 
 The people's power of consumption will always keep pace with their 
 ability to produce, so long as they get fairly paid. When they 
 have as much as they require, they will begin to slack work 
 and enjoy more of the pleasures and refinements of life instead 
 of "over-producing," as factory slaves are driven to do. 
 
 With the more equal distribution of wealth would necessarily 
 come a more healthy and less grinding competition, and with 
 this a better use of capital and human effort, so much of which 
 is worse than wasted in the hundred ways where competition 
 at present means commercial warfare quite as destructive, 
 almost as cruel as real war. Co-operation in almost every walk 
 ot life would, it appears to me, inevitably become the rule, 
 this again helping to bring capital and competition into their 
 proper places in our social system. 
 
 Our present system, which is founded on the robbery from 
 the producer of all that the holder of the land and his 
 henchman, vested interest, can get out of him, is as much death 
 to healthy and regular industry as the blackmailing and 
 highway robbery of old. There is but one road to honest and 
 healthy trade and that is by such just laws as will encourage 
 it and give the workers the only help they require, that is, the 
 power to help themselves, restoring to them their birthright, 
 watching over them and protecting them in their toils, 
 securing to them instead of depriving them of the fruits of 
 their industry. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 THE WAY TO REGAIN THE LAND. 
 
 It is hardly worth while dwelling much on schemes for 
 regaining the land, for if once the people have made up their 
 minds that it is just and necessary for their welfare that they 
 should have it, a way will very soon be found, and although it 
 may be well to think out beforehand the just and reasonable 
 principles that should guide us, or even to go as far as to 
 
38 
 
 elaborate a scheme in order to show unbelievers that it can be 
 done, nevertheless all politicians must know that it is impos- 
 sible to forsee what will be the best scheme practicable, until 
 the time arrives and we know with what forces we have to 
 deal. 
 
 More than this, if we keep true to our traditions we shall 
 simply drift into it piece-meal, blundering along without any 
 scheme at all till the thing is half done. There is one plan, 
 however, that of confiscation, that we may rest assured will 
 not be carried out, as the gradual growth of public opinion will 
 have reached the stage of compensating landowners, and what 
 is more to the point, have put it in practice long before it was 
 ' educated " up to confiscation. Confiscation would be possible 
 only if we lived under a despotism that would not yield till it 
 broke, but under a constitutional government which passes 
 into law the changes which the people have thoroughly made 
 up their minds about, the thing is impossible. 
 
 No less a man than Henry George advocates a scheme of 
 piecemeal confiscation by a gradually increasing land-tax which 
 should finally absorb all rent. This would avoid the violence 
 of a revolution and might be supposed to travel in some sort 
 with public opinion. There are grave objections to a scheme, 
 however, which involves a long and fierce struggle between the 
 landowners and the people, and does not, in the meantime, give 
 the people possession of the land or the benefit of the unearned 
 increment, to say nothing of the undoubted power of the land- 
 owners to increase the rent as rates and taxes are taken off their 
 tenants, which makes many think that the whole scheme is 
 economically at fault. 
 
 Here is a plan which would, I think, work smoothly and 
 avoid these difficulties, which I suggested in the Westminster 
 Review of May, 1890. 
 
 1 . Reimpose the 4s. in the pound land tax as a part of a 
 comprehensive scheme for land nationalisation. This would 
 depreciate land values 20 per cent. 
 
 2. Use the money thus obtained in purchasing land, and 
 not in relieving rates and taxes, the benefit of which would, 
 according to many able thinkers, ultimately filter back to the 
 landowners in the form of increased rents. 
 
 3. The rent accruing from the land purchased to be used, 
 at first at any rate, for the purchase of more land. 
 
 4. To avoid the enormous expenses of valuation by arbitra- 
 tion and the excessive values so often given, the landowners 
 should be obliged to assess their own land in detail. Thus, if 
 the assessment were too low, they would be bought out at 
 
39 
 
 their own valuations ; if too high, their taxes would be propor- 
 tionately heavy. They would be in the position of the boy 
 who is allowed to divide the apple, but obliged to give his play- 
 fellow the first choice. They would be obliged to assess fairly. 
 
 It may be urged, as an objection to the perfect working of 
 this plan, that although at twenty years purchase there would 
 only be one-hundredth part of the land bought every year at 
 first ; nevertheless, the landlords might be aware that certain 
 land was more particularly required, and would, therefore, be 
 willing to pay the extra tax on a high valuation for the 
 prospect of sale. This objection is quite valid, but could be 
 fairly met by some such provisions as the following : 
 
 1. The purchase value should be calculated from the last 
 five years' assessment. 
 
 2. The purchasing authority should have the power of 
 appeal against any assessment to a commission. 
 
 3. As the State gradually resumed ownership, and confi- 
 dence in this new system became thoroughly established, the 
 whole process might be summarily cut short by purchasing all 
 the remaining land at one stroke by means of State bonds 
 redeemable at par. 
 
 It will be observed that the 4s. in the pound tax performs 
 three most important functions. First it depreciates the value of 
 land in a much better way, both for the country and land- 
 owners than by agitation and disturbance such as we have had 
 in Ireland. Second, it provides a fund to purchase the land. 
 Third, and the most important by far, it establishes a fair 
 valuation and makes possible an easy and cheap procedure unat- 
 tainable in any other way. 
 
 Another suggestion, but not so good, I made some years ago 
 in "The Land for the People." I showed how the land might 
 be bought up at once, the unearned increment or increased 
 value of the land going to pay off the principal, the rent 
 paying the interest on the bonds which would be given in 
 payment for the land ; the interest, let loose year by year by 
 the redemption of the bonds going to relieve taxation. Reck- 
 oning a yearly increase of ground rent at one per cent., the 
 whole of the land would be paid for in seventy years and 
 presuming the total value of the land to be 3,000,000,000, 
 taxation during that period would have been remitted to the 
 amount of 2,111,000,000, no extra tax having been put on 
 and all the landowners paid in full. 
 
 This scheme was of course open to much fair criticism 
 but the principle was adopted by great numbers of friends to our 
 cause. It was. only a suggestion, however, and intended merely 
 
40 
 
 to show that the land can be regained quietly by purchase. What 
 queer irony surrounds us. In the midst of all the jeers at land 
 nationalisation and the profound arguments proving the imposi- 
 bility of purchasing the land; our strongest opponents, the 
 Conservative Government of the day, begins to do both. During 
 the panic that followed the Spalding election they gave local 
 authorities power compulsorily to purchase land to be let out 
 for the benefit of the villagers, the land being gradually paid 
 for and becoming the permanent property of the nation or 
 district. It is true they took care to make it unworkable 
 and limited the purpose for which the land was to be used to 
 allotments, but, nevertheless, here were the fatal principles 
 which they had been teaching us were impractical, ridiculous and 
 wicked, quietly admitted and put down in black and white in 
 an Act of Parliament. " Land was to be nationalised for the 
 benefit of the people to whom it was to be let," and landowners 
 were to be compelled to give it up for a fair consideration. All 
 the Liberals have to do is to extend this principle to building- 
 land and small holdings, making the act workable by reducing 
 expenses and putting the initiation into the hands of authori- 
 ties in full sympathy with the villagers instead of in the hands 
 of the Boards of Guardians, and we shall have land nationali- 
 sation in full swing. 
 
 This, the Liberal not only will do but must. The 
 agricultural population are thoroughly aroused and awake and 
 will demand it as a pledge for their future support. 
 
 It is said that every reform goes through three stages 
 first, it is ridiculous, second, it is irreligious, third, " we were 
 always in favour of it." The three acres and a cow, in spite of 
 continued ridicule, is actually being advocated by some of the 
 more advanced Conservatives, who are now so far converted 
 that they think a peasant can not only find money to 
 buy a cow, but to buy the land as well, and while 
 the absurdity of buying out the landlords is still being 
 expounded, Mr. Balfour, in his Land Purchase Bill, is quietly 
 doing it and teaching us that if we first agitate furiously 
 enough to depreciate the value of land, we can nationalise it 
 very cheaply. True, he is using the nation's credit to create 
 another privileged class, and for this reason the bill, so far from 
 aiding land nationalisation, is directly opposed to it. But never- 
 theless, just as in the Allotment Act, the Conservative Govern- 
 ment has acknowledged the principle of land rationalisation, 
 so in his Laud Act Balfour has shown the perfect feasibility of 
 the nation buying out the landed interest without loss or 
 difficulty. If only the nation's money in this bill was used to 
 
41 
 
 buy land for the nation, never to be parted with again, instead 
 of for the benefit of a few chance tenants, we should be able to 
 enrol Mr. Balfour as a member of the Land Nationalisation 
 Society. The following is the gist of his bill as explained in 
 the Review of Revieivs, July 1891 : 
 
 " The Bill is too complicated to explain in detail here, but 
 in brief it may be said that it provides for the issue of 
 33,000,000 of 2J Stock by the Imperial Government for 
 buying out the interests of the Irish landlords who wish to 
 part with their property, and who can persuade their tenants 
 to purchase. The tenants who buy obtain at once, for the 
 first five years, an immediate reduction of 20 per cent, on their 
 rent, and after that five years a further reduction, correspond- 
 ing to the difference between their old rents and 4 per cent, on 
 the purchase-money. For instance, landlord A agrees to sell 
 to tenant B a farm for which the latter is paying 50 per 
 annum at sixteen years' purchase. The Government will give 
 to A Government Stock, bearing 2| per cent, interest, to the 
 amount of 800, and will give B ownership of the farm subject 
 to a payment for the first five years of 40 per annum, and 
 after that time of 32 per annum for forty-four years. 
 The 8 extra per annum levied for the first five years 
 goes to form an insurance fund. Afterwards, of the 32 
 paid by the tenant for forty-four years, twenty-two pounds 
 goes to pay the landlord, 8 to a sinking fund to repay capital, 
 and the remaining 2 is devoted to local purposes, notably to 
 the supply of labourers' dwellings. . . . The bulk of the 
 money is to be set apart for tenants and farmers under 50 
 valuation." 
 
 As an illustration, here is a statement which shows the 
 financial position clearly : 
 
 Rent. 
 s. d. 
 Supposed value of land in first instance, 100 5 
 
 4/- in the depreciation which Mr. Balfour 
 
 insists upon before he will buy, 80 400 
 
 Cost to Government who borrow at 2 j per cent. 240 
 Balance after reducing rent 20 per cent, which 
 is used for reduction of rent at future date, 
 repayment of principal, and reserve fund 
 or insurance t 1 16 
 
 400 
 
42 
 CHAPTER X. SIGNS OF THB TIMES. 
 
 This question is moving so fast while I write, now m March, 
 1892, that what I have just been saying may be ancient 
 history, compared with what may be proposed before these 
 pages are published. 
 
 Lord Salisbury has just been advocating small holdings as a 
 happy breeding ground for conservative props to a rotten 
 system, and Chaplin has consequently brought in a bill to 
 bring this desirable object about. There is, however, more to 
 encourage us than to alarm us in these proposals. These 
 gentlemen can't guide the revolution they are helping to bring 
 about into the narrow grooves they would wish ; the flood 
 gates once open, the water will take its own course, and there 
 is every indication that that will be in the right direction, 
 in the long run, although they may wind about a little at 
 first. 
 
 Even in Mr. Chaplin's bill, bad as it is, there are good points. 
 There is a perpetual rent of one quarter the total value, which, 
 although redeemable at option, seldom will be, so long as the 
 cultivator owns the land. Then again land may be let at fair 
 rents to those who can't afford to buy, and through a great part 
 of his speech Mr. Chaplin evidently recognises that the 
 purchasers will have plenty to do with their money in 
 furnishing their farms without buying them ; he moreover 
 fully realises how much better it is that all buildings and 
 improvements should be made by the occupier than by the 
 government. 
 
 It would be but a very small step to make this bill a 
 thorough land nationalising one, giving a man the same 
 security as a tenant as it proposes to do as an owner. 
 
 The whole tendency of the most interesting debate that 
 followed was to widen the bill, to protect the cultivator from 
 being over burdened by repayments and from the clutches of 
 the money-lender, to give the nation a quid pro quo for its risks, 
 and to allow men to acquire land for cottages surrounded by 
 gardens only. No one had a word to say in favour of peasant pro- 
 prietorship as developed abroad and more particularly in France ; 
 all were for stopping the mortgaging of the land and the entrance 
 of the money-lender. It will only be a matter of time when they 
 will see that the best and simplest way of preventing mortgages 
 will be for the State not to part with the fee simple, thus 
 preventing also the necessity, by leaving free the working 
 capital of the small farmer instead of first making him sink 
 
 NOTE. October, 1892. Mr. Chaplin's Bill is now law. Under it 
 County Councils may levy a rate of Id. in the for the purpose of buying 
 land, \yhich may be permanently held by them and let out to agriculturists. 
 The thin end of the wedge thus fairly entered merely requires driving home. 
 
43 
 
 this necessity in the land and then making him dig it up again 
 at great expense. That is, pay the cost of a mortgage and after- 
 wards a high interest. 
 
 Mr. Jesse Collings said " The oill proposed the adoption of a 
 system of peasant proprietorship which the right hon. gentle- 
 man and others had stated to have failed miserably on the 
 Continent ; but we knew the causes of that failure, and could 
 guard against them in England. Those causes wers the money- 
 lender, sub-division, and sub-letting Go where you will, in 
 France and elsewhere, these were the three evils attending 
 peasant proprietorship. If the scheme were not confined to 
 the cultivating classes, the rent-charges would be bought up 
 by little capitalists, who would re-let at exhorbitant rates. At 
 a place in Oxfordshire there were 90 small holdings of from 
 two to four acres in the hands of 60 occupiers in a population 
 of 300 people ; but many of these had been bought up by little 
 shopkeepers in Witney and Oxford, and they were charging as 
 much as ,17 a year for holdings originally let at 9 10s. This 
 case only coincided with the common experience that small 
 landowners were the worst to deal with in carrying out a 
 policy like the policy of this bill." 
 
 Mr. James Lowther said "It was generally admitted that 
 where this system had hitherto been tried in England it had 
 failed, and the cause was of especial consequence. In the 
 counties of Cumberland and Westmoreland the system had 
 been largely tried, and it was there in the hands of those who 
 possessed ample capital and experience. It had broken down, 
 though it was only fair to say that the main cause had been 
 that the owners of land found they could invest their 
 capital to greater advantage by divesting themselves of owner- 
 ship and investing their money in the stock on the land. His 
 right hon. friend had referred to the curse of the money-lender 
 as one of the causes of the failure of small holdings. He hoped 
 that provisions would be inserted in the bill requiring that the 
 consent of some competent authority should be necessary 
 before any charge might be imposed on the land. 
 
 Mr. Heneage said " He could not agree with the right hon. 
 member for Thanet that the want of success of the small 
 holders on the Isle of Axholme was due to the price of corn. 
 The cause of their failure was to be found in the interposition 
 of money-lenders. He was glad that the principle of compul- 
 sion had not been adopted in a tentative measure of this kind. 
 It was his opinion that in all transactions under the bill a 
 quit-rent ought to be left upon the land, and precautions 
 ought to be taken to prevent mortgages like that which had 
 
44 
 
 had such unfortunate results in the case of the Isle of 
 Axholmc. If half the purchase money were left as a quit-rent 
 for ever people would not be anxious to advance money upon 
 the land. He suggested that a clause should be inserted in 
 the bill limiting the costs of conveyancing." 
 
 Mr. Chaplin, referring to his change of front, said that some 
 years ago, when the agricultural depression was at its very 
 lowest, he had visited a number of small holdings, which were 
 in a most deplorable condition and had made a deep impression 
 on him, but that since that date he had found that the most 
 extravagant prices had been paid for the land, and that the 
 rent and not the system was probably responsible for the ruin 
 he saw around him. 
 
 Now this state of things is not confined to tenants it is 
 exactly the position that peasant proprietors find themselves in 
 when they have a fixed and heavy interest to pay on a mort- 
 gage. In the recent depression numbers of well-to-do farmers 
 who had bought their farms but had not money enough 
 to pay more than a substantial deposit, were ruined for no 
 other reason than that they farmed their own land and had to 
 pay a fixed rent to money lenders far in excess of what the 
 land would produce. 
 
 In speaking of small holdings Mr. Chaplin says : 
 
 " I know scores of instances, most of which have come under 
 my own notice during the present year, where men with a 
 single acre for an allotment, and sometimes with even less, 
 have been able to make a profit out of the land for themselves 
 a profit ranging from 5 to 8, and even in one case rising 
 to ,10 in the year. 
 
 Another most interesting debate has just been raised on Mr. 
 Sexton's amendment to the address on Balfour's Irish Land 
 Act, in which it appears that, in spite of the exceedingly 
 favourable terms given, the Irish peasantry were so far 
 availing themselves of it but to a very small degree. This I 
 was altogether unprepared for, knowing how thoroughly both 
 the Irish peasants and their representatives believed in proprietor- 
 ship. My first idea was that the terms were not favourable 
 enough for the landowners. The hitch does not appear to have 
 been here, however. Many reasons were given, but none of 
 them seemed to account for the failure except one, which was 
 brought out very plainly by several speakers, and which was this, 
 that having got security of tenure by other acts, and feeling 
 certain of further reduction of rents if prices again fell, the 
 Irish tenants had been advised not to take the responsibilities 
 of ownership with the uncertainty of future liabilities and 
 
45 
 
 burdens on the land. In other words, they felt safer as 
 tenants under perfect security and a fair rent than as owners. 
 
 Looking back a little for signs of the times, we have the 
 remarkable fact of no less than 150 members of the House of 
 Commons voting for Mr. Reid's resolution of May 6th, 1890, 
 which asserted the right of public authorities compulsorily 
 taking land for any purpose whatever when such action 
 should be deemed necessary for the public interest. 
 
 More important than this even has been the attitude taken 
 by the Daily Neivs through its Special Commissioner, whose 
 letters on rural life created such wide-spread interest during the 
 summer. Writing some time after he says he is dismayed to see 
 that on one vital point he has been grievously misunderstood. 
 
 " I am supposed to have been endeavouring to show that 
 the way to get the agricultural working man back to the 
 village and to finally solve the agricultural problem is to afford 
 him every facility for acquiring a bit of land of his own. 
 From the discussions that have taken place, many Liberals 
 appear to regard this as the true remedy, and Lord Salisbury 
 says that * if by any use of the public credit we are able to 
 increase the number of small proprietors in this country, I 
 shall think it to be an enormous gain in the first instance to 
 our country, and in the second instance to the Conservative 
 party.' The Tories have been doing this in Ireland on a large 
 scale, and quite obviously it will be to the interest of the Tory 
 party to do it in England if they can. But I should have 
 supposed that the evils of private ownership in land were 
 sufficiently apparent to all Liberals to prevent them advocating 
 anything of the kind. They may not all of them see their way 
 to any great scheme of land nationalisation; but that any 
 thoughtful Liberal should for a moment countenance any 
 proposal to move in exactly the contrary direction by an 
 indefinite multiplication of private owners, is, to my mind, 
 simply amazing. Those letters certainly advocated nothing of 
 \\\Q kind. If public credit "i& to be used for the purchase of 
 /and, the purchase should be made by public bodies for the 
 public benefit. This would permit of its being let out on 
 equitable terms and on a tenure practically secure so long as 
 that tenure should be consistent with the general welfare, thus 
 affording all the advantages of actual ownership, while it would 
 reserve to the community the right and the power to resume 
 possession should the common good require it. ... That 
 way lies social health and progress and prosperity. The other 
 is a cul de sac from which sooner or later we shall be bound to 
 tetreat, it may be only after much suffering and disaster," 
 
46 
 
 Now, the article was printed in large type in the leading 
 Liberal paper, by its own Special Commissioner, and thus 
 practically commits the Daily J\ r eivs to the principles laid 
 down. With all this evidence around us, ought not the laughing 
 and indifferent stage of opposition at least to be over, and is it 
 not a trifle feeble to continue to speak of land nationalisation 
 as ridiculous and impracticable? 
 
 The only reform in the land laws that will be permanently 
 successful and all-pervading is the one we advocate, which 
 recognises in a practical fashion the equal rights of all men of all 
 ages to the use of the earth, and inasmuch as it is just for the 
 Government to secure to the individual the production of his ov. n 
 industry, so the dictates of common sense and justice, let alone 
 any higher motives, should induce the collective power of the 
 State to show just sufficient ordinary business capacity to 
 appropriate the collective earnings of the people represented 
 by ground rents and royalties. We can understand a despotism 
 robbing the people for its own advantage ; we can understand 
 a Government favouring certain classes at others' expense, but 
 that a representative Government should favour classes at its 
 own expense, take from one class to give to another that which 
 belongs all the time to itself, can be explained only by the 
 stupefying influence of dark centuries of usurpation and wrong, 
 and the respectability and prestige which accrues to stupid 
 and wicked acts, if only they are successful enough and repeated 
 often enough to come under the cover of custom and the halo 
 of an ancient institution. 
 
 Free sale of land, easy and cheap transfer, abolition of 
 primogeniture and entail, establishment of peasant proprietors, 
 <fec., look plausible enough at first sight, but as soon as you 
 come to examine them, they are at best but an improvement to 
 a system that is rotten and evil at its core, a system that must 
 be struck down root and branch, and not pruned and propped. 
 If these reforms could have saved civilisation from the evils 
 it suffers from, it would have been saved in many countiies 
 long ago. All nations have had their peasant proprietors, 
 while America and our colonies have had from the beginning 
 a system of easy and cheap land transfer, in the case of 
 Australia an absolutely perfect one. They have, in fact, arrived 
 at the happy goal aimed at by one school of land reformers. 
 They can buy and sell land as easily as stocks and shares, or any 
 other sort of property, and with what result ? Why, that with 
 the growth of population exactly the same evils arise that we 
 have to contend with here, the same excess of wealth and 
 poverty, power and helplessness, if anything accentuated, while 
 
47 
 
 the ease of transfer appears to facilitate a furious and ruinous 
 gambling in land, that is happily unknown in the old country. 
 None of their efforts to have the land fairly distributed have 
 prevented the most monstrous monopolies and the most gigantic 
 estates. The holding of land for speculative purposes has 
 driven emigrants through hundreds of miles of rich but 
 unused land, to lead an isolated, arduous and dangerous life, 
 far away from civilisation, while magnificent forests are 
 wastefully destroyed which would have been invaluable, 
 had agriculture proceeded step by step with a population 
 behind to use the timber for fuel, building, and other 
 useful purposes. The vast area of land, in comparison to 
 the population in the new countries, and the shameful way in 
 ^hich the native territories are annexed, as soon as land jobbers 
 require a further field for their exploitations, has so far kept 
 the colonies clear of many difficulties that we have to contend 
 with here. But this is no thanks to their land laws, which 
 are far worse than ours, and grant the tenants no such 
 protection as they get in Ireland, for instance. 
 
 All experience goes to show that private ownership in any 
 form leads to the land getting into the hands of the moneyed 
 classes, who use it simply for purposes of investment and 
 speculation. Their money flows in this direction as inevitably 
 and naturally as water flows down hill. Working agricul- 
 turists or tradesmen almost invariably require all their capital 
 in their business when they ought to be making, say, from 10 per 
 cent, to 25 per cent., while the investor is glad to get 4 per 
 cent, or 5 per cent, for a secure investment. As certain as it 
 is in physics that lead will displace water, is it in economics 
 that the investing classes will displace the working classes in 
 the virtual possession of the land. 
 
 Whatever merits or demerits there may be in peasant pro- 
 prietorship let us be clear about this, that this system and 
 land nationalisation are as far removed as the poles. We 
 land nationalists advocate a radical reform that will be all- 
 pervading and inclusive, that will affect all classes directly as 
 well as indirectly, instead of a few agriculturists only ; that 
 is founded on the rock of justice and worked on the principle 
 of the common brotherhood of man, a principle, the benefits of 
 which will multiply with generations instead of ending with 
 the first ; a principle which opens itself to the natural develop- 
 ment of man, and the unforeseen evolutions of industry. We 
 don't attempt artificially to plant certain men in certain holes, 
 for their own exclusive benefit with the idea that they will 
 flourish, because in past ages under entirely different con- 
 
48 
 
 ditions, in an uncommercial and comparatively unprogressive 
 period of our civilisation, these men in their holes managed 
 to reap their share of the rough plenty of their day. Where 
 peasant proprietors have played a useful part in history they 
 have grown up naturally through their own fitness. Their day 
 is gone, and unless we are to be again over-run with the 
 barbarians, and begin all over again, their day will never 
 return. 
 
 We should shun as poison the re-establishment of a system 
 the whole tendency of which is, to make men self-centred, 
 selfish, unprogressive and narrow. Their whole life and fortune 
 tied to one particular corner of the earth in one particular 
 occupation ; out of sympathy with, and jealous of the changes 
 around them, fearful that they should injure their particular 
 and immoveable stake, you can hardly find in the lowest of 
 our town populations a people so utterly wanting in public 
 spirit and so out of sympathy with national movements as a 
 long established peasant proprietary of the present day. 
 
 A reform to be healthy must embrace humanity, must have 
 nothing in the form of privilege or vested interest to eat into 
 it like a cancer, must have nothing to check free evolution, 
 and individual accomodation to the changes around, must lead 
 us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. It must 
 make us all feel ourselves an integral portion of society, 
 must make us feel that with it we stand or fall, that it is 
 our duty, pleasure and interest to protect society, instead of to 
 protect ourselves against it. It must give us common 
 interests and aspirations not with a class only, nor yet even 
 with a nation, but ultimately with the whole human race : it 
 must make us public spirited, and render it possible to carry 
 out in practice the few great central truths taught us over 
 1800 years ago. "As ye would that men should do to you, 
 do ye also likewise. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as 
 thyself." It must enable us to feel when we pray " Thy 
 kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in 
 heaven," that we are honestly doing our part to bring about 
 what we are praying for, and that, however far from the goal 
 we are and always must be, that nevertheless step by step we are 
 nearing it, step by step leaving behind us the sordid misery 
 and revolting vice of the present age. It must reward those 
 who have faith in righteousness, and bless those who love 
 mankind, by seeing ever growing up around them a healthier, 
 happier, and nobler generation of the children of God, who 
 live on their Mother the Earth. 
 
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