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 OF THE 
 U N IVLRSITY 
 Of ILLI NOIS
 
 THE 
 
 NATIONALISATION 
 
 OF 
 
 THE LAND. 
 
 BY 
 
 SAMUEL SMITH, M.P 
 
 LONDON: 
 KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO. 1, PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 
 
 1884. 
 
 ^
 
 PEEFACE. 
 
 The pamphlet which follows is a reprint of an Article 
 which appeared in the Contemporary Beview of December 
 last, with the addition of some Notes, and a considerable 
 Appendix, in the shape of a Letter from Mr. Alfred E. 
 Wallace, the President of the English Land Nationalisation 
 Society, and my Eeply thereto. I thought it right to give 
 this additional matter, as my article was mainly intended 
 as a reply to the view put forward by Mr. Henry George 
 in his book entitled Progress and Poverty. I may add that 
 the utmost care has been taken to get accurate and reliable 
 data ; my only object being to set forth a true and dis- 
 passionate statement of the case. 
 
 Samuel ^mith. 
 
 Liverpool, January, IS84.
 
 THE NATIONALISATION OF THE LAND. 
 
 [Reprinted, by permission, from the Contemporary Review.'^ 
 
 Up till recent years no such phrase as the Nationali- 
 sation of the Land was heard in England. It is doubtful 
 if the idea it conveys was even intelligible to the mass of 
 the people. In other countries it may possibly have been 
 used as a symbol of extreme socialistic theories, but to all 
 intents and purposes it is only within the last three or 
 four years that the group of ideas indicated by this novel 
 term has taken any hold of the average British mind. 
 
 It can, however, no longer be said that those ideas lie 
 outside the scope of public discussion : though it is true 
 that very few of our leading statesmen have deigned to 
 notice them, and, though few publicists of any weight 
 have lent their advocacy to the cause, it cannot be denied 
 that they are making way among considerable classes of 
 the community, especially the artizans of our great towns. 
 This rapid progress is no doubt owing very much to the 
 wide circulation of that remarkable book by Henry George, 
 of America, entitled "Progress and Poverty," a book 
 which I shall treat in this paper as the chief exponent of 
 those views. It appears to me that our leading statesmen 
 must no longer keep silence on this subject. Though it 
 may appear to them too visionary to admit of serioas
 
 discussion, it is being diffused so widely among the masses 
 as to forebode trouble in the future unless met by rational 
 argument. 
 
 So far as I understand this novel doctrine, it is that the 
 State ought to own the entire land of the country on the 
 ground that it is the legitimate property of the whole 
 community — that it ought never to have been alienated 
 to private owners — that their rights are usurped, and 
 must be brought to an end either by compulsory purchase, 
 or by simple confiscation. Mr. George goes so far as to 
 advocate the latter method, on the ground that private 
 property in land is as immoral as slavery, and he extends 
 his anathema not only to agricultural land, but to building- 
 land in towns, and argues that even a freehold on which the 
 owner has built a house is as much a robbery of the 
 public domain as the largest estate of a Highland Laird. 
 He condemns not only the great estates of our aristocracy, 
 but the small properties of the French peasantry and the 
 homestead farms of the American yeomen. In his eyes 
 the possession of any portion of the earth's surface by a 
 private owner is theft, and the stolen goods ought to be 
 restored to the public that has been defrauded.* 
 
 I am not aware that any body of British opinion has 
 endorsed these extreme views. When the Trades' Congress 
 last year advocated the Nationalisation of the Land, I don't 
 suppose they meant confiscation, and I question if they 
 extended the term to property in towns. Probably ^heir 
 leading idea was the improvement of British agriculture ; 
 and I much doubt if they, or any of their sympathisers in 
 
 * From Henry George. 
 "Though his titles have been acquiesced in by generation after generation, to 
 the landed estates of the Duke of "Westminster the poorest child that is born in 
 London to-day has as much right as his eldest son. Tliough the sovereign people 
 of the State of New York consent to the landed possessions of the Astors, the 
 puniest infant that comes wailing into the world in the sipialidest room of the most 
 miserable tenement house, becomes at that moment seized of an equal right with 
 the millionaires. And it is robbed if the right is denied." 

 
 this country, have clearly thought out the subject, or 
 perfected any plan for the acquisition of the soil or its 
 cultivation after it was acquired. This phrase has a fine 
 grandiose sound about it, like other well known catch 
 words, which take captive minds that have not analyzed 
 the question or grappled with the real difficulties of the 
 case. It has a delightful vagueness, which covers many 
 shades of meaning, and makes it no easy task to analyze 
 or refute it. 
 
 I shall, in the first instance, deal with the form it 
 assumes in Mr. George's book, where he boldly recommends 
 confiscation on the ground of the immorality of private 
 ownership. I do so because it is quite obvious that the 
 State cannot acquire possession of the soil at full market 
 value without to a certainty making a loss on the transac- 
 tion, as was well shown by Professor Fawcett in his 
 Liverpool address some two years ago. It is plain to me 
 that as this agitation proceeds, it will develop more and 
 more into Communistic lines, and tend to assume the 
 form of naked spoliation. 
 
 Now the main ground on which Mr. George makes this 
 startling proposal is, that the land originally belonged to 
 the state or community, and that it was wrongfully granted 
 away to favoured individuals, and he compiles a brief 
 history of ancient civilization to prove his point. I will 
 go with him so far as to allow that before the earth was 
 peopled land was not appropriated, and while popu- 
 lation was very sparse it was not worth the while of 
 individuals to claim special plots of land. The origin 
 of all communities that we know anything of was the 
 tribal state, when a clan or tribe, under a chieftain 
 of their choice, roamed over a wide tract of country, 
 supported by the produce of the chase or by their flocks 
 and herds. Agriculture, in our sense of the word, did 
 not exist in the infancy of the race. Our ancestors
 
 6 
 
 lived, as savage tribes now do, by hunting and fishing, and 
 afterwards by pastoral pursuits; and so there was no 
 motive for the private appropriation of land. But the 
 point I wish to bring out is that usually private ownership 
 of land arose when agriculture commenced, for the simple 
 reason that no one would toil to raise crops which he 
 could not enjoy. Indeed, so invariable has been the rule, 
 that we may almost say that civilization has never made 
 a commencement, or at least has never advanced beyond 
 a rudimentary stage, till private ownership in land, or at 
 least individual occupancy, was recognized by the law of 
 the State. The necessary stimulus for cultivating and 
 improving the soil was wanting, till security was given that 
 he who laboured should enjoy the fruits of his labour. 
 
 But without going back to the dim and dusty records of 
 antiquity, we have only to take a survey of the condition of 
 the globe to-day to prove the truth of my assertion. We 
 still have in active existence every form of human society, 
 from the most barbarous to the most refined. We still see 
 a large part of the earth tenanted by races as primitive in 
 their habits as our forefathers were when they were clothed 
 with skins of beasts, and possessed the soil of this island in 
 common. Nearly all Africa, considerable portions of 
 North and South America, a large portion of Central Asia, 
 the interior of Australia, New Guinea, and many other 
 islands of Polynesia are all in that state of primitive sim- 
 plicity. In these regions the land is not appropriated, it is 
 either the common possession of the tribe or the battle 
 ground of contending tribes. Now, Mr. George gravely as- 
 sumes that all our modern poverty and degradation are the 
 result of private land ownership, that all would disappear 
 if we reverted to the happy Arcadian times when land 
 communism prevailed ; and it is natural for us to ask if 
 we find an absence of poverty and degradation among
 
 those portions of mankind who have preserved the primi- 
 tive tradition unimpaired. 
 
 Let us travel through Africa with Stanley or Livingstone, 
 let us accompany our expeditions to Ashantee, or Abyssinia, 
 or Zululand, in quest of the golden age of plenty — do we 
 find anywhere even a trace of such social well-being as to 
 be worthy of comparison with the worst governed country 
 in Europe. Do we not find slavery, polygamy, the most 
 horrid oppression and barbarous cruelty, the invariable 
 accompaniments of this primitive state of existence. Do not 
 famines and pestilences periodically desolate those tribes, 
 while human life is scarcely valued more than that of 
 the brutes. The Eed Indians who once roamed over 
 the North American Continent, and still hold large 
 reserves in the far West, were all Land Communists; 
 there was never private appropriation, nor, as a necessary 
 consequence, was there any Agriculture worthy of the 
 name. These rude tribes lived by the chase, and a province 
 that will now support, in plenty, a million of Anglo- 
 Saxons, could scarcely sustain a thousand of these roaming 
 savages. Wherever we find the land unappropriated, 
 whether among Zulus, or Ked Indians, or Maoris, or roving 
 Tartars in Central Asia, we find a savage and degraded 
 state of mankind, and we find almost invariably that the 
 first step in civilisation is coincident with the private 
 appropriation and careful cultivation of the soil. 
 
 So far from the sweeping generalisation of Mr. George 
 being true, that human misery and degradation have 
 sprung from private ownership of land, we find from 
 actual survey of the earth at the present time that precisely 
 the opposite is true — that human misery is deepest where 
 the land is not appropriated, and human happiness and 
 civilisation most advanced where the land is held by 
 private owners. 
 
 I am aware that it will be objected that other things
 
 8 
 
 than agrarian causes account for the progress of the 
 advanced races. Christianity, science and trade have 
 elevated Europe, while Africa remains in primitive darkness. 
 This is self-evident to any ordinary person, but Mr. George 
 virtually ignores all moral causes for social progress, or 
 treats them so lightly as to leave the reader to infer that 
 the possession of the soil is the only vital question for a 
 nation's welfare — that if this be secured to the State, all 
 other things will right themselves, and social perfection 
 be speedily reached. The retort is obvious. Why have 
 those communities that have acted on his principles for 
 thousands of years remained in primitive barbarism, while 
 all advance has been made by nations that discarded them? 
 The reason is plain — Because they are not suited for 
 mankind in a civilized state. Whenever progress is made 
 to a certain stage the land becomes appropriated, while at 
 the same time arts and literature arise, cities are built, 
 and laws are framed. At that stage of human progress, 
 where slavery and polygamy prevail, where private rights 
 are at the mercy of the chief or despot, where agriculture 
 is unknown, and population is kept down by incessant wars 
 and famines, we find the land unappropiated. Wherever 
 these abuses disappear, and the garments of civilisation 
 are put on, then private ownership of land appears. The 
 pastoral or nomadic state is exchanged for the agricultural, 
 and dense populations take the place of thinly scattered 
 tribes. 
 
 I am aware that some exceptions may be taken to this 
 large generalisation. I cannot go into minute details in 
 such a paper as this. The case of India will present itself 
 as an exception to some of my hearers, regarding which 
 I will only say that the State, from time immemorial, has 
 owned the soil of India, and leased it to cultivating tenants ; 
 but so far from abolishing poverty, it has always been one 
 of the poorest countries in the world. Speaking broadly, I
 
 contend that the theory of human progress I have sketched 
 is nearer the mark than that of Mr. George. I hold that in 
 place of private appropriation of land causing the deteri- 
 oration of mankind, it usually accompanies their upward 
 progress, and marks the first great advance from barbarism 
 to civilisation. If this be true, the main plank of the 
 communist platform disappears, and the ground is cleared 
 for looking at some other sides of the question. 
 
 But it will now be objected — grant that private owner- 
 ship of land is the law of civilisation, the methods by 
 which it was brought about were unjust ; large grants of 
 land were made by kings to courtiers and favorites, great 
 estates were gained by conquest and confiscation, might 
 took the place of right, and the descendants of those "land 
 robbers" to-day should receive no mercy. This is an 
 argument we constantly hear. What is the practical 
 worth of it? No student of history will deny that there 
 have been many cruel conquests, many displacements of 
 population, as weaker races were subdued by stronger; and 
 one incident that usually accompanied those conquests 
 was the allocation of the soil to the conquerors. In this 
 way the corpus of the old Eoman Empire was transferred 
 to the chieftains and warriors of the rude tribes that over- 
 ran it — the Goths, the Vandals, the Huns and the Franks 
 paid little regard to the rights of the subject populations. 
 The feudal system of modern Europe arose out of those 
 conquests, and the land was conveyed by the chiefs to 
 their vassals upon military tenure. In this way the 
 soil of England changed hands, first upon the Saxon, 
 then upon the Danish, and lastly upon the Norman 
 conquest, and that of Ireland some centuries later upon 
 the English conquest. Very much the some process is 
 going on at this day in all our colonies ; the white race is 
 gradually dispossessing the coloured races of their land in 
 South Africa, in New Zealand, in Polynesia, while our
 
 10 
 
 American kinsmen have pretty nearly completed the 
 spoHation of the Eed Indians of North America. 
 
 These processes have usually heen cruel and unjust, but 
 it is the work of an archaeologist rather than a states- 
 man to investigate the original titles by which most of 
 the earth's surface passed to our ancestors. None but a 
 dreamer could seriously think that modern titles should 
 be impugned because Alaric, or Atila, or William the 
 Conqueror acted unjustly. Modern civilisation is the web 
 woven of the warp and woof of conqueror and conquered, 
 and it is well for humanity that time, which wears away 
 all things, covers with the mantle of oblivion the rough 
 processes by which they were knit together. Nations that 
 are wise seek to bury the hatchet : it is only worthy of 
 children to be ever seeking to keep alive race injuries that 
 are irreparable and hoary with antiquity. 
 
 Indeed those very processes by which the land of most 
 countries has been transferred have been in truth the 
 prelude to a higher civilisation. No educated man can 
 doubt that the Norman Conquest has made England a 
 greater nation than it would otherwise have been, and 
 every historian admits that the warlike tribes which over- 
 ran the rotten and effete Eoman Empire paved the way 
 for the far higher civiHsation of modern Europe. 
 
 I dismiss, as the dream of Utopia, the idea that modern 
 land tenures can be upset because ages ago they originated 
 in conquest. 
 
 But again we are told that the feudal tenures of mediaeval 
 Europe were very different from modern property rights ; 
 they were conditional on military service ; the holder of a 
 fief had to appear in the field with his retainers when called 
 upon by his Sovereign ; and these obligations, we are told, 
 were unfairly commuted when standing armies took the 
 place of feudal service. I reply it is quite probable that the 
 nobles made too good a bargain with their Sovereigns when
 
 11 
 
 the feudal system broke up, and the military baron was 
 transmuted into the modern squire ; but it is far too late in 
 the day to overhaul titles on the ground of dubious transac- 
 tions in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. In all countries 
 the statute of limitations bars enquiry into wrongs after a 
 lapse of years. In England forty years of undisputed 
 possession is adequate to give a valid title, and surely 
 two or three centuries should be enough to satisfy 
 even a legal purist. Further, the greater part of the land 
 of Europe has changed hands by purchase since feudal 
 times ; much of it has been transferred many times over. 
 The State has in all these cases recognised the title as 
 indefeasible, and I could not conceive a grosser act of 
 injustice than to confiscate the property of a modern 
 purchaser of land in England, France or Germany because 
 some dusty parchment threw doubt upon a transfer 
 effected in the middle ages. Were States to act on such 
 principles in all their dealings the world would -be con- 
 vulsed with strife; feuds between nations, between races 
 and individuals would be endless ; no settlement could 
 ever be regarded as final, and modern civilisation would 
 perish as ancient civilisation did in the smoke of internecine 
 strife. 
 
 It is an undoubted fact that the first conditions of all 
 national progress are security for life and property. Till 
 those are attained no wealth can be accumulated, or no 
 material prosperity enjoyed by the mass of the people. 
 The wretched condition of the people of Egypt and Turkey 
 to-day arises from the circumstance that no man feels secure 
 in the possession of his property, consequently few will 
 take the trouble to produce wealth of which they may any 
 day be robbed. Now in all countries that enjoy settled 
 government the first property to claim protection of the 
 laws is that in land. All other industries hang upon it, and 
 so long as it is liable to violent seizure there will be no
 
 12 
 
 industry, and no trade of any moment. I defy anyone to 
 point to a country where the title to the soil is violently 
 attacked, where any trade or industry flourishes. In the 
 South and West of Ireland, where land agitation con- 
 stantly goes on, there is virtually no commerce, nor will 
 there be any real revival of industry till there is a general 
 acquiescence in the land settlement. 
 
 I could not conceive anything more destructive of the 
 social welfare of any old and peaceful country than to tear 
 up the foundation of all property by disputing existing titles 
 to the soil. There have been times in past history when long 
 continued and cruel wrongs have furnished a partial justifi- 
 cation for dispossessing a ruling caste of its property and 
 privileges. Such a time was the first French Kevolution. 
 The old French noblesse had shockingly abused its power 
 for ages. The ancient regime was rotten to the core, and 
 the down trodden people tore the rotten fabric to pieces, 
 and shocked the world with their frightful excesses. The 
 land system of France was remodelled as a consequence of 
 that Eevolution, and, no doubt, a much healthier system 
 arose out of the ashes; but no one, save a madman, would 
 wish to see a repetition of that carnival of blood. Nothing 
 but the most desperate agony of a nation could justify or 
 even palliate such a convulsion, and it would be absurd 
 to suppose that there is any analogy between the just 
 constitutional Government of England now and the 
 grinding tyranny of the ancient regime in France. 
 
 But I pass now to consider another argument by which 
 the Nationalisation of the Soil is advocated. It is said 
 that land differs from all other forms of wealth because it 
 is limited in quantity, and not the product of human 
 labour — it should, therefore, not be the monopoly of the 
 few, but the property of the many. I reply that the 
 productiveness of the soil is mainly the result of ages of 
 careful cultivation. In ancient times most of this country
 
 13 
 
 as of the Continent of Europe, was covered with dense 
 forests, and it has been transformed by untold expenditure 
 of labour into the smiling garden it now appears. 
 
 I can conceive no equitable reason why this form of 
 wealth should not have the protection of the law like all 
 other kinds. All wealth may be called stored up labour, 
 and none is more valuable to the community than that 
 which makes two blades of grass grow where one grew 
 before. What was it that induced the hardy emigrant to 
 settle in the wilds of North America, to hew down the 
 primeval forest, and with intense labour and privation to 
 turn the wilderness into a fruitful field? What, but the 
 hope that he or his family after him would own a com- 
 fortable homestead. Could w^e conceive that no private 
 property in land had ever been permitted, how would the 
 continent of North America have been settled? How 
 would the Anglo-Saxon race have been spread over the 
 globe ? What would have drawn the emigrant * ship to 
 the desolate shores of Australia and New Zealand? 
 No magnet would have charmed the hardy pioneer of 
 civilisation but the hope of bequeathing a freehold to his 
 posterity. And now, after vast regions have been settled 
 on the faith of the solemn sanction of the State, it is 
 coolly proposed to rob these people or their descendants 
 of the land on which they have spent their life blood, on 
 the ground that it should never have been granted to them. 
 Could human folly go further? Well, the process by 
 which the wilds of North America were reclaimed within 
 the past two centuries is just the process by which our 
 own and other countries were settled at a still earlier 
 period. You will always reach a point in which human 
 labour gave its first value to land, and without that labour 
 it would have been as worthless as the soil of Kamskatgha 
 is to-day. 
 
 Then we are told that it is the industry of the whole
 
 14 
 
 community which gives its high value to land, and that 
 the community has a right to take back what it gives. 
 On that ground the late John Stuart Mill advocated the 
 retention by the State of what he called ''the unearned 
 increment of the soil." 
 
 I grant that in all old and settled countries land rises in 
 value just as the community prospers, but so do most 
 other kinds of property — railways, canals, house property, 
 the public funds, and nearly all good and sound invest- 
 ments rise as the nation flourishes ; and I cannot see in 
 justice why one form of property should be singled out 
 for attack. The motive that led the settler to clear the 
 primeval forest was partly the expectation that population 
 would follow in his track, and raise the value of his 
 investment. But for that hope he would hardly have 
 forfeited all the comforts of civilised life. Would it be 
 fair, after he has cleared a pathway through the jungle for 
 more effeminate followers, to deny him the legitimate 
 fruit of his enterprise. Surely one of the greatest 
 stimulants to material progress is just the knowledge 
 that good orderly government will increase the value of 
 property. It affords the strongest inducement to all the 
 propertied classes in a community to avoid warfare and 
 civil strife. Take away from the owners of property all 
 hope of improving their position, and you abolish one of 
 the greatest safeguards of peaceful progress. 
 
 But again we are told by Mr. George that private 
 property in land reduces the labourers to the condition of 
 slaves; that it keeps down their wages to the lowest 
 minimum on which they can exist, and that its tendency 
 is everywhere to reduce the masses to a deeper and deeper 
 degree of degradation. He says that modern civilisation 
 must perish as ancient civilisation did, because it ensures 
 the steady descent of the great mass of the people to a 
 condition of hopeless servitude.
 
 15 
 
 It is really difficult to meet such outrageous assertions. 
 One would suppose that any competent acquaintance 
 with modern history would show that the facts were all 
 the other way. Nothing is more absolutely certain than 
 that the condition of the great mass of the people in all 
 civilised countries has been steadily improving at least for 
 a century back. Let any one who doubts this read any 
 impartial account of the state of our manufacturing dis- 
 tricts during the Chartist agitation forty years ago, when 
 the chronic condition of most of the operatives was semi- 
 starvation ; let him carefully examine the state of Eng- 
 land during the Napoleonic wars, when the State took 
 annually in taxation fully 20 per cent of the entire 
 national income against about 6 per cent which it takes 
 now;* when, as Sydney Smith said, every act of a man's 
 life from the cradle to the grave paid toll to the tax 
 gatherer.! Let him remember that before the era of free 
 
 * The average amount of revenue drawn from the United Kingdom in the period 
 1800 to 1815 was 55 millions sterling, against an estimated total income ot 250 
 millions; the amount of revenue received last year was 89 millions, or deducting 
 post-office and telegraph receipts, which are not taxes, was 80 millions, which is in 
 round numbers 6 per cent on the present estimated income of 1300 millions. It 
 should also be remembered that while in 1800 to 1815 we were adding to the 
 National Debt at the rate of 2u millions a year, we are now paying it oif at the 
 rate of 7 millions a year. 
 
 + Sydney Smith on British Taxation. 
 
 " We can inform Jonathan what are the inevitable consequences of being too 
 fond of glory : — Taxes upon every article which enters into the mouth, or covers 
 the back, or is placed under the foot. Taxes upon everything which it is pleasant 
 to see, hear, feel, smell or taste. Taxes upon warmth, light and locomotion. Taxes 
 on everything on earth, and the waters under the earth ; on everything that comes 
 from abroad, or is grown at home. Taxes on the raw material ; taxes on every 
 fresh value that is added to it by the industry of man. Taxes on the sauce which 
 pampers man's appetite, and the drug that restores him to health ; on the ermine 
 which decorates the judge, and the rope which hangs the criminal; on the poor 
 man's salt, and the rich man's spice ; on the brass nails of the coffin, and the 
 ribands of the bride. At bed or board, couchant or levant, we must pay. The 
 schoolboy whips his taxed top ; the beardless youth manages his taxed horse, with 
 a taxed bridle, on a taxed road ; and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine, 
 which has paid 7 per cent, into a spoon that has paid 15 per cent, flings himself 
 back upon his chintz bed, which has paid 22 per cent, and expires in the arms 
 of apothecary, who has paid a licence of a hundred pounds for the privilege ot 
 putting him to death. His whole property is then immediately taxed from 2 to 10
 
 16 
 
 trade the average wage of an agricultural labourer did not 
 exceed 7s to 8s per week, which only sufficed to buy one 
 bushel of wheat, whereas now it is 14s to 16s, while the 
 bushel of wheat is 5s to 6s, that is to say, a labourer can 
 earn 2 J times as much of the staff of life as he could then.* 
 Let him read Mr. Bright's speech at Birmingham, where he 
 compared the wages paid in his factory now with those 
 paid in his boyhood, showing about 80 per cent advance, t 
 Whatever test of national progress we adopt we see a pro- 
 digious increase of well-being since the beginning of this 
 century. I believe I am within the mark when I state 
 that the income of every class in the community has at 
 least doubled in the last eighty years. The national 
 income has increased from about 250 millions to 1300 
 millions, while population has increased from 16 to 35 
 millions. 
 
 per cent. Besides the probate, large fees are demanded for burying liim in the 
 chancel ; his virtues are handed down to posterity on taxed marble ; and he is then 
 gathered to his fathers, to be taxed no more." 
 
 * Extract from The Landed Interest and the Supply of Food, hy Sir James 
 Gaird, F.R.S., the greatest living authority in this country on all questions 
 connected loith Agriculture. 
 
 "The general condition of the agricultural labourer was probably never better 
 than it is at present. Compared with that of 300 years ago, in the time of Elizabeth, 
 wages have risen sixfold, while the price of bread has only doubled. Two centuries 
 later, in 1770, the farm-labourer's wages was Is 2d a day, when the price of wheat 
 was 46s a quarter. In 1846, immediately before the repeal of the Corn Laws, 
 wages were Is 7d, when wheat was 53s. At the present time wages have risen 60 
 per cent., while wheat has diminished in price. In other words, the labourer's 
 earning power in procuring the staff of life cost him five days' work to pay for a 
 bushel of wheat in 1770, four days in 1840, and two-and-a-half days in 1880." 
 
 t QiLotation from Mr. Bright's Speech at Birmingham, comparing Wages 
 imid in 1841 with those 'paid in 1881. 
 
 Workers mostly women. 
 
 "Those who received 8s per week, now receive 13s. The next case is a class that 
 received 7s 6d, they now receive 15s. The next is a class of workers then receiving 
 8s, they now receive 14s. The next was a class of boys, who then had 5s 6d a Aveek, 
 and they now have 9s 6d, The last class were women in those days, but the employ- 
 ment is in the hands of men now. The wages were then 17s 6d, and now are 35s 6d. 
 The hours of work are also much shorter."
 
 17 
 
 No better test of a nation's material progress can be 
 given than the consumption of food per head and the 
 annual death rate. I give the following table of con- 
 sumption : — * 
 
 1840. 1880. 
 
 "Tea ozs. 22 73 
 
 "Sugar lbs. 15 54 
 
 "Wheat „ 269 358 
 
 "Meat „ 84 118 
 
 With regard to the death rate no accurate return was 
 made for England before 1840, but in London the mortality 
 in the first half of last century was estimated at about 40 
 per thousand (per Mulhall). Since then it has been 
 steadily diminishing, till now it stands at 21.7 per 1000. 
 No doubt this is a fair index of the whole country. 
 Then, as compared with the great Continental nations, 
 our country shows a decided gain. I take from the 
 Kegistrar General's report the following figures. Average 
 for 20 years : — 
 
 "England 21.9 # 1000 
 
 "France 23.7 „ 
 
 "Germany 26.9 ,, 
 
 "Austria 30.9 ,, 
 
 "Italy 30 
 
 "Spain 29.7 ,, 
 
 The only countries that surpass us are the thinly popu- 
 lated and healthy Scandinavian States, which is not to be 
 wondered at. 
 
 Now, to return to Mr. George, his allegation is that rent 
 eats up all the increase of a nation's wealth, that whatever 
 labour and capital succeed in adding to the national produc- 
 tion is immediately consumed by the idle and bloated 
 landowners. I ask is this true, or even partially true ? The 
 facts are just the reverse ; the rent of land has increased far 
 
 * Taken from article by Mr. M. G. Mulhall in tlie Contemporary Review. 
 
 B
 
 18 
 
 less than any other form of wealth.* The rent of Agricultural 
 Land m the United Kingdom in 1814 was iG49,000,000, now 
 it is iG69, 000,000; the national income is supposed to have 
 increased in the same time from 250 to 1300 millions, t or 
 fully five-fold, i.e. rent has increased 41 per cent while 
 general income has increased 520 per cent ; in other words, 
 landlords instead of taking about 20 per cent of the whole 
 income of the community now only take 5 J per cent, and if 
 their whole property were confiscated and divided among the 
 people it would only add about Is in the £ to their income. 
 Again : the rent of the land is only about half as much as is 
 spent annual-ly upon intoxicating drink ; the working classes 
 alone spend considerably more than the agricultural rent of 
 the United Kingdom. A temperance reformation would 
 put more money into the pockets of the people than the 
 confiscation of the land, and it would do so without staining 
 the national conscience or convulsing our social system. 
 
 One further remark I would make. Even if all the rent 
 were confiscated and paid to the State in relief of taxation, 
 the only effect on the poorer classes would be that they 
 would get their alcohol, tobacco and tea cheaper. They 
 pay scarcely anything to the State except through taxes on 
 these three articles. "Would any one be insane enough to 
 
 * It may be said that rent was inflated by the war prices then ruling. This is 
 partly true, but even in 1798 Pitt estimated the rent of England at 25 millions, or 
 say 33 millions for the United Kingdom, which would give 16J per cent on a supposed 
 income of 200 millions. 
 
 + Mr. Giffen, Chief Statistician to the Board of Trade, estimated, a short timd' 
 ago, the aggregate income of all the people of the United Kingdom at 1300 millions, 
 but this is something quite distinct from the national production of wealth. Large 
 classes of the population are not direct producers, though most useful members of 
 society, and their incomes are drawn from the producers. For instance, clergymen, 
 lawyers, doctors, literary men, schoolmasters, &c. and the whole class of distri- 
 butors, such as shopkeepers ; also innkeepers, publicans, domestic servants, army 
 and navy, &c. 
 
 It will be seen at a glance that the national income thus estimated is something 
 entirely different from the net production of wealth, which cannot be estimated at 
 more than a thousand millions. 
 
 I take the estimate of national income in 1800 to 1815 from Leone Levi and 
 Mulhall.
 
 19 
 
 hold that cheap whiskey, beer, tobacco and tea would 
 extinguish poverty, or even reduce it perceptibly? 
 
 It is singular that so acute a reasoner as Mr. George 
 entirely overlooks the main reason why rent is restrained 
 from rising indefinitely in such a country as Great Britain. 
 I refer to our free trade policy. He argues as if a country 
 must subsist exclusively upon its own produce, and so as 
 population increases and presses upon the resources of the 
 soil, landlords may exact more and more rent from a starving 
 people. No doubt this is what would have happened had 
 our old system of protection continued ; had we prohibited 
 the importation of Corn, at least till Wheat rose to 60s a 
 quarter, we should seldom have had "Wheat below 60s, and 
 sometimes at 80s or 100s, as happened repeatedly in the 
 early part of this century; in such a case the growth of 
 population would have brought us nearer and nearer to 
 famine; indeed it is impossible to imagine how 35 millions 
 of people could have lived in these islands on home produce 
 alone. But we have acted for 40 years on the principle of 
 taking all the food the world can send us, and the whole 
 increase of our population during that period may be said to 
 be fed with foreign food. The British landlord has no longer 
 a monopoly of the means of subsistence, he shares it with 
 the grain grower of Illinois and Manitoba, of India and 
 California. To all intents and purposes the soil of 
 Western America is annexed to Great Britain, so far as 
 food supply is concerned, and the price of the quartern 
 loaf in London is really governed by the price of Wheat in 
 Chicago. We now import about two-thirds of the Wheat 
 consumed in this country, and more than one-third 
 of our total food supply. This is the reason why rent 
 does not increase as all other forms of wealth do; every 
 one knows that of late years rents have considerably fallen, 
 and it seems to me that as means of transport are always 
 being improved, we may expect cheaper and yet cheaper
 
 20 
 
 food from abroad, and lower and yet lower rents for 
 Agricultural Land ; instead of the land of this little island 
 being limited and a monopoly, it is virtually coextensive 
 with the vast regions of the New World, and is as much 
 affected by their food supplies, as if it was towed across 
 the Atlantic and moored alongside of New York. 
 
 In this connection I would also refer to the idea vaguely 
 entertained by many that another system of land tenure 
 would marvellously increase the supply of home grown 
 food. Mr. Joseph Arch puts this possible increase at 
 eighty-seven millions sterling, and the Trades' Congress 
 seemed to agree with him. No doubt this would come 
 true under the principle of protection ; the excessive price 
 of food in that case would admit of the profitable culti- 
 vation of much land that is now in pasture — ^just as the 
 iron and cotton industries of America have been much 
 increased by protection, that is by a tax levied on the rest 
 of the community, so would agriculture be stimulated 
 by artificial prices, which would be a tax levied on the 
 consumer ; but it puzzles me to see how under a system 
 of free imports of food we can force cultivation beyond 
 the point at which it is profitable. Surely farmers and 
 proprietors of land know best how to get the largest profit 
 out of the soil ; if they grow less wheat year by year, 
 it is because wheat growing will not pay in face of the 
 enormous imports at lower and yet lower prices. If more 
 of our land is going into pasture, it is because we cannot 
 raise crops as cheaply on poor land as we can import them 
 from abroad. No doubt it is true that much of the soil 
 could be improved by drainage ; but the question that 
 every sensible agriculturist asks is, Will it pay ? It can 
 hardly be expected that men will court bankruptcy, in 
 order to please speculative writers who have no practical 
 knowledge of the subject. Any trade when left to itself 
 finds the most suitable ways of working. Men who have
 
 21 
 
 spent their lives in trying to get the most out of the soil 
 are as likely to understand their business as mere theorists, 
 and I assert that it is nonsense to suppose that any vast 
 increase of food can be got out of our soil, in such a way 
 as to compensate the labour and capital employed.* 
 
 I have no doubt that it is possible to grow eighty milhons 
 more food in Great Britain, but it would probably cost 
 100 millions to accomplish it. You can hardly expect 
 that any class would sacrifice twenty millions a year for 
 pure patriotism. So long as wheat can be imported at 
 40s a quarter, it is vain to expect that it will be grown on 
 land where it costs 50s. The cost of production settles 
 this question just as surely as the law of gravitation settles 
 how water will flow. 
 
 If the commercial history of this country has taught us 
 anything it is the futility of fighting against the laws of 
 nature, and the folly of trying to override economical laws by 
 legislation. A great deal of what is written on the subject 
 of land reform is just on the lines of the old protectionist 
 theories, which demands that the State should compel a 
 nation's industry to be turned to whatever direction it 
 thought best. We hear it constantly said that there is a 
 vast extent of waste lands that ought to be reclaimed, 
 that the State should either buy or take them itself, and 
 
 * Extract from The Landed Interest and the Supply of Food, hy 
 Sir James Caird, F.B.S. 
 
 "A system is best tested by its fruits. Compared with all other countries, our 
 threefold plan of landlord, farmer and labourer appears to yield larger returns, 
 Avith fewer labourers, and from an equal extent of land. Our average produce of 
 wheat is 28 bushels an acre, as against 16 in France, 16 in Germany, 13 in Eussia, 
 and 12 in the United States. We show a similar advantage in live stock, both in 
 quantity and quahty. We have far more horses, cattle and sheep in proportion to 
 acreage than any other country, and in all these kinds there is a general superiority. 
 Our most famous breeders of live stock are the tenant farmers. The best examples 
 of farming are found in the same class. The improved breeds of cattle, the 
 Leicester and Southdown sheep, and the extented use of machinery, manures and 
 artificial foods is chiefly due to them. And the neatness of the cultivation, the 
 straight furrow, and the beautiful lines of drilled corn, the well-built ricks and docile 
 horses, exhibit at once the strength and skill of the labourers."
 
 22 
 
 cause them to be cultivated. The simple answer is that 
 they are not cultivated because it does not pay. Many 
 landlords are great improvers. Many spend annually a 
 third or a half of their rent in improvements, but so far as 
 I can gather very few of them earn even 3 per cent on these 
 improvements. Indeed, I have rarely heard of a case 
 where full commercial interest was obtained. Before the 
 State enters on the gigantic task of cultivating several 
 millions of acres of waste land, let it buy a few thousand 
 acres, and work them as best it can. If the experiment 
 pays it can attempt more, if it fails, as I feel sure it will do, 
 this foolish agitation will be silenced. The cry for the 
 Nationalisation of the Land is a reversal of the policy which 
 all civilised states have been following for many years, 
 viz. the liberation of private enterprise from state control, 
 and the restriction of the state to those functions which 
 properly belong to it. There was a time when the state 
 claimed monopolies of various trades ; these it either 
 carried on in a most slovenly manner, or jobbed out to 
 privileged individuals with great political corruption. The 
 India and China trade was once a monopoly of this kind, 
 and the sale of tobacco and management of railways 
 is still a government monopoly in some Continental 
 countries. 
 
 Experience always proves that governments cannot 
 conduct ordinary business so well as private individuals, 
 and all sound and cool thinkers have for long urged the 
 exclusion of the State from the sphere of private industry. 
 The Nationalisation of the Land would overturn every 
 sound principle that nations have painfully learned by 
 experience, and it is truly humiliating to all lovers of 
 progress to see old fallacies of the crudest kind again 
 raising their heads, as if mankind must for ever revolve in 
 a vicious circle of error. 
 
 But let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the 
 
 I
 
 23 
 
 scheme has been somehow carried out, and consider briefly 
 some of the consequences; and I will suppose that the 
 State acts honestly in the matter, and expropriates the 
 owners of land at the full value of their property. I will 
 make the concession that the State possesses the abstract 
 right to effect compulsory purchase of any property that 
 is necessary to the national well-being — just as land is 
 taken compulsorily for railroads and other necessary pur- 
 poses, and streets are widened or demolished in towns 
 when necessary for the public good. I admit that there 
 exists a power in the community to purchase, at a fair 
 price, the land of the country, if a clear and vaHd reason 
 can be shown for so doing. 
 
 Let us, however, point out, in passing, what a ruinous 
 investment it would be. The price to be paid. Professor 
 Fawcett assumes, is two thousand millions. It is hard to 
 believe that even so wealthy a country as ours could raise 
 all this money; but if it went even so far as to*compel the 
 landowners to take assignments of Consols, paying interest 
 at 3 per cent, in lieu of money payment, it would lose at 
 least J per cent on the operation, for the land of this 
 country does not yield a net return of more than 2J 
 per cent. Indeed I doubt if it yields so much. Now 
 J per cent on two thousand millions is ten millions 
 a year, which would be a dead loss to the country, and 
 must be raised by adding so much to the taxes. It is 
 obvious that such a scheme would not work ; the loss 
 would have to be recouped somehow, and the first thing 
 that would be thought of would be to raise the rent of the 
 farmers so as to make up this deficiency. Now I have little 
 doubt that the land of this country, if put up to auction, 
 and let to the highest bidder, would yield ten millions 
 more rent than it pays at present. Most British landlords 
 take less rent than they could get in the open market. 
 Many of the large estates are rented 20 per cent below
 
 24 
 
 what could be extorted by open competition ; the tenantry 
 are seldom changed, and a kindly relation exists between 
 the landlord and his tenantry which has continued for 
 generations. All this would be reversed. The system of 
 rack-renting which we have put down with infinite labour 
 in Ireland would be fastened on Great Britain, and would 
 soon raise up in this country a storm of indignation at the 
 cruel treatment the farming interest was subjected to. It 
 seems perfectly clear to me that the position of farmers 
 would be far worse under a national system than under 
 one of private ownership. There could be no abatement 
 of rents in bad seasons, no permission of arrears to stand 
 over, but a hard and rigid system of merciless precision 
 must prevail. 
 
 You cannot administer a great department of State 
 except by fixed rules. If you leave discretion to the heads 
 of a department as to the rents they should take, the 
 allowances to be made in bad years, the consideration to 
 be shown to old and infirm tenants, to widows, &c. 
 you would of necessity introduce jobbery and corruption 
 wholesale. Such enormous power could not be entrusted 
 with safety to any ofiicials, and even the heads of the 
 government would be under frightful temptations to use 
 this prodigious power for either private or political pur- 
 poses. Think of over a milHon of farmers in Great Britain 
 and Ireland holding direct from the State and at the mercy 
 of a government department. Would no pressure be put 
 upon them at election times ? Would no promise to abate 
 rents be given as the price of their support ? Would not 
 this huge state department become what all similar depart- 
 ments have become in the United States, a hotbed of 
 bribery? We know that with every change of government 
 in America more than 100,000 ofdcials are turned out, from 
 the President of the United States down to the humblest 
 letter carrier. Would it be safe, as our government
 
 25 
 
 becomes increasingly democratic, to place at its mercy so 
 vast an interest as the agriculture of the United Kingdom. 
 
 Further, we would ask, where is the money to come 
 from to improve the soil under this system? at present a 
 large percentage of rent is returned to the soil in the shape 
 of improvements. I should not be surprised if over 20 
 per cent of the rental of the land is returned to it in one 
 shape or another, and probably another 20 or 30 per cent is 
 spent by the landlords in keeping up their country houses, 
 and supporting a host of domestic servants, gardeners, 
 gamekeepers, grooms and other retainers — not to speak 
 of the custom they give to the country shopkeepers. 
 All this great expenditure, which is the life-blood of 
 the rural community, would be stopped. The landlords, 
 who would now be mere pensioners of the State, would 
 have no inducement to live in the country any longer. 
 They would drift into our towns or live abroad, and 
 bring all the evils of absenteeism on this country that 
 have been felt so keenly in Ireland. The hosts of people 
 that depend upon them in the country would starve, 
 or have to add to the congestion of our over-crowded 
 towns. A great decrease in the rural population would 
 take place — the very last thing that any good government 
 should desire. Those beautiful mansions, which are the 
 ornament of this country, and which afford pleasure to 
 multitudes of tourists and sightseers, historical places such 
 as Chatsworth and Haddon Hall, would fall into ruins. We 
 should have rudely torn down the social edifice which it took 
 centuries to build up and have left nothing to fill the void. 
 
 It may be said that the farmers would now become the 
 improvers of the land, seeing that we have passed a Tenants' 
 Compensation Bill. I fear little outlay would be made by 
 them under the State as landlord, unless they got fixity of 
 tenure and judicial rents, and I have little doubt that this 
 would be the ultimate outcome of Nationalisation. It would
 
 26 
 
 be found impossible to secure proper cultivation under the 
 dreadful sense of insecurity caused by competition rents 
 fixed by government officials ; it would be found that we 
 were turning Great Britain rapidly into an Ireland, and 
 we should have to resort to the state of things we have 
 established there. So this very arbitrary system of 
 judicial rents would have to be introduced. If it merely 
 confirmed existing rents the State would lose ten millions 
 a year, as already stated. If it recouped that ten millions 
 by adding to the rents, the tenantry would be bitterly 
 discontented. It would be a choice of evils, and the 
 extraordinary result would be reached that under the guise 
 of Nationalisation of the Land, we would have constituted 
 a new set of permanent holders of the soil, subject to a fixed 
 quit rent, and the nation would have no greater control of 
 the soil of the country than it had before ! 
 
 Some may suggest that there are other ways of 
 dealing with the land after the nation has acquired 
 it. No doubt there are various ways. The Democratic 
 Federation says it is to be cultivated by agricultural 
 and industrial armies, whatever that may mean ; but 
 I believe every one of them would prove utterly im- 
 practicable, and all would be vitiated by the political 
 danger of entrusting so large a business to the management 
 of a State department. There was an agitation some 
 years ago for the Nationalisation of the Eailways. Some 
 theorists held that the State should purchase and worl^ 
 our railway system. Most fortunately, as I think, this 
 scheme was defeated by the practical good sense of the 
 British people. But the management of the railways 
 would have been simplicity itself compared with the 
 management of a landed estate worth two thousand 
 millions. No doubt bribery and corruption would soon 
 have been rampant in the railway department, but that 
 would have been a trifle compared with the powers that
 
 27 
 
 an unscrupulous minister might exercise over the vast 
 agricultural interest. 
 
 I think I have now said sufficient to show that the 
 scheme of Nationalising the Land is about as absurd as 
 the South Sea bubble, or as any other delusion that 
 history records. If it be carried out by confiscation, it 
 would be the most gigantic piece of wickedness perpetrated 
 in modern times ; if effected by purchase, it would be the 
 worst investment which the State ever made. Under no 
 circumstances that I can conceive would it work success- 
 fully, and it may be dismissed to the region of Utopia. 
 
 I might have gone further in my attempts to explode 
 it by pointing out that Mr. George recommends the con- 
 fiscation of all the freehold land in towns as well as in the 
 country, so that any house which the owner had built 
 on his plot of land would virtually be confiscated to the 
 State, for it is very evident that if the land were taken by the 
 State, and it had the power of exacting whatever ground 
 rent it chose, it would virtually be the owner of the house. 
 An obvious reply to Mr. George would be that it is 
 difficult to conceive that any person would ever be so 
 foolish as to build a house again. No lease given by the 
 Government would be worth a day's purchase, for after a 
 State had perpetrated such a piece of iniquity as suddenly 
 and without compensation to take possession of every free- 
 hold in the country, it would be a small thing to break any 
 leases it might afterwards give. I would simply point out 
 that every man who could save anything from the general 
 wreck would flee from a country abandoned to legalised 
 robbery, and the time would come within measurable 
 distance when Macaulay's New Zealander would stand on 
 a broken arch of London bridge and survey the ruins of 
 the modern Babylon. There is nothing more certain than 
 if you set at nought the primary laws of morality, of which 
 the eighth commandment is one, the descent to anarchy is
 
 28 
 
 swift and sure. It is vain to suppose that men who 
 would confiscate this principal form of property would stop 
 short at it; if a thief puts his hand into my pocket and tells 
 me he will only abstract the half-crowns, but that the 
 shillings are sacred, I will put both my shillings and half- 
 crowns out of reach as soon as possible. The principles of 
 Mr. George's book are already amplified by the Democratic 
 Federation, recently formed in London, so as to include 
 the repudiation of the National Debt, the confiscation of 
 railways, banks and most other forms of property. 
 
 The descent is rapid to the simple aphorism of Proudhon, 
 the celebrated French Communist, that ** Property is 
 robbery." We may safely predict that if such views were 
 spread so widely in our country as to lead to the return of 
 many of their advocates to Parliament, the era of free 
 government in this country would be drawing to a close. 
 Long before such schemes could be put in force the 
 propertied classes would do in England as they have often 
 done in France, sacrifice liberty rather than run the risk 
 of Communism. Some ' * saviour of society ' ' will be found in 
 all countries before Communism, which is another name 
 for organised theft, is allowed to get the upper hand. 
 
 Liberty requires justice for her hand maid and due respect 
 for the rights of all. It will only flourish permanently in 
 communities that are essentially honest, enlightened and 
 law-abiding. As the suffrage in our country becomes wider 
 and wider, and power passes increasingly into the hands 
 of the masses, it is increasingly necessary that education in 
 the highest sense of the term should be universal. By 
 education I mean the harmonious development of all our 
 powers, based on the immutable precepts of religion and 
 morality. There is no doubt that demagogues will be 
 found to appeal to the basest motives of the most degraded 
 classes. In all ages men are to be found who are willing 
 to prostitute great talents to the vilest purposes; men
 
 29 
 
 who, like Cataline of old, or Eobespierre and Danton of 
 modern times, would climb to power on the ruins of their 
 country. We need not be astonished if schemes that 
 combine the principles of Atheism and Communism are 
 flaunted before the constituences of the future, but I shall 
 be much surprised if the sober commonsense that has 
 hitherto distinguished the British people is beguiled by 
 their enchantments. 
 
 Before parting with the subject of Land Nationalisation, 
 I would point out, in a word or two, that not only the 
 owners of land would be defrauded on Mr. George's plan, 
 but likewise all the mortgagees, whose name is legion. 
 Much of the land of this country is heavily burdened; 
 probably hundreds of millions are lent on its security. As 
 the State has encouraged the belief that land was the safest 
 form of property, it has long been the custom of Banks, 
 Insurance Companies, Loan Societies and oth^r agencies 
 that gather up the savings of the nation to lend them on 
 the security of the soil. The sole livelihood of multitudes 
 of widows and orphans depends upon trust money so 
 invested. It is difficult to conceive what frightful misery 
 would be caused by suddenly pulling away the platform on 
 which such a pile of obligations has been reared. The 
 ruin of the landlords themselves would be but a part, 
 perhaps a small part, of the general disaster. As when 
 dynamite is exploded in a crowded thoroughfare, helpless 
 women and children would be among the chief sufferers. 
 
 I must, however, before concluding, point out in a few 
 words the direction in which true land reform must run. 
 
 I am not of those who regard our land system as at all 
 perfect. The proprietors are far too few either for the 
 social welfare of the country or for the stability of property 
 itself. There were in the United Kingdom, by the last Par- 
 hamentary return (that of 1872), 314,000 owners of more
 
 30 
 
 than an acre each, and 852,000 owners of less than an 
 acre each, the latter mostly in towns. It would be greatly 
 for the advantage of society if more people were interested 
 in the soil of the comitry. The large estates are very 
 much the creation of the law of entail, a law which is 
 doomed, and is already in a great measure set aside. The 
 ordinary laws of nature are opposed to the perpetuation of 
 gigantic fortunes, either in land or moveable wealth. The 
 heirs of the rich are often spendthrifts and dissipate what 
 their fathers have gained. 
 
 The law of entail has overridden the wiser law of nature 
 and kept estates intact, though the proprietor was 
 bankrupt; that unjust provision is tottering to its fall. 
 The law of primogeniture, which passed all real estate 
 when entailed, or in case of intestacy to the eldest son, 
 will fall along with it, and liberty will be given to parents 
 to leave their estates more in accordance with the dictates 
 of justice. Then the system of limited ownership, which 
 springs out of the law of entail, will disappear along with 
 it. Many estates are starved at present, because the 
 landlord is merely a life renter, with little power and no 
 inducement to make improvements ; that injurious system 
 will pass away with entail. I would hope and expect that 
 many of the large estates will naturally subdivide, and 
 many of them will certainly come into the market as soon 
 as entails are broken. The farmers also under the Tenants 
 Compensation bill will tend to become fixtures, and if 
 compensation be extended to the sitting tenant upon rise 
 of rent, as is proposed by Sir James Caird and many of 
 our best agriculturists, there would gradually arise some- 
 thing analogous to the Ulster tenant right, and we should 
 have two classes instead of one permanently interested in 
 the soil. 
 
 The assessment of mansions and pleasure grounds and 
 also of waste lands in the vicinity of towns should likewise
 
 31 
 
 be adjusted to their selling value, not to their nominal 
 letting value, which is often quite deceptive. There are 
 large tracts of land allowed to lie idle in the outskirts 
 of rising towns, like our own Kensington Fields, that they 
 may be sold at a vast advance in price when required for 
 building purposes. Some of our greatest fortunes have 
 been made in this way, and yet these lands escape taxation 
 so long as they are unoccupied. This is a great blot which 
 must be removed. 
 
 I can see no reason whatever why the Death duties, as 
 Mr. Gladstone calls them, should be so very much heavier 
 on personal than on real property. This most unjust 
 distinction must be swept away, nor would I object to a 
 graduated duty as estates increase in value. Besides this 
 I have always thought that a difference should be made 
 between income derived from fixed property and that 
 derived from the labour — either of hand or brain — the one 
 is certain, the other precarious, and it is fair -that the 
 former should pay higher income tax than the latter.* 
 
 I am also in favor of extending the Bright clauses of the 
 Irish Land Act to Great Britain, so that the State may be 
 empowered to advance three-fourths of the purchase money 
 to occupying tenants desiring to buy their farms, and I 
 would give special facilities for the creation of small 
 properties, say of ten or twenty acres, to encourage the 
 more thrifty of the peasantry to acquire land, and to 
 facilitate the creation of market gardens on a large scale. 
 
 It is also a fair question whether the State should not 
 aid agricultural labourers by loans to purchase their 
 cottages along with garden allotments. No one can 
 doubt the immense boon to a farm labourer of a plot 
 of ground he can call his own, and if any reasonable 
 
 * Freehold estate, except where employed in trade, pays no probate duty, while 
 personalty pays 2 to 3 per cent. Succession duty also falls more lightly on realty 
 than on personalty.
 
 32 
 
 way could be shown whereby the State could facilitate 
 this desirable result, without incurring undue risk, all 
 land reformers would favor it. I have, however, little 
 faith in the general extension of the French system of 
 peasant proprietary to this country. Our soil and climate 
 are not favorable to it. The habits of our people are 
 radically opposed to the excessive thrift and discouragement 
 of families which characterise the French peasantry, and 
 which are essential to the successful working of their 
 system. Nations develop their own modes of life, and you 
 cannot force imitations. "We can as little copy the land 
 system of France as she can copy our manufacturing and 
 commercial system. The case of Ireland is different, and 
 there I think that a peasant proprietary, arrived at by 
 honest purchase with some aid from the State, may perhaps 
 prove to be the ultimate solution of the land question. 
 
 There is another point also on which I will partly go 
 with the views of the Nationalists. I allow that property 
 in land ought not to be as absolute as property in chattels. 
 You may make and destroy a chair or a table, and no one 
 has any right to complain ; but the owner of land has no 
 moral right to destroy its value, or debar the public from 
 all access to it, when such access is no personal injury to 
 himself. I think it is contrary to natural law that vast 
 tracts of barren land in the Highlands should be shut up 
 
 * This paper is written with reference mainly to Land tenure in England, and I wish 
 to add that I except the Highlands and Islands of Scotland from the scope of my 
 remarks. Their condition is widely different from that of England, or the Lowlands 
 ot Scotland, and more nearly resembles that of Ireland, The tribal system existed in 
 the Highlands till the middle of last century, the land being to a certain extent the 
 common property of the Clan, though the chief liad special I'ights of his own. 
 After the battle of Culloden, the system of English law was applied most unjustly to 
 the Highlands, and the chiefs were constituted absolute owners of the land, causing 
 in many cases cruel injustice to a brave and honest people, who had shed their 
 blood like water for the same chiefs. Many evictions took place at the end of last 
 century and beginning of this as harsh as those which made the Irish Land Act 
 necessary, and I consider that even yet some reparation ought to be made to a most 
 loyal section of the British nation, and protection given to the "Crofters" on 
 principles akin to those of the Irish Land Act.
 
 33 
 
 against the harmless tourist, because a deer-stalker does not 
 wish his game to be disturbed. I would neither acknowledge 
 nor permit such a usurpation. I would not permit the 
 elementary rights of the earth's inhabitants to be sacrificed 
 to extreme theories of game preserving. In the same way 
 I would uphold the rights of town populations to common 
 rights of way wherever practicable, and not allow them to 
 be debarred from the enjoyment of the beauties of nature 
 at the whim of landowners who may happen to be of a 
 boorish disposition. 
 
 I greatly regret the abstraction of so many village 
 commons in past ages, and it is fairly a question whether 
 portions of these should not be re-purchased for the public 
 good. Our town populations are far too much cramped, 
 and I would take, by compulsory purchase, whatever land 
 is required for recreation ground, or even, in case of 
 necessity, for building purposes, and for the legitimate 
 development of growing towns. The rights of landowners 
 can never be so interpreted as to override the primary 
 necessities of life for the toiling masses of the country. 
 There will probably be directions, not yet clear to us, in 
 which the State must do more than it has yet done to 
 sweeten the lot of our labouring poor ; and as these become 
 plain, common sense will impose any restrictions on landed 
 property that may be shown to be necessary. 
 
 Another important suggestion I would make, is the 
 
 * I have not dealt in this paper with the evils of leasehold tenure in onr large 
 towns. I think the system of building houses on leases of 75 years, so common 
 in London, is very disadvantageous to the public. The houses revert to the 
 owner of the land at the end of the lease, and so he profits, as it seems to me, 
 unjustly by the expenditure of others. Besides there is no inducement to build 
 solid and lasting habitations when the owner or builder of the house loses his right 
 at the end of a term of years. The necessary consequence is that much of this 
 property becomes almost uninhabitable towards the end of the lease, for it is 
 nobody's interest to keep it in repair. 
 
 I therefore advocate some scheme for the conversion of leaseholds into freeholds 
 on just terms to all concerned, in the same way as copyhold tenure has been 
 gradually exchanged for freehold.
 
 34 
 
 compulsory registration of titles to real property, with an 
 authoritative record of all charges upon it. 
 
 One of the chief obstacles to the transfer of property in 
 England is the cumbrous and costly process by which 
 titles are verified. It operates very much against the 
 multiplication of small owners. The State must do here 
 what it has done in France, Belgium, and other countries : 
 establish land courts to register titles and make transfers 
 cheap and easy. I believe nothing would do more to 
 multiply small owners. I would also establish agricultural 
 schools, as is done in Switzerland and other Continental 
 countries, where farmers' sons can learn the science of 
 their profession. 
 
 In the Colonial possessions of this country I think that 
 a most wasteful system of dealing with the land has been 
 adopted. There we had the opportunity of applying sound 
 principles of land tenure to virgin territory unencumbered 
 by old proprietory rights ; but we have allowed vast tracts 
 of land to be alienated to speculative buyers almost for 
 nothing, and so have laid the foundation for even greater 
 inequalities of wealth than we have in England. 
 
 It would have been a wise policy had our Colonies in 
 America, Australia and elsewhere refused to give freehold 
 possession to any but bona fide settlers, and not alienated 
 more than 100 or 200 acres to any individual, and they 
 might even have retained the right of imposing a moderate 
 land tax, say of 10 per cent, on its future annual value. 
 No settler would have objected, when he was getting land 
 almost gratuitously, to come under such an obligation. 
 These new States would thereby have laid the foundation 
 of a splendid revenue in the future, and would have kept 
 their boundless stores of land for the relief of the dense 
 population of Europe. Instead of that they have sold 
 vast stretches of territory to squatters, to railway com- 
 panies, to speculative land companies, and to foreign
 
 35 
 
 adventurers. Some of these men own millions of acres, 
 and will pile up incredible fortunes from the labour of the 
 toiling emigrants, who are compelled to apply to them 
 for the right to settle on those vast domains. It is only 
 the other day that I was asked to take a share in a grant 
 of three millions of acres in an American State, which a 
 speculative builder had received as payment for putting up 
 a State house. It is easy to see that future agrarian 
 difficulties are being created wholesale in the new countries 
 of the world by such reckless procedure. It was, no 
 doubt, this ruinous system of dealing with unappropriated 
 land, and the abuses of these land speculators, which con- 
 tributed largely to form Mr. George's opinions. The old 
 countries of Europe are exempt from this special class of 
 evils ; but it is a great injustice that their emigrant popula- 
 lation should in this way be cut off from much of the 
 advantages that the new countries of the world would 
 otherwise offer. 
 
 Our rulers were not wise in permitting the Colonies in 
 their infancy to do as they liked with their vast possessions. 
 They should have acted as trustees for our future population, 
 and carefully guarded the rights of unborn millions.* 
 
 It is a question even yet whether our Government 
 should not acquire and hold a quantity of virgin soil in 
 Manitoba, Australia, or New Zealand as trustee for future 
 emigrants from the old country. If we wait a few years 
 longer these lands may all be appropriated, as is the case 
 over most of the United States. It is a grave question 
 whether the poverty of masses of our people may not 
 compel us to adopt some system of State emigration, and 
 it would be an infinite pity if we allowed all the vast 
 
 * To show the sparseness of population in these new countries, compared with the 
 density of our own, I may state that if the soil of England were divided equally 
 among its people it would scarcely yield IJ acres to each person, whereas Australasia 
 would give 704 acres to each person, and Canada 482 acres.
 
 36 
 
 domain acquired by the courage of our forefathers to be 
 granted away, so that this country ceased to have any 
 beneficial interest in it. 
 
 I must now bring these remarks to a close. 
 
 While I dismiss as a chimera the idea of nationalising 
 the land in the old countries of Europe, I admit there is a 
 possibility of doing something in that direction with the 
 unoccupied portions of the world. I willingly recognise 
 the philanthropic spirit that underlies this movement. I 
 sympathise with its desire to elevate the poorer classes, 
 and would gladly join in any practicable scheme founded 
 upon justice which aims at that result. 
 
 I admit with deep sorrow that modern civilisation has 
 failed to eradicate poverty and suffering among large sec- 
 tions of the population. The struggle and strain of life 
 with many is excessive, and if by wiser social adjustments 
 we can lessen this, who would not thankfully welcome 
 them ; but the causes of inequality of wealth lie deep in the 
 foundation of human nature and the constitution of the 
 world, and no laws can essentially alter them. Mankind 
 vary enormously in natural and acquired gifts ; it is impos- 
 sible to hinder a strong man succeeding where a weak man 
 fails, or a wise man rising where a foolish man falls — till 
 we can make men equally wise, strong and virtuous, there 
 will be profound differences of condition just as there are 
 profound differences of character. No laws can hinder a 
 good workman getting better employment and higher pay 
 than a bad one, a good physician or lawyer attracting 
 crowds of clients while the dull and careless practitioner 
 starves — the prudent merchant or tradesman amassing a 
 fortune while the idle or reckless loses one. Modern civili- 
 sation does not diminish but accentuate moral and intel- 
 lectual differences; it is more difficult for the idle, the 
 improvident and the vicious to hold their own in the race 
 of life now than in ruder ages — all our processes are more
 
 37 
 
 refined — all require greater skill and higher character, and 
 there is an increased tendency to precipitate the coarser 
 material to the bottom of the social edifice — hence we see 
 in all our cities a huge and melancholy deposit of human 
 wretchedness and vice. It is an honest desire to raise this 
 sunken mass of human beings which accounts for much of 
 the socialism of the day. Those schemes for compulsorily 
 dividing the land and distributing wealth among the poor, 
 are the outcome of mistaken philanthropy, but they will 
 never succeed while such vital differences exist in the 
 capabilities of mankind. The utmost you can expect of a 
 State is to give a fair chance to every one, and free play to 
 all the powers and capacities of its citizens — it never can, 
 by any laws or social arrangements, produce equality of 
 condition. " The drunkard and the glutton shall come to 
 poverty, and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags;" 
 " he becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand, but 
 the hand of the diligent maketh rich." These laws are 
 unchangeable ; they have operated in all ages and all climes, 
 and human legislation cannot override them, nor should it 
 try to do so. Yet benevolence has its function as well, 
 and much that the State cannot do ought to be done by 
 private philanthropy. Where there may not be a legal 
 obligation there is often a moral one, not less binding, to 
 feed the hungry and clothe the naked. Nor am I one of 
 those who would exclude the State altogether from the 
 sphere of benevolence. The conscience of the community 
 is impersonated in its Government, and I regard with hope- 
 fulness the increasing responsibility felt by the State for 
 the care of the weak and helpless. I expect rich results 
 to flow from this principle in the future, yet we must guard 
 against sapping individual self-reliance and leading the 
 people to look to the State as a Special Providence. Our 
 strength in the past has sprung from individual initiative, 
 and we must beware of weakening that mainspring of our 
 national greatness.
 
 38 
 
 NATIONAL INCOME AND TAXATION COMPARED. 
 {From Mulhall's Dictionaey op Statistics.) 
 
 Income 
 Millions £. 
 
 United Kingdom 1,247 
 
 France 965 
 
 Germany 850 
 
 Russia 760 
 
 Austria 602 
 
 Italy 292 
 
 Spain 188 
 
 Portugal 45 
 
 Holland 104 
 
 Belgium 120 
 
 Denmark 47 
 
 Sweden and Norway 104 
 
 Greece 23 
 
 Europe 5347 
 
 United States 1420 
 
 Taxation 
 Millions £. 
 
 Katio of 
 
 Taxes 
 per Cent. 
 
 124 
 
 10 
 
 145 
 
 15 
 
 104 
 
 12 
 
 85 
 
 11 
 
 74 
 
 12 
 
 74 
 
 25 
 
 41 
 
 21 
 
 8 
 
 18 
 
 10 
 
 10 
 
 14 
 
 11 
 
 4 
 
 9 
 
 10 
 
 10 
 
 3 
 
 13 
 
 696 
 
 13 
 
 160 
 
 11 
 
 The Taxation includes all Taxes, Rates and Revenues, 
 National and Local.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 ME. S. SMITH, M.P. ON LAND NATIONALISATION. 
 
 To the Editor of the Daily Post. 
 
 SlE, 
 
 I trust you will grant me a little of your space to make 
 a few observations on the lecture by Mr. S. Smith, M.P. so 
 fully reported in your paper of Tuesday, because it is right that 
 your readers should be informed that the bulk of the lecturer's 
 criticism does not apply to English land nationalisers, whose 
 contentions and proposals were passed over with the most 
 studious silence. Surely it is a very remarkable and suggestive 
 fact that a member of the British Parliament, lecturing in one 
 of our chief cities on the applicability of land nationalisation to 
 England, should yet not say one single word about the English 
 Land Nationalisation Society or the proposals it makes, but 
 should confine himself strictly to the proposals of an American 
 for land nationalisation in America. Before Mr. George's 
 remarkable book was noticed by a single English review, and 
 while it was still unknown to the vast majority of English 
 readers, an article on land nationalisation appeared in the 
 Contemporary Beview for November, 1880. This article led to 
 the foundation of a Land Nationalisation Society, and was 
 followed by the publication of a small volume on '* Land 
 NationaHsation : its Necessity and its Aims," in which the 
 large body of facts on which the society founds its proposals 
 are set forth. Only a few months back Professor Fawcett's 
 article on ** State Socialism and the Nationalisation of the 
 Land" was answered by myself in two successive issues of 
 Macmillan's Magazine. I mention these facts because they 
 raise the question of Mr. Smith's competence to treat the 
 subject at all. He appears to be completely ignorant that any 
 such book, articles or society exists, for he says, speaking of 
 the Trades Congress, " 1 much doubt if they or any of their 
 sympathisers in this country have clearly thought out the 
 subject, or perfected any plan for the acquisition of the soil 
 or its cultivation after it was acquired." Now, this is exactly 
 what we have done; and yet, in total ignorance of our pro-
 
 40 
 
 posals, our facts and our arguments — for "I much doubt" 
 surely implies ignorance — Mr. Smith comes forward to instruct 
 the people of Liverpool. If he is not ignorant of the facts I 
 have stated, still less reason have his audience to be satisfied 
 that the chief Bnghsh proposals for land nationalisation should 
 be purposely ignored, v^hile they v?ere led to believe that those 
 of the American writer were universally adopted by English 
 nationalisers. 
 
 I will now briefly reply to a few of Mr. Smith's statements 
 from the standpoint of the Land Nationalisation Society. 
 
 1. Mr. Smith says that " human misery is deepest where the 
 land is not appropriated, and human happiness and civilisation 
 most advanced where the land is held by private owners." 
 This assertion I directly contradict. There is no such connection 
 as alleged, but rather the contrary, if we eliminate such factors 
 as ignorance, barbarism and bad government, and compare only 
 countries which are fairly comparable. I will give two examples 
 which sufficiently demonstrate the incorrectness of Mr. Smith's 
 generalisation. In a very remarkable article in La Nouvelle 
 Bevue (15th March, 1883,) on ** La Famille Chinoise," it is 
 stated that the land of China is really national, every one 
 holding it from the State, and paying a fixed rent to the State. 
 Holdings are small, the average being seven acres, while estates 
 of more than 200 acres are exceedingly rare. Every family also 
 holds a small portion of ** patrimonial land," which is invaluable 
 and inviolable. The result of this excellent system, says the 
 writer, is that every hamlet forms a complete community, where 
 the inhabitants find their school, their guildhall, their court of 
 justice. In these hamlets each home is independent, yet all 
 are bound together by the ties of relationship, and all assist each 
 other in the various troubles and labours of life. The writer 
 dwells at some length on the peace and contentment, the 
 simplicity, and the happiness of Chinese village life under this 
 beneficent land system, and this, be it remembered, in spite of 
 a very imperfect civilisation and a despotic Government. The 
 next case I will quote is that of Switzerland, where the old 
 system of communal land still largely prevails, and where its 
 influence is felt even in the districts where it has been abolished. 
 Here we have at once the freest, the best educated, and the 
 most really civilised people in the globe, if we measure civilisa- 
 tion, not by the height reached by the few, or the luxury and 
 refijiement of the rich, but by the general well-being, intelligence 
 and contentment of the great majority of the people. In 
 Switzerland landlords and landlordism, as we understand them, 
 are almost unknown; and in Switzerland pauperism, famine 
 and social degradation are almost ec[ually wanting. 
 
 2. Mr. Smith very justly says that none but a dreamer would 
 seriously impugn titles to land because Alaric or William the
 
 41 
 
 Conqueror acted unjustly; but he omits to notice the much 
 more important fact that possession of land, except so far as it 
 is personally occupied, never can arise otherwise than by force 
 or fraud. Take any plot of land you like in Great Britain, and 
 if you trace its history far enough you inevitably come to an 
 owner who obtained it by force or fraud. There is no other 
 way in which land can be obtained, except in the case of a 
 piece of land cultivated by its owner in unbroken continuity 
 from the time it was first enclosed; and almost the only land 
 thus held in England is by some of the squatters on our 
 commons and wastes. There is no other form of property 
 whatever which inevitably has its origin in wrongdoing, and 
 this alone goes far to prove that such property cannot be good 
 for the community. 
 
 3. In reply to the argument that land should not be private 
 property because it is limited in quantity, is essential to human 
 existence, and is not producible by human labour, Mr. Smith 
 asserts that " the productiveness of the soil is mainly the result 
 of ages of careful cultivation." This is simply not true, since 
 the productiveness mainly depends on the physical characters 
 of the soil and subsoil; but even were it true, it would prove 
 that the land belonged to the successive cultivators, not to the 
 landlords, who, as a rule, never cultivate: that is, the land 
 should belong to the whole people whose ancestors from time 
 immemorial have given it its "main value." 
 
 4. Another gross misstatement is, that ''most other kinds of 
 property" as well as land increases in value with increase of 
 population and wealth. The very reverse is the case. Broadly 
 speaking, all property except land is destructible, and more or 
 less rapidly deteriorates in value ; the few apparent exceptions, 
 as old pictures and books, and our public funds, do so because 
 they are in the nature of monopolies. The funds, too, are not 
 property, but debt, and they rise in value merely because the 
 payment of interest on no other debt is guaranteed by the State. 
 "House property," Mr. Smith, with a strange confusion of 
 ideas, declares to increase in value ! But surely he knows that 
 it is the land that increases, while the house upon it steadily 
 deteriorates in value, and has to be kept up by an ever-increasing 
 outlay in repairs. 
 
 5. In answer to Mr. George's proof that landlordism keeps 
 down wages to the minimum necessary to sustain life, Mr. 
 Smith adduces the oft-exploded fallacy of the rise of wages in 
 most trades ; but he ignores the facts that house rents and the 
 prices of meat, butter, eggs and milk have risen in a far greater 
 ratio, and that labourers, on the average, have to work as hard 
 and have as much difficulty in earning a bare subsistence as 
 ever they had, while they have been creating an enormous 
 increase of wealth and luxury for all the classes above them,
 
 42 
 
 For the proof of this fact, and of the probable increase of 
 pauperism and misery — notwithstanding official statistics — I 
 must refer your readers to my article in Macmillan's Magazine. 
 
 6. If Mr. Smith had examined our English proposals for land 
 nationalisation, and not those of an American, he would have 
 seen that we do not consider the transference of the rents of 
 land to the State to be the only or even the most important 
 benefit to be obtained. The most vital point is that all English 
 people who wish it shall have the use on equal terms of some 
 portion of English land, and that the fruits of every hour's 
 labour upon the land shall belong to the labourer. In order 
 that labourers may not be forced to compete for any wages that 
 will keep them and their families from starving, or from being 
 turned homeless from the cottage they occupy at a weekly rent, 
 we would provide that every man shall have the opportunity of 
 acquiring a plot of land direct from the State, on which he may 
 live, and from which he can never be ejected so long as he pays 
 the rent of the land at its fair value. Every village and country 
 town would then grow, in all the natural development of rural 
 life; our country would be soon dotted over with groups of 
 cottages, gardens and small farms; such rural produce as milk, 
 butter, eggs, cheese, poultry and bacon would be produced and 
 consumed on the spot, instead of being imported from a score 
 of foreign countries, while our labourers are crowded into the 
 slums of great cities simply and solely because landlords will 
 not let them live in the country. Millions of acres, now neglected 
 and almost worthless pasture, could and would be cultivated 
 like a garden, only allow the labourer to have it on the same 
 terms as the farmer, with absolute security of tenure, and every 
 one of these cultivators would not only help to diminish the 
 intensity of the struggle for existence in towns, but would spend 
 their gains almost wholly on home manufactures, and thus 
 create a demand for labour in all the industries of the country. 
 
 7. Mr. Smith then adduces Professor Fawcett's argument 
 against the possibility of the State acquiring the land by 
 purchase ; but he knows nothing of our proposal to allow the 
 existing landlords and their living heirs to continue to enjoy 
 their present net incomes, while at once taking the land for the 
 use of the people ; and declaring that no unborn person shall 
 inherit any portion of the national land. This disposes of the 
 terrific picture he draws of widows and orphans beggared by 
 confiscation. Such has been the result of the Irish land 
 legislation, but by our scheme no living person would suffer. 
 
 8. Finally, Mr. Smith admits that perhaps the State ought 
 to aid labourers to buy their cottages and gardens, which he 
 says would be an ** immense boon." He declares that Highland 
 landlords should not be allowed to shut out tourists; that 
 village commons should not be enclosed; that the rights of
 
 43 
 
 landlords "should not be allowed to override the necessities of 
 life for the toiling masses of the country;" that the State 
 "shall give a fair chance to every one, and free play to all the 
 powers and capacities of its citizens ;" and other such suggestions. 
 But every one of these things would be done once and for all by 
 our system of land nationalisation, without costing the nation — 
 that is, the taxpayers — one penny; while all of them are so 
 completely opposed to "the rights of property," as they are 
 now interpreted, that so long as those rights exist each detail 
 of reform will be fought against by the whole power of the 
 landlords. In the meantime all the evils of a pauperised 
 community, depopulated villages, and "horrible cities" must 
 go on and increase, notwithstanding our frantic efforts to 
 ameliorate the outward symptoms, so long as the fundamental 
 cause — ^private property in land — remains. I would ask your 
 readers to ponder on the facts stated by the chairman. Sir 
 James A. Picton, and then say whether a system which permits 
 such things can be longer permitted to exist. Our public writers 
 are never tired of assuring us that "property has its duties as 
 well as its rights," but those duties are neither defined nor 
 enforced either by equity or by public opinion, as shown by the 
 continuous confiscation of tenants' property by hundreds of 
 Irish landlords, and the wholesale misery and death caused by 
 evictions in Ireland and the Highlands, without a single example 
 of the prime cause of such horrors — the landlord-^even suffering 
 in reputation or social position. In the present day in Great 
 Britain the great landlords have, as a matter of fact, no duties, 
 while their power for evil is practically unlimited. I appeal to 
 the records of Ireland and the Highlands to bear out this 
 assertion. Such power is inconsistent with freedom and national 
 well-being, and as it is inherent in the system of landlordism, 
 that system must be abolished. 
 
 Yours, &c. 
 
 ALFEED R. WALLACE. 
 GoDALMiNG, 29th Nov. 1883. 
 
 MK. S. SMITH, M.P. AND MK. WALLACE. 
 
 Sir, 
 
 To the Editor of the Daily Post. 
 
 I beg leave to offer a few observations in reply to 
 Mr. Alfred Wallace's criticism of my lecture that appeared in 
 your issue of Tuesday. 
 
 Mr. Wallace blames me for confining my remarks to Mr. 
 George's scheme of nationalisation and ignoring his plan, I
 
 44 
 
 admit that I selected Mr. George as the chief exponent of this 
 school of thought. I have found his views widely disseminated 
 in all sections of society, but I have not yet met any supporter 
 of Mr. Wallace's scheme. I plead guilty to not having read 
 Mr. Wallace's writings on the subject; but now, thanks to his 
 letter, I fairly understand his opinions, and they appear to me 
 to be a somewhat pale reflection of those of Mr. George. Most 
 of what I said in reply to the one is also applicable to the other, 
 with some modifications which any intelligent reader can supply. 
 The principle of both writers is the same — viz. that private 
 property in land is a fraud on the community. This I wholly 
 deny, and the common-sense of mankind for centuries has 
 ratified my view. 
 
 Mr. Wallace's proposal to confiscate private property after 
 two lives is milder than Mr. George's, but is the same in 
 principle. It is as if two competing schemes for repudiating 
 the national debt were put before the public — one to commence 
 at once, the other after twenty years. It would be found, I 
 think, that all the dishonest section of the community would 
 vote for immediate repudiation, and so, if the property of the 
 landowners is to be taken from them without compensation, it 
 would be found that the most thorough-going scheme of con- 
 fiscation will be most popular with those who covet their 
 neighbours' property. 
 
 All Continental experience supports this view. The Com- 
 munists there are strictly logical. They do not distinguish 
 between the temporary and permanent possession of land. 
 They do not even distinguish between land and other property. 
 They hold that all property is stolen from the community, and 
 they would empty Mr. Wallace's pocket as remorselessly as he 
 would empty the pockets of the British landlords. I say empty 
 their pockets, because the selling value of their property would 
 be nil from the day his measure passed. And what would 
 become of the load of mortgages and incumbrances of all sorts 
 which most estates have to carry? Would the nation pay 
 these back after having stolen the property on which they were 
 based, and which English law has for centuries treated as the 
 safest form of security? 
 
 I also wonder how long a nation which had perpetrated such 
 a fraud would consent to pay sixty millions a year to pension 
 off landlords, whom Mr. George's and Mr. Wallace's followers 
 would never tire of denouncing as idle drones. I think when 
 that time came Mr. Wallace would find that the ''Mountain" 
 would swallow up the "Girondists," as happened in the French 
 Revolution, and perhaps Mr. Wallace would go to the guillotine 
 in his vain attempt to stop the Robespieres of the future ! 
 Depend upon it a nation can never deflect from the path of 
 honesty without paying a heavy penalty; the temptation is
 
 45 
 
 often very great to sacrifice principle for temporary relief. Such 
 a temptation the United States had to repudiate their debt at 
 the close of the civil war, but they bravely chose the nobler 
 path, and who can doubt that the whole nation was strengthened 
 by this example of good faith. Our own country nobly stood 
 up to a far more oppressive debt at the close of the Napoleonic 
 war, and has, in consequence, gained the front place in the 
 world for national integrity. The chief part of the power of 
 England at this day rests upon the splendid credit she enjoys, 
 and the knowledge of the whole world that she can, and will, 
 fulfil her engagements to the letter. Shatter that, and you 
 break her right arm; any scheme of domestic confiscation 
 would at once react on the national credit and paralyse it. 
 Who would lend money to a State that one day robbed the 
 owners of the soil, and might next day rob the national creditor? 
 Already papers are being sown broadcast through the country, 
 which recommend in the same breath the confiscation of the 
 land and the repudiation of the debt. Eobbery is very catching, 
 and the area of pillage is sure to grow larger. 
 
 Mr. Wallace objects to my statement that the area of 
 civilisation coincides with the area of private ownership of 
 land. He quotes China and Switzerland as cases to the con- 
 trary. As to China, it is the first time I have found that 
 country cited as a model for England to follow. I have always 
 understood that there is not in all the world a more stagnant 
 civilisation than that of the Celestial Empire ; in no country is 
 the struggle for life more terrible ; in no country is there such 
 shocking overcrowding, such a vast number of deaths through 
 suicide, infanticide and starvation. The vast mass of the 
 people can just keep themselves alive by unremitting toil, and 
 I make bold to assert that the average British artisan eajrns 
 ten times the wages of a Chinese labourer. India and China 
 are the two great countries where the State owns the land. I 
 have travelled for weeks alone in the interior of India with a 
 single black servant, have slept in the villages, sometimes on 
 heaps of straw, and can testify that the poverty of England 
 would be riches there. The usual rate of wages was then 
 threepence per day ; many of the natives went almost naked, 
 and over hundreds of miles I could not get a piece of bread fit 
 to eat ; during hundreds of miles' travel I did not see a house 
 that a British artisan would care to live in. Friends of mine 
 who have travelled in China tell me that the filth and nastinesa 
 of a Chinese village are indescribable, and if these two countries 
 are to be taken as an example of the blessings of State ownership 
 of land, I say commend me sooner to some desolate island, 
 where I can live like Eobinson Crusoe. 
 
 Then, as to Switzerland, Mr. Wallace says, " The old system 
 of communal land still largely prevails." I do not agree with
 
 46 
 
 him. I have travelled repeatedly through that country, and 
 inquired closely into the land tenure and habits of the people ; 
 the cultivated land is all, or nearly all, occupied by small 
 proprietors, who hold their rights quite as tenaciously as in 
 any part of the world ; the high mountain pastures are com- 
 munal property, for it is impossible to divide them, but each 
 person is rigidly restricted to the grazing of a fixed number of 
 cows, and the milk yielded by each cow is minutely credited to 
 the owner; it is, in fact, a system of limited ownership defined 
 as exactly as it is possible to do under the circumstances. 
 There are also common rights of cutting wood on the slopes 
 of the mountains. Switzerland in its land laws is almost a 
 copy of France ; in each of them private ownership of land is 
 most jealously guarded, and the proprietor may deal with it as 
 he chooses, either cultivate it himself, sell it, or lease it to 
 another, and there are many occupying tenants paying rent in 
 France, and still more in Belgium. 
 
 As to the general system of peasant proprietary, I have 
 studied it pretty closely for several years ; at one time I was 
 much enamoured of it, but fuller knowledge has somewhat 
 modified my views. It is a very hard life for small proprietors, 
 say those of five to ten acres. The French and Swiss peasants 
 stint themselves almost of the necessaries of life; the women 
 work out in the fields almost as much as the men. I have 
 repeatedly watched the Swiss women, and even the little 
 children, toihng from early morn till late at night; their hands 
 and faces get almost black long before they are middle aged, 
 and all female beauty disappears ; most of their little properties 
 are burdened with mortgages, and the great struggle of their 
 lives is to prevent sub-division. For this purpose they resort 
 to every expedient to keep down population ; in some of the 
 Swiss cantons marriages are forbidden till the applicants can 
 show they have property enough to support a family, and all 
 through France means are taken to hinder the growth of 
 population which cannot be even hinted at here. The population 
 in the rural districts of France has long been stationary, and is 
 now declining; and there is a drift towards the large cities there 
 as well as in this country. All the phenomena of high rents, 
 overcrowding, and extreme misery exist in Paris the same as in 
 London, and there is tenfold more bitterness and demoralisation. 
 
 So far as wishes are concerned, I myself would delight to see 
 a growth of peasant proprietors in this country, but its success 
 would involve a great change in the habits of our rural labourers. 
 I venture to state that if we were to present the first thousand* 
 labourers we met each with ten acres of land not one quarter of 
 them would retain their holdings at the end of ten years. They 
 would mostly have large families, and find the strain of life very 
 great on those small holdings, where much of the work must be
 
 47 
 
 done with hand labour; they would want to help on their 
 children in hfe, and the temptation to sell their land for £500 
 (say £50 per acre) would be irresistible ; they would drift into 
 town and start some small business there, or, more likely, 
 emigrate to countries where £500 would buy a large farm, and 
 enable them to make three or four times as much as they could 
 do in England. The little peasant properties would be gradually 
 swallowed in some large estate by the same law which has 
 nearly extinguished the small English yeomen. What has 
 caused the disappearance of the numerous freeholders of Cumber- 
 land and Westmoreland? Just the desire to sell their little 
 properties that they might use their capital more advantageously. 
 I exceedingly regret this change, but do not see how it is to be 
 hindered. Besides the climate of these isles is not nearly so 
 favourable to peasant cultivation as that of France ; there they 
 have sunshine most of the year, and long, hot summers, and 
 much of their wealth is derived from vine cultivation, which 
 only needs hand labour, in which all the family can co-operate. 
 Our winters are long and wet, the soil stiff and deep, and needs 
 to be torn up by steam ploughs to yield its full increase. Our 
 autumns are often wet, and reaping machines are needed to 
 quickly cut down the harvest. The small cultivator cannot 
 compete with the large farmer, except in favourable circum- 
 stances, just as the hand-loom weaver cannot compete with the 
 modern factory. If we fight against the forces of nature, we 
 are doomed to failure ; and, as I have said already, I do not see 
 that the State can do much more than let everyone use their 
 labour and capital to the best advantage. The reforms I have 
 recommended would give every reasonable facility to enable 
 small holders to acquire land if they wished to do so; more than 
 this the State cannot and ought not to do ; it might just as well 
 legislate that large factories should not be established because 
 they interfered with the spinning-wheel and handloom. I believe 
 the attempt to force prematurely a system of peasant proprietor- 
 ship upon this country would be as signal a failure as the 
 attempt to restore the domestic industries of last century, 
 before steam machinery was invented. 
 
 As to Mr. Wallace's denial of my statement that most 
 other kinds of property rise in value as well as land when a 
 country is flourishing, I refer to any Stock Exchange list of 
 securities, and point to the enormous difference in their value 
 between times of national prosperity and times of depression. 
 
 Most of the other points in Mr. Wallace's letter I have 
 already dealt with, and must apologise for the length of this 
 communication. 
 
 Yours, &c. 
 
 SAMUEL SMITH. 
 
 4, Chapel-street, Liverpool, 6th Dec. 1883.
 
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