LETTERS ON THE LAND QUESTION. 339 



lated them, the assimilation may eventually be denied. . . . There is reason to 

 suspect that, while private possession of things produced by labor will grow even 

 more definite and sacred than at present, the inhabited area, which can not be 

 produced by labor, will eventually be distinguished as something which may not 

 be privately possessed. . . . Possibly the communal proprietorship of land, par- 

 tially or wholly merged in the ownership of dominant men during evolution of 

 the militant type, will be resumed as the industrial type becomes fully evolved. 



After quoting these and similar passages from his revised 

 opinions, Mr. Spencer makes the following observations: "The 

 use of the words ' possible/ 'possibly/ and ' perhaps/ in the above 

 extracts shows that I have no positive opinion as to what may- 

 hereafter take place." But of this Mr. Spencer feels sure : Na- 

 tionalize the land on righteous principles of compensation, and 

 the interest on the purchase-money would exceed the sum now 

 paid in rent. Moreover, it is a " wild belief " that the land would 

 be better managed i. e., more profitably managed by public 

 officials than by private owners. "With a humanity anything 

 like that we now know, the implied reorganization would be dis- 

 astrous." 



Well, we have only to do with the humanity that we now 

 know; and being what it is, surely Mr. Spencer should have 

 taken pains from the beginning to consider its manifold weak- 

 nesses and temptations. Yet still he repeats that the individual 

 ownership of land was established by force, the assertion that Mr. 

 Laidler and the Labor party of Newcastle stand upon. While, as 

 for his perhapses and possiblies, they are in fact expressions of 

 doubt as to whether the community will or will not resume own- 

 ership of the land, but they are not necessarily to be taken in that 

 sense, and any Mr. Laidler might be forgiven if he saw in them a 

 suggestion of the right thing to do, or a prophecy the fulfillment 

 of which it would not be wrong to precipitate. All the more 

 reasonably might he think so when he sees that in these same 

 revised conclusions Mr. Spencer likens the acquisition of property 

 in land by individuals to the old-time "ownership of man by 

 man." "The ownership of land was established by force"; it 

 originated in robbery ; at the root it is robbery still. That is the 

 point for Mr. Laidler ; and, writing for humanity as we know it, 

 and as the next generation is likely to know it, it is a pity that 

 Mr. Spencer did not guard at once and in the strongest way 

 against the probable use that humanity, as we know it, would 

 make of the assertion. The possible resumption of the land by 

 some totally different generation of humanity, one that we know 

 not of, should not have been committed to print as the righting 

 of a wrong, without the clearest warning that, till that generation 

 comes, land nationalization must be an exceeding great folly, 

 amounting to absolute disaster. For the good of humanity, that 



