CHAPTER XVI 



HOW TO NATIONALIZE THE LAND: A RADICAL SOLUTION 

 OF THE IRISH LAND PROBLEM ^ 



' ' Land is not and cannot be property in the sense that 

 movable things are property. Every human being born 

 into this planet must live upon the land if he lives at all. 

 The land in any country is really the property of the 

 nation that occupies it ; and the tenure of it by individuals 

 is ordered differently in different places, according to the 

 habits of the people and the general convenience. 

 ' "To treat land, with the present privileges attached to 

 the possession of it, as an article of sale, to be passed 

 from hand to hand in the market like other commodities, 

 is an arrangement not likely to be permanent either 

 in Ireland or elsewhere." — J, A. Froude, in the Nineteenth 

 Century, September 1880, pp. 362, 369. 



The Irish Land League proposed that the Government 

 should buy out the Irish landlords (at an estimated cost 

 of two hundred and seventy millions), and convert the 

 tenants into a peasant proprietary who were to redeem 

 their holdings by payments extending over thirty-five 

 years. That a scheme so impracticable as this — and even 

 if practicable so unsound and worthless — should be put 

 forth by a body of educated men, who had, presumably, 



^ This article appeared in the Contemporary Review, November 1880, 

 and it is reprinted here because the principle of separating the inherent 

 value of the land from the improvements, as a means of obviating the 

 need for any "management" by the State or Municipality, was I believe 

 first enunciated in it, and led in the following year to the formation 

 of the Land Nationalisation Society, which, with its offshoot, the Land 

 Restoration League, have done much to spread correct views as to the 

 fundamental importance of its proposed solution of the Land question. 

 The article has therefore, in some degree, an historical value. 



