HOW TO NATIONALIZE THE LAND 26'; 



and shopkeepers of the towns. What then becomes of the 

 " five millions " who would cry out against the " half 

 million " monopolizing the land ? Would the wives and 

 the children of the new peasant proprietors cry out 

 against their husbands and fathers ? Would the manu- 

 facturers of Belfast or the shopkeejDers of Dublin suddenly 

 want to turn farmers, merely because the same people 

 who now cultivate the land as tenants then cultivate it as 

 owners, or prospective owners, having paid its full value ? 

 The whole objection thus vanishes, as a mere " Irish bull," 

 w^hich the English press adopted and circulated as if it 

 had been sound logic and good political argument ! 



Some other objections stated by Mr. Daunt are, 

 however, more valid. The whole rental of the land 

 during the thirty-five years would necessarily^ go to the 

 London Treasury, and as it would be the repayment of a 

 loan, distress and eviction must follow non-payment of 

 rent, just as it does now. More important, however, is 

 the consideration that so soon as the new proprietors had 

 acquired the fee simple of the land (or even before), the 

 buying of land by the more wealthy, and the selling of it 

 by the poorer, will, inevitably, begin again. The land 

 will be mortgaged by the poor or improvident, and the 

 wealthy will again accumulate large estates. Then, 

 absentee landlords and discontented tenants, rack-rents, 

 agents, middlemen, evictions and agrarian outrages will 

 all arise as before, till some future Government will again 

 be asked to advance money to buy out the new landlords, 

 and transfer the land to those who Avill at that time be 

 the tenants. It is evident then that no such proposal as 

 that of the Land League would be more than a temporary 

 palliative applied at an enormous cost, and that we must 

 seek in a different direction if we would effect a radical 

 cure. That direction, is, I believe, indicated by the 

 remarks of Mr. Froude placed at the head of this article, 

 and which fiiirly represent the views of many advanced 

 thinkers. Hitherto, no practical mode of carrying such 

 ideas into effect has been hit upon, and they have 

 accordingly been relegated to the limbo of " unpractical 

 politics." But this defect is not inherent in the views 



