HOW TO NATIONALIZE THE LAND 287 



perfect free- trade in land compatible with the liberty, the 

 progress,and the free development of the whole community. 

 There can be no conceivable use of the land for which it 

 would not be available under the new regime. The 

 absolute freedom of sale of tenant-right to intending 

 occupiers of land would provide for experimental cultiva- 

 tion in any direction. The capitalist who wished to 

 devote himself to farming on a large scale would first 

 purchase the tenant-right of some large farm, and gradu- 

 ally add to it the surrounding farms as they came into the 

 market, or as he could persuade their owners to sell them 

 by liberal offers. Farms would often be broken up, and 

 the tenant-right to single fields or small plots sold 

 separately whenever there was a demand for such lots, 

 and thus the industrious labourer or the retired tradesman 

 would be able to obtain jDortions suited to their respective 

 wants. Spade husbandry on small peasant properties, 

 and huge machine-cultivated farms like those of Western 

 America, would have an equal chance of trial ; each district 

 would gradually merge into that style of husbandry which 

 suited it best, and in no case would there be any hampering 

 restrictions to check its progress. This would be real 

 free-trade in land as opposed to its present monopoly b}- 

 the rich, and would lead to the freest and most perfect 

 development of the agricultural resources of the country. 



This system of cesses has eaten, like an incuraUe disease, into the 

 social organization of the country. An energetic Government might 

 have grappled with the question, and succeeded in abolishing a system 

 which, though forbidden by law, yet flourishes in undisturbed 

 luxuriance ; yet no one raises a hand on behalf of the ryots, no 



one speaks a word in their interest It seems almost as though 



they were doomed never to be emancipated from their present degrad- 

 ing life." 



The result is that the ryots exist always on the verge of starvation. 

 They were once, it must be remembered, direct holders of their land 

 under the Government. But Lord Cornwallis and the then Home 

 Government of India handed them over to a body of tax collectors (the 

 zemindars) as tenants, thinking that our English landlord system, 

 perfect in the eyes of a landlord Government, must be best for all 

 the world. The result has been, that, "under British rule, the soil 

 of India has either passed or is fast passing into the power of land 

 speculators and money-lendei s, while the ancient landowners have been 

 converted into half-starved, poverty-stricken serfs on the fields Avhicli 

 were once their own." 



