XVI HOW TO NATIONALIZE THE LAND 291 



of wealth to the country which it is impossible to 

 estimate. 



Although sporting will necessarily be a far less import- 

 ant feature in country life than it is now, there is no 

 reason to think it would altogether cease. The wealthy 

 could devote as much land as they pleased to the 

 preservation of game for their own or their friends' 

 amusement, or sporting might take other forms more 

 suited to the altered state of the rural population, in 

 which both wealth and intelligence would be more 

 widely distributed than at present. Even if the present 

 land-system were to continue unaltered, we could hardly 

 anticipate that the growth in population and changed 

 habits and ideas of two centuries hence would leave the 

 customs of the country, as regards field sports, what they 

 are now; and it is therefore quite unnecessary to con- 

 jecture further what might happen to them under such 

 extremely changed conditions as are here anticipated. 



Although the legislature and the press may alike ignore 

 it, there is undoubtedly growing up among the more 

 intelligent of the working classes, as well as among a 

 large body of independent thinkers, a profound dissatis- 

 faction with the actual state of things as regards private 

 property in land. They see that its possession or 

 enjoyment by any but the wealthy is yearly becoming 

 more and more difficult, and that its accumulation in the 

 hands of a few owners is opposed in many ways to the 

 public welfare. They see wide areas of common lands 

 enclosed, to the pauperization of the needy labourer, and 

 the further enrichment of the wealthy landowner ; while 

 a system of obsolete laws framed by, or in the interests of, 

 the so-called " lords of the soil," are now being everywhere 

 strained against any free and adequate enjoyment of their 

 native land by the great mass of the people. They find 

 themselves often shut out from the downs and moors and 

 picturesque mountains, almost all of which are said to 

 have private owners who may, and often do, enclose them ; 

 while the very rivers and streams, which ought to be 

 as free for the enjoyment of all as the winds of heaven or 

 the light of the sun, '^v^ everywhere being monopolized 



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