XVII LAND NATIONALIZATION— WHY ? AND HOW ? 313 



and local over-population if the people are forbidden the 

 free use of their native land, are confined to the least 

 productive districts and to insufficient holdings, and if 

 all the surplus produce above a bare supply of potatoes 

 in average years is exported to pay rent ! That more 

 starving Irishmen should be expatriated while millions 

 of acres which they once tilled are given up to cattle 

 and sheep, is the condemnation of landlord government. 

 That the chronic famine which has prevailed in Ireland 

 for a century should still devastate it, is the condemna- 

 tion of landlordism itself. 



Landlordism in Scotland. 



Let us now turn to another country, where the landlord 

 power has had complete sway for a century, unfettered 

 by any of the difficulties which are often alleged as the 

 reason for its terrible failure in Ireland. In the Highlands 

 of Scotland there has been no religious difficulty, and 

 there has been no antipathy of race ; the people have 

 not depended wholly upon potatoes, and the country 

 has certainly never been over-populated. Neither has 

 there been any rebellion against authority ; but the uni- 

 versal testimony of all who know them best is, that in 

 the whole British dominions there exists no more intelli- 

 gent, religious, peaceable and industrious people than the 

 Highland peasantry. Yet here too, under the most 

 favourable conditions, we find perennial destitution and 

 famine, and a series of Royal Commissions seeking out that 

 which is plain as the sun at noonday — the causes of want 

 and misery among the tenantry of an enormously wealthy, 

 and in their own territories almost omnipotent, body of 

 landlords. The causes are, simply, that the native in- 

 habitants have been driven from the inland valleys to 

 the sea-coast to make room for sheep and deer. The 

 terrible history of the Highland clearances is too long to 

 go into in this place. Suffice it to state that more than 

 two millions of acres once inhabited by human beings are 

 now devoted to deer only, from which the noble Highland 

 chieftains or their successors get much sport or large 

 rentals. Seventy men at this day own half Scotland, and 



