XVII LAND NATIONALIZATION— WHY ? AND HOW? 317 



labourer — a condition afterwards changed if anything for 

 the worse, since he had become more than ever divorced 

 from the soil and was tending to a nomadic life — and who 

 has depicted so forcibly the land-hunger of the rich, should 

 yet, in his latest teaching, have no other remedy to 

 propose for the evils due to unrestricted private property 

 in the first essential of human existence, the soil, on 

 and by which alone men can live, than to make that 

 property still more easily acquired by the wealthy and 

 still more absolute, by means of complete free trade 

 in land ! 



It has repeatedly been said, and will no doubt be said 

 again, that many of the admitted evils here pointed out 

 are not due to our system of landlordism, but to various 

 other causes, such as improvidence, over-population, and 

 idleness. To this I reply, that even where these causes 

 do exist they are but secondary causes, and are themselves 

 due to the landlord system. Improvidence is the 

 inevitable result of insecurity for the produce of a man's 

 labour ; over-population is always local, and is produced 

 by men being forcibly crowded together and not allowed 

 freely to occupy and cultivate the soil ; while idleness is 

 the last accusation that should be made against any of 

 the inhabitants of these islands, whose fault rather is a 

 too great eagerness for work whenever they can work for 

 fair wages or with full security that they will reap the 

 produce of their labour. I reply, further, that the close 

 correspondence between the theoretical and the actual 

 results, between deduction and induction, must not be 

 ignored. An irresistible logic assures us that the 

 possession of the soil by a few must make those who have 

 to live by cultivating the soil virtual slaves ; that it must 

 keep down wages and enable the landlords to absorb all 

 the surplus wealth produced by the labourer beyond what 

 is necessary for a bare subsistence ; while it indisputably 

 prevents all who are not landowners from any use or 

 enjoyment of their native soil except at the landowner's 

 pleasure — a fact everywhere visible in the unnatural mode 

 of growth of our towns and villages, where, with ample 

 land suitable for pleasant and healthy homes all round 



