XXIV ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL JUSTICE . 451 



they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth," yet 

 this is what they are constantly striving for, not by 

 purchase only, but by robbery. Again they are told, 

 " The land shall not be sold for ever, for the land is 

 Mine ; " and at every fiftieth year all land was to return to 

 the family that had sold it, so that no one could keep land 

 beyond the year of jubilee; and the reason was that no 

 man or family should remain permanently impoverished. 



Both in law and morality the receiver of stolen goods is 

 as bad as the thief; and even if he has purchased a stolen 

 article unknowingly, an honourable man will, when he 

 discovers the fact, restore it to the rightful owner. Now, 

 our great hereditary landlords know very well that they 

 are the legal possessors of much stolen property, and, 

 moreover, property which their religion forbids them to 

 hold in great quantities. Yet we have never heard of a 

 single landlord making restitution to the robbed nation. 

 On the contrary, they take every opportunity of adding to 

 their vast possessions, not only by purchase, but by that 

 meanest form of robbery — the enclosing of every scrap of 

 roadside grass they can lay their hands on, so that the 

 wayfarer or the tourist may have nothing but dust or 

 gravel to walk upon, and the last bit of food for the 

 cottager's donkey or goose is taken away from him. 



This all-embracing system of land-robbery, for which 

 nothing is too great and nothing too little ; which has 

 absorbed meadow and forest, moor and mountain ; which 

 has secured most of our rivers and lakes, and the fish 

 which inhabit them ; which often claims the very seashore 

 and rocky coast-line of our island home, making the 

 peasant pay for his seaweed- manure and the fisherman 

 for his bait of shellfish ; which has desolated whole 

 counties to replace men by sheep or cattle, and has 

 destroyed fields and cottages to make a wilderness for 

 deer; which has stolen the commons and filched the 

 roadside wastes ; which has driven the labouring poor 

 into the cities, and has thus been the primary and chief 

 cause of the lifelong misery, disease, and early death of 

 thousands who might have lived lives of honest toil 

 and comparative comfort had they been permitted free 



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