Legislative Action 145 



endeavours to modify the harmful conflict of interests thus set up. 

 It leaves to the landlord his property in the land, but it obliges him, 

 where the need arises, to let it in accordance with the modern 

 economic pressure for small holdings. The English landlord may in 

 future still value his land for the sake of the sport it provides, the 

 social consideration it ensures him, or the political opportunities it 

 offers him, and may pay as high a price as he pleases for these 

 qualities of land regarded as a luxury. But its value for these 

 purposes can no longer prevent the increase of small holdings, for if 

 the landlord refuses to meet an existing demand for them, the State 

 will force him to use his land as is most desirable from the economic 

 and socio-political points of view. If in this way a divided owner- 

 ship of land arises in certain cases, it is because the increasing 

 tendency to regard the land in the first place as a luxury and only in 

 the second place as an instrument of production has made such a 

 divided exercise of the rights of property necessary. 



Such considerations are however rather of theoretical than of 

 practical importance. For the compulsory clauses only come into 

 operation where no voluntary agreement can be arrived at ; that is to 

 say, in case of necessity. This is a point which has often been over- 

 looked by the opponents of the measure. The Quarterly Review, for 

 instance, writes : " So far as owners of land and other property are 

 concerned, almost any bold measure of socialism would be less 

 harassing and oppressive than the annual crop of semi-socialistic 

 measures which has been the characteristic feature of recent legisla- 

 tion, particularly that of the present government 1 ." And the writer 

 concludes his annihilating criticism of the new legislation by suggest- 

 ing that the only really effective method, if any change is to be 

 brought about at all, is to buy out the landowners of the country 

 according to the receipt of Henry George. He thus overlooks the 

 fundamental difference between the existing legislation and any such 

 sweeping measure ; the difference which makes the Act of 1907 one 

 of reform and not of revolution. The Act does not undertake any 

 general transformation of the conditions of landownership. In the 

 first place, it only interferes where the creation of small holdings is 

 economically justified ; and in the second place it only interferes 

 where the conditions of landownership prevent such a development 

 on non-economic grounds. In contradistinction to the plans of 

 communistic land reformers it refuses to limit in general the rights 

 of property in land ; it will only limit them just at the point where 



1 Quarterly Review, 1907, p. 222 n. 

 L. 10 



