The Land fro7n the Citizens Standpoint. 2)97 



fellows from the participation in its products. We can even 

 go further, and imagine an eventuality when private pro- 

 perty — yes, and. private liberty also — cease to exist, for in the 

 last resort of a nation in agony its executive may requisi- 

 tion both one and the other. 



But to the narrow reasoning of some economists at the 

 period now under discussion, any excuse, however trivial, for 

 State interference with landed property was good enough. 

 Unnecessary expenditure about the seignorial home, or un- 

 necessary display about the seignorial person, constituted, they 

 argued, a distinct theft from the public purse. At a time 

 when the production of grain was beginning to be unequal 

 to the national consumption of it, the parks and chases of the 

 nobility were regarded as some of that unremunerative capital 

 of which the law of primogeniture served to deprive the public.^ 

 Adam Smith shared this prejudice, and, as we have shown 

 in an earlier chapter, grudged the monies expended on the 

 squire's grounds, equipage, and dress. Then, too, Passy re- 

 lates that there exists in Hungary a domain which the princes 

 of the house of Esterhazy have devoted to the pleasures of the 

 chase. A lake of great extent preserves the waterfowl, and 

 thick forests furnish shelter for deer and wild boars, and a vast 

 plain left uncultivated is set apart for pheasants and par- 

 tridges. Ah ! were I the owner of that royal domain, said the 

 Prince of Ligne, soon would there rise up on the banks of 

 the lake a handsome village — the plain would soon be covered 

 with farms and hamlets, and with what delight would I not 

 listen to the joyous hum of the numerous inhabitants whom 

 the place would nourish ? " ^ 



At least, however, it may be said that the world would be 

 a very poor one were all artistic tendencies thus made sub- 

 servient to economical theory. Our country, in the opinion of 

 many, is already too like a huge overgrown workshop, and ex- 

 istence amidst all our factory chimneys and mining operations 

 would have become by now unbearable without those beautiful 

 oases composed of gardens, pools, shrubberies and woodlands, 



* Faille's Answer to Burke. 



' On Aristocracy. By H. Passy. Vol. i. p. 8. Paris, 1826. 



