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CHAPTER XIII. 



LANDLORDS A NATURAL GROWTH. 



The case against nationalisation of land miglit be rested on 

 the impracticable nature of the object for which it is de- 

 manded. If the legislative introduction of a peasant pro- 

 prietary is condemned as impossible, the broad features of 

 the existing cultivation by landlords, tenant farmers, and 

 wage-earning labourers must remain unchanged. But 

 defenders of this system are challenged by the oft-repeated 

 statement that landlords in this country are a parasitic 

 growth. Although the State purchase, or nationalisation, 

 of land is chiefly demanded for the creation of peasant pro- 

 prietors, time will not be wasted by an attempt to prove 

 the futility of this statement, which is continually used as 

 a rhetorical point. 



In France the system of peasant owners and tenant 

 farmers exists side by side, and is the outcome of natural 

 causes and economic laws. France offers no parallel to 

 the commercial exigencies which in England during the 

 fifteenth and sixteenth centuries required the home pro- 

 duction of wool, and evicted crowds of small farmers from 

 the land to make room for the shepherd, his dog, and 

 his flock. So, again, the population of France remained 

 stationary, while that of England increased at the rate of 

 geometrical progression ; the one country, confronted by 



