LANDLOEDS A NATURAL GROWTH 147 



present condition is the result of gradual well-ascertained 

 causes. But the record of the growth of large estates is 

 not so free from the taint of oppression that landlords can 

 appeal with entire confidence to their moral title-deeds. 

 The paucity of their numbers, and the exceptional nature 

 of their position and property, should add no element of 

 insecurity to their possessions ; yet they warn landlords to 

 think less of their rights than their duties ; they render it 

 essential that no individual should fall below the hiarhest 

 standard of the class. It is inconceivable that any serious 

 attack upon legal rights of property should be sanctioned 

 by the law-abiding English nation. No more fatal blow 

 could be struck at that national credit upon which our 

 very existence depends. There is nothing in the examples 

 of foreign legislation, there is still less in the history of 

 the growth of English landed property, to justify the State 

 in violently forcing back or putting forward the clock of 

 social progress, in defying the natural laws of agricultural 

 development, in arbitrarily replacing the peasantry of the 

 country in a position which the majority abandoned nearly 

 four centuries ago, and for the surrender of which com- 

 pensation was, in most cases, oflered and accepted. Even 

 if State interference were in theory so justified, practical 

 experience does not invariably encourage a repetition of 

 the experiment. Foreign precedents cannot be accepted 

 when favourable and rejected when adverse. In Greece 

 the rent to the State was from the first repudiated ; in 

 Belgium the tenants always regarded themselves a,s State 

 pensioners. Nor is the failure confined to foreign coun- 

 tries. At Snigs End and Minster Lovell the experiment 

 was tried after the Chartist movement. It cannot be said 

 to have succeeded. If it is to be repeated on a large scale, 

 we may once more witness the spectacle of tillers of the 



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