THE NEW ERA IN POLITICS 263 



England. The agricultural population is a tenant 

 population. The same thing happened to Ireland, 

 which unhappy coimtry lost one-half of its people 

 as a result of alien landlordism and the excessive 

 rentals which were exacted from the cotters by the 

 English landlords, who lived in London from the 

 rentals of their estates. Ireland has been greatly 

 improved b}^ the legislation of the last generation, 

 under which a large part of the land has been ac- 

 quired by the state and divided into small holdings, 

 which are sold to the tenants on easy terms. But 

 England has refused to extend the Irish land acts 

 to England, Scotland, and Wales, while the system 

 of taxation, by which the local taxes are borne by 

 the tenant, while the land itself is practically free, 

 has placed such a premium on idle land holding 

 that the great-estate-owners find it to their profit 

 to hold land out of use or to cultivate it carelessly 

 or use it for pleasure. 



As a result of the land and taxation laws four 

 persons out of five in the United Kingdom live in 

 cities. Only 20 per cent, of the population is on 

 the land. The population is driven to the towns, 

 where it competes with the labor already there, 

 keeping down wages, forcing up tenement rents and 

 gradually weakening the strength and fibre of the 

 people. Underlying the other explanations of the 

 condition of England is the decay of agriculture, 

 the system of landownership and the exclusion of the 



