NATIONALISATION OF THE LAND. 101 



itself to the general sense of the community as equitable. 

 In an interesting little book on Land Nationalisation, the 

 joint production of the Chairman of the Railway National- 

 isation Society and a former Organiser of the Land National- 

 isation Society, I find a frank statement of the issue. They 

 refer to the " advanced section numerically unimportant," 

 who are absolutely opposed to giving any compensation 

 at all on the ground that " the original proprietors of the 

 land simply stole it." It would be interesting, by the way, 

 to know who, in the view of the " advanced section," the 

 original proprietors of the land of England were. It is a 

 problem which, I believe, has not yet been conclusively 

 settled by ethnographical authorities. The question is, 

 however, immaterial, because there is no doubt that who- 

 ever the original proprietors were they " stole " the land, 

 even if their predecessors upon it were only the bison and 

 the wolf. But the authors of the work I have mentioned, 

 while sympathising with the " advanced section," and 

 recognising that " they can establish quite a good case 

 so good a case that if all the land of the country were in the 

 ownership of a few great families, we should agree that the 

 simplest form of dealing with the matter would be for the 

 community to proclaim the land of the country national 

 property as from a given date," have to admit that, " un- 

 fortunately," it is not so simple a matter as that. Though 

 there are still " some very large landowners," the land, 

 speaking generally, has become so parcelled out and most 

 of it has changed hands so frequently within the last few 

 generations that " to take it over without compensation 

 to the present owners would bring about a complete break- 

 down of the whole social fabric." They proceed to amplify 

 this statement very forcibly. "Quite apart from the 

 hundreds of thousands of small owners who might easily 

 be ruined by such a course, we have the fact that hundreds 

 of millions of pounds of the funds of Insurance Companies 

 and other institutions, as well as of private persons, are 

 invested in mortgages on landed properties, and if the land, 

 the security for such advances, were to be taken without 

 compensation, these institutions would immediately become 



