82 LAND REFORM 



population can be learned only from the literature, 

 chronicles, and other utterances of the time ; while the 

 disastrous effects which the policy itself has had on 

 the social life of England are to be seen in the state 

 of our towns and rural districts to-day. The final 

 result of the policy is that the soil of this country and 

 all beneath it are owned by a handful of men. "It 

 may seem strange that in England, the land where 

 above all others the personal and political rights of the 

 simplest freeman have been saved whole through all 

 changes of princes and dynasties, the law should find 

 so little room for public and unstinted rights of using 

 the very elements. Even the air is not free, for the 

 maxim is that the owner of the soil is owner up to the 

 height above and down to the depth beneath. I con- 

 ceive it is indisputable that to pass over land in a 

 balloon, at whatsoever height, without the owner's or 

 occupier's licence, is technically a trespass." ^ 



^ " The Land Laws " (Sir Fredk. Pollock). The author states that this 

 doctrine does not lead to any "grave inconvenience." It may not do so 

 in the case of a balloon, but if the discoveries of science should make 

 aerial transit practicable — as some say they will — then owners could 

 legally charge a toll for every aerial machine passing over their land. It 

 is, however, fortunate that the element of air is not visible and fixed, and 

 is not subject to manage, like the element of land Were it so, it is 

 probable that we should now be paying sums for the right of breathing 

 it to certain air-lords who in times past had succeeded in getting it into 

 their hands. 



