28 OUR ENGLISH LAND MUDDLE. 



to-day of less than five million people, is in 

 the position that recently penal taxation has 

 been imposed " to burst up the big estates ; " 

 that there is in some of the States an unsatisfied 

 local demand for land for farming ; and that 

 some States refuse to encourage immigration, 

 because " there is no land available for settlers." 

 Throughout those sixty years the system of 

 government has been democratic ; of late it has 

 been based upon universal adult suffrage, with 

 no plural voting. Always there has been a 

 steady cry of " the land for the people." Never 

 has there been a hereditary territorial aristocracy. 

 Yet to-day the position is so far from being 

 accounted satisfactory that there is in every 

 State a land question, which seems to need an 

 almost annual Land Act ; and the central 

 Commonwealth Government has interfered over 

 the heads of the States to open up further " the 

 land for the people " by penal taxation rising 

 to the rate of 7d. in the £ on the capital value 

 in case of estates over £80,000 in value held by 

 absentees. 



It will be instructive to follow the chief stages 

 of this progress of a land system from a clean 



