142 OUR ENGLISH LAND MUDDLE. 



thought for popular rights in this ; but it is 

 not possible to think that any great practical 

 good would be done in these days if all the 

 common lands unjustly enclosed in the past 

 were restored to the people with full furze-cutting 

 rights. The type of enthusiast who thinks and 

 talks in that way has his mind unconsciously 

 steeped in ideas contemporary with Middle Age 

 feudalism. 



As for the " snobbism," the class distinctions 

 which exist in this or any order of society that 

 has a place for the large landowner, or the large 

 property owner of any kind, one may reasonably 

 doubt whether they are not founded in human 

 nature rather than in landlordism. The English 

 social system, with its orders of nobility and its 

 classes, has, of course, sprung from feudalism, 

 and has been based on the existence of landed 

 estates. The laws of entail, the usual condition 

 precedent to the creation of a new peerage that 

 the peer must have some kind of landed property, 

 and many other circumstances, show that. But 

 the existence of privileged " classes " and " big 

 estates " is not interdependent. In countries 

 where there is no survival of feudalism, snobbism 



