144 OUR ENGLISH LAND MUDDLE. 



tempt for titles. I fear it will be found that, 

 whatsoever the system of land tenure, our 

 defective human nature in the general order 

 will discover a necessity to bow down to some- 

 body ; to set up some Golden Calf to worship. 

 The philosophers will grieve, and most of us 

 will sympathize in public with their grief, how- 

 ever much we cherish in our secret hearts our 

 own particular form of snobbism. But do not 

 let us be turned away from a cool consideration 

 of an economic question by " hot-air " talk 

 about class privileges. 



To be candid, I have not found, though I have 

 searched with some diligence, any clear evidence 

 that there is bound up with landowning in 

 England any particularly virulent snobbism, any 

 exceptional arrogance of class distinction, or any 

 gross ' feudal tyranny." On several occasions 

 I have gone out, at the disclosure in some news- 

 paper of a bad case of " landlordism," to check 

 the facts, and have always come back resultless, 

 the described horrors having vanished when put 

 to the test of dispassionate inquiry. Sometimes 

 I thus learned to doubt for a while my capacity 

 to see straightly, until reassured by noting a 



