LAND NATIONALIZATION 257 



culties which were constantly adduced as insuperable, and 

 I at once took the opportunity of the controversy on the 

 question to set forth my views in some detail. I did this 

 especially because the Irish Land League proposed that 

 the Government should buy out the Irish landlords, and 

 convert their existing tenants into peasant-proprietors, who 

 were to redeem their holdings by payments extending over 

 thirty-five years. This seemed to me to be unsound in 

 principle, and entirely useless except as a temporary expedient, 

 since it would leave the whole land of Ireland in the pos- 

 session of a privileged class, and would thus disinherit all 

 the rest of the population from their native soil. 



In my essay I based my whole argument upon a great 

 principle of equity as regards the right of succession to 

 landed property, a principle which I have since further ex- 

 tended to all property. 2 But the suggestion which rendered 

 land-nationalization practicable was, that while, under certain 

 conditions stated, all land would gradually revert to the State, 

 what is termed in Ireland the tenant-right, and in England 

 the improvements, or increased value given to the land by 

 the owner or his predecessors, such as buildings, drains, 

 plantations, etc., would remain his property, and be paid for 

 by the new state-teiiants at a fair valuation. The selling 

 value of land was thus divided into two parts: the inherent 

 value or ground-rent value, which is quite independent of 

 any expenditure by owners, but is due solely to nature and 

 society; and the improvements, which are due solely to 

 expenditure by the owners or occupiers, and which are essen- 

 tially temporary in nature. My experience in surveying and 

 land-valuation assured me that these two values can be 

 easily separated. It follows that land as owned by the State 

 would need no " management " whatever, the rent being 

 merely a ground-rent, which could be collected just as the 

 house-tax and the land-tax are collected, the state-tenant 

 being left as completely free as is the " freeholder " now (who 

 is in law a state-tenant), or as are the holders of perpetual 

 feus in Scotland. 



1 See my w Studies, Scientific and Social," vol. ii. chap, xxviii. 



