LAND NATIONALIZATION 261 



in houses dovetailed into each other, with everything of 

 nature — winds, flowers, verdure, the healthy smell of earth — 

 shut out and replaced by a thousand miasmas — is it, I say, 

 to be credited that this is the normal condition of beings 

 born with natural cravings for activity and pure air, with an 

 intelligent eye for nature's manifold beauties, with bodies 

 requiring to be exercised no less than heads? The very 

 necessity for drains tells against us. All manure was meant 

 directly to nourish the land it accumulates on — not to pollute 

 our streams and rivers. Cities as they now are, are the 

 abscesses of nature. The soil and terrestrial space are not 

 meant for the rearing of food only, but to be dwelt and moved 

 about on — to be daily enjoyed in all the variety of agreeable 

 sights, sounds, and odours they afford us." 



This important, thoughtful, and suggestive work, published 

 in our own time, and dealing most thoroughly with the ever- 

 growing evils of our social economy, has remained almost 

 absolutely unknown. With the exception of the works of 

 one or two land-nationalizers, I have never seen it even 

 referred to by the host of political writers, who weakly and 

 ignorantly dabble in the great questions affecting the real well- 

 being of our whole population. 



Our Society being established, it seemed necessary to pre- 

 pare something in the form of a handbook or introduction 

 to the great problem of the land ; and I accordingly devoted 

 my attention to the subject, studying voluminous reports on 

 agriculture, on Irish famines, on Highland Crofters, and 

 numbers of special treatises dealing with the various aspects 

 of this vast and far-reaching question. My book was pub- 

 lished in March, 1882, under the title "Land Nationalization: 

 its Necessity and its Aims," and gave, in a compact form, 

 the only general account of the evils of our land system as 

 it exists in England, Ireland, and Scotland ; a comparison 

 with other countries or places in which a better system 

 prevails, together with a solution of the problem of how to 

 replace it by the only just system, without any confiscation 

 of property or injury to any living individual. The book has 



