LAND NATIONALIZATION 283 



lord's demands, and both in politics and religion submit himself entirely 

 to the landlord's will. So long as the agricultural labourer, the village 

 mechanic, and the village shopkeeper are the yearly or weekly tenants 

 of the great land-owner, the squire, the parson, or the farmer, religious 

 freedom or political independence is impossible. And when those em- 

 ployed in factories or workshops are obliged to live, as they so often are, 

 in houses which are the property of their employers, that employer can 

 force his will upon them by the double threat of loss of employment and 

 loss of a home. Under such conditions a man possesses neither free- 

 dom nor safety, nor the possibility of happiness, except so far as his 

 landlord and employer thinks proper. A secure home is the very first 

 essential of political security and of social well-being. 



Now, all this has been said many times before, and we may go on 

 saying it, and yet be no nearer to a remedy for the evil. But now that 

 every worker, even to the hitherto despised and down-trodden agricul- 

 tural labourer, has been given the right of some fragment of local self- 

 government, it is time that, so far as affects the inviolability of the home, 

 the landlord's power should at once be taken away from him. This is 

 the logical sequence of the creation of Parish Councils. For to 

 declare that it is for the public benefit that every inhabitant of a parish 

 shall be free to vote for and to be chosen as a representative of his 

 fellow-parishioners, and at the same time to leave him at the mercy of 

 the individual who owns his house to punish him in a most cruel man- 

 ner for using the privileges thus granted him, is surely the height of 

 unreason and injustice. It is giving a stone in place of bread ; the 

 shadow rather than the substance of political enfranchisement. 



Now it seems to me that there is one very simple and very effectual 

 way of rendering tenants secure, and that is by a short Act of Par- 

 liament declaring all evictions, other than for non-payment of rent, to 

 be illegal. And to prevent the landlord from driving away a tenant by 

 raising his rent to an exorbitant amount, all alterations of rent must be 

 approved of as reasonable by a committee of the Parish or District 

 Councils, and be determined on the application of either the tenant or 

 the landlord. Of course, at the first letting of a house or small holding, 

 the landlord could ask what rent he pleased, and if it was exorbitant he 

 would get no tenant. But having once let it, the tenant should be secure 

 as long as he wished to occupy it, and the rent should not be raised, ex- 

 cept as allowed by some competent tribunal. No doubt a claim will be 

 made on behalf of the landlords for a compulsory tenancy on the part 

 of the occupier ; that is, that if the tenant has security of occupation, 

 the landlord should have equal security of having a tenant. But the 

 two cases are totally different. Eviction from his home may be, and 

 often is, ruinous loss and misery to the tenant, who is therefore, to 

 avoid such loss, often compelled to submit to the landlord's will. But 

 who ever heard of a tenant, by the threat of giving notice to quit, com- 



