THE LAND SYSTEM OF BELGIUM AND HOLLAND 477 



It is a grave symptom of the emergency that the upper classes 

 themselves no longer remain inaccessible to these ideas. A dis- 

 tinguished member of the British Parliament, to whom I pointed 

 out that certain measures proposed for Ireland looked remarkably 

 like "confiscation," replied to me, "No doubt they do; but why 

 should they not ? Is it not just that every one should have his 

 turn ? " And really, if but a few are chosen to sit down to the 

 feast of life, why should these guests be always the same ? This 

 is in its crudity the idea which involuntarily rises in the mind. It 

 is all very well for lawyers and economists to prove its absurdity, 

 but one and the same argument produces a different effect on the 

 man who is seated at table and the man who waits upon him ; 

 what may seem absurd to the man who has the good side of the 

 present regime may appear perfectly right and proper to him who 

 has come in for the bad side. 



Travelling in Andalusia this year (1869), I lighted upon peas- 

 ants harvesting the crops on the lands of Spanish grandees, which 

 they had shared among themselves. " Why," said they, " should 

 these large estates remain almost uncultivated in the hands of 

 people who have neither created nor improved them, but are ruin- 

 ing them by spending elsewhere the net produce they yield ? " I 

 am convinced that were land more divided in those districts of 

 Andalusia, where ideas of communion prevail at the present day, 

 these would no longer find any adherents. In Belgium, socialism, 

 though spreading among the working classes in manufacturing 

 districts, does not penetrate into the country, where the small 

 landowners block up its way. 



Therefore I think the following propositions may be laid down 

 as self-evident truths : There are no measures more conserva- 

 tive, or more conducive to the maintenance of order in society, 

 than those which facilitate the acquirement of property in land by 

 those who cultivate it ; there are none fraught with more danger 

 for the future than those which concentrate the ownership of the 

 soil in the hands of a small number of families. 



