324 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL CHAP. 



or the famine-stricken cottiers of Ireland. It will not 

 cause the tracts now occupied by sheep and deer to be 

 given up again for the use of men and women ; but it will 

 allow rich men, more easily than now, to make more deer- 

 forests and sheep-farms if they choose. It will not help 

 the labourer, the mechanic, or the shopkeeper, to a plot of 

 land where he requires it. It will not give back the land 

 to the use of the people who want it most, and who, as 

 the universal experience of Europe shows, are always bene- 

 fited by it both physically and morally. Let us then 

 appeal to first principles and simply follow their teaching. 



We have seen (1) that private property in land cannot 

 justly arise at all ; and (2) that its results, except where 

 small portions are personally occupied and tilled, are 

 always evil. Hence we conclude that the land of a country 

 should be the property of the State and be free for the 

 use and enjoyment of the inhabitants on equal terms. In 

 order that every one may feel that sense of property in the 

 land he cultivates which is the best incentive to industry, 

 absolute security of tenure is necessary. This given, a 

 man becomes virtually the owner of the land he holds 

 from the State, and can deal with it like a freehold, only 

 that it remains subject to such ground-rents and such 

 general conditions as may from time to time be held to be 

 for the good of the community. Another important 

 principle is, that sub-letting must be absolutely prohibited ; 

 for if this were allowed the evils of landlordism would 

 again arise, as middlemen would monopolize large 

 quantities of land which they would let out at advanced 

 rents and under onerous conditions, so that the actual 

 cultivators might be no better off than under the present 

 landlord system. 



Recurring again to first principles we find, that although 

 land itself cannot justly become private property, yet 

 everything added to the land by human labour is truly 

 and properly so ; and this leads to the important sub- 

 division of landed property into two parts (as is so common 

 in Ireland), the one represented by the landlord's rent for 

 the use of the bare land, the other the tenant-right, 

 consisting of the houses, fences, gates, plantations, drains, 



