344 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL CHAP, xvm 



Here then, by this simple and perfectly equitable 

 principle, we have found a means of transferring the 

 people's land back to the people, by a gradual process 

 which would rob nobody and cost nothing ; and thus the 

 whole huge mountain of difficulty which has induced Mr. 

 Spencer to look upon the restoration of the land as a 

 moral and financial impossibility crumbles into dust. 

 The mode of acquiring the land now suggested was 

 advocated in my first article on Land Nationalization 

 (see Chap. XVI.), and I myself, and many of my friends, 

 still think it to be the best. Of course we may and do 

 also advocate the power of compulsory purchase by local 

 authorities to supply the immediate wants of the people. 

 But while this was being done, wherever needed, land 

 would be continually accruing to the State by the dying 

 out of the direct heirs of landlords; and land thus acquired, 

 always administered by the local authority and the 

 proceeds of the rents equitably divided between the State 

 and the locality, would continually reduce the weight of 

 both imperial and local taxation. 



This concludes all that needs now be said of Mr. 

 Spencer's new work. There are some other points I 

 should have liked to touch upon, but they are of less 

 importance from our present point of view. I hope that 

 I have shown with sufficient clearness the fallacies that 

 underlie his recent utterances, and have thereby enabled 

 all land reformers to continue with a good conscience to 

 quote the burning and logical denunciation of landlordism 

 to be found in Social Statics, notwithstanding the author's 

 recent attempt to minimize the effect of them. 



