350 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL CHAP. 



under the State, combines all the essential elements ot 

 stability. 1 



Thus far we have considered the question solely from 

 the economical and practical point of view, but the great 

 superiority of State tenants over freeholders is equally 

 apparent when we treat it as a question of justice. Land 

 necessarily increases in value as population and civilization 

 increase, and that increase being the creation of the com- 

 munity at large is justly the property of the community. 

 By a system of State tenants we shall obtain this increase 

 for the benefit of all, by means of a periodical reassessment 

 of the ground rents payable to the State ; but if we create 

 a body of small freeholders we shall perpetuate injustice 

 and inequality. A. and B. may acquire two farms at the 

 same cost and may bestow the same labour and skill in the 

 cultivation of them. But in thirty or forty years the value 

 of the two may be very different. Minerals may be dis- 

 covered or some new industry may spring up causing the farm 

 of A. to become the site of a populous town, while that of 

 B. remains in a secluded agricultural district ; so that, while 

 the children of the one are earning their living by honest- 

 labour the children of the other may be all living in 

 idleness by means of wealth which they have not created 

 and to which they have no equitable claim, and to the 

 same extent the community at large is robbed of its due. 

 If on the other hand we establish a system of State-tenancy 

 over the whole country, the natural increase of land-value 

 by social development will produce an ever increasing 

 revenue even if existing landlords continue to be paid the 

 incomes they now receive from land, so that in addition to 

 all the other advantages of the system we shall acquire the 

 means of bringing about a steady diminution of taxation, 

 by which all alike will benefit. 



Briefly to sum up the argument : SMALL FREEHOLDS 



ARE BAD BECAUSE 



1. Money must be sunk in the purchase which can be 

 better invested in the cultivation of the soil. 



1 This danger has been attempted to be obviated on the Continent by 

 the farms consisting of scores or hundreds of scattered patches of land 

 of different qualities. But this system renders economical cultivation 

 impossible, and the remedy is worse than the disease. 



