410 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 



by enacting that afterwards, no rental or other charge on 

 land payable to individuals or companies would be re- 

 coverable at law. 



All municipalities, townships, or other local authori- 

 ties should, however, have a prior and also a continuous 

 right to purchase all such land at a moderate but fair valua- 

 tion, paying for it with bonds bearing alow interest and 

 redeemable at fixed dates. In this way the public would be 

 able to acquire most of the land for some miles around all 

 towns and cities ; and as much of this would certainly 

 increase rapidly in value, through growth of population 

 and municipal improvements, the bonds could in a few 

 years be redeemed out of the increased rents. 



There is, however, another quite distinct method of re- 

 claiming the land for the community, which has many 

 advantages. This may be effected by carrying into 

 practice two great ethical principles. These are, first, that 

 the unborn have no individual rights to succeed to property; 

 and, second, that there is no equitable principle involved 

 in collateral succession to property, whatever there may 

 be in direct succession. By the application of these two 

 principles the people may, if they so will, in the course of 

 some eighty years gradually regain possession of the 

 whole national domain, without either confiscation or 

 purchase. The law should declare that, after a certain 

 date, land would cease to be transferable except to direct 

 descendants children or grandchildren ; and, that, when 

 all the children of these direct descendants, who were 

 living at the time of passing the law, had died out, the 

 land should revert to the State. As people owning land, 

 but having no children, are dying daily, while even whole 

 families often die off in a few years, land would be continu- 

 ally falling in, to be let out to applicants on' a secure and 

 permanent tenure, as already explained, so as best to 

 subserve the wants of the community. 



Here, then, are two very distinct methods of obtaining 

 the land, both thoroughly justifiable when the welfare of 

 a whole nation is at stake. The last named is that which 

 seems best to the present writer, since it would at once 

 abolish the greatest evils of the American social system 



