242 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY 



Smith to John Stuart Mill, maintains the freedom 

 of land from the feudal shackles of long entail and 

 primogeniture-by-law, as the prime and fundamental 

 rule of * Justice to society ' in the matter of the Soil. 

 The change that we want is but little, but that little 

 underlies and interpenetrates the whole economy of 

 agriculture as a national business, and renders every 

 acre uncultivated or half-cultivated through the 

 operation of legal trammels upon the owner, a 

 robbery upon the Labourer, the Capitalist, and ulti- 

 mately on the public purse. It is the first and the 

 most natural of Savings-banks to the humble, as well 

 as of Investments to the wealthy capitalist. It is 

 endowed with the most natural and versatile aptitude 

 to the capabilities of both ; it belongs to the Spade 

 as well as the Plough. It is evident as an instinct to 

 every mind, and needs neither proof nor argument, 

 that the soil is the * primest, eldest ' investment of 

 our capital : to risk our national earnings and accu- 

 mulations in any other channel till this field is first 

 exhausted, is a course that men may indeed be driven 

 to by the operation of foolish laws or customs, but 

 which few, from either will or circumstance, would 

 voluntarily choose. It needed no small ingenuity of 

 folly, no small ( method in our madness,' to produce 



