xxxiv] LAND NATIONALIZATION 243 



as if they could be remedied piecemeal while the funda- 

 mental cause of these and a thousand other evils remains 

 untouched — 



" Is it to be credited that this crowding together of men 

 in houses dovetailed into each other, with everything of 

 nature — winds, flowers, verdure, the healthy smell of earth — 

 shut out and replaced by a thousand miasmas — is it, I say, 

 to be credited that this is the normal condition of beings 

 born with natural cravings for activity and pure air, with an 

 intelligent eye for nature's manifold beauties, with bodies 

 requiring to be exercised no less than heads ? The very 

 necessity for drains tells against us. All manure was meant 

 directly to nourish the land it accumulates on — not to pollute 

 our streams and rivers. Cities as they now are, are the 

 abscesses of nature. The soil and terrestrial space are not 

 meant for the rearing of food only, but to be dwelt and 

 moved about on — to be daily enjoyed in all the variety of 

 agreeable sights, sounds, and odours they afford us." 



This important, thoughtful, and suggestive work, published 

 in our own time, and dealing most thoroughly with the ever- 

 growing evils of our social economy, has remained almost 

 absolutely unknown. With the exception of the works of 

 one or two land-nationalizers, I have never seen it even 

 referred to by the host of political writers, who weakly and 

 ignorantly dabble in the great questions affecting the real 

 well-being of our whole population. 



Our Society being established, it seemed necessary to 

 prepare something in the form of a handbook or introduction 

 to the great problem of the land ; and I accordingly devoted 

 my attention to the subject, studying voluminous reports on 

 agriculture, on Irish famines, on Highland Crofters, and 

 numbers of special treatises dealing with the various aspects 

 of this vast and far-reaching question. My book was 

 published in March, 1882, under the title "Land Nationaliza- 

 tion : its Necessity and its Aims," and gave, in a compact 

 form, the only general account of the evils of our land system 

 as it exists in England, Ireland, and Scotland ; a comparison 



