xxxiV] LAND NATIONALIZATION 265 



And to prevent the landlord from driving away a tenant by raising his rent 

 to an exorbitant amount, all alterations of rent must be approved of as 

 reasonable by a committee of the Parish or District Councils, and be 

 determined on the application of either the tenant or the landlord. Of 

 course, at the first letting of a house or small holding, the landlord could 

 ask what rent he pleased, and if it was exorbitant he would get no tenant. 

 But having once let it, the tenant should be secure as long as he wished 

 to occupy it, and the rent should not be raised, except as allowed by 

 some competent tribunal. No doubt a claim will be made on behalf of 

 the landlords for a compulsory tenancy on the part of the occupier ; that 

 is, that if the tenant has security of occupation, the landlord should have 

 equally security of having a tenant. But the two cases are totally different. 

 Eviction from his home may be, and often is, ruinous loss and misery to 

 the tenant, who is therefore, to avoid such loss, often compelled to submit 

 to the landlord's will. But who ever heard of a tenant, by the threat of 

 giving notice to quit, compelling his landlord to vote against his conscience, 

 or to go to chapel instead of to church ! The tenant needs protection, 

 the landlord does not. 1 



The same results might also be gained (and perhaps more surely) by 

 giving the Parish and District Councils power to take over all houses 

 whose tenants are threatened with eviction, or with an unfair increase of 

 rent ; and that will come some day. But the plan of giving a legal 

 permanent tenure to every tenant is so simple, so obviously reasonable 

 and so free from all interference with the fair money-value of the land- 

 lord's property, that, with a little energy and persistent agitation, it might 

 possibly be carried in a few years. Such an Act might be more or less 

 in the following form : — " Whereas the security and inviolability of the 

 Home is an essential condition of political freedom and social well-being, 

 it is hereby enacted, that no tenant shall hereafter be evicted from his 

 house or homestead for any other cause than non-payment of rent, and 

 every heir or successor of such tenant shall be equally secure so long as 

 the rent is paid." A second clause would provide for a permanently fair 

 rent. 



This formed part of my address to the Land Nationaliza- 

 tion Society at its annual meeting in 1895, and one would 

 have thought that some Liberal or Radical or Labour Member 

 would have made an effort to get so small yet so far-reaching 

 and beneficial a measure discussed in the House of Commons. 

 But no notice whatever was taken of the suggestion, and we 

 have had for the succeeding ten years, and have to-day, cases 

 of punishment by eviction for political or religious opinions. 

 It is true that it is but a small and isolated portion of the 



1 The late Lord Tollemache voluntarily recognized this, and gave his tenant- 

 farmers leases for twenty-one years, determinable at their pleasure, but not at his. 



