Puruuips.—On the Law of Gavelkind, 527 
must amount to something like £100,000,000 per annum, which, of itself, 
means an enormous foreign food-supply. England at present is a gigantic 
money-lender, and the Stock Exchange is the London office. But both 
sources of these two exceptions are precarious, and it would be better for a 
state to depend upon its own food-supply. Therefore it follows that the 
land should be fairly divided among the people. The danger arises, too, of 
these great manufacturing towns breeding vast hordes of paupers, which in 
times of war, pestilence, famine, or other trouble, would put to the test not 
only the food-supply, but the whole machinery of law of whatever kind. 
France, this custom of gavel-kind, and a slightly higher tone of civilization, 
checks the increase of population beyond the food-supply limit, and it is 
very doubtful whether we shall not have to educate the members of both 
sexes of the Anglo-Saxon race in this direction. I, of course, include the 
fish from the adjacent seas in the food-supply limit. 
Mr. George ridicules Malthus. I simply desire to record my respect for 
the principle enunciated by Malthus, and if the limits of this paper would 
permit, I think I could show that Mr. George’s own observations are open 
to numerous exceptions. 
There is little doubt that England is in a precarious position, when she 
has to import so many hundreds of thousands of tons of corn and meat to 
feed her population. This is enough to prove to us here how utterly diverse 
are our circumstances from the circumstances of America. Furthermore that 
different land laws apply according to the density of the population. Thus 
there is more necessity for an alteration in the English land law of the 
present day than there is in Australasia or America. In the latter 
countries we may still go on as we are, butin order to prevent accumulation 
we may enact the custom of compulsory division, the same as France 
enacted it after the revolution. But in England more immediate and drastic 
measures are required, for from 20,000,000 of a population, in the course of 
a few years, the United Kingdom has sprung up into 35,000,000, and it is 
time to check the growth of this population which surpasses the food limit. 
A: great population will test any land law. But then great populations of 
paupers should not arise. 
Of course emigration of a superabundant home population is no cure for 
the root of the evil. Emigration only allows the matter from the ulcerous 
sore to escape as it were.. The sore itself is not healed. The only cure is 
the compulsory subdivision of the land, whereby the population itself imposes 
the voluntary check to excessive increase. This is the cause found to be at 
work in France. The five million land proprietors do not care to further 
subdivide their small estates, and population becomes checked. Under any 
system of leaseholding whatever paupers would continue to breed paupers, 
