258 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xv 



The correspondence referred to arose out of the heckling 

 of Mr. John Morley by one of his constituents at Newcastle 

 in November 1889. The heckler questioned him concern- 

 ing private property in land, quoting some early dicta from 

 the " Social Statics " of Mr. Herbert Spencer, which denied 

 the justice of such ownership. Comments and explanations 

 ensued in the Times; Mr. Spencer declared that he had 

 since partly altered that view, showing that contract has in 

 part superseded force as the ground of ownership ; and that 

 in any case it referred to the idea of absolute ethics, and 

 not to relative or practical politics. 



Huxley entered first into the correspondence to point 

 out present and perilous applications of the absolute in 

 contemporary politics. Touching on a State guarantee of 

 the title to land, he asks if there is any moral right for 

 confiscation : — In Ireland, he says, confiscation is justified 

 by the appeal to wrongs inflicted a century ago ; in England 

 the theorems of " absolute political ethics " are in danger 

 of being employed to make this generation of land-owners 

 responsible for the misdeeds of William the Conqueror and 

 his followers. {Times, November 12.) 



His remaining share in the discussion consisted of a 

 brief passage of arms with Mr. Spencer on the main ques- 

 tion,* and a reply to another correspondent,! which brings 

 forward an argument enlarged upon in one of the essays, 

 viz. that if the land belongs to all men equally, why should 

 one nation claim one portion rather than another? For 

 several ownership is just as much an infringement of the 

 world's ownership as is personal ownership. Moreover, 

 history shows that land was originally held in several owner- 

 ship, and that not of the nation, but of the village com- 

 munity. 



These signs of renewed vigour induced Mr. Knowles 

 to write him a " begging letter," proposing an article for 

 the Nineteenth Century either in commendation of Bishop 

 Magee's recent utterances — it would be fine for eulogy to 

 come from such a quarter after the recent encounter — or 



* November 18. f November 21. 



