158 



MY LIFE 



[Chap. 



only legalize but justify our process of restitution. It will 

 justify it, because, unlike their laws, which always took from 

 the poor to give to the rich — to the very class which made 

 the laws — ours will only take from the superfluity of the rich, 

 not to give to the poor or to any individuals, but to so 

 administer as to enable every man to live by honest work, to 

 restore to the whole people their birthright in their native 

 soil, and to relieve all alike from a heavy burden of unnecessary 

 and unjust taxation. This will be the true statesmanship of 

 the future, and it will be justified alike by equity, by ethics, 

 and by religion. 



In the few preceding pages I have expressed the opinions 

 which have been gradually formed as the result of the ex- 

 perience and study of my whole life. My first work on the 

 subject was entitled "Land Nationalization: its Necessity and 

 its Aims," and was published in the year 1882 ; and this, 

 together with the various essays in the second volume of my 

 ''Studies Scientific and Social," published in 1900, may be 

 taken as expressing the views I now hold, and as pointing 

 out some of the fundamental conditions which I believe to be 

 essential for the well-being of society. 



But at the time of which I am now writing such ideas 

 never entered my head. I certainly thought it a pity to 

 enclose a wild, picturesque, boggy, and barren moor, but I 

 took it for granted that there was some right and reason in 

 it, instead of being, as it certainly was, both unjust, unwise, 

 and cruel. But the surveying was interesting work, as every 

 trickling stream, every tree, every mass of rock or boggy 

 waterhole, had to be marked on the map in its true relative 

 position, as well as the various footpaths or rough cart-roads 

 that crossed the common in various directions. 



At that time the medicinal springs, though they had been 

 used from the time of the Romans, were only visited by a 

 few Welsh or West of England people, and there was little 

 accommodation for visitors, except in the small hotel where 

 we lodged. One of our great luxuries here was the Welsh 

 mutton fed on the neighbouring mountains, so small that a 



