JOURNAL 
OF THE 
EOYAL AGraCULTURAL SOCIETY 
OF ENGLAND. 
XV. — The Making of the Land in England: a Retrospect. 
By Albeut Pell, of Hazelbeach, Northamptonshire. 
It is a common observation that the earth belongs to the race. 
The possession of land is thus regarded as a boon, the title to 
which is of a nature entirely different from that upon which the 
ownership of other property depends. 
Raw land is, however, only a chance to prosecute the struggle 
for existence, and those who try to earn a living by the subju- 
gation of raw land, find that they make the attempt under 
most unfavourable conditions, for land can be " made " or 
brought into use only by great hardship and exertion. 
Men are too frequently blind to the difference between land 
in a state of nature and as they now find it presented to their 
eyes in an old and settled country such as ours, and so lose sight 
of the fact that the real boon or gift which so many covet is to 
get some land, after somebody else had made it fit for use. In 
the absence of information, the hardship and exertions of those 
who, for all historical time, have been making the land are 
ignored, the result unappreciated, and vague notions of appro- 
priation justified, by referring the present value of land to what 
is termed its "unearned increment." 
The difference, however, between man in the prehistoric age 
and man in the Victorian age is not more marked than that 
between the condition of the land in the former and in the later 
period ; nor are the struggle and the sacrifice, through many ages, 
undergone in the civilization of the one, any more real than 
those involved in the reformation and improvement of the other. 
The present moment, with the rent of agricultural land in 
England declining under the competition of America and 
India, is not well chosen for attacking the supposed advantage 
VOL. XXIIL — S. S. ' ' 2 B 
