he cultivates. But apart from the purchase-money of his estate, the landlord has rarely invested one-fourth of such a sum in permanent improvements, and what he has invested is not indeed indestructible, but is very enduring, is necessary for the development of any rent whatever, and is therefore as essential to the origin of rent as the land and the farmer's stock are. But in the rent paid by a tenant, say 30s. an acre, or £600 a year, the interest on the landlord's outlay, essential though that outlay is, will be found to be infinitesimal.

There is indeed an answer, and a complete answer, to those who allege that natural rent-i.e., the gradual appreciation of agricultural land, should be appropriated by the State. It is that value has for a great part of its area been given for it on the faith that it is as sacred as any other kind of property (and it may be with some reason alleged that the prospective increase in value was contained in the price); that the obligations of society are continuous; that a new departure, in which an existing generation repudiates such obligations, is not only unfair, but suicidal, because it extinguishes confidence and discourages enterprise; and that it is impossible to distinguish between the sanctity of different kinds of property. Unluckily, foolish lawyers have given a peculiar sanctity to one kind of property; and quite as unluckily foolish landowners have surrounded one kind of property, and that the least obviously defensible, with peculiar privileges and peculiar exemptions. If at any time hereafter the popular voice irresistibly demands the nationalization of land, the extinction of the landowner's rights and enjoyments, and the partial or complete confiscation of his interests, the landowners will have to thank the lawyers and themselves for the discouragement which has been given to the advocates of their defensible rights, and for the successful violence with which these rights have been assailed.

It cannot be denied that the form of Communism which attacks the English land system, and, despairing of remedial measures, seeks to overthrow private property in land, is already in the air. It is not advocated by penniless and desperate adventurers, for men of position and means have given in their adhesion to the movement, and are thorough in its advocacy. Now, there is no position which is maintained with greater difficulty than that of an unreformed institution, which has no friends in its present shape, and is criticized by an increasing party which is eager to destroy it. There are numbers of clear-headed and honourable persons, who have a wellmerited dislike to the English land system, who see in it a thousand evils, and little or no countervailing good, but who have no desire to see land put on any other footing than that on which personal property is placed, except in so far, as they argue, that the settlement of

that which is a limited quantity is a greater violation of good sense than the settlement of that which may be indefinitely extended in quantity. But, on the other hand, there are a number of other persons, and apparently an increasing number, who credit the private ownership of land with being the source of all, or nearly all, the social mischiefs of modern civilization. As long as landowners cling to anti-social expedients, such as primogeniture, the power of strict settlement, and the conveyance of land by secret deeds unquestionably are, so long will those who would advocate the maintenance of private property in land be disabled from defeuding what is legitimate, and must leave the field to those who assail the institution itself.

The revision and even the invasion of the rights of private ownership in land has already got beyond the stage of theory. Sixteen years ago, I argued, from a careful examination of the state of husbandry in the south of Ireland, from Wicklow and Waterford to Kerry and Limerick, that nothing short of what are now called the three F's could satisfy the situation in Ireland. I do not assert that had they been granted in 1870, much that is deplorable and disheartening would have been averted; but I am certain that the concession of 1882 would have been timely then, but is scouted as incomplete at present. I am persuaded that had the Act of 1876, relative to English holdings, been like that of 1883, instead of being the barren acquiescence in a principle, and an entire refusal of all details, the Farmer's Alliance would be less minatory than it now is, or than it is likely to be, in some form or another, in Scotland, in Wales, and ultimately in England. We have acknowledged at last a double ownership in land. The system is complete in Ireland, for no rational person expects that the Land Commissioners' rents will ever be raised in the interest of those who will hereafter have nothing but a rent charge. Unless we are greatly misinformed, discontent in Scotland is engaged in formulating very startling demands and very drastic remedies. It will not be long before the same feeling will take shape in England, and the old-fashioned political economists will find that they have misinterpreted their science, and that they must needs prepare themselves for other social phenomena than those which they have hitherto held to be normal and natural.

I cannot, on the principles of Mr. Ricardo and Mr. Mill, justify the legislation which is past or that which is impending. Though these writers have not carried the doctrine of freedom of contract to the extent which has seemed good to certain parties, they certainly never contemplated the contingency of the State making bargains for grown-up men, or of its modifying the contracts into which such persons have entered. Nor does any one now doubt that it would have been better if the assisted parties in the contract had been able to do without this assistance, and does not regret that the assistance

was needed. But granted that they could not, that the law had given such power to one of the parties in the contract that the other could not make a fair bargain, two questions arise? Is not the interest of the producer of wealth more important than that of one who produces nothing, but simply shares in the product; and next, granted that it is of supreme importance that industry should be encouraged, is not the existing relation of capital to land injurious to the tenant, a hindrance to the growth and distribution of public wealth, and ultimately a serious drawback to general prosperity ? Parliament has answered these two questions in the affirmative, and the precedent is of very grave significance. What if it be discovered and emphasized that the public health of the towns, and especially the condition of labour, is seriously deteriorated by the ordinary tenure of building sites in towns, especially in London ? What if the English people traces much of its misery to the settled estates of great landowners and great corporations? The leading Conservatives are beginning to throw the farmers overboard, and to profess that they desire nothing more than the free admission of the county labourers to the Constitution. Does any reasonable person believe that these blandishments will avail, when those labourers are taught, as they assuredly will be taught, who are responsible for so much of the misery of their condition? The Democracy, whatever it is called, will not be so discriminating as to reserve all their wrath for employers in towns, for the Manchester and Birmingham capitalists, and ignore the condition of Hatfield and Woodstock. And conversely, when they discover the mischief of a settled estate in the county, they will not long be blind to its evil in a town. I do not know whether Mr. Broadhurst's Bill is within measurable distance of becoming law, but I am pretty sure it would be well for the town proprietors if it

were.

But though it appears that Communism is making very definite progress in relation to the English land question among certain classes of Englishmen, while Socialism in a modified form-by which I mean the accommodation of economical relations to distinct social ends-has made very considerable progress in the British Parliament, and the anti-social tenets of Fair Trade and Protection are only avowed to be ridiculed, the English nation has not taken a single step in the direction of that Continental Socialism which M. de Laveleye has so acutely analyzed, and Mr. Rae has described. Continental Socialists have admitted and deplored that the seed they sow in England does not yield a crop, does not even germinate. When the English workmen went to the meeting of the International at Geneva, they came back bewildered with the unpractical schemes which were there ventilated with the object of regenerating or reconstructing society. When they sent out their delegation to Paris a twelve

month ago, they could suggest no better remedy for social mischief than their own trades' union. They have no animosity to the capitalist, though they wish to get a greater share of his profits. They do not desire to make war on the State, nor to claim its assistance. The best among them wish to be part of the State, to be admitted to the Constitution, to have an effective voice in the selection of representatives, and to be themselves represented in Parliament by some of their own order, or by men who know them and their wants. I cannot recall a single instance in which English working men have asked for a State subvention, or a department which should look after their own interests, or anything beyond a State inspection of employers and their works. When the calling is peculiarly risky, employers are particularly heedless, and the risks of which they complain can be generally obviated.

The English Government has never affected the function of a special providence for the working man. For centuries it was his jealous step-mother, which denied him, as far as possible, freedom of thought and freedom of action. It has never formulated the rights of man. It has never pretended to regulate his life in his interests. It has let him see that as long as he is out of the Constitution he must expect little or nothing in the way of consideration, and that when he is in it, he must take his own way in order to get his demands conceded. And, to do them justice, the leaders of the working classes have never advised their followers to squeeze the Constitution for the benefit of labour, as land-owners do for land. There are, indeed, symptoms that the raw advocates of Tory Democracy may enter on the dangerous course of stimulating disaffection towards the social relations in which labour finds itself. If they do, their words will be so many boomerangs, which may be aimed at others, but will hit those who utter them; for if the English people is not affectionate towards employers, it is the very reverse of affectionate towards landlords. A century or more ago the highest wages in England were paid at Woodstock. Perhaps a Birmingham elector may ask Lord Randolph Churchill why so lamentable a change has come over that poverty-stricken little borough.

The English working man does not appeal to the State for favour or assistance. He is strongly convinced, and he has the vague memories of centuries to assure him, that men get on by their own efforts, some men individually, the mass collectively. He believes, and rightly believes, a great deal more in the principle of association than he does in that of revolution. He does not call capital theft, or property either, for he knows the functions of the one and the conveniences of the other. But he is under the impression that the employer gets more of the common profits of the customer and

employés' labour than is fair, and he has a mind to better himself and his fellows if he can. And men who set themselves honestly to work on the solution of this problem are more and more removed from Socialism the more completely they master it.

It is, I think, true that the mischief of competition is not seeu so manifestly or felt so forcibly in England as it is abroad. The English race has been active in getting money, but it has been generous in the use of it. It has always looked on gripping and penurious selfishness with marked dislike. When its wealth was at the lowest ebb, just at the beginning of the seventeenth century, it passed a poor law, centuries before any other European nation, or, indeed, before any nation whatever recognized that the destitute should be fed and clothed and housed. It would rather be extravagant than mean. The voluntary efforts of Englishmen in the satisfaction of public duties are enormous and amazing. Their hospitals, their charities, their institutions are incessantly demanding aid, and are as incessantly supplied. If distress of an exceptional kind arises, people give, sometimes capriciously and unequally, but always freely. It is probable that the voluntary donations of Englishmen, in which I include the United States and the Colonies, are ten times as much as the voluntary gifts of the whole of the world besides. If one puts a franc into the plate at an exceptional collection in a French Church, the gendarme will make one a low reverence; if one puts a shilling into an English collection for any considerable purpose, one is rightly thought mean if one's appearance justifies a larger expectation. Now the habit of systematic alms-giving is fatal to Socialistic impulses, for the essence of the former is to do a duty oneself, of the latter to bid somebody else do it, and to force him to do it, if he be unwilling. It would be an error to believe that genuine alms-giving is confined to the very opulent, among whom it is rare, or to the middle classes, with whom it is a habit; for the working classes, apart from the sacrifices which they make for common purposes, are notoriously generous to one another. Kindness may be superficial. I once travelled by sea from Genoa to Marseilles in the company of a Frenchman and a woman, the latter alone and in distress. I witnessed the incessant and almost affectionate politeness of the Freuchman, and regretted that I was not so acute and supple in my courtesies. But when we had all landed at Marseilles, I saw that polite Frenchman seize the only cab that could be gotten and leave the poor lady on the quay for the practical attentions of the less demonstrative Englishman.

In point of fact, the foreigner has been tutored into the belief that Government is the only supernatural force which he has to recognize. But he concludes that a supernatural power is bound to supernatural beneficence, or that it must be superseded, displaced, or modified. In