It has now, I think, been made clear how all public works and public improvements may be effected by public credit, properly so called, instead of by public debt, involving far less risk of loss, no permanent charge on the community, but leading, on the contrary, to a continuous reduction of taxation, and cutting away the very foundations of the system by which the financier and speculator are now enabled to plunder the working people. Concluding Observations. Returning to our main subject, some may think that by thus checking great accumulations of capital by individuals the country would be impoverished; but the fact would be exactly the reverse, since the accumulation of real capital would be greatly facilitated. For that large class which now makes its wealth by financial operations and speculations a mere form of gambling-would find its occupation gone, and would be forced to turn its attention to genuine industrial pursuits. Instead of money being used, as it so largely is now, as a mere instrument to make more money by pure speculation, it would have to be invested in true reproductive wealthmachines, tools, buildings, roads, bridges, ships, &c., and thus the whole country would be enriched and benefited. When the changes here indicated had been effected, capital could be profitably invested only in some form of agriculture, manufacture, or commerce; and, while the wealth of the community would thus be indefinitely increased, the accumulation of excessive wealth by individuals would become almost impossible, since, there is a limit to the number of industrial concerns that can be profitably managed by one man. As the race of hereditary idlers would no longer exist, the total production of wealth would be much increased from this cause, while the free use of land in small quantities by a large proportion of the population would render labourers less dependent on capitalists than now, and thus lead to a more equable distribution of wealth than now prevails. My object in this brief chapter has been to call attention to a principle of great importance which appears to have been overlooked by political economists and ignored by legislators, namely,--that the system which enables a permanent and sometimes an increasing revenue to be derived from nominal wealth long after the real wealth it is supposed to represent has ceased to exist, is wrong in itself; and that, like all wrongs, it inevitably leads to suffering. One of the evil results of this system is that it affords the main, if not the only, support to millionnaires and to hereditary plutocrats. I have further endeavoured to show that we may remove all the sources whence vast revenues can be derived by individuals without any productive exertion on their part, not only without injury but with the most beneficial results to the community. Lastly, I believe, that it is in some such view as to the economic error and moral wrong of deriving permanent incomes from perishable wealth, that we shall find the true solution of the problem of the antagonism between capitalists and labourers now everywhere agitating the civilized world. CHAPTER XVI HOW TO NATIONALIZE THE LAND: A RADICAL SOLUTION OF THE IRISH LAND PROBLEM 1 "Land is not and cannot be property in the sense that movable things are property. Every human being born into this planet must live upon the land if he lives at all. The land in any country is really the property of the nation that occupies it; and the tenure of it by individuals is ordered differently in different places, according to the habits of the people and the general convenience. "To treat land, with the present privileges attached to the possession of it, as an article of sale, to be passed from hand to hand in the market like other cominodities, is an arrangement not likely to be permanent either in Ireland or elsewhere."-J. A. FROUDE, in the Nineteenth Century, September 1880, pp. 362, 369. THE Irish Land League proposed that the Government should buy out the Irish landlords (at an estimated cost of two hundred and seventy millions), and convert the tenants into a peasant proprietary who were to redeem their holdings by payments extending over thirty-five years. That a scheme so impracticable as this and even if practicable so unsound and worthless should be put forth by a body of educated men, who had, presumably, studied the subject, is a noteworthy fact, and one which shows the importance of a thorough and fearless discussion of all questions relating to the tenure of the land, in order that we may arrive at some fundamental principles on which to base our practical legislation. 1 This article appeared in the Contemporary Review, November 1880, and it is reprinted here because the principle of separating the inherent value of the land from the improvements, as a means of obviating the need for any "management" by the State or Municipality, was I believe first enunciated in it, and led in the following year to the formation of the Land Nationalisation Society, which, with its offshoot, the Land Restoration League, have done much to spread correct views as to the fundamental importance of its proposed solution of the Land question. The article has therefore, in some degree, an historical value. The total neglect of the study of this most important subject is further illustrated by the way in which the daily press widely promulgated, either without criticism or with expressed approval, an objection to the Land League's proposal which is more absurd than that proposal itself, inasmuch as it involves and rests upon an oversight so gross as almost to constitute a true "Irish bull." Mr. W. J. O'Neill Daunt, an old colleague of O'Connell, was the author of this remarkable piece of criticism, the most important part of which, and that which has been quoted as so especially crushing, is as follows: "There are, roughly speaking, about half a million of tenants in Ireland. But there are about five and a half millions of people in the country. Suppose the half million of tenants are established as peasant proprietors, what is to be done with the claims of the remaining five millions? Have they not a right to say to the peasant landocracy, 'You are only one-eleventh of the nation. Why should one-eleventh grasp all the land? Our right to the land is as good as yours. We will not permit your monopoly. We insist on getting our share of your estates." But neither Mr. O'Neill Daunt himself, nor the writers who approvingly characterized his letter as "remarkable," and his criticism as "pertinent," can have given five minutes' real thought to the matter, or they must have seen the absurdity of their remarks. For surely the half million of tenants have wives and families, and reckoning the children at three and a half per family (which is rather higher than the average for the whole country), we arrive at a tenant population of two and three-quarter millions, or about half the total inhabitants of the island. And what will the other half consist of? There are the landlords, the clergy, and other professional men, the army and navy, the members of the court and officials, the manufacturers, the merchants, and all the mechanics and shopkeepers of the towns. What then becomes of the "five millions" who would cry out against the "half million" monopolizing the land? Would the wives and the children of the new peasant proprietors cry out against their husbands and fathers? Would the manufacturers of Belfast or the shopkeepers of Dublin suddenly want to turn farmers, merely because the same people who now cultivate the land as tenants then cultivate it as owners, or prospective owners, having paid its full value ? The whole objection thus vanishes, as a mere "Irish bull," which the English press adopted and circulated as if it had been sound logic and good political argument! Some other objections stated by Mr. Daunt are, however, more valid. The whole rental of the land during the thirty-five years would necessarily go to the London Treasury, and as it would be the repayment of a loan, distress and eviction must follow non-payment of rent, just as it does now. More important, however, is the consideration that so soon as the new proprietors had acquired the fee simple of the land (or even before), the buying of land by the more wealthy, and the selling of it by the poorer, will, inevitably, begin again. The land will be mortgaged by the poor or improvident, and the wealthy will again accumulate large estates. Then, absentee landlords and discontented tenants, rack-rents, agents, middlemen, evictions and agrarian outrages will all arise as before, till some future Government will again be asked to advance money to buy out the new landlords, and transfer the land to those who will at that time be the tenants. It is evident then that no such proposal as that of the Land League would be more than a temporary palliative applied at an enormous cost, and that we must seek in a different direction if we would effect a radical cure. That direction, is, I believe, indicated by the remarks of Mr. Froude placed at the head of this article, and which fairly represent the views of many advanced thinkers. Hitherto, no practical mode of carrying such ideas into effect has been hit upon, and they have accordingly been relegated to the limbo of "unpractical politics." But this defect is not inherent in the views |