Page:Landholding in England.djvu/197

 Englander and Little Englander—all agree that there is physical degeneration, and that such degeneration will, if it goes much further, imperil our place among the nations. We have tried many palliatives (as our manner is), but never a remedy. There is but one remedy—the redressing of the balance, the redistribution of the population. If we fear, as was feared of old, this will increase the population by making the people too comfortable, let us remember that by a perfectly comprehensible law of Nature, the poor increase faster than the rich, increase, as our fathers said, "like lice and flies," while the rich have much ado to prevent their stock from dying out. Let us try comfort.

For generations we have been lamenting the evils of the people herding in towns, but the moment our talk takes a practical turn, the cry of "confiscation" is raised. A few unpractical fanatics may have given some slight excuse for this cry; but the vast majority of land reformers are not fanatics. They know that redistribution must come about by natural causes, and all they ask is that these natural causes shall be allowed to work. At present, our whole land system is constructed to prevent their working. It is Nature's way alternately to gather together and to disperse abroad Our land laws are all on the side of gathering together. Suppose we allowed the great estates to break up by the natural operation of natural causes, instead of continuing to keep them together by laws invented to defeat the operation of these natural causes?

"Land is Perpetual Man." THE END