Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/351

Rh proprietorship of land, partially or wholly merged in the ownership of dominant men during evolution of the militant type, will be resumed as the industrial type becomes fully evolved (pp. 643-646).

The use of the words "possible," "possibly," and "perhaps" in the above extracts shows that I have no positive opinion as to what may hereafter take place. The reason for this state of hesitancy is that I can not see my way toward reconciliation of the ethical requirements with the politico-economical requirements. On the one hand, a condition of things under which the owner of, say, the Scilly Isles might make tenancy of his land conditional upon professing a certain creed or adopting prescribed habits of life, giving notice to quit to any who did not submit, is ethically indefensible. On the other hand,"nationalization of the land," effected after compensation for the artificial value given by cultivation, amounting to the greater part of its value, would entail, in the shape of interest on the required purchase-money, as great a sum as is now paid in rent, and indeed a greater, considering the respective rates of interest on landed property and other property. Add to which, there is no reason to think that the substituted form of administration would be better than the existing form of administration. The belief that land would be better managed by public officials than it is by private owners is a very wild belief.

What the remote future may bring forth there is no saying; but with a humanity anything like that we now know, the implied reorganization would be disastrous.

I am, etc.,

November 6th.

To the Editor of "The Times":

Mr. Herbert Spencer's letter in "The Times" of to-day carries with it a heavy lesson to political philosophers. They are taught to remember that this is an age of popular education, as well as of social unrest; that their books are read not only by students like themselves, who often find their chief interest in a display of intellectual subtlety or athleticism, but by thousands of men who are ever on the alert for warranted theories of social reform that will better their condition. And if such theories should happen to be ill-considered before publication, or unaccompanied by a strong and clear recital of whatever reasons are fatal to their application in this work-a-day world, the mischief they may do is enormous. How clearly Mr. Spencer himself must see this now! And how sorry he must be for having so terribly misled, not Mr. Laidler and the Labor party of Newcastle alone—that