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THE

DUBLIN REVIEW.

OCTOBER, 1886.

ART. I.-WHAT TO DO WITH THE LANDOWNERS.

THE

HE land question has become a part of practical politics, and every newspaper must be prepared to give to its readers ex cathedrá judgments on the lawfulness or unlawfulness of landowning; whether a private person may have any at all, or as much as he can get hold of; whether he may use it as he likes or not; and if he is to be controlled, who is to control him, and how much; whether the present landowners have any business to be where they are, and had not better be turned out and others put in their place. And do all our woes spring from the monstrous appropriation of the soil by individuals, and must our salvation be sought in the nationalization of the land? Or is the survival of an effete feudal system our bane, and free trade in land the remedy? Or must we at all hazards put peasant proprietors and small holdings in the place of tenant-farmers and large holdings, and for ever afterwards live in peace? However this may be, we are forced to listen to a great deal of strong language and much calling of bad names; so that if we are to believe what we hear, half our countrymen are tyrants, exterminators, greedy monopolists, revolutionists, socialists, breakers of the Decalogue, stirring up to their own profit the passions of the multitude; or again, making their profit out of the necessities of others, and trampling on the poor and the weak. And besides this mutual vituperation, there is the din of watchwords and phrases, the various political and economical shibboleths; such as the land for the people, unearned increment, three acres and a cow, the right to the fruits of your labour, the laws of political economy, the law of demand and supply, free trade in land, security of capital, application of capital to land, the rights of property, the liberty of the individual, the freedom of contract. Finally, it is scarcely possible to discuss many of the recent laws VOL. XVI.—NO. II. [Third Series.]

S

and proposals dealing with land without raising a violent storm of denunciation, or being lost in an incense cloud of praise.

Amid all this clamour and discord, amid this labyrinth of words, we are in evident need of some clue for our guidance. It is little use giving us advice to be calm and impartial, and avoid extremes; and nothing is more feeble and unpractical than eclecticism, which declares there is much to be said for all parties and opinions, and proceeds to offer you a select mixture, being so much of Messrs. George and Hyndman with an equal quantity of Messrs. Chamberlain and Arch, added to a strong composition of Lord Bramwell and Sir James Stephen. There is nothing to be done with such an indigestible compound. No doubt a great many people are eclectics-that is, they pick and choose, not on any principle, but as the fancy strikes them. And so we find excellent people holding opinions that lead straight to socialism, and others holding opinions that would justify any tyranny, and yet who would never dream themselves of committing any act of plunder or oppression. They are better as men than as logicians, and must be judged by their practices rather than by their professions. But after all we cannot permanently set logic at defiance, and the incoherent or contradictory views on social questions that are held by so many of our contemporaries are an accidental phenomenon not likely to be repeated. Our young men call on us to set before them something more clear and reasonable, and there seem but three social doctrines that we have the opportunity of teaching them. One is the socialistic or humanitarian theory, aiming at abolishing the poor and weak by equalizing property and power, and based on the assumption of man's natural goodness and equality. The second is the Darwinian or scientific theory, based on the doctrine of the survival of the stronger and the elimination of the weak; it refuses to protect the poor and feeble, so as not to interfere with the free development of higher organisms and the decay of lower. This is the suitable doctrine for the freethinkers (and there are such) among the Conservatives; while the socialistic theory is adapted for freethinkers among the Liberals; and both theories are equally opposed to Christian teaching, which recognizes inequality as providential, and will not admit that the rich are vampires and the poor are victims; nor again will admit the poor and weak and suffering to be inferior types, but, on the whole, puts them on a higher level than the rich and powerful, and seeks to bind both classes together by preaching submission and content, paternal care and fraternal charity. These are the three theoriesthe Socialist, the Darwinian, and the Christian-that are the only serious competitors for our allegiance; pull down the rich, or keep down the poor, or bind the two together by the bonds of religion.

Now, the question of the ownership of land being one of the chief among the social questions, will naturally be answered differently by each of these theories. With the two irreligious theories we are not now immediately concerned, for we are asking whether the Christian theory of society can give us clear and definite principles on the ownership of land which we can apply to the present circumstances of our country. I think it can; and the principles seem to me to be something as follows.

The right of every family to occupy and hold as its own so much unoccupied land as it can itself cultivate is a right that so obviously flows from the Christian view of man's position on the earth, and the nature of the family, that it needs no defence or illustration. The point of interest is whether any more may be occupied. Now, there is one kind of occupation that cannot be recognized-namely, where immense tracts of land fit for cultivation are claimed as their own by individuals, or families, or tribes, and kept out of cultivation. For this contradicts the end for which the earth was given over to men-to increase, multiply, and subdue the earth; and such nominal occupancy confers no title to exclude others from becoming genuine occupants of the land. This is a matter of no slight practical importance. For example, the greater part of the United States a few generations ago was in the occupation of tribes of Indians. Had they the right to exclude all settlers, and keep the vast valley of the Mississippi as their hunting-ground for ever? Not at all; for they were not using it as it was given to man to be used, and were keeping the earth unpeopled. For many hundred men could live by agriculture on the space that one man required to support him as a hunting-ground. I know well, indeed, that the Indian tribes have been treated with much cruelty and injustice, but this does not alter the fact that they had no claim to exclude agriculture from North America, and keep it as a perpetual wilderness for hunters and game. This is an extreme case, but the same principle applies in other cases, notably to the gigantic sheep-runs of the Southern Hemisphere. I am not saying a word against the temporary use of vast regions for raising wool, as is done in Australasia, as long as the temporary character of such occupation is recognized, and no serious hindrance put to the settlement of the country and the increase of population. But where there is such a hindrance-and there seems to have undoubtedly been such in Tasmania, where millions of acres are owned by a few dozen sheep-farmers, and settlement is blocked-such occupation should be restricted, and the

See the interesting account given in the Times for September 4, 1884. The vast, healthy, and fertile island, after nearly a century of settlement,

occupants have no more cause for complaint at their dispossession than the tribes of the aborigines.

But why tell us, you may exclaim, about squatters and Red Indians? We want to know about our landowners at home: are we to go on touching our hats to them, or to take them and hang them, more Gallico, on the nearest lamp-post? Well, if you will have a little patience, I will tell you plainly which of the two courses I recommend. And first, because it is not right or tolerable that one man or a few men should keep vast regions permanently uncultivated, it does not follow in the least that one man or few men should not hold vast regions of cultivated land as their own. No doubt there is a political danger if very much land or very much of any kind of power is in the hands of one or two people. There is a well-known sentence in Roscher's "Economics": "A dreadful lesson is to be learnt from history, when we read how six men owned half the province of Africa, and then Nero had all six put to death." But this does not prove that it is unjust and wrong to own a vast estate-only impolitic; and may justify measures to restrict gigantic ownership, but does not touch the ordinary rich landowner, whom you are in doubt whether to salute or to hang. Now, what is the meaning of a rich landowner? He is one who is the legal owner of much more land than he can cultivate with his own hands and with those of his family, and this land is cultivated by his servants or dependants, who work on his land, and after getting from it enough to support themselves, get a surplus above, which goes either in part or wholly to the landowner, and forms his revenue. Thus he can be freed from all labour except that of superintendence, and even this he can delegate to an agent. He has, therefore, both leisure for himself and his family, and can live in a fine house full of fine things, and (an essential requisite) with servants to take care of his goods and enable him and his family to enjoy them and live a cultured life. It may be noted, by the way, that not only landowners but every man who is above the poorer classes, in proportion as he is rich, must have others who are poor working for him; his revenue, as far as it exceeds the salary that he would pay an agent to do his work, must come from the surplus produce of the labour of the poor-call it rent, call it profit, call it interest: it can come from no other possible

has no more than 126,000 inhabitants; and in the twenty years from 1860 to 1880 the increase was only 27,000: manufactures remained next to none. The wheat produced was between six and seven hundred thousand bushels less, and the average number of sheep to each inhabitant sank from twenty to fifteen. The more energetic among the young men leave their country, as it can give no scope to their energy.