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["The Nationalization of the Land." The Times 6 September 1882.*]
Last evening, in the presence of a large audience, at the Memorial-hall, Farringdon-street, Mr. Henry George, the author of a book called "Progress and Poverty," delivered a lecture, under the auspices of the Land Nationalization Society, on the subject of "Land Nationalization." In the unavoidable absence of Professor F. W. Newman, the chair was occupied by Mr. A. R. Wallace. The secretary (Mr. J. A. Parker) at the outset of the proceedings read the following letter from Professor Newman:— My dear Sir,—You desire of me some expression of my sympathy with the expected lecture of Mr. Henry George, for which I had agreed to take the chair if it came off on August 25. I should have felt it an honour to appear publicly at his side, and it would have been in accordance with my old convictions. More than 30 years ago, in a book long out of print, I avowed several cardinal truths concerning land in substantial harmony with the doctrines which he eloquently expounds. English law has never admitted that property in land is identical in character with property in moveables; yet in the mercantile classes, probably at all times, and recently in the school of Cobden and Bright, an effort has been made to claim and establish an identity, with much success in blinding our public. The monstrous despotism under which Ireland, Scotland, and England groan has been too truthfully and awfully depicted by our president, Mr. A. R. Wallace, in his noble book on the nationalization of the land. Mr. Henry George is our very valuable coadjutor in the main question. The despotism has been built up in the course of six centuries by landlords, locally supreme, as well as irresistible in Parliament, from which they long excluded all but landlords; besides they had the aid of subservient lawyers. Such malversation in power does not imply that the class of landlords is specially unjust. No single predominant class is capable of making just laws. The clergy, the medical faculty, or the capitalists, if for six centuries they had had the decisive voice in legislation, would have inflicted upon us evils different in kind, but probably not smaller. Mr. George's native America has a vast advantage over us in the fact that with them neither House of Congress is hereditary. Many try to persuade us that a law or institution is sacred because it is old; but when laws or institutions sanction injustice, antiquity cannot make them sacred. The presumption is to the contrary—"institutions made in an age of violence and comparative barbarism are likely to be violent and barbarous;" and such are our oldest institutions. Only one Norman king—emphatically our conqueror—claimed to drive out human population in order to make a hunting forest; and his memory is infamous for it in our history. Yet this very thing is done by modern landlords, and our Home Secretaries at most do but regret it as an extreme use of legal power. As well might a king or queen claim to drive us all into the sea. And these modern landlords keep the land empty of men and barren of crops simply in order to get more rent from over rich men, who pay a fancy price for the pleasure of cruel sport. This is still more despicable than to be oneself devoted to hunting. There is another matter into which the public ought to inquire—that is, with what right modern lords of the manor claim to be owners of the wild land. To me its aspect is that of simple usurpation. It is certain that in feudal times the barons were remunerated for their personal political service by customary dues from the tenants. They had the duty of "keeping the king's peace" on the wild land, but no ownership of it was assigned to them. The baron might take timber from the forest, stone or lime from the hill, gravel from the sea beach; but so might many others, it was not with him an exclusive right. If tenants then paid anything to him when they served themselves (of which I know nothing), it can only have been a payment fixed by custom, as was all rent in those days. To claim back for the State all the wild land appears to me very natural and reasonable, especially that which has been artificially made wild by vile despotism. But this is only one branch of a vast subject, to elucidate which I do not doubt Mr. George will eminently and fruitfully contribute. F. W. NEWMAN
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