maintaining "communal rights" would be insuperable, because no man would plough and sow when others had as good a right as he to reap; and therefore, under a system of "communal rights," land would not be cultivated, and the resources of the soil would remain undeveloped. Of course we are prepared to be told that we are wresting Mr Chamberlain's words from the meaning with which he employed them, and evading the real questions which he intended to raise. No such thing. We are most anxious to meet, fairly and fully, the mischievous spirit which pervades these two semi-Socialist speeches which have been delivered by Mr Gladstone's President of the Board of Trade; but it is a spirit which eludes pursuit and evades argument unless encountered by a process of exhaustion. If Mr Chamberlain did not mean by "communal rights" such a system as that to which we have alluded – a system utterly incompatible with any settled institutions what did he mean? We will at once confess that when an orator takes us back to "the origin of things," and to the time "when our social arrangements first began to shape themselves," the discovery of his exact meaning is a task of some difficulty. We may fearlessly assert, however, of Great Britain – as well, indeed, as of every other civilised country – that there never was a period at which "every man" was born into the world with any such rights as those which Mr Chamberlain describes. This is the doctrine which Mr Henry George preaches in almost identical words, as witness his recent speech at the meeting held in January opposite the Royal Exchange, when this champion of land agitation informed the unemployed of London that "the great principle that went to the very root of all reform was this – that all men were created equal; with equal rights to the land in which they were born." It is not to be expected that a man who, like Mr George, joins in a "prayer that all landlords might be taken into heaven," and talks of "landlords being substituted for the Lord above all" in this country, could speak upon these questions without extravagance and absurdity. His fallacies may safely be left to refute themselves. But when a Cabinet Minister utters the unmitigated rubbish which we have quoted from the speech at Birmingham, it is not only right but necessary that his folly should be exposed. Where does Mr Chamberlain learn that "every man" was born into the world "with a right to a part of the land of his birth"? Of course he must intend to convey the idea, which he apparently shares in common with his friend Mr Henry George, of an equal right, or rather of a right to an equal share; for if one man was born into the world with a right to half an acre, and another with a right to half-a-dozen acres, the whole theory would be destroyed at once.
But if men are born with such rights, why not women? Looking at the question from this point of view, the population of Great Britain at the present time has become so large that there would be some difficulty in adjusting matters upon Mr Chamberlain's and Mr George's notions, even if no other obstacles stood in the way. Unfortunately, however, these are neither few nor far between. Not a day passes without the entrance into our English world of numerous male and female infants, all, of course, with equal "rights to a part of the land
