of which they can in no possible way be equitably deprived. He declared that equity does not permit private property in land, and that it is impossible to discover any mode by which land can become private property. He scouted the idea that force can give right, or that sale or bequest or prescription can make invalid claims valid; saying that, "though nothing be multiplied forever, it will not produce one "; asking, "How long does it take for what was originally wrong to grow into a right? and at what rate per annum do invalid claims become valid?" He declared that neither use nor improvement, nor even the free consent of all existing men, could give private ownership in land, or bar the equal right of the next child born. And he, moreover, proved that land nationalization, which he then proposed as the only equitable treatment of land, did not involve state administration.

Not one of the arguments of "Social Statics" is answered in "Justice" - not even the showing that land nationalization merely involves a change in the receivers of rent, and not the governmental occupation and use of land. There are two things, and two things only, that Mr. Spencer admits that he overlooked the relation of the poor law to the claims of land-owners, and the amount of compensation which the landless must give to the landed "for all that value which the labor of ages has given to the land." Mr. Spencer has discussed the poor law before. One of the longest of the chapters of "Social Statics," from which I have already quoted,1 is devoted to it; and in recent writings he has again.

1 pp. 89-90.

referred to it. In "Social Statics" he declares that

the excuse made for a poor law - that it is a compensation to the disinherited for the deprivation of their birthright—has much plausibility; but he objects, not only that the true remedy is to restore equal rights to land, but that the poor law does not give compensation, insisting that poor rates are in the main paid by non-landowners, and that it is only here and there that one of those kept out of their inheritance gets any part of them.

In 1884, in "The Coming Slavery," he repeats the assertion that non-landowners get no benefit from the poor law, saying —

The amount which under the old poor law the halfpauperized laborer received from the parish to eke out his weekly income was not really, as it appeared, a bonus, for it was accompanied by a substantially equivalent decrease of his wages, as was quickly proved when the system was abolished and the wages rose.

In "The Sins of Legislators," he repeats that instead of being paid by land-owners, the poor rates really fall on non-land owners, saying —

As, under the old poor law, the diligent and provident laborer had to pay that the good-for-nothings might not suffer, until frequently, under this extra burden, he broke down and himself took refuge in the workhouse

as, at present, it is admitted that the total rates levied in large towns for all public purposes, have now reached such a height that they "cannot be exceeded without inflicting great hardship on the small shopkeepers and artisans, who already find it difficult enough to keep themselves free from pauper taint."

But in Appendix B Mr. Spencer ignores all this. He assumes that land-owners have been the real

payers and the disinherited the real receivers of the poor rates; and, adding together all that the landowners have paid in poor rates since the time of Queen Elizabeth, he puts the whole sum to their credit in a ledger account between existing landlords and existing landless.

He begins this account at 1601. He credits the landlords and charges the landless with all that has been collected from land for poor rates between 1601 and 1890. Now, if this is done, what is to be put on the other side of the ledger? We must take the same date, the ordinary book-keeper would say, and charge the landlords and credit the landless with all the ground rents the land-owners have received from 1601 to 1890. To this we must add all that the land-owners have received from the produce of general taxes between 1601 and 1890, by virtue of their political power as landlords. And to this we must again add the selling value in 1890 of the land of England, exclusive of improvements. The difference will show what, if we are to go back to 1601, and no farther, existing landlords now owe to existing landless.

This would be the way of ordinary, every-day book-keeping if it were undertaken to make up such a debtor and creditor account from 1601 to 1890. But this is not the way of Spencerian synthetic bookkeeping. What Mr. Spencer does, after crediting

1 The Financial Reform Almanac has given some idea of what enormous sums the British land-owners have received from the offices, pensions and sinecures they have secured for themselves, and from their habit of providing for younger sons and poorer relatives in the army, navy, church, and civil administration.

landlords and charging the landless with the amount collected from land for poor rates between 1601 and 1890, is, omitting all reference to mesne profits, to credit the landless and charge the landlords with the value of the land of England, not as it is, but "in its primitive, unsubdued state, furnishing nothing but wild animals and wild fruits"- that is, before there were any men. This though by what sort of synthetic calculus he gets at it he does not tell us Mr. Spencer estimates at £500,000,000, a sum that will about square the account, with some little balance on the side of the landlords!

Generous to the poor landless is Mr. Accountant Spencer!-so generous that he ought to make a note of it in writing Part VI. of his "Principles of Ethics "The Ethics of Social Life: Positive Beneficence." For is it not positive beneficence to those who are to be credited with it to say that £500,000,000 would be a high estimate of the value of England when there was nothing there but wild animals and wild fruit? To one of less wide magnificence two and threepence would seem to be rather more than a high estimate of the value of the land of England before man came.

CHAPTER XIII.

PRINCIPAL BROWN.

REALLY, this final close of the most important discussion of the most important book of the most important grand division of the great Spencerian Synthetic Philosophy can only be fitly treated by calling on the imagination for an illustration:

Mr. J. D. Brown, for some time before our civil war a prominent citizen of Vicksburg, Mississippi, was a native of Connecticut, of Puritan stock and

thrifty habits. Beginning life as a clock-maker, he emigrated when a young man to that part of Ohio, settled from New England, which is still in those regions known as the Western Reserve. There he went to school-teaching, joined a local literary society, and made some speeches which were highly applauded, and in which he did not hesitate to denounce slavery as the sum of all villanies, and to declare for immediate, unconditional emancipation. Somewhat later on, he went South and settled at Vicksburg, where he became professor of moral philosophy in a young ladies' seminary, and, finally, its principal. Being prudent in speaking of the peculiar institution, and gaining a reputation for profundity, he became popular in the best society, a favorite guest in the lavish hospitalities of the wealthier planters, and, in the Southern manner, was always