, in
conjunction with Colonel Martlett, was on the point of promoting a policy
for imposing penalties on those who attempted to leave it without good
reason, such reason to be left to the discretion of impartial district
boards, composed each of one laborer, one farmer, and one landowner,
decision going by favor of majority. And though opinion was rather
freely expressed that, since the voting would always be two to one
against, this might trench on the liberty of the subject, many thought
that the interests of the country were so much above this consideration
that something of the sort would be found, after all, to be the best
arrangement. The cruder early notions of resettling the land by
fostering peasant proprietorship, with habitable houses and security of
tenure, were already under a cloud, since it was more than suspected that
they would interfere unduly with the game laws and other soundly vested
interests. Mere penalization of those who (or whose fathers before them)
had at great pains planted so much covert, enclosed so much common, and
laid so much country down in grass was hardly a policy for statesmen. A
section of the guests, and that perhaps strongest because most silent,
distinctly favored this new departure of Henry Wiltram's. Coupled with
his swinging corn tax, it was indubitably a stout platform.

A second section of the guests spoke openly in favor of Lord Settleham's
policy of good-will. The whole thing, they thought, must be voluntary,
and they did not see any reason why, if it were left to the kindness and
good intentions of the landowner, there should be any land question at
all. Boards would be formed in every county on which such model
landowners as Sir Gerald Malloring, or Lord Settleham himself, would sit,
to apply the principles of goodwill. Against this policy the only
criticism was levelled by Felix. He could have agreed, he said, if he
had not noticed that Lord Settleham, and nearly all landowners, were
thoroughly satisfied with their existing good-will and averse to any
changes in their education that might foster an increase of it. If--he
asked--landowners were so full of good-will, and so satisfied that they
could not be improved in that matter, why had they not already done what
was now proposed, and settled the land question? He himself believed
that the land question, like any other, was only capable of settlement
through improvement in the spirit of all concerned, but he f