there not, to dread the appearance of the
money-lender?

About this illustrative parish there lie many hundred acres of good
land all belonging to one man, while we, the said village council,
do not possess a rood apiece, and our constituents not a square
yard. Rightfully we ought to have a share, yet we do not agitate for
confiscation. Shall we then say that every owner of land should be
obliged to sell a certain fixed percentage--a very small percentage
would suffice--upon proffer of a reasonable amount, the proffer
being made by those who propose to personally settle on it? Of one
thousand acres suppose ten or twenty liable to forcible purchase at
a given and moderate price. After all it is not a much more
overbearing thing than the taking by railways of land in almost any
direction they please, and not nearly so tyrannous, so stupidly
tyrannous, as some of the acts of folly committed by local boards in
towns. Not long since the newspapers reported a case where a local
authority actually ran a main sewer across a gentleman's park, and
ventilated it at regular intervals, completely destroying the value
of an historic mansion, and utterly ruining a beautiful domain. This
was fouling their own nest with a vengeance. They should have
cherished that park as one of their chiefest glories, their proudest
possession. Parks and woods are daily becoming of almost priceless
value to the nation; nothing could be so mad as to destroy these
last homes of nature. Just conceive the inordinate folly of marking
such a property with sewer ventilators. This is a hundred times more
despotic than a proposal that say two per cent. of land should be
forcibly purchasable for actual settlement. Even five per cent.
would not make an appreciable difference to an estate, though every
fraction of the five per cent. were taken up.

For such proposals to have any effect, the transfer of real property
must be greatly simplified and cheapened. From time to time,
whenever a discussion occurs upon this subject, and there are signs
that the glacier-like movements of government will be hastened by
public stir, up rises some great lawyer and explains to the world
that really nothing could be simpler or cheaper than such transfer.
All that can be wished in that direction has been accomplished
already; there is not the slightest ground for agitation; every
obstruction has been removed, and the machinery is now perfect. He
quotes a long list of Acts to de