e say therefore, 'You need not
kick the landlords out; you must not buy them out; you had better tax
them out.'"[428] "If the people rose in revolt, took up arms,
confiscated the lands of the nobles, and handed them over to the
control of a Parliament, that would not be brigandage; it would be
revolution. But if the people by the exercise of constitutional means,
passed an Act through Parliament making the estates of the nobles the
property of the nation, with or without compensation, that would be
neither brigandage nor revolution; it would be a legal, righteous, and
constitutional reform. We propose to be neither revolutionaries nor
brigands, but legal, righteous, and constitutional reformers."[429]
Legality implies and presupposes justice, but Socialist law and
justice are different from that conception of law and justice which
has been held hitherto. Chapter XXIV. will make that point clear.

The foregoing should suffice to show that the Socialists intend to
abolish private property in land by "taxing landowners out of
existence."

They apparently forget that not all the owners of land are rich; that
many small farmers, shopkeepers, artisans, &c., own freehold land and
freehold houses; and that the insurance companies have a very large
proportion of their funds invested in land and on the security of
land. A confiscation of land would therefore ruin a vast number of
hard-working people. It would cripple some insurance companies and
ruin others. Hence the savings of thrifty workers would be confiscated
or destroyed by the State together with those of the larger
capitalists.

The Socialists are not entirely agreed as to the way by which the
abolition of private ownership in land should be effected, but some
interesting proposals will be found in Chapter X., "Socialist Views
and Proposals regarding Taxation and the National Budget." The purely
agricultural aspect of the land question is treated in Chapter XVIII.,
"Socialism and Agriculture," and in Chapter XXI., "Some Socialist
Views on Free Trade and Protection."

FOOTNOTES:

[411] Page 81.

[412] Blatchford, _Merrie England_, p. 61.

[413] _Ibid._ p. 60.

[414] Washington, _A Corner in Flesh and Blood_, p. 60.

[415] _Clarion Song Book_, p. 6.

[416] Keir Hardie, _From Serfdom to Socialism_, p. 11.

[417] Davidson, _Book of Lords_, p. 25.

[418] Blatchford, _Land Nationalisation_, p. 9.

[419] Sidney Webb, _Socialism, True and False_, p. 19.

[420