conclusion that each man is free to use his limbs and move where he pleases.

The truth is, that instead of every one being free in England "to use his limbs and move about where he pleases," there is no part of the British Isles, even though it be wild moor, bleak deer-forest or bare mountain-top, where a man is free to move about without permission of the private owner, except it be the highroads, the public places, or other strips and spots of land deemed the property of the community.

Mr. Spencer seems to have forgotten this now, but he knew it when in "Social Statics" he denounced the system that permitted the Duke of Leeds to warn off tourists from Ben-muich-Dhui, the Duke of Atholl to close Glen Tilt, the Duke of Buccleuch to deny Free Church sites, and the Duke of Sutherland to displace Highlanders with deer.

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Verily, they have their reward." The name of Herbert Spencer now appears with those of about all the Dukes in the Kingdom as the director of an association formed for the purpose of defending private property in land that was especially active in the recent London County Council election.

CHAPTER VIII.

"JUSTICE" ON THE RIGHT TO LAND.

At last, however, as all men must, even after the flying-machine becomes practicable, Mr. Spencer is forced to come down from light and air to solid earth.

But observe how reluctantly, how tenderly, he approaches the main question, the subject he would evidently like to ignore altogether. Land- to us the one solid, natural element; our all-producing, allsupporting mother, from whose bosom our very frames are drawn, and to which they return again; our standing-place; our workshop; our granary; our reservoir and substratum and nexus of media and forces; the element from which all we can produce must be drawn; without which we cannot breathe the air or enjoy the light; the element prerequisite to all human life and action - he speaks of as "that remaining portion of the environment, hardly to be called a medium," which "by an unusual extension of meaning" is included in the things to which the equal liberty of all extends.

Yet, at last, and thus tenderly, after having shown to his own satisfaction that with regard to personal rights and the liberty of movement, "things as they are" in such countries as England do not differ from things as they ought to be," except, perhaps, that

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there is too much smoking in railway carriages, Mr. Spencer does at last get to the burning question of the land. And no sooner does he get there than the power by virtue of which a truth once recognized can never be entirely forgotten or utterly ignored, forces from him this recognition:

If, while possessing those ethical sentiments which social discipline has now produced, men stood in the possession of a territory not yet individually portioned out, they would no more hesitate to assert equality of their claims to the land than they would hesitate to assert equality of their claims to light and air.

"If, while possessing those ethical sentiments which social discipline has now produced." This "if" is the assumption of the Spencerian philosophy, that our moral sentiments have been evolved by pressure of conditions, survival of the fittest and hereditary transmission, since the time when, according to it, primitive men were accustomed to eat each other. Having told us that social evolution has brought mankind in the Victorian era to the recognition of equal rights to air and light, Mr. Spencer now assumes that the idea of equal rights to the use of land is the product of a similar development instead of being a primary perception of mankind.

Now this assumption is not merely opposed to all the facts; it is inconsistent with the Spencerian philosophy.

To consider the philosophy first: It holds that man is an evolution from the animal. He comes to be man by gradual development from the monkey or from some form of life from which the monkeys have also sprung. In the course of this evolutionary

process, continued since he became man, he has acquired his present instincts, habits and powers.

Now I will not ask how, since the highest animals that habitually eat their own kind are on the synthetic genealogical tree far below any of the animals, existing or extinct, from which man can have descended, the oft-repeated assumption that primitive men were habitual cannibals can be reconciled with the assumption that they derived their habits from their animal ancestors.

But I will make bold to ask how the assumption. that men have only now arrived at the perception of the equality of rights to the use of the natural media, and especially land, can be reconciled with the assumption that our moral perceptions are derived from animals. Animals fight with their own kind, as men fight; or at least some of them do occasionally, though none fight so frequently and so wantonly. But is there an animal, from the monkey to the jelly-fish, that does not, with animals of its own kind, and when at peace, fail to claim for itself and accord to others the liberty to use natural media, bounded only by the equal liberty of all? If there is not, how can the assumption that it has taken man all these ages to recognize the equality of rights to the use of natural media be made to harmonize with the assumption that he primarily derives his perceptions from the animal?

I ask this question to emphasize the fact that, in his effort to smooth away the monstrous injustice of private property in land, Mr. Spencer does violence to his own theories - not alone to the theories which he held when he wrote "Social Statics," but to the

theories of his Synthetic Philosophy the theories set forth in "Justice;" that he stands ready to sacrifice to his new masters not only his moral honesty, but even what the morally depraved often cling to the pretence of intellectual honesty. In order to ignore the gist of the land question while pretending to explain it, he is endeavoring to create the impression that the present treatment of land, if not indeed the best, is at least the highest form which the progressive development of the idea of the equality of rights to the use of natural media has assumed. But to say that the idea of equal rights to land is the product of advancing social discipline is to say that it has proceeded from the contrary idea that of unequal rights, or private property in land. Since the animals show no trace of this idea, this assumption is inconsistent with the doctrine that primitive man came closest to the animals. And to assume, as Mr. Spencer does in this chapter, that men start with the idea of unequal rights to land, and have been working up through social discipline to the idea of equal rights, is likewise inconsistent with all the points in the elaborate derivation of the idea of justice, which occupy the first eight chapters of this very book.

The assumption that the idea of equal rights to land is the product of social discipline is at both ends contradicted by the facts. In America, Australia and New Zealand, men of English speech, possessing "those ethical sentiments which social discipline has now produced," have stood in possession of territory not yet individually portioned out; but, instead of asserting the equality of claims to land,