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not  less  than  one  acre  or  more  than  five  acres,  and  will  cease
on  any  estate  from  which  a  fixed  proportion,  say  ten  per  cent,
of  the  whole,  has  been  taken,  while  it  should  not  apply  at  all
to  very  small  holdings  ;  and  finally,  it  will  be  limited  by
proximity  to  the  dwelling  of  the  occupier  of  the  land,  so  as  to
subject  him  to  no  unnecessary  annoyance.”  All  questions
arising  out  of  this  curious,  but  in  many  ways  attractive,  scheme
(and  they  would  be  numerous)  would  be  settled  by  local
courts  of  the  same  character  as  the  Sub-Commissions  under  the
Irish  Land  Act  Mr.  Wallace  calculates  that  perhaps,  as  a
maximum,  one  and  a  half  million  families  would  take  advantage
of  this  right  of  pre-emption,  to  the  extent  of  three  million  acres,
or  one-tenth  of  the  whole  agricultural  land  of  the  country,
within  the  first  ten  years.
A  society  called  the  “  Land  Nationalization  Society  ”  has
been  formed  under  the  presidency  of  Mr.  Wallace,  with  the
object  of  carrying  out  his  scheme.  In  his  address  at  the  third
annual  meeting  of  this  Society,  held  in  June,  1884,  Mr.
Wallace  maintained  that  Mr.  George’s  remedy—the  appropriation ­
  of  the  whole  ground-rent  for  common  purposes—would
not  have  the  effect  of  redressing  the  fundamental  wrong,  the
monopoly  of  land  by  the  few,  nor  of  securing  the  fundamental
necessity,  free  access  for  all  to  the  land.  “  It  would  not,”  he
said  “  give  the  labourers  land,  and  therefore  would  not  raise
wages.  It  would  tend,  on  the  contrary,  to  intensify  the
monopoly  of  land,  because  the  landlords,  possessing  the  houses
and  other  improvements  as  well  as  the  land,  would  raise  the
price  of  these  improvements  to  recover  what  they  had  lost  in
taxation.  And  this  could  not  be  prevented,  because  the
owners  of  a  necessary  of  life  are  masters  of  the  situation,  and
can  command  any  prices  which  those  who  must  have  these
necessaries  are  able  to  pay.  It  is,  therefore,  absolutely  impossible ­
  that  such  a  course  as  Mr.  George  proposes  should
produce  any  good  whatever.”
Mr.  Wallace’s  Society  has  lost  some  of  its  most  energetic
members,  who  were  unable  “  to  concur  with  its  consideration
to  landlords  or  other  principles.”  These  seceders,  early  in
1883,  formed  the  “Land  Reform  Union,”  a  society  already