SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND. 
299 
holdings for nothing, and have no idea of virtually paying rent 
to the State—not even to an Irish Republic—in aid of, or in 
substitution for, the general taxation of the community. It is 
just possible that the labourers, who are beginning to find out 
that they have gained no benefit from the recent agrarian 
legislation, and who assert with truth that the farmers are far 
harder masters than the landlords, may be led to adopt the 
Socialistic programme; but their present ideal is a better 
cottage and a plot of land. When they get the franchise they 
may make their voices better heard; but they lack “the 
sinews of war,” an essential for any successful agitation in 
Ireland. 
Indeed, neither farmers nor agricultural labourers in any of 
the three countries are likely to swell the cry for land nationali 
zation. In Scotland, the country perhaps most favourable 
to it, the Highland Land Law Reform Association, which 
lately (September, 1884) held a gathering of the clans at 
Dingwall, on behalf of the unfortunate Highland Crofters, is 
a far more infiuential organization than the Scottish Land 
Restoration League. Its programme, however, is not socialistic 
in any proper sense of the term. It merely asks for a law, 
somewhat similar to the Irish Land Act, to enable the Crofters 
to recover rights which they have but recently lost. Radical 
changes in the English Land Laws are pretty widely desired, 
but there is great divergence of opinion as to the direction 
which the particular changes should take. In 1882 the 
Trades Union Congress passed a resolution in favour of land 
nationalization, but this resolution was rescinded last year at 
Nottingham; and this year the congress at Aberdeen, while 
calling for a measure which would “ provide for greater security 
of tenure, compensation for improvements, and bringing the 
land within the reach of the people,” rejected an amendment 
intended to embody the principle of land nationalization. The 
Co-operative Congresses have given no encouragement to any 
scheme which does not embody the principle of compensation. 
Indeed, the question of compensation gives rise to an awkward 
dilemma : Without compensation, nationalization of the land is 
flagrantly unjust and quite hopeless ; with compensation, its