in passing that one man with 1000 acres of land does not dispossess
any more babies of their rights than do ten men with 100 acres each.
The ransom therefore must be a strictly level rate: to put a higher
rate on large holders, or to despoil large holders of a portion of
their landed property, will be to work the ransom unfairly. It hence
will follow that any heavy ransom is now impracticable. Of late years
some farms have gone out of cultivation because they will not pay the
tithe, land tax, and rates already on them: to put any heavy ransom
on the land would at once throw large areas in England out of
cultivation.

The question of the ransom, therefore, is not so all-important as has
been considered; the rates at present being L25,000,000, it might be
possible to levy an additional national rate of L5,000,000 to keep
down the perpetually upspringing rights of new-born infants, without
throwing land out of cultivation to any sensible extent. The whole
question will lie thus between a total rate of L25,000,000 and
L30,000,000. I am about, however, as a corollary to this subject, to
suggest a way of forming a National Rate Book which probably would
not materially alter the present rating, but which would alter
entirely the taking of land for public purposes, and would effectuate
all that is good in the phrase the Nationalisation of Land.

This phrase is liberally used but rarely defined. Different orators
appear to have quite different ideas as to what it means; and when
they explain what they suppose it to mean, they generally prove that,
in the way they understand it, it would be serious national damage.

It is unnecessary to observe that landlords now (omitting individual
exceptions and idiosyncrasies) expend their best endeavours in