of India. All the statements in this paper were founded upon Government Reports or other official documents, referred to in detail. I knew, therefore, that Grant Allen's views as stated in this paper were correct, and therefore wrote to tell him how pleased I was to find that he was not only interested in physical science, as was so often the case with my scientific friends. His reply is so interesting that I will here give the more important parts of it :

"As to your remarks about the wrong actually perpetrated by us in India, I know only too much about that question. For three years I was employed by W. W. Hunter, DirectorGeneral of Statistics for India, in collecting and working up the district accounts and other materials in his possession. Not to put too fine a point upon it, Dr. Hunter is the literary whitewasher of the Indian Government. In working up the abundant reports and other documents submitted to me, I had plenty of opportunities for realizing what English rule really meant. In the ruin wrought by our land settlements especially, I collected a large number of facts and statistics; and I offered John Morley to work them into a paper on 'The Indian Cultivator and his Wrongs;' but Morley did not care for the subject. The fact is, nobody in England wishes to move in the matter. I sent Knowles a paper two years ago about the same subject, dealing especially with the Ganges Canal—a vast blunder, bolstered up by cunningly contrived balance-sheets, in which deficits are concealed as fresh investments; but he would not take it. I only got this article into the Contemporary by leaving out India, and looking at the question from a purely English point of view. I'm afraid the fact can't be blinked that most Englishmen don't mind oppression as long as the oppressed people are only blacks. A startling outrage, like the Zulu War, wakes them up for a moment; but chronic and old-standing sores, like India or Barbadoes, do not affect them."

Neither do "chronic and old-standing sores" at home affect them. The slums, slow starvation, murder and suicide from want, one-third of our population living without a sufficiency of the bare necessaries for a healthy life-food

clothing, warmth, and rest; while another third, comprising together those who create the wealth of the nation, have not the amount of relaxation or the certainty of a comfortable old age which, in a country deserving to be called civilized, every human being should enjoy. This, however, is a step or two beyond land nationalization, before leaving which I must refer to one application of its principles which any Government declaring itself to be "Liberal" ought at once to make law. I call it

SECURITY OF THE HOME.

It is an old boast that an Englishman's house is his castle, but never was a boast less justified by facts. In a large number of cases a working man's house might be better described as an instrument of torture, by means of which he can be forced to comply with his landlord's demands, and both in politics and religion submit himself entirely to the landlord's will. So long as the agricultural labourer, the village mechanic, and the village shopkeeper are the yearly or weekly tenants of the great landowner, the squire, the parson, or the farmer, religious freedom or political independence is impossible. And when those employed in factories or workshops are obliged to live, as they so often are, in houses which are the property of their employers, that employer can force his will upon them by the double threat of loss of employment and loss of a home. Under such conditions a man possesses neither freedom nor safety, nor the possibility of happiness, except so far as his landlord and employer thinks proper. A secure home is the very first essential of political security and of social well-being.

Now, all this has been said many times before, and we may go on saying it, and yet be no nearer to a remedy for the evil. But now that every worker, even to the hitherto despised and down-trodden agricultural labourer, has been given the right of some fragment of local self-government, it is time that, so far as affects the inviolability of the home, the landlord's power should at once be taken away from him. This is the logical sequence of the creation of Parish Councils. For to declare that it is for the public benefit that every inhabitant of a parish shall be free to vote for and to be chosen as a representative of his fellow-parishioners, and at the same time to leave him at the mercy of the individual who owns his house to punish him in a most cruel manner for using the privileges thus granted him, is surely the height of unreason and injustice. It is giving a stone in place of bread ; the shadow rather than the substance 1; of political enfranchisement.

Now, it seems to me that there is one very simple and very effectual way of rendering tenants secure, and that is by a short Act of Parliament declaring all evictions, other than for non-payment of rent, to be illegal.

And to prevent the landlord from driving away a tenant by raising his rent to an exorbitant amount, all alterations of rent must be approved of as reasonable by a committee of the Parish or District Councils, and be determined on the application of either the tenant or the landlord. Of course, at the first letting of a house or small holding, the landlord could ask what rent he pleased, and if it was exorbitant he would get no tenant. But having once let it, the tenant should be secure as long as he wished to occupy it, and the rent should not be raised, except as allowed by some competent tribunal. No doubt a claim will be made on behalf of the landlords for a compulsory tenancy on the part of the occupier; that is, that if the tenant has security of occupation, the landlord should have equally security of having a tenant. But the two cases are totally different. Eviction from his home may be, and often is, ruinous loss and misery to the tenant, who is therefore, to avoid such loss, often compelled to submit to the landlord's will. But who ever heard of a tenant, by the threat of giving notice to quit, compelling his landlord to vote against his conscience, or to go to chapel instead of to church! The tenant needs protection, the landlord does not.1

The same results might also be gained (and perhaps more surely) by giving the Parish and District Councils power to take over all houses whose tenants are threatened with eviction, or with an unfair increase of rent; and that will come some day. But the plan of giving a legal permanent tenure to every tenant is so simple, so obviously reasonable and so free from all interference with the fair money-value of the landlord's property, that, with a little energy and persistent agitation, it might possibly be carried in a few years. Such an Act might be more or less in the following form:-" Whereas the security and inviolability of the HOME is an essential condition of political freedom and social well-being, it is hereby enacted, that no tenant shall hereafter be evicted from his house or homestead for any other cause than non-payment of rent, and every heir or successor of such tenant shall be equally secure so long as the rent is paid." A second clause would provide for a permanently fair

rent.

This formed part of my address to the Land Nationalization Society at its annual meeting in 1895, and one would have thought that some Liberal or Radical or Labour Member would have made an effort to get so small yet so far-reaching and beneficial a measure discussed in the House of Commons. But no notice whatever was taken of the suggestion, and we have had for the succeeding ten years, and have to-day, cases of punishment by eviction for political or religious opinions. It is true that it is but a small and isolated portion of the

'The late Lord Tollemache voluntarily recognized this, and gave his tenantfarmers leases for twenty-one years, determinable at their pleasure, but not at his.

much greater reform that we advocate, but, unlike most small measures, it goes directly to the root of a shameful oppression, and would do more to elevate the very poor and prepare the way for real reform than many whole sessions of even "liberal" legislation.

For about ten years after I first publicly advocated land nationalization I was inclined to think that no further fundamental reforms were possible or necessary. Although I had, since my earliest youth, looked to some form of socialistic organization of society, especially in the form advocated by Robert Owen as the ideal of the future, I was yet so much influenced by the individualistic teachings of Mill and Spencer, and the loudly proclaimed dogma, that without the constant spur of individual competition men would inevitably become idle and fall back into universal poverty, that I did not bestow much attention upon the subject, having, in fact, as much literary work on hand as I could manage. But at length, in 1889, my views were changed once for all, and I have ever since been absolutely convinced, not only that socialism is thoroughly practicable, but that it is the only form of society worthy of civilized beings, and that it alone can secure for mankind continuous mental and moral advancement, together with that true happiness which arises from the full exercise of all their faculties for the purpose of satisfying all their rational needs, desires, and aspirations.

The book that thus changed my outlook on this question was Bellamy's "Looking Backward," a work that in a few years had gone through seventeen editions in America, but had only just been republished in England. On a first reading I was captivated by the wonderfully realistic style of the work, the extreme ingenuity of the conception, the absorbing interest of the story, and the logical power with which the possibility of such a state of society as that depicted was argued and its desirability enforced. Every sneer, every objection, every argument I had ever read against socialism. was here met and shown to be absolutely trivial or altogether

baseless, while the inevitable results of such a social state in giving to every human being the necessaries, the comforts, the harmless luxuries, and the highest refinements and social enjoyments of life were made equally clear. As the mere story had engrossed much of my attention, I read the whole book through again to satisfy myself that I had not overlooked any flaw in the reasoning, and that the conclusion was as clearly demonstrated as it at first sight appeared to be. Even as a story I found it bore a second almost immediate perusal, a thing I never felt inclined to give any book before (except, I think, in the case of Herbert Spencer's "Social Statics"), and during the succeeding year I read it a third time, in order to refresh my memory on certain suggestions which seemed to me especially admirable.

From this time I declared myself a socialist, and I made the first scientific application of my conviction in an article on "Human Selection" in the Fortnightly Review (September, 1890), in which I showed how such a state as socialism postulates would result in the solution of two great problems, (1) that of gradually reducing the rate of increase of the population through a later period of marriage, and (2) by setting up a process of sexual selection which would steadily eliminate the physically imperfect and the socially and morally unfit. This article called forth several expressions of approval, which I highly value. It forms the last chapter of vol. i. of my "Studies, Scientific and Social."

I now read several other books on socialism, such as Mr. Kirkup's "Enquiry into Socialism," an admirable résumé, generally favourable; William Morris's "News from Nowhere," a charming poetical dream, but as a picture of society almost absurd, since nobody seems to work except at odd times. when they feel the inclination, and no indication is given of any organization of labour. Gronlund's "Our Destiny" is a beautiful and well-reasoned essay on the influence of socialism on morals and religion, and his "Co-operative Commonwealth," an exposition of constructive socialism, which has given us in its title the shortest and most accurate definition of what socialism really is. "A Cityless and Countryless