In this particular locality the land to be enclosed consisted of a large extent of moor, and mountain which, with other common rights, had for many years enabled the occupants of the scattered cottages around to keep a horse, cow, or a few sheep, and thus make a fairly comfortable living. Under the Act, the whole of this open land was divided among the adjacent landowners of the parish or manor, in proportion to the size or value of their estates. Thus, to those who actually possessed much, much was given; whilst to those who only nominally owned a little land, even that was taken away in return for a small compensation which was by no means as valuable to them as the right to graze their cattle. In spite of the statement set forth in the General Enclosure Act—"Whereas it is expedient to facilitate [pg 141] the enclosure and improvement of common and other lands now subject to the rights of property which obstruct cultivation and the productive employment of labour," Wallace ascertained many years later that no single part of the land so enclosed had been cultivated by those to whom it was given, though certain portions had been let or sold at fabulous prices for building purposes, to accommodate summer visitors to the neighbourhood. Thus the unfortunate people who had formerly enjoyed home, health, and comparative prosperity in the cottages scattered over this common land had been obliged to migrate to the large towns, seeking for fresh employment and means of subsistence, or had become "law-created paupers"; whilst to crown all, the piece of common originally "reserved" for the benefit of the inhabitants had been turned into golf-links!
Again and again Wallace drew attention to the fundamental duties of landownership, maintaining that the public, as a whole, had become so blinded by custom that no effectual social reform would ever be established unless some strenuous and unremitting effort was made to recover the land by law from those who had made the land laws and who had niched the common heritage of humanity for their own private aggrandisement.
With regard to the actual value of land, Wallace pointed out that the last valuation was made in the year 1692, and therefore, with the increase of value through minerals and other products since then, the arrears of land tax due up to 1905 would amount to more than the value of all the agricultural land of our country at the present time; therefore existing landlords, in clamouring for their alleged rights of property, might find out that those "rights" no longer exist.
Yet another point on which he insisted was the right of [pg 142] way through fields or woodlands, and especially beside the sea. With the advent of the motor-car and other swift means of locomotion, the public roads are no longer safe and pleasurable for pedestrians; besides the iniquitous fact that hundreds are kept from enjoying the beauties of nature by the utterly selfish and useless reservations of such by-paths by the landowner.
"This all-embracing system of land-robbery," again he writes, "for which nothing is too great or too small; which has absorbed meadow and forest, moor and mountain, which has appropriated most of our rivers and lakes and the fish that live in them; making the agriculturist pay for his seaweed manure and the fisherman for his bait of shell-fish; which has desolated whole counties to replace men by sheep or cattle, and has destroyed fields and cottages to make a wilderness for deer and grouse; which has stolen the commons and filched the roadside wastes; which has driven the labouring poor into the cities, and thus been the chief cause of the misery, disease, and early death of thousands ... it is the advocates of this inhuman system who, when a partial restitution of their unholy gains is proposed, are the loudest in their cries of 'robbery'!
"But all the robbery, all the spoliation, all the legal and illegal filching, has been on their side.... They made the laws to legalise their actions, and, some day, we, the people, will make laws which will not only legalise but justify our process of restitution. It will justify it, because, unlike their laws, which always took from the poor to give to the rich—to the very class which made the laws—ours will only take from the superfluity of the rich, not to give to the poor or to any individuals, but to so administer as to enable every man to live by honest work, to restore to the whole people their birthright in their native soil, and to relieve all alike from a heavy burden of unnecessary and unjust taxation. [pg 143] This will be the true statesmanship of the future, and it will be justified alike by equity, by ethics, and by religion."
These, then, are the facts and reasons upon which Dr. Wallace based his strenuous advocacy of Land Nationalisation.[49] It was only by slow degrees that he arrived at some of the conclusions propounded in his later years, but once having grasped their full importance to the social and moral well-being of the community, he held them to the last.
The first book which tended to fasten his attention upon these matters was "Social Statics," by Herbert Spencer, but in 1870 the publication of his "Malay Archipelago" brought him into personal contact with John Stuart Mill, through whose invitation he became a member of the General Committee of the Land Tenure Reform Association. On the formation of the Land Nationalisation Society in 1880 he retired from the Association, and devoted himself to the larger issues which the new Society embraced.
Soon after the latter Society was started, Henry George, the American author of "Progress and Poverty," came to England, and Wallace had many opportunities of hearing him speak in public and of discussing matters of common interest in private. In spite of the ridicule poured upon Henry George's book by many eminent social reformers, Wallace consistently upheld its general principles.
His second work on these various subjects was a small book entitled "Bad Times," issued in 1885, in which he went deeply into the root causes of the depression in trade which had lasted since 1874. The facts there given were enlarged upon and continually brought up to date in his later writings. Articles which had appeared in various magazines were gathered together and included, with those on other subjects, in "Studies, Scientific and Social." His last three books, which include his ideas on social diseases [pg 144] and the best method of preventing them, were "The Wonderful Century," "Social Environment and Moral Progress," and "The Revolt of Democracy"; the two last being issued, as we have seen, in 1913, the year of his death.