INCREASING TENDENCIES TO CONFEDERATION. 249

adoption of a postal convention between the various nations of the world would have been treated as an Utopian dream. It is now an established fact, which largely contributes to the comfort and benefit of mankind.

Neither do we assert that such contemplated confederations, which would knit together the interests of the foremost nations of the world, and give an immense stimulus to the production of wealth, are at all likely to spring at once into existence. But we do contend that, if the time for them has not yet come, it is certainly coming-that the continuous and increasing tendency to the congregation of political bodies into large masses must result in further practical development-and that distances are now so neutralised by rapidity of inter-communication, as to offer no impediment to the working of large or complex combinations. Nor would the diversity of languages prove any serious difficulty. Already the diplomatic language of the States of Europe is French; the Anglo-Saxon nations have in common the language of Shakespeare; and throughout the South American states the prevailing tongues are Spanish and Portuguese.

We modestly offer these suggestions for what they may be worth. It is possible that improvements in our system of international polity may take place in a different form, and we shall hail them in any form. But meanwhile, we should not shrink from ourselves propounding remedies to evils merely because the adoption of those remedies appears beset with difficulties. All difficulties are surmountable. Even if our views should be

branded as "impossibilities" we should not be much moved. Our reply would simply be that "Impossible!" is an objection which man, with his finite intelligence and undefined perfectibility, should be most chary of using. Dogmatically to draw the precise line of demarcation between the possible and the impossible, is an arrogant assumption of infallibleness. That boundary line has often been magisterially drawn; and just as often, subsequent experience has shown it to have been drawn in the wrong place. The list of actually accomplished "impossibilities" is an endless one. That fact should prove a rebuke to dogmatic sceptics, and an encouragement to the advocates of progress.

It may perhaps be said that the absorption of local and national interests into the wider and more general range of universal human interests. will be destructive of patriotism. That depends on the meaning assigned to the word "patriotism.” As long as it is, not the direct converse to, but a concentrated form of philanthropy, as long as it implies an intense desire for the special welfare of a man's native country, not as opposed to, but as connected with, the general welfare of mankind, no sentiment can be more in accord with the principles on which a friendly congress of nations would be founded.

But if patriotism is meant to confine its sympathies to the exclusive welfare of a man's native country at the expense of, and in contradistinction to, the general welfare of mankind, it subsides into a narrow, provincial, and selfish prejudice, founded

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on the absurdly erroneous opinion that a country best prospers if, and when, other countries are unprosperous. Patriotism so construed is the apotheosis of a blunder. It is a defect wrongfully raised to the rank of a virtue. It is this fatuous feeling that inspired those wretched feuds which have marked the barbarism and hastened the decadence of contentious savage tribes. The same fatuous feeling gave rise to internecine and cruel wars between the petty towns of ancient Greece, and between the petty states of mediæval Italy. The ancient Lacedemonians specially called themselves patriots, because they hated and despised everybody else; but, in truth, they were (begging Plutarch's pardon) nothing but a petty, savage, egotistical, bigoted, and cruel race of slaveholders.

CHAPTER XXI.

Land-Origin of Private Proprietorship-The World's Supply of Land-Its Gradual Absorption and Consequent Increasing Value.

WE must forbear from prolonging the list of those influences from which wealth-creation receives either hindrance or encouragement. By the time that public opinion throughout the civilised world has received sufficient enlightenment to appreciate, and gained sufficient strength to enforce, the reforms advocated in the preceding pages, the improvement in the condition of mankind will have become so mani

fest that the remaining minor reforms will rapidly follow, and prove but feeble obstructions. Before, however, we proceed to summarise and comment upon the general principles which constitute, and the facts and reasonings which support, the argument propounded in this work, we must devote some share of attention to a few collateral issues, with which the main subject is more or less connected.

Of these, one of the most important relates to the peculiar conditions under which land is placed as compared with the other two factors of all wealth, viz., capital and labour. In the first place, the supply of capital and labour is, originally, scanty it increases gradually and to that increase no limit is assignable. It is different with land. Barring geological phenomena, the supply of land is a fixed quantity. Hitherto, the aggregate quantity of land which the world affords for man's use has been far beyond man's requirements. But it cannot always be so. As cultivable land becomes worked up and utilised by the joint action of capital and labour, its present excess of supply will be gradually reduced, and must, at some period more or less remote, become exhausted. The more rapid the progress of mankind and the increase of the world's population, the sooner the time will arrive when we shall approach the limit of the world's land-supply.

In densely populated countries the value of land has been continually rising, but, so far, the rise has been checked and rendered gradual and bearable by the influx of agricultural produce from

CONTINUOUS RISE IN THE VALUE OF LAND. 253

regions where land was cheap and abundant. How will it be when those regions shall themselves become more densely populated, and the supply of surplus land shall further diminish? The result will no doubt be a general and growing enhancement in the value of land, eventually culminating, should the present laws relating to landed property remain in force, in conferring upon its possessors, the unlimited, because undefined, privileges of a monopoly. These are These are not merely vague and distant speculations. It is a fact that there is a limit to the supply of land-it is a fact that the world's population is fast increasing and therefore using up that supply-and it is a fact that, as the demand becomes greater while the supply remains the same, a proportionate rise in value must ensue. Reason how we may, and infer what we may, those facts have to be confronted. Is it wise to adjourn the consideration of the pinch till the pinch itself shall come?

In the second place, while capital and labour are migratory and can, when required, remove from one locality to another, land is fixed and irremovable. Its products, indeed, are transportable, and may be conveyed to those places where labour is most efficient and capital most abundant; but in order to create that agricultural produce, capital and labour must go to the land. From the two peculiarities which we have pointed out as distinguishing land from its co-factors, capital and labour, various pregnant inferences are deducible, to which we may make some brief reference.

It will be necessary to say a few words as to (a)