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He mustered statistics; he adduced historic and contemporary example of the just and the unjust in land-holding; he gripped the throat of a certain English duke, and held him up for flagellation; he drifted into oceans of economic theory; he sat down by the waters of Babylon; he climbed Pisgah. Had he but spoken of backslidings in the wilderness!
The first daily paper contained a declaration of principles, including the entire separation of Church and State, the abolition of the clergy reserves and the restoration of the lands to the public, cessation of grants of public money for sectarian purposes, the abolition of tithes and other compulsory taxation for ecclesiastical purposes, and restraint on land-holding by ecclesiastical corporations.
In some localities they call him the ground keeper, and he seems to be that a sort of land owner of the sea bottom. Just as ashore most substantial success comes from land-holding, and those who own the earth are almost invariably financial magnates also, so the cod is a banker.
It was then that the beginning of the present desperate state of things was inaugurated. I do not think the landlords deliberately meant to oppress. I think they looked to the one thing, raising their rental, increasing their income, and went over everything, through everything to the desired end. They have succeeded in making a wide separation between the land-holding and land-tilling classes.
Sigerson, writing in 1871, looked forward to the peaceful co-existence in Ireland of two systems of land-holding, "whereby the country might enjoy the advantage of what is good in the 'landlord, or single middleman system, and in the peasant proprietary or direct system."
Thus arose those estates for life, which in later ages became a special feature of the English land system, and which, by restricting the control of the actual possessor of a property over his land, did much to perpetuate the worst features of medieval land-holding. It is a modern error to regard the legitimation of estates in tail as a triumph of reactionary feudalism over the will of Edward.
The army was likewise reconstructed on the basis of universal military service. Serfdom was abolished and the old caste system, with its restrictions on land-holding, abandoned. A new Germany was slowly waking to life, and collecting its energies for the combat for freedom. The "Continental System" caused increasing irritation.
What distinguishes the period of speculation in Rome from most other manifestations of the kind in Europe is the prominent part played in it by the old land-holding families, a number of which were ruined in wild schemes which no sensible man of business would have touched. This was more or less the result of recent changes in the laws regulating the power of persons making a will.
And although European states might have lost their original feudal character, and although new classes had arisen, land-holding still remained the basis of social distinction.
The conditions of the time made all these possible. The land-holding peasantry of England and it is here that the revolution was accomplished had been largely dispossessed and pauperized under Henry VIII, Edward VI and Elizabeth, while the development of the wool-growing industry had restricted the arable land to a point where it no longer gave employment to the mass of field labourers.
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