The house of Industry : a new estate of the realm

42 THE HOUSE OF INDUSTRY

the burden of rent cannot be expressed in mere terms of money; it plainly implies a social and perhaps a spiritual servitude. Therefore, my attitude towards C.D. must be different from my attitude to A.B. I can afford to be reasonably complaisant to A.B., when it might be my duty to eliminate C.D.—a fact well known to my fellow Irish countrymen.

It is this universality of the land problem that makes it at once the protection of the landlord and the despair of the theorist. Shall we interfere with the slum landlord? Then we touch the interests of the country squire. And we all know how urban rents affect the margin of cultivation. At least we all pretend to know; as a vulgar matter of fact, it is by no means so easy as it looks.

We cannot therefore compromise on land, regarded from the universal aspect. So far from making easy and comfortable the declining years of the landlord, policy may provide the lethal chamber—or special taxation, and particularly upon unused land or land uneconomically employed. Or upon rack rents. Or inequitable leases. Or—who knows ?—upon absentee landlords. Or, for all I know, upon landlords who don’t absent themselves. They seem to be equally unwelcome either way. Pluming itself upon its patriotism, landlordism now as ever remains the greatest enemy of society. The remnants of an ancient and disrupted feudal order are scattered ; wherever they lodge, they fester and poison life.