Herbert Spencer, he will see that Spence's scheme was entirely freed (as is the one put forward in this little book), from the objections which might probably attend control by the State.[1] The rents were, under Spence's proposals, as in my own, not to be levied by a Central Government far removed from contact with the people, but by the very parish (in my scheme the municipality) in which the people reside. As to the other difficulty which presented itself to Mr. Herbert Spencer's mind—that of acquiring the land on equitable terms, and of yet making it remunerative to the purchasers—a difficulty which Mr. Herbert Spencer, seeing no way out of, rashly concluded to be insuperable—that difficulty is entirely removed by my proposal of buying agricultural or sparsely-settled land, letting it in the manner advocated by Spence, and then bringing about the scientific migratory movement advocated by Wakefield and (though in a somewhat less daring fashion) by Professor Marshall.
Surely a project, which thus brings what Mr. Herbert Spencer still terms "the dictum of absolute ethics"—that all men are equally entitled to the use of the earth—into the field of practical life, and makes it a thing immediately realisable by those who believe in it, must be one of the greatest public importance. When a great philosopher in effect says, we cannot conform our life to the highest moral principles because men have laid an immoral
- ↑ Though Mr. Herbert Spencer, as if to rebuke his own theory that State control is inherently bad, says, "Political speculation which sets out with the assumption that the State has in all cases the same nature must end in profoundly erroneous conclusions."
