Page:Garden Cities of To-morrow (1902).djvu/120

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110
GARDEN CITIES OF TO-MORROW.

foundation for us in the past, but " if, while possessing those ethical sentiments which social discipline has now produced, men stood in possession of a territory not yet individually portioned out, they would no more hesitate to assert equality of their claims to the land than they would hesitate to assert equality of their claims to light and air"[1]—one cannot help wishing—so inharmonious does life seem—that the opportunity presented itself of migrating to a new planet where the "ethical sentiments which social discipline has now produced" might be indulged in. But a new planet, or even "a territory not yet individually portioned out," is by no means necessary if we are but in real earnest; for it has been shown that an organised, migratory movement from over-developed, high-priced land to comparatively raw and unoccupied land, will enable all who desire it to live this life of equal freedom and opportunity; and a sense of the possibility of a life on earth at once orderly and free dawns upon the heart and mind.

The third proposal which I have combined with those of Spence and Mr. Herbert Spencer, of Wakefield and Professor Marshall, embraces one essential feature of a scheme of James S. Buckingham,[2] though I have purposely omitted some of the essential features of that scheme. Mr. Buckingham says (p. 25): "My thoughts were thus directed to the great defects of all existing towns, and the desirability of forming at least one model

  1. "Justice," Chap, xi., p. 85.
  2. Buckingham's scheme is set forth in a work entitled "National Evils and Practical Remedies," published by Peter Jackson, St. Martins le Grand, about 1849.