A measure to buy back the lands of a country from their owners, such as has been contemplated in New Zealand, would be as important as the seizure of Church lands in England, or as the confiscations of the French Revolution; but it would in all likelihood be carried out more temperately and equitably, and it would not involve the same tremendous consequences—a change of faith or a sudden transformation of the whole social structure. Moreover, something depends on the more or less sensational manner in which a change is effected. Negro emancipation still impresses the imagination as a very memorable fact. In one sense its importance can hardly be exaggerated, for, by recognising the obligation to free even a half-brutal race, England practically accepted an enhanced duty towards the higher forms of labour. Nevertheless, looking back on it, one can see that the actual expectations entertained of lifting a degraded race to a higher level have been absolutely futile. On the other hand, the reforms of the criminal law, which have abolished pressing to death, burning, torture, and promiscuous hangings for almost every kind of fraud and larceny, have been so gradual that they have passed almost unobserved. It is only if we look back and sum them up that we can estimate their full importance, and we mostly forget the names of the men who carried them. It is probable that change in the future will generally be of the same tentative and orderly kind, giving no great popularity or power to the statesman who has the good fortune to associate himself with some of the details.
Swift, in a characteristic passage, declares that the names of those who have rendered the greatest services to their country are to be found upon no record, except
