of it by those who need it. With regard to rent, an interesting and incisive attack on it by Mr. Bernard Shaw is to be found in the first chapter of the Fabian Essays on Socialism.
"Let us," he says, "in the manner of the political economist, trace the effects of settling a country by private property with undisturbed law and order. Figure to yourself the vast green plain of a country virgin to the spade, awaiting the advent of man. Imagine then the arrival of the first colonist, the original Adam, developed by centuries of civilization into an Adam Smith, prospecting for a suitable patch of Private Property. Adam is, as Political Economy fundamentally assumes him to be, 'on the make:' therefore he drives his spade into, and sets up his stockade around, the most fertile and favourably-situated patch he can find. . . . Other Adams come, all on the make, and therefore all sure to pre-empt patches as near as may be to the first Adam's, partly because he has chosen the best situation, partly for the pleasure of his society and conversation, and partly because where two men are assembled together there is a two-man power that is far more than double one-man power. . . . These Adams, too, bring their Cains and Abels, who do not murder one
