The Bristol Channel, the river Thames, all our high roads, and most of our bridges are public property, free for the use of all. No power in the kingdom could wrest a yard of the highway nor an acre of green sea from the possession of the nation. It is right that the road and the river, the sea and the air should be the property of the people; it is expedient that they should be the property of the people. Then by what right or by what reason can it be held that the land--Britain herself--should belong to any man, or by any man be withheld from the people--who are the British nation? But it may be thought, because I am a Socialist, and neither rich nor influential, that my opinion should be regarded with suspicion. Allow me to offer the authority of more eminent men. The late Lord Chief-Justice Coleridge said, in 1887-- These (our land laws) might be for the general advantage, and if they could be shown to be so, by all means they should be maintained; but if not, does any man, with what he is pleased to call his mind, deny that a state of law under which such mischief could exist, under which the country itself would exist, not for its people, but for a mere handful of them, ought to be instantly and absolutely set aside? Two years later, in 1889, the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone said-- Those persons who possess large portions of the earth's space are not altogether in the same position as possessors of mere personality. Personality does not impose limitations on the action and industry of man and the well-being of the community as possession of land does, and therefore _I freely own that compulsory expropriation is a thing which is admissible, and even sound in principle_. Speaking at Hull, in August 1885, the Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain said-- The soil of every country originally belonged to its inhabitants, and if it has been thought expedient to create private ownership in place of common rights, at least that private ownership must be considered as a trust, and subject to the conditions of a trust. And again, at Inverness, in September 1885, Mr. Chamberlain said-- When an exorbitant rent is demanded, which takes from a tenant the savings of his life, and turns him out at the end of his lease stripped of all his earnings, when a man is taxed for his own improvements, that is confiscation, and it is none the less reprehensible because it is sanctioned by the law. These views of the land question are not merely the views of ignorant demagogues, but are fully indorsed by great lawyers, great statesmen, great authors, great divines, and great economists. What is the principle which these eminent men teach? It is the principle enforced in the patent law, in the income tax, and in the law of copyright, that the privileges and claims, even the _rights_ of the few, must give way to the needs of the many and the welfare of the whole.