◆¹ But the more important part of the matter still remains to be noticed. The popular idea is, as I just now said, that we should, in confiscating the rental of the kingdom, be merely robbing a handful of rich men, who would be probably a deserving, and certainly an easy prey. The facts of the case are, however, singularly different. It is true, indeed, if we reckon the land by area, that the large landlords own a preponderating part of it: but if we reckon the land by value, the whole case is reversed; ◆² and we find that classes of men who are supposed by the ordinary agitator to have no fixed interest in the national soil at all, really draw from it a rental twice as great as that of the class which is supposed to absorb the whole. I will give the actual figures,[12] based upon official returns; and in order that the reader may know my exact meaning, let me define the term that I have just used—namely “large landlords”—as meaning owners of more than _a thousand_ acres. No one, according to popular usage, would be called a large landlord, who was not the owner of at least as much as this; indeed the large landlord, as denounced by the ordinary agitator, is generally supposed to be the owner of much more. Out of the aggregate rental, then—that total sum which would, if divided, give each man twopence a day—what goes to the large landlords is now considerably less than _twenty-nine million pounds_. By far the larger part—namely something like _seventy million pounds_—is divided amongst _nine hundred and fifty thousand_ owners, of whose stake in the country the agitator seems totally unaware; and in order to give to each man the above daily dividend, it would be necessary to rob all this immense multitude whose rentals are, on an average, _seventy-six pounds_ a year.[13] Supposing, then, this nation of smaller landlords to be spared, ◆³ and our robbery confined to peers and to country gentlemen, the sum to be dealt with would be less than _twenty-nine million pounds_; and out of the ruin of every park, manor, and castle in the country, each adult male would receive less than three-farthings daily. [Sidenote ◆1 Were the National Debt and the Railways confiscated, the results would likewise be hardly perceptible to the nation as a whole.]