cause, the remedy being worse than the disease. But the cause assigned for the wages paid to labourers is not the true one; the rate of wages must always be regulated by the law of supply and demand-the proportion between the number of the buyers and sellers-which regulates the price and remuneration of all-labour, skill, and capital alike. Mr. George tells us that "poverty deepens as wealth increases, and wages are forced down while productive power grows, because land, which is the source of all wealth and the field of all labour, is monopolized. To extirpate poverty, to make wages what justice commands they should be the full earnings of the labourer-we must therefore substitute for the individual ownership of land a common ownership. Nothing else will go to the cause of the evil-in nothing else is there the slightest hope.

"This, then, is the remedy for the unjust and unequal distribution of wealth apparent in modern civilization, and for all the evils which flow from it.

" We must make land common property."

" I do not propose either to purchase or to confiscate private property in land. The first would be unjust, the second needless. Let the individuals who now hold it still retain, if they want to, possession of what they are pleased to call their land. Let them continue to call it their land. Let them buy and sell, and bequeath and devise it. We may safely leave them the shell, if we take the kernel. It is not necessary to confiscate land ; it is only necessary to confiscate rent." For the sake of argument, let us admit that the owners of land believe, with Mr. George, that there is no other means to "extirpate poverty," and they