My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

288 MY LIFEpriestly rule, which they have now happily thrown offmore completely than we have done. We gave themslavery, both white and black—a curse from the effectsof which they still suffer, and out of which a whollysatisfactory escape seems as remote as ever. Buteven more insidious and more widespread in its evilresults than both of these, we gave them our bad andiniquitous feudal land system ; first by enormousgrants from the Crown to individuals or to companies,but also—what has produced even worseeffects—the ingrained belief that land—the firstessential of life, the source of all things necessaryor useful to mankind, by labour upon which all wealtharises—may yet, justly and equitably, be owned byindividuals, be monopolized by capitalists or bycompanies, leaving the great bulk of the people asabsolutely dependent on these monopolists for permissionto work and to live as ever were the negroslaves of the South before emancipation.The result of acting upon this false conception is,that the Government has already parted with thewhole of the accessible and cultivable land, andthough large areas still remain for any citizen whowill settle upon it, by the mere payment of verymoderate fees, this privilege is absolutely worthlessto those who most want it—the very poor. Andthroughout the western half of the Union one seeseverywhere the strange anomaly of building lots insmall remote towns, surrounded by thousands ofuncultivated acres (and perhaps ten years before soldfor eight or ten shillings an acre), now selling at therate of from ;^iooo to ;^20,ooo an acre ! It is not anuncommon thing for town lots in new places to doubletheir value in a month, while a fourfold increase in ayear is quite common. Hence land speculation has