With regard to the actual value of land, Wallace pointed out that the
last valuation was made in the year 1692, and therefore, with the
increase of value through minerals and other products since then, the
arrears of land tax due up to 1905 would amount to more than the value
of all the agricultural land of our country at the present time;
therefore existing landlords, in clamouring for their alleged rights of
property, might find out that those "rights" no longer exist.
Yet another point on which he insisted was the right of way through
fields or woodlands, and especially beside the sea. With the advent of
the motor-car and other swift means of locomotion, the public roads are
no longer safe and pleasurable for pedestrians; besides the iniquitous
fact that hundreds are kept from enjoying the beauties of nature by the
utterly selfish and useless reservations of such by-paths by the
landowner.
"This all-embracing system of land-robbery," again he writes, "for which
nothing is too great or too small; which has absorbed meadow and forest,
moor and mountain, which has appropriated most of our rivers and lakes
and the fish that live in them; making the agriculturist pay for his
seaweed manure and the fisherman for his bait of shell-fish; which has
desolated whole counties to replace men by sheep or cattle, and has
destroyed fields and cottages to make a wilderness for deer and grouse;
which has stolen the commons and filched the roadside wastes; which has
driven the labouring poor into the cities, and thus been the chief cause
of the misery, disease, and early death of thousands .
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