us, and the question of
land tenure is seen to be of profound importance in the discussion of
social reform. No democratic statesman in our time can propose an
improvement in the social condition of the people without reference to the
land question, and no social reformer of the nineteenth century has had
more influence or been more widely read and discussed than Henry
George--the exponent of the Single Tax on Land Values.

Winstanley was very little heeded in his own day, but two hundred and fifty
years later the civilised countries of the earth are found in deep debate
over the respective rights of landowners and landless, and the relation of
poverty to land ownership. State ownership, taxation of land values,
peasant proprietorship, co-operative agriculture--all have their advocates
to-day, but to Winstanley's question whether the earth was made "for to
give ease to a few or health to all," only one answer is returned.

THE RESTORATION

Under the Commonwealth the landowners were as powerful as they had been
under the monarchy. Enclosures continued. Social reform was not
contemplated by Cromwell nor by Councils of State; democracy was equally
outside the political vision of government. Church of England ministers
were dispossessed in favour of Nonconformists, Puritanism became the
established faith, Catholicism remained proscribed.

The interest in ecclesiastical and theological disputes was considerable,
and Puritanism was popular with large numbers of the middle-class. But to
the mass of the people Puritanism was merely the suppression of further
liberties, the prohibition of old customs, the stern abolition of Christmas
revels and May-day games.

Lilburne did his best to get Cromwell to allow the people some
responsibility in the choice of its rulers. Winstanley proposed a remedy
for the social distress. To neither of these men was any concession made,
and no consideration was given to their appeals.

Hence the bulk of the nation, ignored by the Commonwealth Government, and
alienated by Puritanism, accepted quite amiably--indeed, with
enthusiasm--the restoration of the monarchy on the return of Charles II.,
and was unmoved by the royalist reaction against Parliamentary Government
that followed on the Restoration.

The House of Commons itself, when Monk and his army had gone over to the
side of Charles, voted, in the Convention Parliament of 1660, "that
according to the ancient and fundamental laws of this Ki