All
tenures of land existing before the war were cancelled at a stroke,
and the soil of each country was declared to be the sole and
inalienable property of the State. No occupiers were disturbed who
were turning the land to profitable account, or who were making use
of a reasonable area as a residential estate; but the great
landowners in the country and the ground landlords in the towns
ceased to exist as such, and all private incomes derived from the
rent of land were declared illegal and so forfeited.

All incomes unearned by productive work of hand or brain were
subjected to a progressive tax, which reached fifty per cent. when
the income amounted to L10,000 a year. It is almost needless to say
that these clauses raised a tremendous outcry among the limited
classes they affected; but the only reply made to it by the President
of the Supreme Council was "that honestly earned incomes paid no tax,
and that the idle and useless classes ought to be thankful to be
permitted to exist at any price. The alternative of the tax would be
compulsory labour paid for at its actual value by the State." Without
one exception the grumblers preferred to pay the tax.

All rents, revised according to the actual value of the produce or
property, were to be paid direct to the State. As long as he paid
this rent-tax no man could be disturbed in the possession of his
holding. If he did not pay it the non-payment was to be held as
presumptive evidence that he was not making a proper use of it, and
he was to receive a year's notice to quit; but if at the end of that
time he had amended his ways the notice was to be revoked.

In all countries the Civil and Criminal Codes of Law were to be
amalgamated and simplified by a committee of judges appointed
directly by the Parliament with the assent of the Sovereign. The
fifth clause of the Constitution plainly stated that no man was to be
expected to obey a law that he could not understand, and that the
Supreme Council would uphold no law which was so complicated that it
needed a legal expert to explain it.

It is almost needless to say that this clause swept away at a blow
that pernicious class of hired advocates who had for ages grown rich
on the weakness and the dishonesty of their fellow-men. In after
years it was found that the abolition of the professional lawyer had
furthered the cause of peace and progress quite as efficiently as the
prohibition of standing armies had done.

On the co