The attacks on private property in land, and the revolutionary proposals for giving the landlords notice to quit, brought down the wrath of the Government on Spence, and he was constantly being arrested, fined and imprisoned for "seditious libel," while his bookshop in Holborn was as frequently ransacked by the authorities.
Spence died in 1814, and the movement for abolishing the landlords in favour of common ownership languished and stopped.

The interesting thing about Spence's "Plan" is its anticipation of Henry George's propaganda for a Single Tax on Land Values, and the extinction of all other methods of raising national revenue, a propaganda that, in a modified form for the taxation of land values, has already earned the approval of the House of Commons.
PRACTICAL POLITICS AND DEMOCRATIC IDEALS Because we insist on the experimental character of our British political progress, and the steady refusal to accept speculative ideas and _a priori_ deductions in politics, it does not follow that the services of the idealist are to be unrecognised.
The work of the idealist, whether he is a writer or a man of action--and sometimes, as in the case of Mazzini, he is both--is to stir the souls of men and shake them out of sluggish torpor, or rouse them from gross absorption in personal gain, and from dull, self-satisfied complacency.

He is the prophet, the agitator, the pioneer, and after him follow the responsible statesmen, who rarely see far ahead or venture on new paths.
Once or twice in the world's history the practical statesman is an idealist, as Abraham Lincoln was, but the combination of qualities is unusual.

The political idealist gets his vision in solitary places, the democratic statesman gets his experience of men by rubbing shoulders with the crowd.
A democratic nation must have its seers and prophets, lest it forget its high calling to press forward, and so sink in the slough of contented ease.
The preacher of ideals is the architect of a nation's hopes and desires, and the fulfilment of these hopes and desires will depend on the wisdom of its political builders--the practical politicians.

Often enough the structural alterations are so extensive that the architect does not recognise his plan; and that is probably as it should be; for it is quite likely that the architect left out of account so simple a matter as the staircase in his house beautiful, and the builder is bound to adapt the plan to ordinary human needs.
The idealist has a faith in the future of his cause that exceeds the average faith, and in his sure confidence fails to understand why his neighbours will not follow at his call, or move more rapidly; and so he fails as a practical leader.
Here the work of the statesman and politician comes in.