FOOTNOTES:

[56] If we were to partition out England into a Mill’s Utopia of peasant proprietors to-morrow, it would not last a week; half of the proprietors would convert their holdings into drink, and be in a state of intoxication until it was expended.

[57] ‘Grande and Petite Culture. Rural Economy of France.’ De Lavergne.

[58] The yeomen and small tenant-farmers, men of little capital, have almost disappeared, and the process of improving them off the face of the agricultural world is still progressing to its bitter end; homestead after homestead has been deserted, and farm has been added to farm—a very unpleasing result of the inexorable principle—the survival of the fittest—by means of which even the cultivators of the soil are selected;—but a result which, not the laws of nature, but the bungling arrangements of human legislators, have rendered inevitable. (Bear., Fortnightly Review, September, 1873.)

[59] ‘Mill’s Political Economy,’ Bk. II. Chap. II.

[60] The original inheritors have, through their lawfully constituted rulers, parted with their property, having, in most cases, received an equivalent for it in the shape, either of eminent services rendered to the State, or else of actual payments in hard cash; and these transactions have been deliberately ratified and acknowledged by the laws of the country from time immemorial. It is therefore simply childish to argue that the land thus disposed of still belongs to the original inheritors, after they have enjoyed for past years the proceeds for which they have bartered the land that once belonged to them.

[61] I beg your pardon, my dear Fanatic, I see I have unconsciously made a slight mistake. Mill says, that appropriation is wholly a matter of general expediency, and on that ground you may justify slavery.

[62] Mill’s Political Economy, Bk. II. Chap. II.

[CHAPTER XVII.]
SELECTIONS FROM JUGERNATH’S SACRED WRITINGS.

Allow me, my dear Idolator, to make a few quotations from one of your sacred Vedas, on the subject of land.

You are fond of quoting them when it suits your purpose.

Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith.Action of Free Trade.
(1.) Every improvement in the circumstances of the society tends, either directly or indirectly, to raise the real rent of land, to increase the real wealth of the landlord, his power of purchasing the labour or the produce of the labour of other people.Free Trade has ruined agricultural industry. Can it be an improvement in the circumstances of the society.
(2.) Every increase in the real wealth of the society, every increase in the quantity of useful labour employed within it, tends indirectly to raise the real rent of land.Free Trade has lowered rents. Can it have wrought increase in the real wealth of society?
(3) All those improvements in the productive powers of labour which tend directly to reduce the real price of manufactures, tend indirectly to raise the real rent of land.The improvements in machinery, science, steam, and electricity prevented the collapse of agriculture at first, and has even given a semblance of temporary prosperity, and this has been dishonestly claimed by Free-traders as their work.
(4.) Whatever reduces the real price of manufactured produce raises that of rude produce of the landlord.In spite of this advantage agriculture has collapsed under Free Trade.
(5.) The neglect of cultivation and improvement, the fall in the real price of any part of the rude produce of the land ... tend to lower the real rent of land, to reduce the real wealth of the landlord, to diminish his power of purchasing either the labour or the produce of the labour of other people.Your Free Trade prophets, Bright and Gladstone, are unceasing in their endeavours to destroy the landlord and diminish his power of employing productive labour.
(6.) The whole annual produce of the land and labour of every country constitutes a revenue to three different orders of people,
—to:—
1. Those who live by rent.
2. Those who live by wages.
3. Those who live by profit.
The interest of the first of these three great orders is strictly and inseparably connected with the general interests of the society.
Whatever either promotes or obstructs the one, promotes or obstructs the other.Free trade obstructs the interests of the first of these three great orders, and necessarily obstructs the general interests of the nation at large.
(7.) The interest of this third order has not the same connection with the general interest of the society as that of the other two.Free trade has emanated from this order.
Merchants and Master Manufacturers are, in this order, the two classes of people who commonly employ the largest capitals.
(8.) The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce, which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious, attention.If attention had only been paid to Adam Smith’s warning, we should not now have to mourn the decadence of England’s industries.
(9.) It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public; who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it. (Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith, Bk. I. Chap. XI.)
How true of your prophet Bright! Free Trade is another fearful example of the deception and oppression practised by this class.

You will probably, attempt to discredit your sacred writings when they do not support your own views.

You will argue that Adam Smith wrote when the conditions of society and commerce were very different from what they are now.

Mathematicians say, that when a formula will not accommodate itself to altering conditions and circumstances, it is unsound. It is the same with political science. Either the political science of Adam Smith is unsound, and he is not reliable, or the serious indictments against Free Trade given in the quotations above are well-founded.

[CHAPTER XVIII.]
THE VAMPIRE.

What is the nature of a country-life that it should breed such a vampire,—such a monster of iniquity,—such a “squanderer of national wealth” as the landlord whom your Free-trading friends hold up to public execration? The old classical idea “procul a negotiis” would indicate that it had a contrary influence. How is it then that it produces the unmitigated miscreant whom Bright delights to denounce,—whom Gladstone loves to pursue with ruinous enactments,—and whom Parnell, with his murderous crew, takes pleasure in “boycotting,” maiming, and assassinating? The external appearance of this monster gives no clue to his character. From personal acquaintance with men of this class in England I should have said, that, on the average, they were well-meaning, harmless, good-natured men; not always of the widest of views, or shrewdest intelligence, but with the best intentions, anxious in bad times to help their tenants, and in good times to improve their property. Even your prophet Adam Smith appears to have been deceived by them.[63] Again, appearances are deceptive; for, to my inexperienced eye, there seemed to be a large amount of kindly sympathy between tenant and landlord.

I am unable to speak from personal experience respecting the same classes in Ireland; but all novels and tales of Irish life, which should reflect, with some degree of truth, the general aspect of things, agree in describing scenes, probably founded on facts, from which one would imagine that, before the present agitation and enactments, there appeared to exist much kindly feeling and sympathy between the peasantry and the “Masther,” who, with all his faults, is represented as a generous, rollicking, devil-may-care sort of fellow,[64] quite opposed to the grasping, grinding miscreant whom your friends denounce; of course, there were exceptions.

Mr. A. M. Sullivan seems also to have been mistaken when he says:—

“The conduct of the Irish landlords throughout the famine period has been variously described, and has, I believe, been generally condemned. I consider the censure visited on them too sweeping. I hold it to be in some respects cruelly unjust.... It is impossible to contest authentic cases of brutal heartlessness here and there; but granting all that has to be entered on the dark debtor side, the overwhelming balance is the other way. The bulk of the resident Irish landlords manfully did their best in that dread hour. If they did too little compared with what the landlord class in England would have done in a similar case, it was because little was in their power.... They were heritors of estates heavily overweighted with the debts of a bygone generation.... To these landowners the failure of one year’s rental receipts meant mortgage, foreclosure, and hopeless ruin. Yet cases might be named by the score in which men scorned to avert, by pressure on their suffering tenancy, the fate they saw impending over them. They went down with the ship.

“No adequate tribute has ever been paid to the memory of those Irish landlords, and they were men of every party and creed, who perished martyrs to duty, in that awful time.”[65]

It is wonderful how, at such an awful time, the Irish landlord should have continued to mask his true character.

Still I am rather puzzled.

I quite admit that the Irish landlord is wrong in rack-renting his tenant to the extent of grinding out of him one-third of the amount that is cheerfully paid by tenants in protectionist countries.

I admit that he should not have tried in a Free Trade country to have extorted more than one-tenth of the rent paid by protectionist tenants. Nay, I will go further. I don’t think that a tenant in Free Trade Ireland would farm to a profit even if he had the land rent-free. I admit also that it was selfish of the landlord to allow the question of his own pauperism to weigh in the question of rent.

Still, after making due allowance for all these faults, I cannot quite understand how his guilt is sufficiently proven to warrant his continued persecution and gradual extermination, by enactment after enactment for his ruin, should he chance to escape assassination. A snake or a rat could not be hunted down with greater venom. I must say that, in spite of his crimes, he is an object of pity.

Perhaps an analysis of his villainy may help me to understand the heinousness of his crime; let us apply, therefore, to the political economist for the character of the rent, the instrument with which he commits his crime—what does he say?[66]

“Rent does not affect the price of agricultural produce.”[67]

“Whoever does pay rent gets back its full value in extra advantage, and the rent which he pays does not place him in a worse position than, but only in the same position as, his fellow-producer who pays no rent, but whose instrument is one of inferior efficiency.”[68]

“Rent is reached by bargaining between the landlord and tenant; bargaining founded on the practical elements existing in the business. Profit must satisfy the tenant, or he will not take the farm; and on the other hand, if he claim an unduly low rent, he will find a rival competitor stepping into the farm house.... The position of an in-coming tenant is that of a man who is buying a business for sale (for whether he purchases the farm outright in order to cultivate it, or hires it, makes no difference in the nature of the transaction). He is buying a specific business in a given locality, as any man might do in a manufacturing town, and his motive is profit. This consideration governs the whole of the negotiation between the landowner and himself ... upon the terms of an annual payment of the means of profit which he seeks to acquire.”[69]

Yes! This appears to me to be just and business-like; the tenant hires the land for the profit he expects to get out of it, and his rent is a simple debt. Proceed:—

“To refuse to pay debt violently is to steal, and to permit stealing is not only to dissolve, but to demoralize, society.”[70]

“When a portion of wealth passes out of the hands of him who has acquired it, without his consent, and without compensation, to him who has not created it ... plunder is perpetrated.”[71]

“Law is common force organized to prevent injustice.”[71]

“If the law itself performs the action it ought to repress, plunder is still perpetrated under aggravated circumstances.”[71]

“To place the position itself of a landlord in an invidious light, as a man who exacts from the labours of others that for which he has neither toiled nor spun, is a most unwarrantable process of argumentation.”[70]

“It would be impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this:—the conversion of law into an instrument of plunder.”[71]

Yes, yes! All this appears to me to be just and sensible! but pardon me, I am a little obtuse. I cannot yet see that the landlord’s guilt is proven. Let us recapitulate:—

Rent does not raise the price of corn! The tenant gets value for his rent! He enters into a business contract for profit! The rent is a simple debt. To refuse it, is to steal! To assist legally at this refusal, is to be an accomplice in the theft! In this case Government is the accomplice, and the Government is a plunderer under aggravated circumstances! Moreover, it not only plunders, but demoralizes society. Mr. Gladstone represents Government. Messrs. Bright, Parnell, Davitt and Co. assist in this legalized and illegal plunder; thus demoralizing the society. The property of the landlord passes to another without his consent and without compensation! Messrs. Gladstone and Co. use that which Professor Bonamy Price terms a most “unwarrantable process of argumentation.”

Stop! Stop!! for goodness’ sake!!! My brain is getting confused; in my innocence, had I not been gravely assured that they were angels of light, patriots, philanthropists,[72] I should have mistaken Messrs. Gladstone, Bright, Parnell, Davitt, and Co. for the real criminals.