“Nor,” he adds, “can it ever be necessary for accomplishing an object by which the community altogether will gain, that a particular portion of the community should be immolated.”[62]
Unfortunately, however, his mischievous denial of the sacred rights of property in land is eagerly read, while his subsequent qualification of it is neglected by those who, like Mr. Bright, aim at the destruction of a political opponent; or, like Mr. Gladstone, are bent on a particular policy, reckless of the results in carrying it out; or, like Mr. Parnell and his followers, whose hands itch for plunder; and it has produced a general haziness of ideas amongst that well-meaning class of people who are good-naturedly liberal with the property of other people.
Yet, clothe it with what sophism you will, any attempt, whether legalized or otherwise, to deprive the landowner of his property and to violate his rights, is as unjustifiable as the depredations of the burglar or the pickpocket. Nay more so; because the statesman or political economist cannot plead poverty or want of education as his excuse.
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.