Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/228



rest of mankind from many square miles of mountain scenery to prevent disturbance to wild animals is an abuse; it exceeds the legitimate bounds of the right of landed property. When land is not intended to be cultivated, no good reason can in general be given for its being private property at all; and if any one is permitted to call it his, he ought to know that he holds it by sufferance of the community, and on an implied condition that his ownership, since it cannot possibly do them any good, at least shall not deprive them of any, which they could have derived from the land if it had been unappropriated. Even in the case of cultivated land, a man whom, though only one among millions, the law permits to hold thousands of acres as his single share, is not entitled to think that all this is given to him to use and abuse, and deal with as if it concerned nobody but himself."

In the passage last quoted from J. S. Mill's Political Economy the words "necessary to protect the owner's privacy against invasion "are particularly deserving of attention, and before I had recurred to the passage for the present purpose, I had noted in the margin of the newspaper (The Daily News for April 18, 1844) containing a letter headed "Trout fishing in Scotland," and signed "J. A. Erskine Stuart," an objection that occurred to me at the time to what is said in the letter about what the writer calls "a fisher's path."