Page:The Complete Works of Henry George Volume 3.djvu/47

 LANDLORDS' RIGHT IS LABOR'S WRONG. 39

not that it be bought from a smaller class and sold to a larger class, but that it be resumed by the whole people. To propose to pay the landlords for it is to deny the right of the people to it. The real fight for Irish rights must be made outside of Ireland; and, above all things, the Irish agitators ought to take a logical position, based upon a broad, clear principle which can be everywhere under- stood and appreciated. To ask for tenant-right or peasant proprietorship is not to take such a position ; to concede that the landlords ought to be paid is utterly to abandon the principle that the land belongs rightfully to the people.

To admit, as even the most radical of the Irish agitators seem to admit, that the landlords should be paid the value of their lands, is to deny the rights of the people. It is an admission that the agitation is an interference with the just rights of property. It is to ignore the only prin- ciple on which the agitation can be justified, and on which it can gather strength for the accomplishment of anything real and permanent. To admit this is to admit that the Irish people have no more right to the soil of Ireland than any outsider. For, any outsider can go to Ireland and buy land, if he will give its market value. To propose to buy out the landlords is to propose to continue the present injustice in another form. They would get in interest on the debt created what they now get in rent. They would still have a lien upon Irish labor.

And why should the landlords be paid ? If the land of Ireland belongs of natural right to the Irish people, what valid claim for payment can be set up by the landlords ? No one will contend that the land is theirs of natural right, for the day has gone by when men could be told that the Creator of the universe intended his bounty for the exclusive use and benefit of a privileged class of his creatures that he intended a few to roll in luxury while their fellows toiled and starved for them. The claim of

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