Page:The Complete Works of Henry George Volume 3.djvu/58

 50 THE LAND QUESTION.

that steadily condemns thousands to far more lingering and horrible deaths than that of walking the plank to death of the mind and death of the soul, as well as death of the body. These things are undisputed. No one denies that Irish pauperism and famine are the direct results of this land system, and no one who will examine the subject will deny that the chronic pauperism and chronic famine which everywhere mark our civilization are the results of this system. Yet we are told nay, it seems to be taken for granted that this system cannot be abolished without buying off those who profit by it. Was there ever more degrading abasement of the human mind before a fetish ? Can we wonder, as we see it, at any perversion of ideas ?

Consider : is not the parallel I have drawn a true one ? Is it not just as much a perversion of ideas to apply the doctrine of vested rights to property in land, when these are its admitted fruits, as it was to apply it to property in human flesh and blood ; as it would be to apply it to the business of piracy? In what does the claim of the Irish landholders differ from that of the hereditary pirate or the man who has bought out a piratical business? " Because I have inherited or purchased the business of robbing merchantmen," says the pirate, " therefore respect for the rights of property must compel you to let me go on robbing ships and making sailors walk the plank until you buy me out." " Because we have inherited or pur- chased the privilege of appropriating to ourselves the lion's share of the produce of labor," says the landlord, " therefore you must continue to let us do it, even though poor wretches shiver with cold and faint with hunger, even though, in their poverty and misery, they are reduced to wallow with the pigs." What is the difference ?

This is the point I want to make clearly and distinctly, for it shows a distinction that in current thought is over-

�� �