Page:The Complete Works of Henry George Volume 3.djvu/68

 CHAPTER X.

APPEALS TO ANIMOSITY.

rilHE Land League movement, as an Irish movement, JL has in its favor the strength of Irish national feeling. In assuming the radical ground I urge, it would lose some of this j for there are doubtless a considerable number of Irishmen on both sides of the Atlantic who would shrink at first from the proposal to abolish private property in land. But all that is worth having would soon come back to it. And its strength would be more compact and in- tenseanimated by a more definite purpose and a more profound conviction.

But in ceasing to be a movement having relation simply to Ireland in proclaiming a truth and proposing a remedy which apply as well to every other country it would allay opposition, which, as a mere local movement, it arouses, and bring to its support powerful forces.

The powerful landed interest of England is against the movement anyhow. The natural allies of the Irish agita- tors are the English working-classes not merely the Irishmen and sons of Irishmen who, in the larger English cities, are numerous enough to make some show and exert some voting power, without being numerous enough to effect any important result but the great laboring masses of Great Britain. So long as merely Irish measures are proposed, they cannot gain the hearty support even of the English radicals; so long as race prejudices and

�� �