Now it is needless to dwell on the extent to which that large numerical majority of our fellow-citizens which consists of the working classes is imbued with this notion, nor, except to those who are similarly imbued, can it be necessary to insist that there is no notion of which it is more indispensable to disabuse the working-class mind. This, accordingly, I strove to do throughout a recent work of mine, 'On Labour,' particularly in the chapter which treats of the claims and rights thereof. I there earnestly pleaded that there may be, and are, private rights independent of utility which no public needs can cancel; that all which any man, or set of men, is entitled to exact from another is payment or fulfilment of what is due to him or them from that other; that unless the poverty of the many has been caused by the few, the many are not warranted in extorting relief of their wants from the few; that the mere circumstance of their being without food or work does not entitle the poor to be fed or employed by the rich, for that there is likewise a justice independent of and superior to utility, consisting simply of respect for rights, while injustice consists simply of violation of rights. In so arguing, I ran directly counter to Utilitarianism, provoking thereby a retaliatory assault from Utilitarianism's tutelary champion, who, as readers of the 'Fortnightly Review'[5] are aware, bore down upon me with an energy no whit the less effective for being tempered with all knightly courtesy. Yet, not to say it vaingloriously, I am not conscious of having been shaken in the saddle, and I now return to the encounter with modest assurance, firmly believing mine to be the better cause, and recollecting too that in a contest with Mr. Mill, let the issue be what it may, I may at least comfort myself with the reflection Minus turpe vinci quam contendisse decorum. I must at the outset be permitted to remark that one or two of Mr. Mill's objections to my statements are based upon misconception of their meaning. I never questioned, but, on the contrary, have always in the distinctest terms admitted that society is perfectly at liberty to put an end to the institution of property in land. No extremest Socialist ever went beyond me in proclaiming that the 'earth was bestowed by the Creator, not on any privileged class or classes, but on all mankind and on all successive generations of men, so that no one generation can have more than a life interest in the soil, or be entitled to alienate the birthright of succeeding generations.'[6] No one more fully recognises that property in land exists only on sufferance and by concession, and that society, which made the concession, may at any moment take it back on giving full compensation to the concessioners.