Yes, yes! All this appears to me to be just and sensible! but pardon me, I am a little obtuse. I cannot yet see that the landlord’s guilt is proven. Let us recapitulate:-- Rent does not raise the price of corn! The tenant gets value for his rent! He enters into a business contract for profit! The rent is a simple debt. To refuse it, is to steal! To assist legally at this refusal, is to be an accomplice in the theft! In this case Government is the accomplice, and the Government is a plunderer under aggravated circumstances! Moreover, it not only plunders, but demoralizes society. Mr. Gladstone represents Government. Messrs. Bright, Parnell, Davitt and Co. assist in this legalized and illegal plunder; thus demoralizing the society. The property of the landlord passes to another without his consent and without compensation! Messrs. Gladstone and Co. use that which Professor Bonamy Price terms a most “unwarrantable process of argumentation.” Stop! Stop!! for goodness’ sake!!! My brain is getting confused; in my innocence, had I not been gravely assured that they were angels of light, patriots, philanthropists,[72] I should have mistaken Messrs. Gladstone, Bright, Parnell, Davitt, and Co. for the real criminals. FOOTNOTES: [63] Adam Smith, in speaking of the class of merchants and manufacturers, says:--“Their superiority over the country gentleman is not so much in their knowledge of the _public interest_ as in their having a better knowledge of _their own interest_ than he has of his. It is by this superior knowledge of their own interest that they have frequently imposed upon _his generosity_ and persuaded him to give up his own interest and that of the public from a very simple but honest conviction that their interest, and not his, was the interest of the people.” (Wealth of Nations, Bk. I. Chap. XI.) How true in the case of Free Trade! [64] The landlordism of the days before Famine (1847) never “recovered its strength or its primitive ways. For the landlord, there came of the Famine the Encumbered Estates Court. For the small farmer and tenant class there floated up the American Emigrant ships.” (‘History of Our Own Times,’ Justin Macarthy.) [65] New Ireland, by A. M. Sullivan, p. 133. [66] Adam Smith contradicts himself about rent--in one set of passages he says it is the _cause_, and in another the _effect_, of prices. [67] Macleod’s Economics, p. 117. [68] Political Economy, by J. S. Mill, Bk. II. Chap. XVI. [69] Profr. Bonamy Price. [70] Profr. Bonamy Price. [71] Political Economy, Bastiat. [72] “Legal plunder has two roots. One of them is in human egotism, the other is in false philanthropy.” (Political Economy, Bastiat.) CHAPTER XIX. ODIMUS QUOS LÆSIMUS.