Mr. Gladstone, 1880:-- Mr. Fitzgerald, of Dublin, “I certainly would be very slow states, that the Judges have to deny that when confiscation adjourned sales from time to time could be proved compensation rather than consent to a wanton ought to follow.” sacrifice of property, and there are “600 estates in the Court waiting for sale, and for these hardly a bidder.” Again I ask your verdict of guilty or not guilty? Are your Right Hon’ble Rulers either incompetent or dishonest, to have made such prophesies? It was not for want of warning that they have blundered so hopelessly. The whole country rang with warnings[89] that the measure was one of confiscation. Even Mr. Parnell predicted it, telling his hearers that there would be no buyers, and the tenants would have “an opportunity of purchasing their holdings under the Bright Clause.” The whole measure is one which commenced by breach of faith and ended in confiscation.[90] Mr. James Lowther, M.P., has been blamed for saying, that “loyal subjects have been deliberately plundered by the Land Act.” Let us see how the political economist defines “plunder:” “When a portion of wealth passes out of the hands of him who has acquired it without his consent and without compensation, whether by force or artifice, to him who has not created it, I say that property is violated, that _plunder is perpetrated_.... If the law itself performs the action it ought to repress, I say that _plunder is still perpetrated_, and even in a social point of view, _under aggravated circumstances_.”[91] Now tell me, my Friend, how do the instances I have given above differ from legalized PLUNDER as defined by Bastiat? When Judge Flannagan says, “you must submit to the inevitable,” he says, in fact, “_you must submit to be legally plundered_.” When Judge Ormsby says “no one could foresee what would occur,” he says in fact, “no one could foresee that the law would become an instrument of _plunder_.” No one could foresee it? Why, every one with common sense could foresee it--every one but those wilfully blind. An admirer of Mr. Gladstone naively writes in the _Westminster Review_ respecting the Land Act:-- “The people of the United States would not have tolerated such an interference with the laws of contract as it involved. No member of Congress could be found who would propose anything so _indefensible_ from the American point of view.”[92] And he might have added _indefensible from every point of view_. Froude, the historian, says: