We see thus, on one hand, the people of England engaged in _shutting_ in the poor people of Africa, lest they should be forced to Cuba; and, on the other, rejoicing at evictions, as the best means of _driving out_ the poor people of Ireland. In all this there is a total absence of consistency; but so far as the Irish people are concerned, it is but a natural consequence of that "unsound social philosophy," based upon the Ricardo-Malthusian doctrine, which after having annihilated the small land-owner and the small trader, denies that the Creator meant that every man should find a place at his table, and sees no more reason why a poor labourer should have any more right to be fed, if willing to work, than the Manchester cotton-spinner should have to find a purchaser for his cloth. "Labour," we are told, is "a commodity," and if men _will_ marry and bring up children "to an overstocked and expiring trade," it is for them to take the consequences--and "_if we stand between the error and its consequences, we stand between the evil and its cure_--if we intercept the penalty (where it does not amount to positive death) we perpetuate the sin."[151] Such being the state of opinion in regard to the claims of labour, we need scarcely be surprised to find a similar state of things in regard to the rights of property. The act of emancipation was a great interference with those rights. However proper it might have been deemed to free the negroes, it was not right to cause the heaviest portion of the loss to be borne by the few and weak planters. If justice required the act, all should have borne their equal share of the burden. So again in regard to Ireland, where special laws have been passed to enable the mortgagees to sell a large portion of the land, rendered valueless by a system that had for long years prevented the Irishman from employing himself except in the work of cultivation. India appears likely now to come in for its share of similar legislation. Centralization has not there, we are told, been carried far enough. Private rights in land, trivial even as they now are,[152] must be annihilated. None, we are told, can be permitted "to stand between the cultivator and the government," even if the collection of the taxes "should render necessary so large an army of _employé_ as to threaten the absorption of the lion's share" of them.[153] In regard to the rights to land in England itself, one of her most distinguished writers says that