from the people, while the inferior lands upon which they are allowed to live will not yield the exorbitant rental demanded and the necessary subsistence for those who work them.  Hence, Ireland is in a state so explosive that it can only be appropriately described by the term “dynamitic.”  In the interest of a few landlords the whole Irish nation has been demoralized and impoverished, so that the government of Great Britain finds it necessary to “assist” able-bodied men to reach America, or any other portion of the world they desire to go to, in order to make a living.

If monopoly in land produces such results as these is it not to be condemned as subversive of correct social adjustments and the perpetuity of government?  The question admits of but one answer.  If monopoly in land compels a government to “assist” its able-bodied men, its laborers, its producers of wealth, its soldiery, to go to other lands, is it not to be condemned as parasitical, destroying the very bone and sinew of government?  The answer is self-evident.  If monopoly in land produces such results as these, would it not be wise statesmanship and sound governmental policy to confiscate to the people the millions of acres which avarice, cunning, favoritism and robbery have turned into parks, pasturages and game preserves—­making the few thousands who constitute the land monopolists, the idlers and the harpies, go honestly to work to make a living, and giving at the same time the same opportunity to the great laboring classes, who earnestly desire to make a living but to whom the opportunity is cruelly and maliciously denied?

I am opposed to aristocracies and so-called privileged classes, because they are opposed to the masses.  They make inequalities, out of which grow all the miseries of society, because there is no limit to their avarice, parsimony and cruelty.  So they thrive, all the rest of humanity may go to the dogs; so they revel in luxury and debauchery, all the rest of humanity may revel in poverty, vice and crime; so they enjoy all the blessings of organized society, all the rest of humanity may bear its curses.  Man is essentially a selfish animal.  Self-preservation is the very first law which he learns to observe and to practice.  That he may get on top of the social ladder and remain there, he will sacrifice family, common humanity and patriotism.  Naturally, Moloch-self is the god he serves.  To enjoy a little brief authority, he would enslave universal mankind, and declare, as Solomon did, after exhausting the catalogue of tyranny and libertinism, “all is vanity”—­emptiness!  Thus, it is dangerous to confide in the humanity of man.  To place in his hands a weapon so all-powerful as land, is to place him upon a pinnacle from whose vast altitude he can, will, and does crush his unfortunate fellowman.