40 THE LAND QUESTION.
the landlords to the land rests not on natural right, but merely on municipal law on municipal law which con- travenes natural right. And, whenever the sovereign power changes municipal law so as to conform to natural right, what claim can they assert to compensation ? Some of them bought their lands, it is true ; but they got no better title than the seller had to give. And what are these titles? Titles based on murder and robbery, on blood and rapine titles which rest on the most atrocious and wholesale crimes. Created by force and maintained by force, they have not behind them the first shadow of right. That Henry II. and James I. and Cromwell and the Long Parliament had the power to give and grant Irish lands is true ; but will any one contend they had the right ? Will any one contend that in all the past genera- tions there has existed on the British Isles or anywhere else any human being, or any number of human beings, who had the right to say that in the year 1881 the great mass of Irishmen should be compelled to pay in many cases to residents of England, France, or the United States for the privilege of living in their native country and making a living from their native soil ? Even if it be said that might makes right ; even if it be contended that in the twelfth, or seventeenth, or eighteenth century lived men who, having the power, had therefore the right, to give away the soil of Ireland, it cannot be contended that their right went further than their power, or that their gifts and grants are binding on the men of the present generation. No one can urge such a preposterous doctrine. And, if might makes right, then the moment the people get power to take the land the rights of the present landholders utterly cease, and any proposal to compensate them is a proposal to do a fresh wrong.
Should it be urged that, no matter on what they origi- nally rest, the lapse of time has given to the legal owners
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