APPEALS TO ANIMOSITY. 63
It is not with the English people that the Irish people have cause of quarrel. It is with the system that op- presses both. That is the thing to denounce ; that is the thing to fight. And it is to be fought most effectually by uniting the masses against it. Monarchy, aristocracy, landlordism, would get but a new lease of life by the arousing of sectional passions. The greatest blow that could be struck against them would be, scrupulously avoiding everything that could excite antagonistic popular feeling, to carry this land agitation into Great Britain, not as a mere Irish question, but as a home question as well. To proclaim the universal truth that land is of natural right common property; to abandon all timid and half-way schemes which attempt to compromise between justice and injustice, and to demand nothing more nor less than a full recognition of this natural right would be to do this. It would inevitably be to put the British masses upon inquiry ; to put British landholders upon the defensive, and give them more than enough to do at home. Both England and Scotland are ripe for such an agitation, and, once fairly begun, it can have but one result the victory of the popular cause.
�� �
