HOW TO WIN. 65
place themselves in an indefensible position; thus they give to the agitation a " communistic " * character, and excite against it that natural and proper feeling which strongly resents any attack upon the rights of property as an attack upon the very foundations of society. It was doubtless this mistake of the agitators in admitting the right of private property in land to which Archbishop McCabe recently alluded in saying that some of the utter- ances of the agitators excited the solicitude of the Holy See. For this mistake gives to the agitation the char- acter of an attack upon the rights of property. If the land is really the property of the landlords (and this is admitted when it is admitted that they are entitled to any rent or to any compensation), then to limit the rent which they shall get, or to interfere with their freedom to make what terms they please with tenants, is an attack upon property rights. If the land is rightfully the land- lords', then is any compulsion as to how they shall let it, or on what terms they shall part with it, a bad and dan- gerous precedent, which naturally alarms capital and excites the solicitude of those who are concerned for good morals and social order. For, if a man may be made to part with one species of property by boycotting or agita- tion, why not with another T If a man's title to land is as rightful as his title to his watch, what is the difference between agitation by Land League meetings and Parlia- mentary filibustering to make him give up the one and agitation with a cocked pistol to make him give up the other?
But, if it be denied that land justly is, or can be, private property, if the equal rights of the whole people to the use of the elements gratuitously furnished by Nature be asserted
- I use the word in the usual sense in which it is used by the
vulgar, and in which a communist is understood as one who wants to divide up other people's property.
�� �
