HOW TO WIN. 71
Englishman^ who grunts as he pays his income tax, the question as to whether the landowner, who draws his income from property that of natural right belongs to the whole people, ought not to pay it instead of him, and it will not be long before the absurd injustice of allowing rent to be appropriated by individuals will be thoroughly understood. This is a very different thing from asking the British taxpayer to buy out the Irish landlord for the sake of the Irish peasant.
I have been speaking as though all landholders would resist the change which would sacrifice their special interests to the larger interests of society. But I am satisfied that to think this is to do landholders a great injustice. For landholders as a class are not more stupid nor more selfish than any other class. And as they saw, as they must see, as the discussion progresses, that they also would be the gainers in the great social change which would abolish poverty and elevate the very lowest classes the " mudsills " of society, as a Southern Senator expressively called them during the Slavery discussion- above the want, the misery, the vice, and degradation in which they are now plunged, there are many landowners who would join heartily and unreservedly in the effort to bring this change about. This I believe, not merely because my reading and observation both teach me that low, narrow views of self-interest are not the strongest of human motives, but because I know that to-day among those who see the truth I have here tried to set forth, and who would carry out the reform I have proposed, are many landholders.* And, if they be earnest men, I appeal
- Among the warm friends my book " Progress and Poverty " has
found are many landholders some of them large landholders. As types I may mention the names of D. A. Learnard, of San Joaquin, a considerable farmer, who had no sooner read it than he sent for a dozeu copies to circulate among his neighbors; Hiram Tubbs, of
�� �
