to the full amount of the injury he sustains.[1] The safety of a nation may depend upon the security of an arsenal, and that of the arsenal on the conversion of a hovel into a redoubt; yet the engineer in command dare no more remove a brick from the obnoxious premises without the sanction of an Act of Parliament, and an elaborate valuation, than he dare blow up St. Paul's.
But considerations such as these, the authors of the various schemes "for dealing vigorously with the Irish landlords" deem beneath their notice.
- ↑ Even Mr. Mill, though inspired with no very indulgent feelings towards the landlords of Ireland, admits this principle.
"The claim of the landowners to the land is altogether subordinate to the general policy of the state. The principle of property gives them no right to the land, but only a right to compensation for whatever portion of their interest in the land it may be the policy of the state to deprive them of. To that, their claim is indefeasible. It is due to landowners, and to owners of any property whatever, recognised as such by the state, that they should not be dispossessed of it without receiving its pecuniary value, or an annual income equal to what they derived from it. This is due on the general principles on which property rests. If the land was bought with the produce of the labour and abstinence of themselves or their ancestors, compensation is due to them on that ground; even if otherwise, it is still due on the ground of prescription. When the property is of a kind to which peculiar affections attach themselves, the compensation ought to exceed a bare pecuniary equivalent. The legislature, which if it pleased might convert the whole body of landlords into fundholders or pensioners, might, à fortiori, commute the average receipts of Irish landlords into a fixed rent charge, and raise the tenants into proprietors; supposing always that the full market value of the land was tendered to the landlords, in case they preferred that to accepting the conditions proposed."—Mill, Polit. Econ. p. 289.
