68 THE LAND QUESTION.
make easier the next ; that there are strong forces that wait but the raising of the true standard to rally on its side.
Let the time-servers, the demagogues, the compromisers, to whom nothing is right and nothing is wrong, but who are always seeking to find some half-way house between right and wrong let them all go their ways. Any cause which can lay hold of a great truth is the stronger with- out them. If the earnest men among the Irish leaders abandon their present half-hearted, illogical position, and take their stand frankly and firmly upon the principle that the youngest child of the poorest peasant has as good a right to tread the soil and breathe the air of Ireland as the eldest son of the proudest duke, they will have put their fight on the right line. Present defeat will but pave the way for future victory, and each step won makes easier the next. Their position will be not only logically defensible, but will prove the stronger the more it is discussed; for private property in land which never arises from the natural perceptions of men, but springs historically from usurpation and robbery is something so utterly absurd, so outrageously unjust, so clearly a waste of productive forces and a barrier to the most profitable use of natural opportunities, so thoroughly opposed to all sound maxims of public policy, so glaringly in the way of further progress, that it is only tolerated because the majority of men never think about it or hear it questioned. Once fairly arraign it, and it must be condemned; once call upon its advocates to exhibit its claims, and their cause is lost in advance. There is to-day no political economist of standing who dare hazard his reputation by defending it on economic grounds ; there is to-day no thinker of eminence who either does not, like Herbert Spencer, openly declare the injustice of private property in land, or tacitly make the same admission.
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