LETTERS ON THE LAND QUESTION. 515 



ever may be the stress of expediency or compulsion in the world 

 as we find it ? But is that the question that was raised on the 

 conversation between Mr. Laidler and Mr. Morley at Newcastle ? 

 Not at all. By that conversation we saw in a remarkably plain 

 way that large numbers of the most intelligent and powerful rep- 

 resentatives of labor in this country had derived from Mr. Spen- 

 cer's teaching these conclusions : That private property in land is 

 a public wrong based on force and fraud, and that to right one 

 wrong it is sometimes necessary to do another. This they took to 

 be a lesson in practical politics ; and what it points to, in practice, 

 is perfectly clear. Resume possession of the stolen land, if you 

 please, for as private property it still is, and under its present 

 ownership it must ever remain, a wrong to the community. For 

 the rest, though compensation must be made for whatever is in 

 the land which was not in it when it was stolen, yet to right 

 one wrong it is sometimes necessary to do another. That is the 

 point for attention as the matter stands at present. For though Mr. 

 Spencer tells the people, as he could and should have told them 

 from the first, that just compensation would entail a disastrous 

 outlay, infallibly to become more disastrous through inferior man- 

 agement of the land by public officials, what of that if, to right 

 one wrong, it is sometimes necessary to do another ? What of 

 just compensation, if it makes a standing crime against the com- 

 munity completely irremediable, and if the people are at liberty 

 to decide whether this is not a case where to right one wrong it is 

 necessary to do another ? The point has been actually considered 

 by labor societies and the leaders of the new Socialist movement 

 all over the country, and it seems quite clear that the Newcastle 

 Labor Electoral Association, for one, has come to the conclusion 

 that, morally, there need not be much punctilio about compen- 

 sation. 



But perhaps Mr. Spencer has never said that to right one wrong 

 it is sometimes necessary to do another. In one of his letters to 

 " The Times " he wrote that he could not be positive whether he 

 had or not ; which seems to imply that he would not be surprised 

 to learn that at one time or another he had included this doctrine 

 in his teaching of absolute political ethics. Be that as it may, 

 however, he could have told us when he was challenged on the 

 subject whether this is his teaching now or not. He has written 

 three letters ; we remain in the dark on the most important point 

 of all, and at the close of an argument entirely occupied with a 

 defense of propagating " absolute political ethics " Mr. Spencer 

 announces his determination to go no further with the contro- 

 versy. Meanwhile here is Mr. Laidler in his old position, and 

 here left. To be sure, it seems difficult to include the dogma he 

 rests upon in any system of absolute political ethics ; and if Mr. 



