ON THE NATURAL INEQUALITY OF MEN. 783 



have called " synthetic " and " prophetic " types, combining the 

 features of the modern gombeen-man with those of the modern 

 rack-renting landlord, who is commonly supposed to be a purely 

 imported Norman or Saxon product, saturated with the very 

 spirit of industrialism namely, the determination to get the 

 highest price for an article which is to be had. As a fact, the 

 condition of the native Irish, under their own chiefs, was as bad 

 in Queen Elizabeth's time as it has ever been since. Again, the 

 status of the original commoners of the sept was steadily altered 

 for the worse by the privilege which the chief possessed, and of 

 which he freely availed himself, of settling on the waste land of 

 the commune such broken vagabonds of other tribes as sought 

 his patronage and protection, and who became absolutely depend- 

 ent upon him. Thus, without war and without any necessity for 

 force or fraud (though doubtless there was an adventitious abun- 

 dance of both), the communal system was bound to go to pieces, 

 and to be replaced by individual ownership, in consequence of the 

 operation of purely industrial causes. That is to say, in conse- 

 quence of the many commercial advantages of individual owner- 

 ship over communal ownership ; which became more and more 

 marked exactly in proportion as territory became more fully occu- 

 pied, security of possession increased, and the chances of the suc- 

 cess of individual enterprise and skill as against routine, in an 

 industrial occupation, became greater and greater. 



The notion that all individual ownership of land is the result 

 of force and fraud appears to me to be on a level with the pecul- 

 iarly short-sighted prejudice that all religions are the results of 

 sacerdotal cunning and imposture. As religions are the inevita- 

 ble products of the human mind, which generates the priest and 

 the prophet as much as it generates the faithful ; so the inequality 

 of individual ownership has grown out of the relative equality of 

 communal ownership in virtue of those natural inequalities of 

 men which, if unimpeded by circumstances, can not fail to give 

 rise quietly and peaceably to corresponding political inequalities. 



The task I have set myself is completed, as far as it can be 

 within reasonable limits. I trust that those who have taken the 

 trouble to follow the argument will agree with me that the gos- 

 pel of Jean-Jacques, in its relation to property, is a very sorry 

 affair that it is the product of an untrustworthy method, applied 

 to assumptions which are devoid of foundation in fact ; and that 

 nothing can be more profoundly true than the saying of the great 

 and truly philosophical English jurist, whose recent death we all 

 deplore, that speculations of this sort are rooted in " impatience 

 of experience, and the preference of a priori to all other methods 

 of reasoning." 



