HOW TO NATIONALIZE THE LAND 273 



State. Now, any individual owner has the power of 

 diverting the transmission of land into another direction 

 than that desired by the previous owner. He may do 

 this in accordance with his personal wishes, his necessities, 

 or even as impelled by his vices, and no person has a 

 right to claim compensation for any supposed injury or 

 injustice in consequence of his not inheriting it. The 

 State, then, may properly claim and exercise a like power 

 for important public purposes; but in order that "just 

 expectations " may not be interfered with, nothing should 

 be done to prevent an estate from descending in due 

 course, at least as far as ^the grand-children of any existing 

 owner ; and, if we go one step further and say that the 

 law shall not be altered so as to affect even his great- 

 grand-children, we certainly extend the principle as far 

 as any one can reasonably claim on the ground that his 

 " sentimental interests " ought to be respected. It is, 

 therefore, proposed that a law shall be enacted by which 

 all landed property in Ireland shall legally descend for 

 three generations beyond the existing owner and then pass 

 to the State. It has been already shown that this will 

 not infringe any individual right or privilege that ought 

 to be permitted to landowners, or even any sentimental 

 interest that they really possess ; neither, as will be shown 

 further on, will it, in all probability, appreciably diminish 

 the market value of their property during the lifetime of 

 any existing owner or heir-at-law. 



In all those cases in which land does not pass from 

 father to son or daughter, but collaterally to brothers, 

 uncles, cousins, or other persons, as well as in all cases in 

 which it is sold or given away, each separate transfer is to 

 be counted as equivalent to one succession in the direct 

 line of descent — the general statement of the new law 

 being, that land will be allowed to pass to three successive 

 owners other than the actual owner at the time of the 

 passing of the Act, and will, on the decease of the last owner, 

 become the property of the State.^ 



^ This was a first tentative application of a great principle which I 

 have considerably extended since, especially in Chapter XXVIII. of 

 this volume. 



VOL. II. T 



