VIII NATURAL AXD POLITICAL RIGHTS IM 



of Westminster's land, and the New York baby no 

 more to Messrs. Astor's land, than the child ..f .1 

 North American squaw, of a native Australian, 

 or of a Hottentot. Property of the community, 

 forsooth ! What right has any community, from 

 a village to a nation, to several property in land 

 more than an individual man has ? 



Natural justice can recognise no right in one [body of men] to 

 the possession and enjoyment of land that is not equally the 

 right of all [their] fellows, (p. 240.) 



Does it make any difference to the validity of 

 this proposition if I substitute the words in italics 

 for the actual words " man " and " his " ? So the 

 splendid prospect held out to the poor and needy 

 is a mere rhetorical mirage ; and they have been 

 cheated out of their cheers by mere " bunkum." 

 Consider the effect of a sober and truthful state- 

 ment of what the orating person really meant or, 

 according to his own principles, ought to mean; 

 say of such a speech as this : 



My free and equal fellow countrymen, there is not the slightest 

 doubt that not only the Duke of Westminster and the Messrs. 

 Astor, but everybody who holds land from the area of a thousand 

 square miles to that of a tablecloth, and who, against all equity, 

 denies that every pauper child has an equal right to it, is a 

 ROBBER. (Loud and long-continued cheers ; the audience, espe- 

 cially the paupers, standing up and waving hats.) But, my 

 friends, I am also bound to tell you that neither the pauper 

 child, nor Messrs. Astor, nor the Duke of Westminster, have 

 any more right to the land than the first nigger you may meet, 

 or the Esquimaux at the north end of this great continent, or 



