8 Aji Appeal to the Young. 



sions as to your future activity — I assume that you 

 are one of the nobler spirits, that you know what 

 altruism means. Perhaps you think, "To devote my 

 life to an unceasing and vigorous struggle against 

 all injustice! To apply my whole faculties to bring- 

 ing about the triumph of law, the public expression 

 of supreme justice — can any career be nobler ? " You 

 begin the real work of life confident in yourself and 

 in the profession you have chosen. 



Very well: let us turn to any page of the Law 

 Reports and see what actual life will tell you. 



Here we have a rich landowner ; he demands the 

 eviction of a cotter tenant who has not paid his rent. 

 From a legal point of view the case is beyond dispute : 

 since the poor farmer cannot pay, out he must go. 

 But if we look into the facts we shall learn something 

 like this: The landlord has squandered his rents 

 persistently in rollicking pleasure; the tenant has 

 worked hard all day and ever}' day. The landlord 

 has done nothing to improve his estate. Neverthe- 

 less its value has trebled in fifty years, owing to a 

 rise in price of land due to the construction of a rail- 

 way, to the making of new highroads, to the draining 

 of a marsh, to the enclosure and cultivation of waste 

 lands. But the tenant who has contributed largely 

 toward this increase has ruined himself; he fell into 

 the hands of usurers, and, head over ears in debt, he 

 can no longer pay the landlord. The law, always on 

 the side of property, is quite clear : the landlord is in 

 the right. I3ut you, whose feeling of justice has not 

 yet been stifled by legal fictions, what will you do? 

 Will you contend that the farmer ought to be turned 

 out upon the high roads ? — for that is what the law 

 ordains — or will you urge that the landlord should pay 

 back to the fanner the whole of the increase or value 

 in his property which is due to the farmer's labor? — 

 this is what equity decrees. Which side will you 

 take? For the law and against justice or for justice 

 and against the law ? 



