These arrangements, so advantageous to capitalists, so burdensome to industry, were made because the railway companies had at that time 130 representatives in Parliament, and working men only two. It is more than forty years since Lord Shaftesbury made known to an astonished and almost incredulous world the terrible condition in which human beings were living in London. A Royal Commission on the Dwellings of the Poor shows that in the richest city of the world the condition of the poor continues to be in the same most deplorable state. The chief cause of this misery is clearly pointed out by the Commissioners as consisting in our unfair system of taxation, which allows the owners of land to benefit by the increase of value without contributing to the rates, the expenditure of which creates that value. Under this system land is withheld from building, and a band formed round the increasing population which crushes it together and causes fearful overcrowding and its deplorable results. Mr. G. R.Sims has shown the present existence of the same evils as Lord Shaftesbury declared forty years since. No attempt has been made to apply the remedy, and about the only effect of the renewed disclosures was that slumming became for a time a fashionable afternoon engagement in order to supply topics for gossip between the evening dances; even this languid degree of interest has now ceased to be manifested. One of the strongest evidences of power of might over right is found in Mr. Gladstone's action in connection with his Irish measures, respecting which he states that, in the hope of conciliating, he made concessions to powerful interests. "Concessions involve the sacri. fice of public right, yet our most powerful and patriotic Minister did not hesitate to admit that he regarded the classes as stronger than the masses, and felt that the sacrifice of the latter to the former was inevitable. Experience has shown, as he has himself nobly admitted, that he might with advantage have relied upon the people. If he had dared to be just he would have been justified. The statement that none but the rich enjoy the protection of civil law might be regarded as an exaggeration; but, practically, it is so. Lord Shaftesbury relates the case of a girl whose dress was caught by a revolving shaft, and she was dreadfully injured. Her inhuman masters, in sending her wages at the end of the week, deducted 1s. 6d. for the time lost by the accident. Lord Shaftesbury took up the case, and recovered damages to the extent of £100. The law costs were £600. This was forty years ago, and the same amount of law would now cost double what it cost then. A working man, whose wages never exceeded 15s. per week, saved £100, and bought an acre of land. At the end of the small field he had purchased was a row of trees, which were always regarded as belonging to that field, but the adjoining landlord, who was a large owner, claimed these trees, and the small owner was powerless; if he had saved ten times as much it would have been insufficient to enable him to maintain his rights. The excessive cost of law arises from unjust customs, supported by unjust legislation. But the cases we have given as instances of oppression and injustice are trifling when compared with the robbery committed on the community by a land system which has been established by landlord legislation for their own benefit, and under which a small number of privileged and idle families receive enormous sums in unjust rents, extracted from a population who are overworked and overcrowded until life becomes a misery instead of a blessing. The cause of social failure is the fact that the produce of labour is snatched from the people by a remorseless and unjust power, intended for the advantage of all, but used for the benefit of the few by the sacrifice of the many. Why is it that the progress of science, mechanical development, commercial extension, the accumulation of wealth, the exercise of charity and religion all fail to produce results which ought to flow therefrom? The answer is this: Our legislators have made laws for the benefit of the classes at the expense of the masses, and until that legislation is reversed we may expect to make speed with a train when the brakes are on as to obtain prosperity and contentment while we are constantly oppressed with legal injustice. :0: INDIVIDUALISTS are delighted at Mr. Goschen's acceptance of office, which shows the manner of man in whom the Earl of Wemyss and E. P. Bouverie delight. Can his admirers point to a single instance in which the public action of Mr. Goschen has had any other effect than that of robbing the masses for the benefit of the classes? This, we suppose, is what is meant by individualism. IT is difficult to say whether the actions of parents or landlords, as revealed in police courts that human nature must not be trusted with and evictions, are most atrocious; but both show absolute power. Catholics of the upper classes, because he supports ARCHBISHOP WALSH has been boycotted by the Nationalists' Plan of Campaign. IRISH EVICTIONS. In the late Mr. A. M. Sullivan's noble book, "New Ireland," there is no more thrilling chapter than that in which he describes the evictions of Glenveigh. Adair, the tyrant whose caprice depopulated a whole country side, has gone to his last account, but the memory of his dastardly work still rankles in the minds of many an Irishman and Irishwoman, who have sought refuge in the bosom of the great Republic of the West. To-day Glenbeigh is witnessing a repetition of the scenes of horror, the acts of wilful murder which were once enacted at Glenveigh. But sad though it be to realise that men, created in God's own image, are capable of the deeds which within the past few days have sent a thrill of horror throughout the civilised world, it is well to note that even in Conservative journals indignant protests are being made, and that Conservative journalists do not hesitate to expose the villainy of those whose class has been the greatest scourge the world has seen. The national conscience is truly awakening. Here is the Standard's description of an eviction scene : "The evictions of Michael Griffin and Thomas Griffin were carried out. Michael holds two-thirds of the place, and Thomas the remainder. The entire rent is £9 2s., and the valuation £5 18s. Thomas has nine in family, the youngest of his children being an infant of four months. The other children were naked, half-starved little creatures, who cried bitterly, as if their being turned out to the ditchside meant much of a change from the miserable hovel that had sheltered them." After a struggle for possession of the house, "The tenant's wife, who is in delicate health, was brought out in a fainting fit. The poor woman was laid down in the yard, while alongside her the police were forming into a double line and loading their rifles. At every moment the crowd seemed ready to rush on the police to the rescue of those in the house, who were being made prisoners. The scene was one of terrible confusion, and a sanguinary encounter appeared inevitable. Mr. Harrington, M.P., who had been some minutes consulting with the police officer, Mr. Morrison, got on the top of the fence of the yard, and said: 'People of Glenbeigh, I ask you in God's name to be quiet. for one moment and listen to me.' (Cries of 'Yes, yes,' mingled with a wild declaration from the women that the tenant's wife had expired). Mr. Harrington: 'Then kneel down and say a prayer if the poor woman is dying.' It was extremely touching to witness the manner in which the people acted. Many threw themselves down on their knees in the gutter and sink of the yard, and raised their hands in prayer, whilst some shouts and imprecations, loud and terrible, arose.' At The Daily News correspondent says :-"The terrible evictions at Glenbeigh, county Kerry, were continued yesterday and to-day. yesterday's evictions forty persons-from the sickly child to the helpless old man of fourscore-were left homeless. The scenes were the most distressing ever witnessed, even in Kerry. Yesterday's evictions were carried out under a heavy downpour of rain. In the case of one tenant, named Pat Rearden, an exciting and peculiarly painful scene occurred. The miserable house was emptied, but the tenant's infant child was dying, and its mother begged of the agent a shelter for it for the night; but he refused, and ordered the bailiff to nail up the door. The poor woman cried piteously, and laid the dying child in the pigstye in the yard, and tried to procure straw for a bed there." Again: "Yesterday the work of burning and levelling the homesteads of tenants on the property of the Hon. Rowland Winn, at Glenbeigh, county Kerry, was resumed. Mr. Roe, the agent, was accompanied by fifty police, several bailiffs, and six emergency men, the latter being specially retained for levelling the miserable houses as soon as the roof was burned. John Connor was the first visited yesterday. He is an old man of sixty-five years, with a family of ten children, and he owed £10 10s. The ordinary process of throwing out the furniture having been performed by the bailiffs, the work of demolition commenced. The emergency men came provided with paraffin and matches, and set fire to the houses in several places from the inside. Simultaneously with this some of them worked with crowbars at the corner of the gable, displacing stones till the gable and sidewall and flaming rooftree collapsed a smouldering mass of ruins. They likewise levelled the little cow-house attached, and sedulously managed that not one stone should be left standing on another." These are a few typical cases; the name of the starving people cast on the roadside to die is legion. Why should Irishmen tamely endure these iniquities? The laws that make them possible have been made by the class who for centuries have lived on the results of their own fraudulent legislation. It is useless to temporise with the enemy. Landlordism must be seized boldly by the throat, and the fight continued until the principle is carried into effect that the soil of Ireland belongs to the people of Ireland, and the soil of the world to the world's workers. Irishmen have set other nations a noble example. Let us, then, sustain them in their fight and emulate their works at home. The Glenbeigh atrocities will assuredly hasten the end. The tottering cabins which the crowbar brigade have destroyed will be replaced by the happy homes of a free people, but the rotten fabric of landlordism once razed to the ground must never again rear its head to the detriment of the human race. O lords of acres, lords of men, Your rule runs short, your glass runs low; Yea, might is might, and strong is strong; And ye shall taste that WRONG IS WRONG. :0: HENRY GEORGE'S NEW PAPER. The first number of Mr. George's newspaper, The Standard, was published in New York on the 8th of January. The number contains a long and interesting article on the case of Dr. McGlynn, and numerous valuable contributions on the great social problems that are agitating the world. In his opening editorial address Mr. George says: "What God created for the use of all should be utilised for the benefit of all; what is produced by the individual belongs rightfully to the individual. The neglect of these simple principles has brought upon us the curse of widespread poverty and all the evils that flow from it. Their recognition will abolish poverty, will secure to the humblest independence and leisure, and will lay a broad and strong foundation on which all other reforms may be based. To secure the full recognition of these principles is the most important task to which any man can address himself to-day. It is in the hope of aiding in this work that I establish this paper. I believe that the Declaration of Independence is not a mere string of glittering generalitics. I believe that all men are really created equal, and that the securing of those equal natural rights is the true purpose and test of government. And against whatever law, custom or device that restrains men in the exercise of their natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness I shall raise my voice." We wish Mr. George God-speed in his undertaking. LIGHT AND SHADE. "What men call luck Is the prerogative of valiant souls." When the day arrives in which poor but eminently capable men can enter public life in Britain, there will be little left of aristocratic institutions. -Carnegie. It is better to fight for the good than to rail at the ill. -Tennyson. Ever since Carlyle wrote that sentence about rights and mights in his "French Revolution," all blockheads of a benevolent class have been declaiming against him as a worshipper of force. What else in the name of the three Magi is to be worshipped? Force of brains, force of heart, force of hand! Will you dethrone these and worship apoplexy, despise the spirit of Heaven and worship. phthisis? Every condition of idolatry is summed in the wickedness of refusing to worship force, and resolving to worship no force; denying the Almighty, and bowing down to four and twopence with a stamp on it. -Ruskin. A LANDLORD'S CLAIM. Sir Massey Lopes believes not only that the minerals under "his" land, and all on the surface, belong to him; but he claims the "clouds in wat'ry colours dressed" that float in the air, and speaks of the rain as "my property." Merely believing this would not do much harm, but the worst of it is this wealthy landowner does all he can to give effect to his belief. Queen Elizabeth granted to Plymouth the perpetual use of the waters of the river Meavy for drinking and sanitary purposes, the only uses to which it could be put in days when there were no factories or manufactories. The Meavy runs partly through and partly by the lands of Sir Massey Lopes, and he actually had the courage to claim payment for all water-"my property -used for other than domestic purposes. Fortunately, the Courts refused to recognise the quibble, or perhaps Sir Massey would have claimed compensation for the air that blew across his lands and was breathed by persons not his tenants. Though defeated, however, the worthy baronet did not despair, and an opportunity was soon afforded him to assert his landlord's rights. The only stream that can supply Plymouth with drinking water is the Meavy, and when the Corporation determined to construct a storage reservoir they had to approach Sir Massey Lopes to purchase a site. It so happened that another riparian owner, a Radical, whose lands are on the other side of the river to those of the baronet, had given to Plymouth a plot for a reservoir, which, however, could not be utilised unless Sir Massey ceded a corresponding plot. This he positively refused to do, on any consideration whatever, modifying his dog-in-the-manger policy by offering a different and an unsuitable site. The fight between him and the inhabitants of Plymouth waxed long and furious, and it was not until the town was in a state of great excitement that Sir Massey at last, "swearing he would ne'er consent, consented." He however, made a condition that he should be paid, not the actual, but a prospective value for his land. The result is that the people of Plymouth will have to pay £11,000 more than they would otherwise have had to pay. :0: A correspondent from Ireland writes:--As a Democrat cradled in the nursery of agriculture you will allow me to know something of the relations of landlord and tenant, and I can only say from practical knowledge that all the hardships tenant farmers suffered under were of their own creation. They outbid one another and supplanted each other in their competition for land, and they exercised their authority like taskmasters over the poor working man, whom they charged, and still do charge, three times the rent they pay the landlord, for his bit of garden, and in nine cases out of ten gave him a hovel not better than a pigsty. While a working man could get employment from a gentleman nothing would induce him to work for a farmer, even at much higher wages. While his daughter could get service in a gentleman's house, she would not go to a farmer to be worked like a slave and kept in filth and dirt for the six days of the week and most part of Sunday. UNEMPLOYED. A dog of a Socialist am I? Of Society the scuin and the bane-Well, just let me tell you my story, And you won't call me that, sir, again. As ostler, up Kentish Town way. To what I'm a-goin' to tell. For a time we lived quiet and happy, With never a trouble or loss: But one night I came home from my work, sir, Feelin' restless and tired and cross. The whole o' that night I lay tossin' In bed, without sleepin' a wink; An' I says to the wife in the mornin', "Better send for the doctor, I think." He come-an' he shook his 'ead gravely; I could see as he thought it was bad: But hoped I should pull through it quickly— 'Twas the fever, he said, as I had. For a month I was down on that bed, sir, And she tended and nursed me all through it, And the rent since I'd been ill was owin', Then we 'ad to clear out o' the cottage. And we drifted down Whitechapel way-- I tramped through the country for work, sir, Though for lodgin' an' food you must pay. And from labour we'd none of us shirk : Then why don't they show as they're Christiaus, By tryin' to find us some work. Why don't they spend some o' the money Mouny mints, banquets, in 'elpin' To relieve our distress and our woes? TO THE EDITOR OF THE DEMOCRAT. SIR,-Born under, and habituated to," the curse of landlordism" from their infancy the landless masses thoughtlessly tolerate it, simply because it exists, and when resumption is proposed their first concern, laudable as springing from an honest motive, is whether it is righteous to dispossess their landlord oppressors without some pecuniary compensation. We do not compensate the thief who is compelled to restore stolen property, but the more important interests of the masses which have been outraged for centuries by landlordism are forgotten or are esteemed subsidiary, and the serfs abjectly contemplate paying for an emancipation which they can command through Parliament at will. Surely compensation should go the other way, and there can be nothing unrighteous in peremptorily abolishing a system which "legalises robbery and murder." Landlordism has no property, but only an estate in the soil, and to make the distinction clear let us imagine the forty counties of England held by as many landlords desirous of combining for their own pecuniary advantage to offer their property (so called) to the Czar of Russia. Would not the people of England rise en masse to forbid the transfer? Certainly. Suppose the forty landlords sold the forty coats off their backs to the Czar, would or could the people object? No. Then wherein lies the difference? The coats are their own, but the people are the true owners of the soil, and have their estate in it over and above, viz., the right to live, while landlordism's estate only confers the power of levying rent consistently with the public weal, and is subject to extinction “for the profit of this realm" as before explained. Why, the Duke of Argyle would not be permitted to sell the Island of Skye to Russia, as he might if he was the real owner. Every reader knows that the Crown entrusted the barons with land for State purposes! As between the State and the landowner it was purely a political compact-no more, no less-and terminable at the option of the Crown. When landlords were permitted to sell to one another, their transactions were purely commercial as between man and man, and consequently they compensated one another for injuries, but the State could always arbitrarily oust the landowner from his trust. Precedents abound where the State constitutionally resumed for State purposes, without compensationno matter what money had changed hands between man and man-the State was superior to pecuniary consideration, and was not bound by the action of |