JOHN STUART MILL ON IRELAND.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 25, 18 October 1873, Page 12

JOHN STUART MILL ON IRELAND.

The late John Stuart Mill said, in closing the famous chapter of hia work on Political Economy, in describing the condition of the cquntry at the time, pasture replacing tillage, and the exodus in- fell flow " Those who think that the laud of a country exists for the sake of a few thousand landowners, and that as long as rents are paid sqciety and Government have fulfilled their functions, may see in this consummation a happy end to Irish difficulties. But this is not a time nor is tho human mind now in a condition, in which such insolent preten-, tions can be maintained. The land of Ireland— the land of every, country — belongs to the people of that country. The individuals called landowners have no right in, morality or justice to anything bat the reat or compensation for its saleable value. With regard t<> the land itself, tho paramount consideration is by what mode of appropriation and cultivation it can be made most, useful to the collective body of its inhabitants. To the owners of the rent it may be very convenient that the bulk of the inhabitants, despairing of justice oa the country where they and then* ancestors have lived and suffered, should seek on another continent that property in land which is denied to them at home. .But the Legislature of the Empire ought to regard with other eyes the forced expatriation of millions of people. When the inhabitants o{ a country quit the country en masse because its Government will not make it a place fit for them to live in the Government is judged and condemned. There is no necessity for depriving the landlords of one farthing of the pecuniary value of their legul rights, but justice requires that the actual cultivators should be enabled to become in Ireland— what they will become in America proprietors of the soil which they cultivate."