ted into law the principle that when a
citizen became too powerful or rich to be controlled within proper
bounds, the safety of society demanded that he should be exiled--sent
where his power or riches could not be used to the detriment of his
fellow-citizens. Should such a rule be applied to-day, society in
every land could disgorge with much advantage the men who ride the
people as the Old Man of the Sea rode Sindbad the luckless sailor. But
our civilization is built upon a higher conception of individual right
and immunity; there is now no limit to the right of one man to rob
another of the produce of his labor or his natural and conferred
rights. Not only may individuals rob and plunder their fellows with
absolute impunity, but our laws have put breath into that soulless
thing which has become notoriously infamous as a "corporation." Around
this thing, this engine of extortion and oppression, our laws have
placed bulwarks which the defrauded laborer, the widow and orphan, and
even the sovereign public, cannot overleap. Here is where Monopoly
first shows its cormorant head.

If millionaires are enemies of society, and I assume that they
are--not because they have property, but because, as a rule, they have
acquired it by unjust processes and use it tyrannically--what excuse
have we for aristocracies, an idle class, a privileged class, who toil
not, nor spin? What is a recognized aristocracy, such as England
maintains? From what perennial fountain did it draw its nobility and
wealth? Came they not through Norman conquest and robbery? Who pay the
heavy taxes levied upon the people to support the privileged classes
of England? The royal revenues and princely preserves, are they not
supported out of the sweat of the poorer classes, upon whom all the
burdens of society fall at last? And why should there be royal
revenues and princely preserves? Do they add anything to the wealth of
a nation or the happiness of a people? Let us see.

Brassey (Sir Thomas), in his book on _Work and Wages_, p. 71, says:

The Irish Poor Law Commissioners stated that the average
produce of the soil in Ireland was not much above one half
the average produce in England, whilst the number of
laborers employed in agriculture was, in proportion to the
quantity of land under cultivation more than double, viz.:
as five to two. Thus ten laborers in Ireland raised only the
same quantity of produce that four laborers