pted as the respectable solution of a very troublesome
problem. When, as in Ireland, it is strong enough to produce turbulence
and disorder, but not strong enough to tire out and overcome the
authorities, it simply ruins the political manners of the people. If the
Irish landlords had had from the beginning to face the tenants
single-handed and either hold them down by superior physical force, or
come to terms with them as the New York landlords had to do, conditions
of peace and good will would have assuredly been discovered long ago.
The land question, in other words, would have been adjusted in
accordance with "Irish ideas," that is, in some way satisfactory to the
tenants. The very memory of the conflict would probably by this time
have died out, and the two classes would be living in harmony on the
common soil. If in New York, on the other hand, the Van Rensselaers and
Livingstons had been able to secure the aid of martial law and of the
Federal troops in asserting their claims, and in preventing local
opinion having any influence whatever on the settlement of the dispute,
there can be no doubt that a large portion of this State would to-day be
as poor and as savage, and apparently as little fitted for the serious
business of government, as the greater part of Ireland is.

There is, in truth, no reason to doubt that the idea of property in
land, thoroughly accepted though it be in the United States, is
nevertheless held under the same limitations as in the rest of the
world. No matter what the law may say in any country, in no country is
the right of the landed proprietor in his acres as absolute as his right
in his movables. A man may own as much land as he can purchase, and may
assert his ownership in its most absolute form against one, two, or
three occupants, but the minute he began to assert it against a large
number of occupants, that is, to act as if his rights were such that he
had only to buy a whole state or a whole island in order to be able to
evict the entire population, he would find in America, as he finds in
Ireland, that he cannot have the same title to land as to personal
property. He would, for instance, if he tried to oust the people of a
whole district or of a village from their homes on any plea of
possession, or of a contract, find that he was going too far, and that
no matter what the judges might say, or the sheriff might try to do for
him, his legal position was worth very little to him. Con