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of their being without food or work does not entitle the poor to be fed or employed by the rich, for that there is likewise a justice independent of and superior to utility, consisting simply of respect for rights, while injustice consists simply of violation of rights. In so arguing, I ran directly counter to Utilitarianism, provoking thereby a retaliatory assault from Utilitarianism's tutelary champion, who, as readers of the 'Fortnightly Review'[5] are aware, bore down upon me with an energy no whit the less effective for being tempered with all knightly courtesy. Yet, not to say it vaingloriously, I am not conscious of having been shaken in the saddle, and I now return to the encounter with modest assurance, firmly believing mine to be the better cause, and recollecting too that in a contest with Mr. Mill, let the issue be what it may, I may at least comfort myself with the reflection Minus turpe vinci quam contendisse decorum. I must at the outset be permitted to remark that one or two of Mr. Mill's objections to my statements are based upon misconception of their meaning. I never questioned, but, on the contrary, have always in the distinctest terms admitted that society is perfectly at liberty to put an end to the institution of property in land. No extremest Socialist ever went beyond me in proclaiming that the 'earth was bestowed by the Creator, not on any privileged class or classes, but on all mankind and on all successive generations of men, so that no one generation can have more than a life interest in the soil, or be entitled to alienate the birthright of succeeding generations.'[6] No one more fully recognises that property in land exists only on sufferance and by concession, and that society, which made the concession, may at any moment take it back on giving full compensation to the concessioners. Again, when asserting the inviolability of moveable, as distinguished from landed, property, I was careful to limit the assertion to property honestly acquired. I never supposed it possible to acquire by prescription 'a fee simple in an injustice.' Only, if in any particular instance it be suspected that property has been acquired by force, fraud, or robbery, I contend that the _onus probandi_ lies on him who raises the question. It is for him to show, if he can, that a commercial fortune has, as Mr. Mill suggests, been built up by 'jobbing contracts, profligate loans, or other reprehensible practic
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