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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