ic example. You will
find in paragraph 5th and 6th of Book II., chap. 2, of Mr. Mill's
'Principles,' that the right to tenure of land is based, by his
admission, only on the proprietor's being its improver.

Without pausing to dwell on the objection that land cannot be improved
beyond a certain point, and that, at the reaching of that point,
farther claim to tenure would cease, on Mr. Mill's principle--take
even this admission, with its proper subsequent conclusion, that "in
no sound theory of private property was it ever contemplated that the
proprietor of land should be merely a sinecurist quartered on it."
Now, had that conclusion been farther followed, it would have
compelled the admission that all rent was unjustifiable which normally
maintained any person in idleness; which is indeed the whole truth of
the matter. But Mr. Mill instantly retreats from this perilous
admission; and after three or four pages of discussion (quite accurate
for _its_ part) of the limits of power in management of the land
itself (which apply just as strictly to the peasant proprietor as to
the cottier's landlord), he begs the whole question at issue in one
brief sentence, slipped cunningly into the middle of a long one which
appears to be telling all the other way, and in which the fatal
assertion (of the right to rent) nestles itself, as if it had been
already proved,--thus--I italicize the unproved assertion in which the
venom of the entire falsehood is concentrated.

"Even in the case of cultivated land, a man whom, though only one
among millions, the law permits to hold thousands of acres as his
single share, is not entitled to think that all is given to him to use
and abuse, and deal with it as if it concerned nobody but himself.
_The rents or profits which he can obtain from it are his, and his
only_; but with regard to the land, in everything which he abstains
from doing, he is morally bound, and should, whenever the case admits,
be legally compelled to make his interest and pleasure consistent with
the public good."

157. I say, this sentence in italics is slipped _cunningly_ into the
long sentence, as if it were of no great consequence; and above I have
expressed my belief that Mr. Mill's equivocations on this subject are
wilful. It is a grave accusation; but I cannot, by any stretch of
charity, attribute these misrepresentations to absolute dulness and
bluntness of brain, either in Mr. Mill or his follower, Mr. Fawcett.
Mr.