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Free Trade in Land: An Aspect of the Irish Question

1949; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 31; Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/3678634

1474-0648

W. L. Burn,

Legal principles and applications

In 1811 the Solicitor-General of Ireland was prosecuting at Clonmel some members of two agrarian societies of the Ribbon type, the Caravats and the Shanavests. What (he asked) is the first object of these savage associations, to enforce the commands of which you are nightly plundered of your arms? It is the regulation of landed property and its produce, it is the vain and idle attempt to fix a maximum for rent and to prescribe the price of labour, it is the frantic project to prevent the transfer of property and to frustrate the exertions of industry. The nature of things, still more than the operation of positive law, has decreed that property should find its own level; and it is the first principle of a commercial country, and the first consequence of national prosperity, that property should be in a state of perpetual transfer and circulation.