not only to agricultural land, but to building laud in towns; and he argues that even a freehold on which the owner has built a house is as much a robbery of the public domain as the largest estate of a Highland laird. In his opinion, the possession of any portion of the earth's surface by a private owner is theft, and the stolen goods ought to be restored to the public that has been defrauded. "Though his titles have been acquiesced in by generation after generation, to the landed estates of the Duke of Westminster, the poorest child that is born in London to-day has as much right as his eldest son. Though the sovereign people of the State of New York consent to the landed possessions of the Astors, the puniest infant that comes wailing into the world, in the squalidest room of the most miserable tenement house, becomes at that moment seized of an equal right with the millionaire. And it is robbed if the right is denied." There can be no mistaking such language; it says plainly enough that all the owners of land and houses have no right thereto; although the State may have given or sold them the land, the State had no right to sell ; therefore the trans. action is void, and the property, like other property proved to have been stolen, or sold without a legal title, must be restored to its rightful owner-the State-whose duty it is to hold it for the benefit of the people. There are very few who will endorse this extreme view; the conscience repudiates such wholesale robbery; if it be agreed that the land should revert to the State, the majority are willing that a fair compensation be given to the present owners.

These speculative theorists overlook one important condition,