as, once there is a doubt as to the security of title, no settlement could be regarded as final; there would be endless litigation; the desire to acquire would be taken away; as where is the use of getting if the possession be not secure? The first conditions of all national progress are security for life and property. Who would take the trouble to produce wealth, or practise self-denial and abstain from using it, if the law helped to take it away, instead of helping the owner to keep it? No industry or commerce can develop or flourish when the title to the soil is open to attach. We are told that it is justifiable, because land differs from all other forms of wealth; it is limited in quantity, and is not the product of human labour; that it was never intended by the Creator to be the monopoly of the few, but the property of all, age after age. But I reply, that the land, as it is now, is the result of human labour; the present productions of the soil are the result of careful cultivation. In ancient times most of this country, as in America and other lands, was covered with dense forests, reclaimed by human toil, transformed by untold expenditure of labour and capital into the smiling garden it now appears. It was bought at the price it was then worth, or perhaps given or appropriated, because in its then condition it was valueless; but the inheritors of those who redeemed it, or those who bought it from their successors, have the right to hold it, or get for its use its present value.

"I can conceive no equitable reason why this form of wealth should not have the protection of the law, like all other kinds. All wealth may be called stored up labour, and none is more valuable to the community than that which makes two blades of