Présentation de l'éditeur
The following Pamphlet was written and published by me about seven years ago before I had, yet, thrown myself upon the turbid current of public life. The views it contains were drawn from the fount of Nature and it gives me pride, even at this distant period, that neither the loyal doctrines of the Orangemen nor the shampatriotism of the liberals have polluted a single line of this humble production. It begins by exhibiting the true merits of the British Government and it proceeds to show the actual position of political affairs in the British I slands. This was, indeed, necessary, because at the time I speak of the mass of the I rish people knew almost nothing of the system that oppressed them. Religious animosities had taken possession of the whole people. The loyal Orangeman was rackrented to the point of starvation yet he cried to Hwith the Pope and toasted the glorious and immortal memorj with as much zeal as if he were not himself as abject a serf as his Catholic fellow countryman. On the other hand the Catholic would shout praise and glory to any lord or Duke no matter how tyrannical who called himsef a liberal ,and subscribed 10 towards building a Chapel out of the ten thousand which his rapacity wrung annually from the famished tillers of the soil. I therefore began with delineating the actual nature of the Government, and the actual state of parties an arrangement that will, 1think, be found useful in the present edition. But the main object of the pamphleft is to discuss, and define the nature, and true extent, of land Ownership, This is a subject which had received no attention in the British islands up to the publication of this Tract. The unlimited right of a few hundred individuals to appropriate the entire soil to themf selves had never been disputed. Often have I heard the Farmer declare that he would not pay Tithe because he did not receive
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)
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