mechanical skill and scientific knowledge, of its high civilization
and its pure Christianity,—I can hut term a state of social
barbarism. We also boast of our love of justice, and that the
law protects rich and poor alike, yet we retain money fines as a
punishment, and make the very first steps to obtain justice a
matter of expense—in both cases a barbarous injustice, or denial
of justice to the poor. Again, our laws render it possible, that,
by mere neglect of a legal form, and contrary to his own wish
and intention, a man’s property may all go to a stranger, and
his own children he left destitute. Such cases have happened
through the operation of the laws of inheritance of landed property
; and that such unnatural injustice is possible among us,
shows that we are in a state of social barbarism. One more
example to justify my use of the term, and I have done. We
permit absolute possession of the soil of our country, with no
legal rights of existence on the soil, to the vast majority who do
not possess it. A great landholder may legally convert his whole
property into a forest or a hunting-ground, and expel every
human being who has hitherto lived upon it. In a thickly-
populated country like England, where every acre has its owner
and its occupier, this is a power of legally destroying his fellow-
creatures ; and that such a power should exist, and be exercised
by individuals, in however small a degree, indicates that, as
regards true social science, we are still in a state of barbarism.