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The wall of land monopoly has barred the forward march of the people to prosperity. While that wall stands, Labour cannot be blamed if there is a state of unrest. While that wall stands, efforts on philanthropic or co-operative lines, or by municipal or State action, for the improvement of conditions in town or country, break themselves to pieces against it. That wall must be overthrown, if the people are to enter into their rightful inheritance.

As to the end to be achieved, there can be no doubt. As to the means, the people must decide for themselves what measures will be practicable, just, and necessary. Democratic thought in other countries, faced by corresponding evils and inspired by corresponding ideals, has turned towards a solution, which would secure to all their just rights in the common heritage, and would at the same time ensure the freedom of individuals and preserve the rights of property, while eliminating economic privilege and thereby destroying the absolutism of capital. It looks to a readjustment of taxation, which will undermine the wall of land monopoly until it sinks quietly and disappears. This is the modern, practical, and equitable application of [James Fintan] Lalor?s principals.

A people robbed of their rights in the land must remain impoverished; The more they struggle, the tighter do their bonds become. They huddle together in slums and underground cellars to escape rent, and the more they overcrowd, the higher do rents rise against them. As they try to advance along the road of industrial progress, the higher becomes the toll levied upon them by monopoly. If they increase their productive power, the larger becomes the tribute demanded for the use of the sole source of production, the land and the stores which it contains. While that source is monopolised and the people denied access to it, the growth of population, which under free conditions would bring increased wealth to all, strengthens the power of the landlord to extort high rents and provides the capitalist with an overflowing supply of cheap labour.

Free nationhood involves making the land of the nation with all its actual and potential resources, available for the common good of the whole nation.

In the establishment of that right lies the solution of the problem of poverty.

To find a man's true place in the world is not for officials and supermen, but for each man himself. What is needed is to give each individual the freest scope under just conditions. He must not be the slave either of the capitalist or of the State. We must extirpate the special privilege which negates the equal rights of all. The harmonizing of the rights of the individual with the rights of the of the community, is the task which modern society has to undertake.

The restoration of the common right to the land must be the basis of the co-operative commonwealth. On that foundation, the new industrial order can be built by a free people. The natural abilities of the people, in free combination, will turn the natural resourced of the country to the best account. While every one might live in comfort, yet no one could grow unduly rich, because he could not live on the labour of others without giving an equivalent return. There would no longer be any class interested in lowering wages or raising prices. All possible opportunities for productive exertion would be open on the fairest possible terms, that is, subject only to paying to the community so much rent as is necessary to adjust the rights of all in the common heritage, the land. Commodities of all kinds would be as plentiful as the bounty of nature and the skill and energy of man can conspire to make them; and they would be obtainable at a price which would give a fair return for all services rendered in the course of their supply, but would not be swollen by any monopoly toll or profit.

With security and plenty would come the possibilities of a fuller and nobler life for the present and all future generations of Irish men and women. The true co-operative commonwealth will be realised by uniting the greatest individual liberty of action with the common right to nature's bounties, and the equitable participation of all in the benefits of combined labour.

The plain man's mind is confused by the technicalities of tenure and taxation, and by the economics of rent, profits and wages. The workers are held fast in the spider?s web spun by the monopolists and the lawyers.

Vested interests have entrenched themselves and grown venerable with age.