Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1859-02-28
LAND STEALING.


Professor Lieber, in his Plea for the Fiji
ans, makes an ingenious apology for cannibal-
ISM and, incidentally, for polygamy, slavery,
piracy, and the kindred systems, which are re-
yiying in various sections of the world, with
something of the vigor they enjoyed in the
times of Moses and the prophets He might
have embraced in his catalogue of abused prac-
tees which moral people, who are proverbially
slow, have been accustomed to disapprove, the
mania for land stealing which operates upon
our reverend senators with as much power as
the passion for wives upon the Mormons, or for
roast-homne upon the FDians.
1t has been generally supposed that the
rights and the limitations of property among
Yankees were sharply, and, in the main, cor
rectly defined. What a man owned, he owned.
If Brown had pasture, and jenkins and his
bows took possession of it because it adjoined
the latter's meadow, Jenkins's conduct would
be deemed very reprehensible, and he would
probably be compelled to atone for it in the
service of the State. He might plead in just
fication till he was as old as Buchanan, that
ards would shrink from it, it is exceedingly
doubtful if any court in the land, except Judge
Taney's, whose decisions are based on circum-
stances, and are sometimes erratic, would &C.
cept the plea as sufficient Brown would be
certain, after reasonable delay, to be sure,
case and his pasture.
Quite recently-it is marvellous how rapidly
these changes occur in moral ratiocination-a
new philosophy has been developed, or, rather,
an old one revived, fortunate for Jenkins
but most unfortunate for Brown. The right
of Jenkins to appropriate the pasture afore-
said, is contingent, under the new code of NOR
ais, on its location, its relations to other prop
erty and its probable usefulness after its acqui-
sition, of which jenkins is to be the judge. If
it is so located as to make it inconvenient for
him to take care of it. and would confer no
substantial commercial advantages, it would
be very wrong for Jenkins to have anything
to do with it. Otherwise, he might take it. in
the words of Senator Mallory, peacefully, if he
can-forcibly, if he must. This is just and
conscientious epitome of the logic by which
the acquisition of Cuba has been urged, by
the President and by every Democratic Sem
ator, since it became evident that Spain was
unwilling under any circumstances to part with
the island 1t is revival of the middle age
processes of expansion. 1t is a recognition by
Christian republic Of the policy of the feudal
robbers.
sc hon
pansion" fever operated on the barons. When
ever one more ambitious and powerful than
the rest wished to enlarge his estates, he called
his vassals together, and his allies, if he had
any, and told them to take the neighboring
castle, and to kill its defenders, which they
proceeded to do-if they were able. They
paid less attention, to be sure, to the hypocriti-
cal forms of NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. of civil
ization of which they were not guilty They
applied the argument of geographical and COM
mercial necessity by instinct; their iron gates
swung open under its influence down went
the portcullis and forth strobe the domesticat-
ed armies on their missions of conquest and
aggrandizement. If conscience was ever au-
dacious enough to smite a penitent lord, he
easily purchased relief from those mercenary
pedlars of absoluton who appropriated the
name of successors of ST. Peter. The en-
pires and monarchies which were somehow or
other consolidated, by means of those preda-
tory forays and guerrilla battles, carried on the
same policy on larger scale, till diplomacy
became fashionable, and the invention of gun
powder had taken some of the starch out of
the practice of war. Almost the only ruler
known to have died with becoming penitence
and modesty, and she the least guilty of them
all, was Eleonora of Austria, who insisted on
writing upon her monument only the words
"Eleonora, poor sinner'-an epitaph which
belonged to the headstones of those statesmen
and politicians who filled her age and empire
with bad morals and corrupt examples, rather
than to the saint who wore sackcloth at the
revels, and read the Psalms of David at the
theatre.
The same fallacy is in the reasoning, and the
same immortality in the practice of those who
advocate, or rather advocated, the taking of
be finally settled-as it was in those Hapsburg
filibusters who over-run and conquered their
Hungarian and Sclavonian neighbors. The
argument of land stealers is in all ages essen
tally the same-manifest destiny, or State ne
cessity. There has not been a crime commit.
ted on large scale since governments were
instituted but under the sanction of one or the
other Of these plausible phrases. The yassals
of the early robbers used to follow the exam
pie of their masters. 1t would not be strange.
nor worthy of especial condemnation, If some
faithful partizans should apply to their own
practice the feudal theory ofacquiring property,
which has been for the last week promulgated
among us with so much recklessness and assid-
uity. Let the next good Democrat who is tried
for trespass, or for robbery, show to the court
the great pecuniary interests he had at stake,
and how much more useful his acquisitions will
be to him than to the person who has been
trespassed on and robbed. And if he is not
acquitted 1t will be because judge or jury do
not believe in his logic or that of his masters.
=---=--==
10 The Agricultural College bill, one of
the wisest and most benefcent measures which
has received the sanction of the present Con-
gress, has been killed by the veto of the Presi-