(Éirigh, April 1970, pp. 14-15)
Property is something in which we all have an interest. To many people the right to private property is as sacred as their religion. In our own time when state control in economic affairs is increasing, it is interesting to cast a glance on the past to see how many of our present-day ideas have developed. Our own country affords us a good example.
In nineteenth century Ireland there were two currents of thought on the subject of property. The wealthy landed classes accepted the liberal doctrines of the Manchester school without reservation. In these theories they found a semi-philosophic justification of their policies. If these ideas led, as indeed they did, to mass evictions in the country and starvation labour in the cities then the answer was that supply and demand were merely finding their own level. The rights of property were everywhere being emphasised, the duties were unheard of.
On the other hand, the Irish Nationalist tradition had always shown a strong tendency towards social reform. In the early half of the nineteenth century, demands for the re-allocation of land were based on the theories of the French revolutionaries. Men like Wolfe Tone and James Fintan Lalor, in particular, drew their inspiration from France. In the Irish Felon, of July 8, 1848, Lalor wrote,
‘The earth, together with all it produces, is the free and common property of all mankind, of natural right, and by the grant of God – and all men being equal, no man, therefore has a right to appropriate exclusively to himself any part or portion thereof, except with and by the common consent and agreement of all other men.’
There is a great similarity between this statement of Lalor’s and some passages of Rousseau’s great social work, the Discourse on Inequality. What we must remember in reading the writings of these men is that when they thundered against the right to private property, what they had in mind was the abuse of it, for they saw nothing else but its abuse. To many of them the existing social conditions seemed to be entirely the product of the system of private property. This clamour for social change was part and parcel of their nationalism. They saw, quite rightly, that a mere change of political institutions without change on the social level was less than half the battle.
Towards the close of the century two new factors entered into the problem. Firstly, while the influence of the French Revolution began to fade, particularly as the Fenian movement weakened, that of Marx and his fellow socialists began to take its place. Secondly, a succession of Land Acts in 1881, 1885 and 1903 had settled a large number of families in relative comfort on their own land, and had mollified a great deal of discontent.
Into this scene moved two great figures, James Connolly and Padraic Pearse, men whose ideas were to shape the events of the next twenty years of Irish history. In social affairs, such as property, Connolly was undoubtedly the better thinker of the two. We will see more of his views in a later issue.