human
The great rent-takers have been the opponents of progress; they have hindered reform; they kept the taxes on knowledge; they passed combination laws; they enacted long Parliaments; they made the machinery of Parliamentary election costly and complicated, so as to bar out the people. They have prevented education, and then have sneered at the masses for their ignorance. All progress in the producing power of labour has added to the value of land; and yet the landowner, who has often stood worse than idly by while the land has increased in value, now talks of the labourer as of the lower herd which must be checked and restrained.