Poor Alike,
Yet We Retain Money Fines As A Punishment, And Male 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 be 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. Ono 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.
End of The Malay Archipelago by Alfred R. Wallace
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