"Against the law, yes; but how on earth can it be a crime against
the rights of property? Obviously the pheasant's the property of
the man who happens to shoot it. How can it belong to him and also
to the fellow who taboos the particular piece of ground it was
snared on?"

"It doesn't belong to the man who shoots it at all," Philip
answered, rather angrily. "It belongs to the man who owns the land,
of course, and who chooses to preserve it."

"Oh, I see," Bertram replied. "Then you disregard the rights of
property altogether, and only consider the privileges of taboo. As
a principle, that's intelligible. One sees it's consistent. But
how is it that you all allow these chiefs--landlords, don't you call
them?--to taboo the soil and prevent you all from even walking over
it? Don't you see that if you chose to combine in a body and insist
upon the recognition of your natural rights,--if you determined to
make the landlords give up their taboo, and cease from injustice,--
they'd have to yield to you, and then you could exercise your
native right of going where you pleased, and cultivate the land in
common for the public benefit, instead of leaving it, as now, to be
cultivated anyhow, or turned into waste for the benefit of the
tabooers?"

"But it would be WRONG to take it from them," Philip cried, growing
fiery red and half losing his temper, for he really believed it.
"It would be sheer confiscation; the land's their own; they either
bought it or inherited it from their fathers. If you were to begin
taking it away, what guarantee would you have left for any of the
rights of property generally?"