Applied to the United Kingdom in
the same rate of the population it would apply to 3,600 persons. Now, in
both Houses of Parliament there are probably 700 landed proprietors. It
would, therefore, be an edict of confiscation to the landed proprietors
of the United Kingdom equal to five times all the landed proprietors in
both Houses of Parliament. An hon. Gentleman says I am all wrong in my
figures. I shall be glad to hear his figures afterwards. But that is not
the fact; but if it were the fact, it would amount not to a political,
but to an entire social revolution in this country. And surely, when you
live in a country where you have, as in Scotland, a great province under
one Member of the House of Lords, and seventy or eighty miles of
territory under another, and where you have Dukes of Bedford and Dukes
of Devonshire, as in England--surely, I say, we ought to be a little
careful, at any rate, that we do not overturn, without just cause, the
proprietary rights of the great talookdars and landowners in India. It
is a known fact, which anybody may ascertain by referring to books which
have been written, and to witnesses who cannot be mistaken, that this
edict would apply to more than 40,000 landowners in the kingdom of Oude.
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