The landlord simply stands out as the representative of the real grievance.

To remove _him_ would not remove the evil; agitation would not cease; murder would still stalk abroad at noonday.

_The real grievance is the false system which makes the landlord possible._ The appropriation of the fertile acres of the soil of Ireland, which created and maintains a privileged class, a class that while performing no labor, wrings from the toiler, in the shape of rents, so much of the produce of his labor that he cannot on the residue support himself and those dependent upon him aggravates the situation.

It is this system which constitutes the real grievance and makes the landlord an odious loafer with abundant cash and the laborer a constant toiler always upon the verge of starvation.
Evidently, therefore, to remove the landlord and leave the system of land monopoly would not remove the evil.

Destroy the latter and the former would be compelled to go.
Herein lies the great social wrong which has turned the beautiful roses of freedom into thorns to prick the hands of the black men of the South; which made slavery a blessing, paradoxical as it may appear, and freedom a curse.