A great landholder may legally convert his whole property into a forest or hunting ground, and expel every human being who has lived upon it. In a thickly populated country like England, where almost every acre has its owner and 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.
— ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE,The Malay Archipelago, Chap. 40. Final Note to the book. (1869)
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