According to this view, the landowners’ tenure of their land was not of absolute right, but was dependent upon their fulfilling their social obligations. Neither Cobbett nor Fielden started from the assumption that the working people had any right to expropriate landed property or capital; but both accepted that if the existing property-relations violated, for the labourer or his child, essential claims to human realisation, then any remedy, however drastic, was open to discussion.
