The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prevalebit. MONDAY, JUNE 4, 1883. Land Nationalisation.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 960, 4 June 1883, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prevalebit. MONDAY, JUNE 4, 1883. Land Nationalisation.

Speaking at the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution a little more than six years ago, Mr J. A. Froude said : —“ No reasonable naan that I know of seriously wishes for an agrarian law, or for a forcible division of landed property, or for an interference with the right of making settlements, or with our right to make our own wills in whatever way may seem good to us.” These words occur in a lecture on “The Uses of a Landed Gentry,” a question that the historian considered in 1876 to be outside the region of practical politics. And yet he has not had to live long to find large numbers of men discussing the advisability of making a forcible division of landed property from a quite other than philosophical point of view. Not that this is by any means a new thing, but until quite recently a belief in its practicability was confined to those extreme social-

ists whom Mr Froude would assuredly I not class among “ reasonable ” men. I Ever since the American journalist, Mr Henry George, published his work, “ Progress and Poverty,” which has had such a phenomenal success both in England and the United States, an intense interest has been manifested in the land question. This interest has spread to New Zealand, and in Dunedin, a city where fads of all kinds for the regeneration of the world find support, a Land Nationalisation League has been formed. It is easy enough to account for the fact that the doctrines of Mr George have been received as gospel by those who have everything to gain and nothing to lose, by the wholesale plunder ol the landowners; but we may take it for granted that while people’s ideas of right and wrong remain as they are at present, it is not likely that a confiscating policy will be carried out. An admirable address on the subject of Land Nationalisation was delivered the other day by one of the professors ot the Otago University, Mr Mainwaring Brown. Unlike a good many people who have spoken on this question, he seems to have given it serious study, and although he quite recognises that considerable benefit would accrue could the State resume the proprietorship of the land, he is not blind to the tremendous difficulties in the way of carrying out such a scheme. Indeed, magnificent as is the prospect opened out to us by the speculations of political theorists in regard to the more equitable division of the land, it is to be feared that they will never have a practical issue. The need for a reform of the system of land tenure in England cannot be denied, but if the milleniura contemplated by the believers in Mr Henry George’s views is ever reached it will not be by the means he advocates. Englishmen have too profound a respect for vested interests, and too keen.a sense of justice to contemplate for an instant the idea of wholesale confiscation of landowners’ property, as is suggested by the extreme Socialists. These latter wish it to be assumed as an axiom that all land, primct facie, belongs to the State; but they forget that that right was forfeited when individual ownership was permitted. In New Zealand the case is different. It is true that the freehold of large tracts of country has been sold, but there still remains a vast residue in the hands of the Crown, and the provisions of the Land Act passed last session prevent the Government disposing of the fee-simple of this. This is virtually nationalising those lands that have not been alienated, and until the perpetual leasing system has had a fair trial, we do not see what is to be gained by the agitation now being got up by the League formed in Dunedin. At any rate the fantastic and impracticable fads of such thinkers as Mr George and Dr Russell need not be discussed until the experiment now being made is proved to have failed in its intention.