The Akaroa Mail. FRIDAY, JUNE 10.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume V, Issue 512, 10 June 1881, Page 2

The Akaroa Mail. FRIDAY, JUNE 10.

We promised in our last issue to furish some evidence of the growth among thoughtful men of opinions on the land question which it hns been the fashion hitherto to sneer at as embodying everything that is fantastical and unpractical. As a sign of the times, and for the information of men as ill-informed as the Premier and the editor of the Timaru Herald, wo shall make a brief extract from a paper recently read in Dunedin. *■' Oh ! " Aye fancy we hear some of our readers exclaim, "we know that all kinds of wild theories are broached in Dunedin. It is the home of Free•ihinking Spiritualists, and men of all beliefs or no be ief at all." Softly, good reader. This essay was not read before tho Freethought Association, or by an itinerant lecturer in a theatre. It is eutitled '• Some of the Social and Religious Aspects of the Day," and is described as " a paper rend b fore the first regular meeting of the 1881 session of the Knox Church Literary and Debating Society, by B. C. Firguson." And under the very shadow of orthodoxy east by the steeple of the church dedicated to the great Apostle of Mr Ferguson promulgates such opinions as will, no doubt, be considered blasphemous by men ot the mental calibre of Mr Hall or the Timaru editor. Here are a few extracts :—

Do you bebeve that in ft century bonce my Lord Duke will still own 300,000 (?) acres of God's earth in Britain, and will still hold thirty livings in God's earthly church in Biitain? Verily, then your faith may yet remove mountain . Talk not to us of the vested rights of private property in land. A whole nation ia not for over to endure the presence of grinding poverty and misery .■•tmngst ifc labouring poor, licause of the vjimted rights of a few of its plumed children What would we have then? Would wo forcibly dispossess the present holders of landed property and establish in their stend a general communistic proprietary])? Nay, wa would not do so, but the people of tho future not only may but wi 1 if our great land owners meet the advance of the people with sullen uncompromising refusal. What ! are fifty men with their vested rights to be considered before the happiness and wellbeing of fifty thousand man ? Believe it not. Tbe world cannot stand still in this direction. In Ireland we are witnessing the elfectsof monopoly of land by the few, though no doubt that unhappy country has many oilier repeals to make besides a repeal of its land laws, before peace and plenty can ever hope to icign within its borders. But that the ownership of Irish soil by the few, and that vexatious, oppressive land laws are the very foundation of all poor Ireland's grievances, there can be no doubt.

Is it not lamentable that in a new country we should have so persistently sown the seeds of future discontent and social An a chy by the unwise disposal of most of our lands. With old world history an I its stern lessons before us, we commence 1 laying the foundatioi.s cf this future nation as if such a world or its lessons had never existed If tho late John Stuart Mill questioned the right of ancient proprietors in the old world to the " untamed increment." what shall the future philosopher say of us? We have sold hind for almost nothing, and immediately, as it vi-eie, thereafter increased the value of theae_tonds four-fold by population and railways, and yet these unfortunate purchasers howl loudly at the mention of a land tax ; or, as Kauffman puts it, " a progressive, mode of taxation as an exceptional means" of equalisation.', Must unquestionably we have hugely blundered in our dealing with the land of New Zealand. Nationalisation of tho land in England we cannot help regarding as a wild dream, but in New Zealand it might and ought to have been an accomplished fact. Mr fr-.tout in his tcture a few days ago on the Irish land question, said that public opinion in New Zealand was not yet ripe for contemplating the nationalisation of the land as a desirable possibility. But alas! whilo public

opinion is ripening, the land is being rapidly possessed hy individuals, and already, ns we are informed, one ay.d n-liall millions of acres are owned by nineteen persons or firms—a fact disgraceful •'() our p-ist history and government, and ''pregnant with the seeds of future disorder and discontent—such disorder and discontent as Ireland ia now unjustly reproached for-