UNSOLD STATE LANDS.

Evening Star, Issue 3431, 19 February 1874, Page 2

UNSOLD STATE LANDS.

To the Ediiqr. Sjs.—l read vith pleasure ypuj: article of yesterday, with ref.erV.nce to the duties of the State in respect to the unsold lands of the Colony. I believe that much more substantial good is done to a cause by language such as you used, than the language used by the writer in the ‘ Guardian.’ To tell a person who differs from you that ho is a mountebank and a posture maker, is no proof that he is wrong in the principles which he advocates, or that the abusive writer is correct because he is an adept at Billingsgate. What l understand the mountebanks aud posture-makers are advocating is this : that uo further appropriation of lands, which are not already private property, shall take placj ; that all the unsold lands of the Grown shall be leased; and that the natural increa-e of the value of all such lauds shall be public property instead of private, as it now is, under the system of selling lands outright. These are the opinions of the late John Stuart Mill, say what ihe writer in the ‘Guardian’ may to the contrary. I have

before me a speech; , L/ ohn stuarfc Mill,' on; Hie 1873 ; and the takenjfrom with the ‘ Guardian,’ lUre advocating the views of'Mr Mill to thfeletter . b°ld that land-r-in winch term we inch de mines, and the whols raw material of ithe globe—is a kind oLpropertySunlike any Other. The rights of private m&ividna's to something which they did not make, or help to make, but which came to them by bequest or inheritance froth people who also did not make it. or help to make it, are a tatal'y diffe ent thing from the right of every one to th© product of his own labor* and sacrifices, or to the product of the labors and sacrifices of those who freely gave it ti him. What a . man has earned by his labor, or by the expenditure of what has been saved from previous earnings. _ he has a fair claim to do what he likes with, subject only to the general rules of morality. But he who detains the land—a thing not made by man, a thing necessary to life, and of which there is not enough for all —is in a privileged position. Whether it is right or wrong that he should be in such a position, he is so. He is, in a ■word, a monopolist: and a monopoly should be exercised, not at the mere will and pleasure of the possessor, but in the manner most consistent with the general good ; the Btate has exactly the same right to control it that it has to control, for instance, the railivays. The land reformers are of opinion that the'time has arrived for the State to reassert this right; to correct the abuses of landed property, aud adapt it better to the wants and interests of the community considered as a whole. How far the modifications should reach is a point on which all land reformers are not agreed. I need only speak of those which are advocated by this Association. Without going the length of those who think that the nation should re-possess itself of all private lands, subject to a just compensation, we yet maintain that at least no further appropriation of lands which are not already private property should he permitted. We protest again the conversion of public or corporate lands into private property. •Still more indignantly do we protest against any more Acts of Parliament for dividing the common lands of the country among the neighboring landholders. Instead of giving the lands to the rich and a miserable pretence of compensation to the poor, we insist that the lands should be for the poor and the compensation for the rich—compensation for what their manorial and other rights now bring in to them ; for the most part a very small value. We farther maintain that permission to own the land does not necessarily carry with it a right to the increase of value which the land is constantly acquiring by the mere progress of the public prosperity. ; Ve affirm that this spontaneous increase of value may j .stly be Liken for the public by means of -special taxation. These are the two chief points of our programme;— First, no more land, under any pretext, to become the private property of individuals ; secondly, taxation on the land, in order to give the benefit of its natural increase of value to the whole community, instead of to the proprietors, these being allowed the option of relinquishing the land at its present money value.” —I am, Ac., _ :. Nemo. Dunedin, February 19.