THE CHURCH, THE LAND, AND THE STATE.

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 20, 4 August 1892, Page 2

THE CHURCH, THE LAND, AND THE STATE.

TO THE KDITOn OF THE STAH. Sir, — A few lines postponing the subject of perpetual lease of land was omitted at the conclusion of my last letter. The present, from a cessation of extensive public works throwing many working men out of employment) is a dangerous period, and favourable to the faddist. As a rule those objects which are most prized in life, and enjoyed after having been attained, require a great deal of self denial and difficulties to overcome necessitating the exercise of mental and physical powers on the part of the individual to attain them. One of the dangers of the perpetual lease system is that it offers an inducement to individuals to leave the avocation to which they are adapted by nature, to follow and try farming, looking to a paternal Government to help them over any failures or difficulties they may have to encounter. In a British community only a limited number are born with the adaptability of becoming farmers, or tillers of the soil, but if individuals, and their children after them, mistake their avocations and are thereby forced [ to exist by that occupation, these men would become mere animals and those mental gifts which would have made them useful members of the community in other pursuits, for want of exercise, would become extinct. Education, except so far as to give rise to a more acute feeling of the degradation and dependence of their lot, would be of little use to them when they would neither have the inclination nor the inducement to make use of it. The State having control over their material interests, to be led astray as to their spiritual aspirations would become easy. Social, mental, and moral degradation, with all the horrors of the dark ages, would again prevail. Human nature may be brought down so low by those means that individuals would believe fables ; a belief in ghosts and witches would become rife; superstition and fanaticism would be again in the ascendant. It may be the opinion of some people that civilization is so far advanced in these days that a retrograde movement, such as the foregoing is impossible ; but progress in railways, telegraphs, and other great works by which the present age is ahead of bygone days, will not save a nation from degeneracy any more than a knowledge of the arts and sciences, learning and wisdom, could save the nations of antiquity from a like fate. Some of the disciples of freethought, and would be leaders of men, who, by the way, often quote Scripture, would fain become a second Moses and Aaron, but with this difference, that Moses was a progressivist in his day, and led the children of Isreal out of the desert, but the modern Moses after transforming men to childhood again, would lead them into the labyrinths of the wilderness out of which predicament his successors would not have the will or know the way to extricate them. In conclusion, if it is necessary to locate individuals upon land for a time by; giving them employment until they are able to return to their natural avocation, then why not set apart land for that purpose 1 But it is time that the objectionable term of perpetual lease was consigned to that oblivion from whence it should never have emerged. 1 I am, etc., A Colonist.