MR WASON ON COMMUNISM.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2372, 9 November 1881, Page 3

MR WASON ON COMMUNISM.

On Friday evening Mr Wason addressed the electors of Wukanui in the school, Wakanui. After dealing with the several questions which are occupying the public mind at the present moment, he proceeded to speak as follows on certain communistic proposals now before the electors:—

The small pamphlet I hold in my hand is one which has been very prominently brought before the public during the present elections, and I am sure all candidates are under an obligation to the author (Mr Sealey) from the fact that he has given them on almost fresh beat to discuss. The views of the author are startling, and the only wonder is that, admitting his premises to bo correct, hie conclusion should be so moderate. I wish every elector in Wakanui had a copy of this pamphlet, that he would take it homo, and ponder over it, and bring the practical knowledge of every-day life to bear upon its shallow humbug, misleading statements, and the rash communism of its teachings. I confess to a little diffidence in addressing you—a practical body of men—on the subject ; but as it is made so much of throughout the Canterbury electorates, and always as the text book of the new school of Cbmmunism, I feel bound to go through it with you, analyse its statements, and leave the result in your hands. Gentlemen, you know what communism moans ; you know it is not Liberalism, not even Radicalism, but something short, and altogether this : that the idle, the vicious and the improvident should live upon the earnings of the industrious, the good and the frugal. Our author’s pamphlet consists of eighty-four pages, the first thirty-three of which he devotes to tracing the course of the Public Works policy of 1880. His plan so far is the remarkably easy one of making large and lengthy quotations from the speeches of about a score of prominent members. To page 38 he gets along by means of some American statistics, and attempts to draw a comparison between America and this country. For all practical purposes, a comparison between Christchurch Cathedral and a sod wharo would be equally effectual. Look at America. Why, there are states there in which the three islands of New Zealand, England, Scotland, and Ireland might be swallowed up. Look at the groat territories of America, each of which average half as much again as the three islands of New Zealand. Again, look at the geographical position of America, with a daily fleet of magnificent steamers between her coast and the over-po-pulated countries of the Old World, and again let me tell you that the state of America is by no means so satisfactory as some would like to make out. The murder of President Garfield is to bo distinctly traced to the abominable pernicious system which prevails in the Civil Service. New York, which I am told, acre for acre, is more densely populated than London, has been described by an eminent writer as so far exceeding Paris in wretchedness and corruption as Paris exceeds Ancient Home, and the seething mass of corruption which prevailed there in the latter days of the Empire is well known. There is no analogy whatever between this little island country and America. On page 39, or when we are nearly half-way

I through the book, our author comes to hi ' fact*, and gives us a table of counties. Fo the eake of argument I will not question hi figures beyond pointing out to you that ii February, 1881, Ashburton county is de scribed as containing four estates, aggregating 44,600 acres. The force of folly could not gc much further, but our author does, so we must go on with him. He shows the said counties, seventeen in all, contain 92 estates, aggregating 2,398,100 acres, and by means of a little cum he finds out that the said 92 estates average 26,175 acres each. Truly a very dreadful state of things. Wbat a down.trodden people we are. But this is nothing to what follows, for by means of another little sum he discovers that if the said estates were divided, 16,000 farmers could farm the land, and each farmer he allows a wife, four children, a ploughman, and a servant girl. By means of another little sum he discovers that those 92 estates of 26,175 acres which now support a population of 2200 in all—the author requests us to take the assertion on his own authority, of the correotness he gives us no proof whatever—would by means of the 16.000 farmers, 16,000 wives, 64,000 children, 16.000 ploughmen, and 16,000 maid servants, support a population of 128 000 souls. Here our author lays down his intellect and his pen, lost in admiration of his own genius, and for the next six pages gives us garbled extracts from other men's brains of a more or less interesting nature, including the acreage of certain large individual estates. Hero he has forgotten his 16.000 farmers, 16,000 wives, 64,000 children, 16.000 ploughmen, and 16,000 servant maids, and proposes to re-divide the said estates, containing 437,000 acres, into homes for 2900 farmers with families and their dependents. Ho does not in the least take the trouble to ascertain how he is going to square his previous 16,000 farmers and the present 2900, and the value of his assertions will be correotly ascertained if, as I am informed, two of the estates he mentions, viz., Bancliff and Opaka, wore actually advertised for sale in the Timaru papers in various sized blocks. fMr Wason then referred at some length to the writer’s remarks about the runholders, preemptive rights, the Hall Government, &c.] He then proceeds as follows : —Gentlemen, indeed I apologise for asking you, a sincere practical body of men, to think seriously with me over this subject. My only excuse is that the question is prominently before the public, and that the public are entitled to see the other side; and what is the other side F Supposing the author and his communistic following to have their own way ; supposing those ninety-two estates, averaging 26,175 acres, were cut up exactly as he describes, we ere then apparently in a very flourishing position. We have 16,000 farmers, 16,000 wives and 64,000 children, 16,000 ploughmen, and 16,000 maids, all actively employed in the cultivating the soil, which our author asks us to believe, on his own word, now only supports 2700. Gentlemen, can you imagine such a fool’s paradise ? Where are the children to go to ? What is their future to be ? There are no more ninetytwo estates to be divided up, to be confiscated by means of a sliding-scale land law. Fathers now know that the future of their children is amply seoured ’by the only land which is always open for sale, and has always been open. In no country have farmers bad greater facilities for the purchase of land than they have bad in this country ; but look at our author’s Utopia—the whole ninety-twa estates, conaaining 2,798,000 of the best land, laid off into rectangular blocks, containing 150 acres, each settled by a farmer, a wife, four children, a ploughman, and a servant girl. There will be no more room, so the childen must either leave the country or another reduction is necessary. Gentlemen, I ask you, who are farmers, who have children, who desire to see your children flourishing in the land, to ponder over this question, and think what hope is left for your children if the proposal is carried out. And now, gentlemen, I come to you who are not farmers, but who hope to be, and witbont whom farmers and tradesmen might shut up shop—l deny the term working classes. There are not many drones in this country outside publics and politics. I think all classes are fairly held workers. We have established amongst us the grand doctrine of Christianity that one man is as good as another, perhaps better, and artisans and ploughmen, shepherds and servant girls, have an equal claim upon the Legislators with either farmers, tradesmen, lawyers, or doctors. I express myself most clearly by alluding to you as the wage-earning class, and I ask you to consider what your future will be under a communistic regime. Gentlemen, our author and Parliamentary honor seeking folio wing,(appeals only to your lowest passions ; in your cupidity they point out to you that you have equal rights with all others. Bo you have, I cordially agree, but I would not insult you by informing you of what you must be well aware. They point out to you a fertile plain, carrying a few sheep, and say if that country were settled by farmers, each with a wife, four children, a ploughman, and a servant girl, what a paradise this would be ? I admit it is exceedingly desirable that the land should be well settled, but we are not like Chinamen, when wo want roast pork we don’t fire a church, when human ailments annoy us we don’t rush off to the nearest advertising quack doctor. We go to a legally-qualified practitioner, who probably tells us to eat, and drink, and smoke less, take more exercise, and let nature swing. Gentlemen, lot nature swing. Remove all restrictions from the sale of land, let it be an easy-acquired commodity. Prevent it being tied up by wills, settlements, and lawyers’ trammels and fetters. Prevent the hand of the dead from interfering with it, and let nature swing. But to revert to your position under our author and his Parliamentary honor-seeking following. I say it would be this. In the first place a very serious scare would affect the whole community, as in the days of the French revolution. No one would know whose turn was to come next, and the groat desire of all persons with any saved money would be to clear out as soon as possible. If it is an offence to-day to hold more than 150 acres, depend upon it to-morrow it will be as great an offence to hold 100 acres, and the day after it will be a capital punishment to hold any land at all. Gentlemen, you of you who are not farmers yet, but who are ploughmen, and have your eye on the servant girl round the corner, hoping with her to soma day soon invest your savings in farm plant, take a farm on terms from a wealthier neighbour, what is to be your position if the author and his following have their way, and establish farmers on 180 acre blocks all over the country ? Where are you and the pride of your heart to go when you are tired of being ploughmen and servant girls, when you want a farm of your own ? Gentlemen, like the children of the farmer, you must either clear out or there must bo another subdivision of the spoil. Gentlemen, I appeal to your intelligence, by your common sense, on every platform throughout Canterbury, to condemn this communism, whose idea is not the levelling up of society to a high and noble future, but the bringing down of everything above them to their own position. This school of communists is similar to little children that, looking out on the horizon, are fairly convinced that beyond their world there is nothing but chaos. Gentlemen, what sympathy have you with a class that are desirous of taking away every hope of being able to settle on the land from yourselves and children. What object have you in seeing the country so thickly populated that emigration even from here would become a necessity ? Gentlemen, a very wise man lived many years ago, whose works have never been received with much favor; the wages earning class, in particular, of Great Britain, have never as a body realised his teachings, but it is this—viz., that the human race increases in something like geometrical progression, or like the numbers 2, 6, 18, 54, and the fertility of land, by applying every possible moans of improvement, only increases in arithmetical proportion, and therefore if it wore not for emigration, war, famine and disease, it would be only a question of time before the earth becomes over-populated, and people would have to consume and prey upon each other. Gentlemen, Mr Malthus’ figures have never been disputed, and I ask you to seriously consider this question of population, and consider how grave your own interests and the interest of the country will bo affected if, in addition to the present enormous natural increase, every estate is to be divided into 150 acres, and sufficient people imported to settle each block with a farmer, a farmer’s wife and children, a ploughman and a servant girl. Gentlemen, I do not appeal to the lust of gain, which is established in every man’s heart; I appeal to your intelligence, to the love you bear your children, to the love you bear your country, not for the sake of a brief harmless burst of pleasure and spoilage to ruin tho magnificent future of this fair country. The author wants to know Are we to stay here ? If ho means the working settlers, the men who have an interest and

stake in the country, no matter how small, I say a thousand times Tee. If he means the wealthy lower 'orders, who are discontented with the sum they have to pay under the property tax, and wish to shift their just responsibility on to other men’s shoulders, political professionals, valiant demagogues trading on the waifs of humanity, publichouse loafers, and land sharks and land speculators, who, led away by the love of gain, purchased large blocks of land that they can’t pay for, I say No, a thousand times No. In Great Britain it has been computed that 14,000,000 people have leas than 18s 6d per week to live upon. Here is the account of free selection in Victoria and New South Wales, in a paper read by Mr Brydono at the annual meeting of the Otago Agricultural and Pastoral Association :—“ We in New Zealand have no idea of the state of these free selectors, and you will hardly credit mo when I tell you that men with their two and throe hundred acres of what is termed wheat growing land are in a state of semi-starvation. Most of them live in log huts, covered with bark, seldom more than one apartment, half the glass gone from the windows, if it ever had any to commence with, rents in the wall, and a roof wide enough for a small boy to crawl through. This mansion is generally the only building on the farm, there being indeed no need for any others, as there would be nothing to put in them. The stock consists of two or three screwed up horses of a nondescript breed, all skin and bone, giving one the shivers to look at, a couple of cows, a sow with a few followers, and a mob of geese. The implements fell far short of Barr’s inventory, as all that ever I could see was a light dray, and sometimes a spring cart, both in the last stage of consumption, an old swing plough, and sometimes a couple of harrows. As for reapers and binders, or even a reaping machine, they are things to be read of.” Look on that picture of 14.000,000 people starving and struggling on less than 10s per week. Look at the sketch of free selectors over the water, and look to your own homes and yourselves. Instead of “ Are we to Stay Here?” ask yourselves the more searching question—where can we better ourselves ?