Public Opinion.

Hawke's Bay Times, Issue 1554, 27 February 1874, Page 132

Public Opinion.

'WIAAAAAVVVWVWI/VWVVA/WVVVVV v WWWVW'/W'flrtA/WWVV THE LAND QUESTION AT HOME. Dundee Advertiser. In Professor Roger’s very instructive and very suggestive book on “ Cobden and Political Opinion”—a book .which no student of politics can afford to disregard —there are no more suggestive chapters than those on the Land v Question and Financial Reform. The attitude of Cobden to each of these questions was in his day that of an advanced “ Radical.” Indeed, the Times described one of his moderate speeches on the land laws as the speech of an incendiary. Nothing will strike the reader of Professor Roger’s review of Mr Cubdeu’s opinions more than the utter absence of incendiarism from every one of them. Contrasted with opinions which in these days are freely discussed even in fashionable circles, they are Conservatism itself. Of most ol them many politicians who now sit in the House of C mmons will say that they are behind the age. But of course times change, and so do creeds and cries. Mr Cobden, when he bad finished the campaign against the corn laws, would have headed a like campaign against the land laws; but he had not strength. From a reform of the land laws he expected as much benefit to the people as these have received from the abolition oi the tax on food. In his speeches he was wont to talk of the laborer as divorced from the soil. The object of his contemplated reform was to restore the laborer to that soil from which he had been divorced. Reform of the land laws is a vague phrase, but what Mr Cobden meant by”it was, we are told, “the extension of the principle of free exchange in all its fulness to landed estate and the removal of all restrictions on the transfer of land.” Indeed, he would have done very much what Mr Bright proposes to do, and what Mr Bright proposes is to abolish the law of primogeniture, “ to limit the system of entails and settlements, so that ‘life interests may be for the most part got rid of and a real ownership substituted for them ” and to “ make it as easy to buy or sell land as to buy or sell a ship.” Now, we certainly do not wish to say a word in favor of the present preposterous land laws. They are in many respects ridiculous and unjust, and the sooner they are reformed the better. But we wish to point out that the reforms advocated by Cobden and by bis school of the present day will when they are acomplished confer almost nothing on the class on which according to their promoters they are intended to confer so much. When Mr Cobden spoke of reforming the laud laws he spoke of the reform in reference to the laborer. So with Mr Bright, We fail to see how any such reforms as the abolition of the laws of primogeniture and entail can restore the broken union between the laborer and the land. To make land as easy of purchase as a ship is only to make its purchase easier for the rich. The break-up of entail and the removal of other absurd restrictions which keep largo estates out of the market will be at the best a shuffling of the cards in the hands of the class by whom the land is already owned. For a time there will undoubtedly be more land in the market. But the purchasers will not be the laborers. To be a purchaser you require to have capital. Where, we wonder, is the capital of the laborers ? There may be in the country a few tillers of the soil who in the coarse of a long life have saved enough to enable them to purchase (partly under bond) and to stock, say, the five-acre plot so dear to Mr Arch. But if they get the plot its possession will be nothing more to them than landed poverty. They cannot live on its produce. They will have to be laborers still; whereas, by investing the cost of the five acres and its stock in anything else, they may manage to exist o» the interest of their savings. Mr Cobden may have been right when he thought that the laborer would be much happier in possession of small plots of land than of high rates of wages. He may also have been right when he thought that a land system such as that implied by a peasant proprietary would be far better for the nation than the system which exists. The question is one as to which there are differences of opiniondifferences which it is not our purpose to discuss here. What, in the meantime, should be continually kept before the Cobden school of land reformers is that without restrictive coercive legislation the position of the laborer to the land must, in spite of all proposed reforms, remain as it is. By the position of the laborer we mean of course the position of the great body of agricultural workmen, It is a notorious fact that agricultural land in this country is now seldom purchased except as a luxury, like a line house or a tine pic j jure. We have gone beyond the stage , * when men at home can buy estates out of . which to earn a living. Estate? in Great Britain are bought now-a-days not for the sake of existence but for the sake of influence. When, therefore, an entailed estate falls into the market a host of men of the Rothschild and Baird class at once bid against each other for its possession The larger the block for sale the greater the price they give for it. It is obvious th it against such buyers the man whose small capital is his only means of livelihood would, under a “ new law of free trade,” have no chance. The vendor of the estate would certainly not play into his bands, for his interest would be to get the largest possible price for his property. So that without the enactment of a law compelling the division of large estates into plots within the laborers’ reach, “free trade in land” would at the end of three generations place the soil of this country in fewer hands than it is. When under the operation of “free trade in land” the soil lias changed hands, R ml-I b" >U| that even W tlibu me lew of i utail rue wlmle thing will S"oii, ii Ine absence <1 legislation , ■compelling tiie contrary, become very •mufi. v' ti> was belb.e Uie returns bejpz, C. txafsa you may forbid n-vv |

landowner to tie up his estate. But the reformers of the Cobden school don’t propose to do any such thing. They are to knock away entail, and permit the city capitalist to step into the shoes of the needy descendant from the Normans. That is all. And when the city capitalist has stepped into the Norman’s shoes if he cannot put his soil “ in tail” he can put it in trust for a period of years, and his successors can repeat the process ad infinitum. This will not be entail, but practically it will be the same thing. The nation may legislate against its being done, but if the nation does, land will not be upon the same footing as persona! property. You can put your coat or your horse in trust. To prevent you after entail is gone from putting in trust your'land just means coercive legislation, to which the Cobdenites declare they will not resort. If they do not resort to coercive legislation, a hundred years hence will find us under a system analogous to the one we have with its evils not only not lessened, but very possibly aggravated. In short, only Acts of Parliament coercive in their operation can ever break up the lauded estates cf a country like ours. To conceal this fact is ! to play with the whole question, to waste j words, and deceive the ignorant and the thoughtless. Closely allied to the chapter on the land question is Professor Roger’s chapter on financial reform. It is a chapter which should be read by every one who wishes to be prepared for the forthcoming discussions on local taxation. For years the landowners have been crying out against the burdens imposed on real property. They say that land bears more than its share of recently-imposed taxes, and that personal property or incomes do not bear enough. Therefore they wish a part of the load which they now endure to be shifted to the hacks of the payers of the income tax. Now, there can be no doubt that the reason why the land has to bear most of the new taxes is an absurd one. Land, and land alone, is rated for many things, because in the time of Elizabeth, when there were no incomes to tax, it was rated for the support of the poor. There is now no reason why some of the taxes which it and it only pays, should not- equally be borne by property in the funds. ' But if land has exceptional burdens, it enjoys exceptional exemptions from them, and the burdens are m ire than made up for by the exemptions. If therefore the landlords clamor for and obtain the one thing they must be compelled to accept the other. If they get rid of taxes which are hereditary, they must no longer be taxed upon a valuation which is also hereditary. Indeed it was plainly hinted to them by the Prime Minister last year that the local taxation question would be settled in a manner at which they would he unpleasantly surprised. And so it should he. It is absurd that landlords should yet be rated on a valuation which is utterly out of date. It is safe to say that while on the majority of estates in this country the burdens upon land have within the century let us say trebled, the value of land itself has been six or seven times increased. If it paid its fair share of taxation the burdens of the landlords would not be lessened, but the reverse—and that although, in the face of the conditions under which land is sold, the Government should see fit to transfer some of the landlord’s burdens to other shoulders. THE RELEASE OF SULLIVAN. Bay of Plenty Times. ‘“Not this man, but Barablns,” was the cry of a multitude of people assembled together on an occasion—the most raonentous and solemn—- related in sacred history. It was the custom in those days, we are told, at a certain period of the year to release unto the people some not.ni ms prisoner then undergoing punishment. This custom, or rather act of releasing atrocious criminals has—if we believe in the truth of the telegram published by us on Saturday—been revived by the Government of New Zealand. Sullivan, the foulest miscreant of that atrocious gang who some few years ago startled the world by a series of the most diabolical murders that ever was committed, has, it is credibly reported, been liberated by our most paternal Government, and is by this time on his way to San Francisco, with probably a purse of mouey in his pocket to help him on along the journey of life. . . . We do not question the wisdom of acceping Sullivan as Queen’s evidence and saving his life therfor, but his punishment should have been perpetual imprisonment. . . . The prerogative of mercy is vested in the Governor of the colony as the representative of our Sovereign; but Sir James Fergusson is a stranger in the land, unaquainted with the enormity and barbarity of the case in question, and it is known that in all such matters his Excellency refers to his “ responsible advisers.” The real responsibility and odium rests with his Executive, and unto the members of the Cabinet, therefore, may the disgrace and blame be fairly attached. Poverty Bay Standard, The release by the Governor of the fellow Sullivan, and forwarding him to San Francisco in the Mikado is engaging the earnest attention of the whole of New Zealand. This man, it will be remembered, turned traitor to his comrades Burgess and Kelly, who were engaged in several murders on the West Coast of the Middle Island, for which he received a free pardon, but was subsequently sentenced to penal servitude for life, for bis share in other crimes. A number of residents in Dunedin have shown their indignation by subscribing and forwarding a telegram to San Francisco informing the authorities of bis arrival, but it appears that the Captain of the Mikado declined the i,eap Risibility of conveying so renowned a desperado ,to a country which had been Warned of iiis arrival, and lias left him behind in Auckland. We cannot bat wonder at the exefcuo ofsuch inclement ole-eucy. ’ j

Poverty Bay Herald. It will be seen by our telegrams that Sullivan, one of those implicated in the Maungatapu murders, who only escaped the penalty of death by turning Queen’s evidence, and is about as atrocious a scoundrel as ever walked the earth, has been turned loose on society by our merciful ami beneficent Government. What the motive for the step can have been it is not easy to conceive. It must be satisfactory, however, to the criminal classes to find that they can depend upon such warm and active sympathy from the department of justice in this colony.