THE PASSING OF THE FREEHOLD.

King Country Chronicle, Volume I, Issue 36, 28 June 1907, Page 3

THE PASSING OF THE FREEHOLD.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—The notion that I would invite the New Zealand farmer to make a personal sacrifice in order to hasten the approach of the millenium is 'really quite uproariously fumi3 r , and I am sorry that your worthy correspondent, "A.M.T.," should have misunderstood me so. And I have not been reading, nor have I read, " Looking Backward." There _ will never be any millenium. The idea, like all the absurd fantasies of the Apocalypse, is a mere figment of the imagination ; but we may be permitted to hope and strive for a time when society shall be built upon a " broad, clean, humane basis'"; when happiness here is recognised as the one and only object in life ; when the true meaning of the word 'righteousness' is realised; when science, reason, education and knowledge shall unite in laying down principles of right conduct, and in exposing the rottenness of bad old laws and bad old institutions," damp and heavy with the mould of centuries, and in in wiping the usurer, the parasite and the bloated monopolist out of existence. In rather a large and imperial manner " A.M.T." asks if we are hot proud of our British kinsmen. The question seems to me irrelevant. I confess I am proud of being a New Zealander, and that I hope to see New Zealand free and prosperous, and her laws and institutions clean, sound, rational and excellent. In the latest " Commonweal " to hand, quite recently the editor quotes the late Mr Herbert Spencer en the land question. Spencer, by many considered the greatest philosopher England has produced, states the case against the Freehold with admirable clearness and convincing effect, concluding his investigations with the "reductio adabsurdum": "If the whole habitable globe was so enclosed, the landless people would have no place to set their feet, and might be completely eliminated from the face of the earth." I quote only from memory, having passed the paper on. The freehold plays into the very hands of capital, while no landlord is so fair and just as the State. It is as much to the State's interest to make concessions to the farmer, to assist him with advances and tide him over bad times—to keep him on the land at any cost —as it is to the mortgagee's interest to foreclose and take possession, for wherever the pestilence of the freehold brcods, there the vulture of the mortgagee hovers and battens. State leasehold, with low rent, easy conditions and periodic re-valuations, is absolutely fair and just, while the freehold is a dangerous " cul-de-sac," and indeed it is the very vermiform appendage of economics, and till it is cut out and

cast aside our body politic will never be really sound and strong. "A.M.T." implies that Britain's success is due to the freehold. How can this possibly be, when agricultural England for centuries has been worked by tenants rack-rented in the most iniquitous manner, the robber owners scooping the rent instead of the State ? As for equality, I think I stated that no sane person believed that equalitywas possible or desirable. The vexed question of Supply and Demand would be very much simplified, for as the State would be in much closer touch with the producers, it would be enabled to adjust Supply and Demand with a much greater nicety than it is possible to do under existing conditions. Under State leasehold not only would stability and liberality of tenure increase production, produce confidence and promote prosperity, but the State income would be considerably augmented, and there would be ample funds for Defence, and every other national requirement. To conclude with the case of the young New Zealand farmer, if he thinks, as our farmers can think if they like, he will scarcely hesitate in his choice. Is it likely, after a fair comparison of both systems, that for the sake of a possible advantage, not by any means certain, he would expose himself to the risk of economic crises and a fall in values and prices, sooner or later surrender his independence and become a slave to the money power, aye, and make his wife and children slaves too, and in the end realise that the years when he should have been enjoying life have been passed in the frantic pursuit of an " ignis fatuus," when he might become an independent lessee of the State lands, a co-partner in the State's prosperity, his tenure and improvements supported by a State guarantee, his wife well dressed and healthy, and his children well educated, and his own life as happy and free from care as it would otherwise be clouded and miserable, with a sword of Damocles, hanging by a slender thread, suspended, day and night, over his head. Apologising for taking up so much

space. —I am, etc., W.T.M, Whangamomona, 14/6/07.