HOME C0L0NIES. Hope for England.

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 287, 30 December 1905, Page 6

HOME COLONIES. Hope for England.

WE don't know who the Mr. J. E. Williams is who has " demanded " from the Home Government a small matter of three million pounds for Home colonisation, and if he is successful in his demands the three millions will be like a drop in a bucket. Mr. Williams' name sounds to us too British for it to have the slightest effect on a British Government. Still, whatever happens, the idea of " free home colonisation " is a very excellent one, and if it comes to anything it will prove that what Russia, or France, or Holland have done is not impossible for England to do. ♦ • * The cutting up of the land into small holdings, the increase of a rural population, and the ability of the farmer class to become their own landlords is absolutely the only way to minimise poverty in any country. Land is the people's only permanent asset, so that practically the only permanent as^efc at Home is held by one class of people, who are too hidebound to unloose their grasp, and help their fellow man ri^e from poverty. ♦ * * More than three-quarters of the land in England lies idle, its owners wallow in wealth and luxury, and drone away a useless existence, while "the people" live a hand-to-mouth existence. The landowners dole out charity in a desultory way, but no land. The State has no land. If it wants any land it must buy it. How many millions of people can it free from the bond of hunger, and how much of the lockedup land can it buy for three million pounds ? ♦ ♦ • Poverty is so common at Home that the rich take absolutely no notice of it unless it is brought vividly before their eyes. There is one man in the new British Cabinet who may be trusted to bring the matter very clearly before the drone class. .John Burns will disappoint the people if he doesn't "go" for the land monopoly with both hands and urge on his chief that the only hope of the down -trodden poor of Britain is the resumption of tens of thousands of acres by the State for the forming of these " home colonies." It may be a pity to disturb the foxes and the hares and the partridges and grouse and woodcock, but if they are not disturbed the people of England will go on dying in large heaps, and will be buried by the "parish." " Rattle his bones over the stones, he's but a poor pauper whom nobody owns."