NATIONAL PROPERTY IN LAND.

Patea Mail, 18 March 1882, Page 1 (Supplement)

NATIONAL PROPERTY IN LAND.

We are indebted to an American statesman for a striking epigram which is not without bearing on the present crisis of the land question. It was Charles Sumner who said “ Nothing is settled till it is settled right.” The affairs of the world that are not adjusted in accordance with principles of equity and justice have all, sooner or later, to be adjusted over again. And as “ unsettled questions have no respect for the repose of nations,” it follows that the right solution of great controversies is essential to the peace and contentment of mankind. But, it may be aaked, what is right F My own answer, so far as political disputes are concerned, would be this—that that is right which is fair to all, injurious to none, and beneficial to the whole community. A settlement of the land question that would respond to this definition would be a permanent settlement. No other settlement can be more than temporary. But, as matters stand, with so many conflicting interests to reconcile, we shall even at the best, have to be satisfied with as good an expedient as can readily be obtained. To expect more in existing circumstances would be to expect the unattainable. Nevertheless it might not be altogether without profit if we try to understand, what lies at the very root of the question which Parliament will soon have to discuss. Well, then, the right settlement of the land question would be such a settlement as would make the State the only landlord. This alone would be fair to all, injurious to none, and beneficial to the whole community. Private property in the soil is a grievous mistake, because it is practically an admission that certain favoured individuals have the right, if they cared or dared to exercise it, of compelling the rest of the nation to starve. There are great proprietors who keep enormous estates for the sole purpose of breeding game. What one may do all may do. And a combination of proprietors to convert the country into one vast game preserve would either be fatal to the inhabitants or fatal to the institution of private property itself. It was some such occurrence as this which brought about that terrific outburst known as the French Revolution. The land, then, ought not to be the private property of any individual whatsoever. It is the products of the land, the result of the labour expended upon it, and not the land itself, that properly belongs to the cultivator. Proudhou’s doctrine, “ Property is theft,” is at least applicable to the property of the first landstealers. Mr. Bright has said that the whole soil of Ireland has been confiscated over and over again. It may be added that there is not an estate in our own country which has not been transferred from one proprietor to another by fraud or violence. These transactions of course occurred centuries ago; but the taint of its origin still attaches in some degree to private property in land. The rights of lan d owners, therefore, are not entitled t that reverence which people in modern times have generally agreed to pay to them. What may be thought the wild and subversive theories just indicated are not without countenance from sober and even conservative thinkers. “ The very idea of individual or private property in our acceptation of the term, and according to the current notion of the right of it, was,” says Coleridge, “ ordinarily confined to moveable things.” Few writers did more to destroy the current notion of

the property in land than Mr. John Stuart Mill. Mr. Mill’s works teem with protests against it. “No man made the land,” he observes; “it is the original inheritance of the whole species.” Again he declares, “ The land, the gift of nature, the source of subsistence to all, and the foundation of everything which influences our physical well-being, cannot be considered a subject of property in the same absolute sense in which men are deemed proprietors of that which no one has any interest in but themselves—that which they have actually called into existence by their own bodily exertion.” Professor Newman has denounced “ the crude and monstrous assumption that the land which G-od has given to our nation is or can be the private property of anyone.” Nor is Mr. Euskin less vigorous than Professor Newmann in the assertion of the same principle. Land, water, air, and the persons of men are, he contends, among the things which it is “ criminal to consider as personal or exchangeable property.” Even Lord Sherbrooke, as Mr. Arthur Arnold has this week informed a Newcastle audience, admits that “ land is a kind of property from which it is im- * possible to separate the dormant joint interest of the people.” It is not a little singular, and I may add not a little encouraging to the advocates of the nationalisation of the soil, that the commissioners who were appointed in. 1869 to investigate the state of affairs in Bengal, laid down the principle that “ the land of a country belongs to the people of a country.” Here, then, we see that the theories of agrarian reformers are neither new nor destitute of eminent authorities to sustain them. Private property in land, strange as it may seem to some people, is a comparatively modern doctrine. The feudal system, at least so far as concerns its relation to the soil, was not altogether the evil system we sometimes regard it. What Coleridge calls the current notions of property in land were certainly not recognised in feudal times. The land was then assumed to be the king’s. And as the king was the sole representative of the State, the State was the only landlord. Estates were indeed granted to followers and favourites of the monarch, but always on condition that the nobles who received them should perform certain services to the Crown. These services were sometimes no doubt of a grotesque character, such as presenting the king with a rose in the winter and a snowball in midsummer. But the services required were generally of a more Useful and substantial kind. It was from the contributions of the landholders —there were no land-owners in those days—that the whcle cost both of political government and national defence was derived. The modern right of absolute property in the soil only came to be recognised when taxation was invented. And now the landlords—no longer landholders, but landowners —possess the soil, the source of all wealth and sustenance, without being expected to render any service in return. Might we not revert, with some advantage to the community, to the spirit of the feudal system. Mr. Mill, who was credited with the power of seeing further into the future than any man of his time, want so far as to prophesy that the present mode of dealing witk landed property would one day give place to an ancient and more equitable mode. “ By the early institutions of Europe,” he wrote, “ property in land was held a public function, created for certain public purposes, and held under condition of their fulfilment; and as such we predict, under modifications suited to modern society, it will come to be considered.” But how is the right of the State—a right which is already inforced in innumerable Acts of Parliament — to be resumed 1 If we take away a man’s property, or what the law acknowledges to be property, we are bound to compensate the owner for his loss. To do otherwise would be to commit injustice —to violate in fact, that definition of right which has been given above. Various ■ schemes have been suggested for transforming the cultivators of the soil ir Ireland into proprietors of their ings. All are surrounded with difficulties. The sum of money that would be needed for the operation would be enormous. Still, if the purchase of the interests of the landlords be considered the best way of dealing with the question, the funds can of course be found. But a simpler solution of the difficulty was propounded by Mr. W. J. Linton a few days ago in a letter to the Newcastle Daily Chronicle. Mr. Linton proposes that Parliament should assert the right of the State in such terms as these :—“ That the land of Ireland is held by present landlords, be they who they may, only as tenants of the whole Irish people.” This would be a settlement, not so much of the Irish question, as of the whole laud question of the kingdom. But the declaration of right would have to be followed by the assertion of right. How? “Tax the land,” says Mr. Linton; “ let the landlord pay the State, not arrears of rent so long withheld, but rent from this day forth.” No other taxation would be necessary. Tenants, whether large or small, would hold of the State for the benefit of the State. Here would indeed be a complete, radical, thorough settlement of the land difficulty. It is of course' a revolutionary proposal. And yet it is precisely the same proposal as that

which Mr. Alfred Eussell Wallace, who has just been awarded a handsome pension from the Crown for his services to science, made the other day in a letter to the Daily News. “It is, I believe,” says Mr. Wallace, “ essential, as regards all land acquired by the Government, that the property in the soil itself —so far as respects its inherent or natural capacity and value —should be permanently retained by the State, the tenant paying an annual quit-rent, which should be fixed by a general valuation of the qualities of the land as dependent on soil, subsoil, aspect, climate, vicinity to markets, means of communication, and generally all such facts and conditions as have not been given to it by the present or preceding owners or occupiers during the past four generations.” We may gather from Mr. Wallace’s statement htat revolutionary proposals are not in themselves objectionable. The fact is, we have arrived at a time when the most extensive changes are considered proper subjects of discussion. That this is the state of the public mind ought to be encouragement to Ministers to deal with the Irish difficulty in a radical and efficient manner. It depends altogether on the reforms effected now whether they will give contentment to the Irish people or merely prepare the ground for a more formidable agitation in the future. — Newcastle Chronicle.