the Land for the People.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 1011, 13 December 1881, Page 4

the Land for the People.

(From the Cantrbury Times)

We have been requested to publish the following manifesto. It issued under the instsuetions of the Reform Union, and taken from an English paper : — Fellow Countrymen, —The prosperity and well-being of our country are in danger. Our trade has been, and still is, falling off. While we are losing foreign markets the Band Raws fqrbid the development of our Home market, whidh would make up for that loss. Capitalists and workmen, merchants and shopkeepers, manufacturers and artisans, are being ruined. Nor is this state of things confined to the towns. In the agricultural districts the ruin is even more serious and widespread.: Farmers and farm laborers are suffering losses which are rapidly driving them from the land to find employment in other countries or to take shelter in the workhouse. We wish to point out to you one of the principal causes of this state of things, and to indicate a remedy. While fighting for the freedom of trade and fostering the manufacturing industries of our towns, we have left uucared for the greatest and moat important of all our manufacturing industries — the production of the nation’s food. The land of England no longer feedsits people. Food cheaper than we can raise at home under the existing Land Laws is brought to our very doors. In vain do our farmers try to compete ; they are beaten in the unequal struggle. Unequal—because they are hampered by iniquitous laws, because they are fettered by a bad system. Under these laws and this system not one of the three classes engaged in producing food has fair play, or can be expected to do its duty fully by the soil. 1. The landowners are tied by settlements aud entails, which give them large estates, but often leave them without money to spend upon the soil.

2. The tenant farmers will not put money and labour into their farms without security, and this the law denies them. They are handicapped by the law of distress, which raises their expensed and lowers their credit. In consequence of the Game Laws, their fields are over run and their crops damaged by ground game which they may not kill.

3. The farm labourers toil without heart in their work or hope for the future. The best men move into the towns, or leave our shores. For those who stay behind there is nothing but a workhouse pittance in their old age.

The remedy for these evils is clear and straightforward. No making of new laws is needed, only the sweeping away of old abuses. This may be done :—

1. By abolishing the law’s of entail and primogeniture, and bymore strictly limiting the power to'tie up land by way of settlement, so that there shall always be some living person with an absolute power to sell the land. 2. By taking away the power of the landlord to appropriate the results of his tenant’s outlay and labour without paying a fair price for them. 3. By abolishing distress and hypothec, which, by an unjust law’, give the preference to the landlord over all other creditors.

4. By such a reform of the Game Laws as will enable the farmer to protect his crops.

5. By getting rid of the uncertainty, delay, and expense which attach to the buying and selling of land—making the transfer of land as simple as the sale of shares, ships, or cotton. Until these things are done, there w’ill be little hope for agriculture in England. The farmer will give up the struggle, and go to lands where they will find fair play. The labourers will leave our shores in search of an independence they cannot win at home, farms will stand empty and unproductive; landlords will lose their rents ; and English land will cease te produce food for English people. Men of the towns ! Will you suffer this ? If you let agriculture once decay, you will never win back good trade. It is the men who produce your food who should be the safest and readiest customers for your goods. Drive these men away, and w’ho shall fill their places ? Will you not rather help us to reform the bad laws which ruin them, aud so help them to gain once more money enough to buy freely the goods you make? Men of the country! Will you slavishly submit to laws which divorce you from the soil, and keep you poor and dependent without profit in your labor, or hope for the future ? Fellow-countrymen ! A general election is at hand, when your votes must decide whether these bad laws shall stand or fall. The Liberal party, through its leader in Parliament, has recoguised the necessity of these changes. Not alone your own welfare, but the welfare of your children and your children s children, hangs on the issue. Weigh well your verdict, and give your votes fearlessly and honestly as becomes free Englishmen. By order of the Executive of the National Reform Union.

Arthur G. Symonds, Secretary,