MR FROUDE ON LIBERTY AND PROPERTY.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 250, 28 March 1888, Page 9

MR FROUDE ON LIBERTY AND PROPERTY.

At a meeting of the Liberty and Property Defence League, held in November at the Westminster Palace Hotel, London, Mr J. I A. Froude, who was in the chair, said the I direction of the affairs of a great nation should be in the hands of men who are, or who ought to be, uninfluenced by any personal or party considerations, and actuated solely and entirely by patriotism and the desire to do good to their country. At the present* time it is one man one vote ; and as the poor and ignorant are sure of a majority, and the few and wise and rich are the minority, he thought ib perfectly certain that those who have the power would use it to bring about what they considered an equitable distribution of the good things of this world. He did not see how ib could be otherwise. This is the light in which he .interpreted what is going on around us. We begin first in Ireland as the weakest place. The landlord calls in his debts, and he is called a brigand, especially if he happens to be a gentleman (laughter) ; when he points to unpaid arrears, he is told that he will be lucky if he is not made to refund the largo sums he had taken in past time. This doctrine will not stay where it has begun, and will nob be limited to land. It is impossible for any human society to go on where industry and honesty are nofc secure of their reward. Society is turned into a menagerie of wild beasts on any other conditions, and that development of political liberty which takes the form of an attack on property itself inevitably cornea to an end. In the Jasb twenty years we have seen laws passed which have taken away half of the property which twenty years ago seemed to belong to the Irish landlords, and we have given ib to others whose vote, ho supposed, one party or other wished to secure ; as if thafa had nob been enough, there is a demand for another moiety, and when that is refused or resisted, responsible statesmen, who have had the caro of affairs in their hands, call; it tyranny. He had, however, great faith in the sense and honesty of bhe English people ; they were too fond of listening to speeches, and too apt to get their head confused by fine sentiments' bliab came rolling out on platforms ; bub he believed that their heads were set straight on their shoulders, and that when they saw what it all meant they would pull up.