HENRY GEORGE ON LONDON POVERTY.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 368, 15 May 1889, Page 4

HENRY GEORGE ON LONDON POVERTY.

At his first meeting in connection with his land nationalisation programme held ab Camber well the other night, Mr Henry George, according to the " Pall Mall Gazette," leceived a regular ovation on rioing to speak. The lecturer said he would rather bland in a Christian ehuich to say u hat he had to say than in any other place. The essential principle of Christianity was justice. London, he said, seemed to him the mo&t interest ing place on the earth's surface. But what sights they saw in it ! We senb missionaries to teach the savage to say that he should love hi& neighbour as him«elf, to tell him that he should nob .steal, and chat polygamy was wrong — the last because in the nature of things an equal number of male and female children wero born into the world, and if the savage married many wives, other men must go without wives. (Laughter.) The command, " Thou shall, not steal," was the very basij ot civilisation. When wo said that to a savage, what would the savage think this country should be? Then let such savage come to England, let him see the sights to be seen here, let him read the statistics ot crime, the repoits of our royal commissions, let him see the thieves and watch the crowds of poor women that walk the streets ab nights. One of two things would be clear to his mind — either th't Christ was a fraud or that this was nob a Chiistian city. Why was there, he asked, so much poveity in this greatest of cities ? Even in new Australia they saw the same poverty. Some might say because there waa so much over-pro-duction. However it might go down with a newspaper editor or a profes°or of political economy, he knew no savage would accept such an explanation. (Laughter and cheers.) Others replied that poverty was a natural thing — "The poor ye have always with you," they quote. And even, they said, if the rich divided their money, "there ain't enough to go round." The savage would bay, '"if there ain't enough wealth why don't jou produce moro ?" The people we put in our workhouses were simply people that can't find wcrk. Yet we had lots of land, that we weren't using. He only wished that among the Hottentots there were societies to send us missionaiies. (Laughter. ) They should ask questions and let the bench ot bishops reply. (More aughter. )

The flax boom is certainly proving a veritable bonanza to the North Island. The Rangitikei "Advocate" says that it is estimated by trustworthy authorities that there will be sent Home from the Wellington provincial district alone during theou<rent year at least 12,000 tons of flax, which at £20 per ton would represent ne rly a quarter of a million sterling. The New Zealand " Trade Review " has collected from official sources a return of the exports of flax trom the whole colony for tho three years ending with 1888. For the year 1886 the value of this export was only £15,000. ' Next year it took a leap' of £10,000, and in 1888 the record of 1887 was trebled, the amount being £75,000. .Now we find, as indicated above, that from one provincial district alone the export in 1899 will be £240,000.