Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 1909. A DANIEL COME TO JUDGMENT

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 4426, 19 June 1909, Page 2

Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News

SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 1909 . A DANIEL COME TO JUDGMENT

This above all—to thine own eel) be true, ; l tid tt must follow as the night the day Thou canst not then be false to any man /Shakespeare.

It has become somewhat fashionable to attack ministers of religion. It is generally safe to do so, because most of them are too busy with more important matters to reply to their assailants. Now and then the critics get a warm (garter of an hour, but ns the critics generally write over a nom de plume, acting like cowardly snipers in a theatre of war, the retaliation is less effective than it otherwise would k°in the ca e 1 ef re us a Mr Edward T. Evans has had the courage to sign his name to “ an open letter to religious teachers. ’ It is in the April number of “The Liberator,” a journal published monthly in Auckland by the single taxers, whose object is to destroy the freehold tenure of land. It matters nothing to the latter that the owners have honestly obtained a Crown Grant for their land either for hard cash earned payment, or for services on the battle fields in early Maori Wars—it matters nothing that our farmers have reclaimed waste land, felled the bush, drained swamps, bridgod creeks, fenced, ploughed, sown the soil and made the desert ( blossom as the rose ; it all goes for nothing, and the farmers are branded by single taxers as robbers.” That being so, ministers of religion need not think some strange thing has befallen them when single taxers assail them with strong and unjusti* liable epithets. Let us see a specimen of Mr Evan’s brusque method of approaching, or rather reproaching, the clergy and others. The open letter is “ to those patrons, teachers, and preachers of all religious communities who do not denounce land monopoly and the daily confiscation of the earnings of labour.” The Daniel come to Judgment proceeds : “ You claim to be preachers of righteousness and ambassadors of ' the Most High. Persons of your superior wisdom and . . • • It is your duty to declare the whole Counsel of God, no matter whom you r may offend. Of course if you were to ! do your duty manfully the monopolists who sit in your pews and who, in ■ many cases, are your paymasters would close their purses against you. ; But what of that ? ... . How ■ is it that you never preach on this i magnificent economic system ? . ■ . . Yet you are great sticklers foi k the Decalogue—although we observe k you do not write in protest against t slaying Naboths and stealing their Vineyards when these crimes are 1 committed by British Governments on - one pretext and another. . . . ■ I In New Zealand the land’@is people ’ have meekly submitted to the same kind of robbery (namely as in Eng- ' land) without one solitary word oi (. protest from the Church and Ministers t 0 f religion collectively. What a disgrace to the Phnreh. You profess tc wonder why the toilers do pot attenc church. Has it never occurred to yoi 7 that it is an importance to a.‘k them t< » attend Church when you make friendi ). 0 f the Mammon of unrighteousness and help to keep the toilers in bondagi n an d misery ? Honest men outside tin f» Church denounce the wrongs here re n fejred to, and denounce them in burn f : in* language, while you are silent an< e receive filthy lucre ptm fo? exploiter v | and robbers of the h&ld r ] poor.” 8 And so Mr Evans went pa with evej 0 more violent and offensive languag for which we cannot find space, be - cause we wanted to deal .with th a justice of freehold tenure, whicj ir single taxers assail. The Secretary o the Single Tax League of the Lowe n Hutt has officially endorsed Mr Evan’ ir letter. i. The Crown legally grants freehol ; tenure, but always reserves the rigli of Eminent jf)oi»ain, by which incase of emergency or necessity i S eanr resume possession of fifie h •f paying to the owners the fair jpar g ket value which it does ,voder op n Public Works Act, That is fair a# 1 just. The public weal must aJway transcend private interest. Whenlan ° is required for roads or for railway it must be taken but, of course pah ' for- Hence the State recognises free ') hold tenure. n But we go bpyopd the State an find that the right to our property i from nature. Pope Leo, &IJI i, 0 1891, said in his encyclical lette on “ The Condition of Labour.” n “ This great labour question canuc t be solved except by assuming as principle foffi .private ownership mue , {fie hold sa,qred inviolable. Th Jaw, ,therefore, should owner 7 ship, jts pojjcy shqyld k e V duce as many .of ffie as poe x \ sible to become owners. . . £h right to possess private property j II from nature not from man and tb & r State has only the right to regulat le jts n&o ;n the interests of the publi n! gpqd, ,b\it by moans to abolish i it' altogether- Th® is, therefon >f | vnjust avd iQruel if, in tfre c ® taxation, it deprives the private oyvne of more than js j ust.'.’ ie The Chnrch of the jPret byterian, M T esleyan, and othe churches have never held that it i sraopg even for Christians to owi land.; £boy have insisted tha landlords and .capitalists are steward and trustees, and that je p be fair and just to the workers. Eveuj civilised state throughout the worl< i £,ppravae> wad ratifies freehold tenur

nd defends it with all the resoure.s f the nnricn. Tt is tbi* best tenure o the individual and for the nation. Aud well it may defend it. l'reelold tenure and private owning of land have obtained for thousands of yi are, since Abraham bought with ; silver the field of Ephron in Mack-p-dah ; and a study of the Agrarian law of Moses also clearly shows that i freehold tenure, obtained according to Divino command. Special penalties attached then as now to the removing of a neighbour’s laud mark. When the Christ was in Palestine. He never denounced private owning of land ; and when Ananias and Sapphira practiced deceit upon the early Church Communistic Society, by keeping back part of the price of their land. St. Peter said : While it remained was it not thine own ?” , Hence we contend that Mr Evans s asperations are uncalled for and unjust, and his contention is opposed to naturp, Scripture, all civilised states, and tho common sense of mankind.