THE LAND BILL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 81891, 21 November 1906, Page 2

THE LAND BILL.

NUTS FOR THE MINISTER OF LANDS TO CRACK. Commenting on the fact that the French peasantry own more than half tho land—in a word, 45,000,000 acres—or about ten times as much as as is owned by the British owneroccupier, that British farms are occupied by tenants to the extent of 844 pc- cent, and that in France there are only 1 g per cent of the occupiers who are tenants, a coutempoiary remarks: —This is the sort of socialism wo want in New Zealand. Every man with a slake in the country, instead of the country being a temporary resting place for a number of penpathetic philosophers, who wish to livo by their wits, rather than by honest labor. Fortunately for the French nation they were never fooled by a Cobden or a Bright running all over their country proclaiming the virtues of a "cheap loaf" of bread, and setting the workers in the towns against the workers in the counry. They were intelligent enough to see that all classes in the country should have equal rights. As a result agriculture has risen to be the greatest industry to-day in France, employing about one-third of the population of the country; thus supplying the artisans in the cities with a magnificent home market, while Cobden cursed benighted England agriculure steadily declines, and tho yeomanry of England, once its pride and its strength, have been driven to the uttermost parts of the earth, to enable the traitors who have robbed them of their right of living at home 'to feast on "cheap bread.' If Mr Ramsay McDonald would spend a few months in France, even he might get his eyes opened to the fact that everything does not depend on being able to feed on "cheap bread.''