THE LAND QUESTION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 59, 4 May 1907, Page 4

THE LAND QUESTION.

To the Kditor. I < Sir, —The people forming the n. lion h exists in its physical unity and ci'vara- j; stances, in a relation t<> tlio H I Mid, The of Iho land by tin- i; l>o*)|>lc is Hi*' condition oi' it* hiVu tical j life. The right to tlio land N in 1 !u* people, and lit. l hud U given to the y people in the fulfilment. of a moral f ur.ler oil the earth. All men ultimately j got their living out of t!ie soil. \!-mi is i! |ilii«ed in a garden to till it and in wit ! ii> fruits, lie has no other way of j ; living, and will never have any oilier. Hence, questions pertaining to land are the most imperative that eome before men. because the livst and mo:;t <Oll- - question with every man is, How shall 1 live; liow get my daily bread? All other questions perl stilling to life or condition come after this one. lie may lie free oj- enslaved; lie may live id a city or on the sea; he may be educated <*r left ignorant, but first of all he must have food, and food, first or last, cutm-s out of the ground. Kverv human must have sonic relation, to a certain extent to the soil. The relation ijm.v be an indirect one. He may never see hU estate; he may toil in -a city, and not know the grain that yields his loaf, but .•omewhere there is a ceriain stretch of , land that stands for that man':; life. Fifteen square feet, it is said, will furjnish a Hawaiian enough to support existence: the Indian requires miles of I hunting ground; the Belgian fanner lives weil 011 two or three acres. J lore, in Xew Zealand, with many hundreds, do not satisfy—nor thousands. Commerce, manufacture, schools, churches, government even, all these represent no such necessity as an open relation to the soil. You may burn nil the ships, factories, churches, school houses, annihilate government, and man still lives, but cut him off from the soil, and in a week is dead. I say this to explain the force of land questions, their interest to thinking minds, their place in history, and in political and divine economy. To j get man rightly related to the soil, in such a way that lie shall most easily get his food from it, this is the underlying question of all history, its keynote and largest achievement. The chief struggles in all ages have turned upon this relation. For hundreds of years Roman history was colored by struggles over the agrarian laws., the patricians claiming the lands of Italy for their own; the people and the great conquerors claiming them for themselves, and

the disbanded armies. These struggles were the basis of Caesar's fortune. It was the apportionment of the lands of England by William the Conqueror •to his followers that laid the foundation of those conflicts between the nobility in-land-owners and he people, that have never ceased, and that are to-day at ' white heat, questions in which there is ' technical justice on one side and eternal ' righteousness on the other. Why should ' not the Duke of lluecleugli own land > over which be can ride thirty miles in I a straight line, with a title good for '■ night a thousand years? Why, again, * should one man hold land from which i thousands of people, on or near it, who * are well nigh starving, could get their i bread? I do not attempt to answer i these questions, because they are complicated and do not admit of brief answer, but the Land Act of Mr. Gladstone shows bow a great philosophical i statesman regards them, marshalling the way thev are going. The code of Napoleon, which took the great estates of France, and even all lauded possessions, and made them subject to division on inheritance, showed the same broad sense of human justice, with perhaps some lack of forecast.—l am, etc., '■ AGRARIAN."