The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 5. THE TRAGEDY OF THE BUDGET.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 151, 5 October 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 5. THE TRAGEDY OF THE BUDGET.

New Zealand is fairly familiar with the Government's methods of bursting up big estates in order to settle the landless Such estates are generally not endeared to their owners by historic association or family ties, and their alienation at big prices is by no means a tragedy, even to the owners. Although the bursting up of great estates is even more necessary in Britain, it is a ,very real tragedy to the owners. We have lately been told repeatedly by cablegram that such-and-such a great landholder is selling his ancestral holding. It is not to be forgotten that around these great homes British history grew as far as internal affairs were concerned, that from these homes came the leaders of the people, leaders by hereditary unquestionably, but knowing no other feeling but that they were born to rule. Because of a recognition of this by the under-dog the rulers have had real service from them. The rulers never swerved from the point of view that the people depended for their existence on the great landholders, nor do they see that they really depend on the people. Wihen the Budget fiat went forth nearly every hereditary landlord showed arrant weakness. Men whose forefathers had I handed down to them .untold wealth in broad 1 acres cried out that ruin stared them in the face. That is to say, a peer with two hundred thousand pounds a year could not afford to be taxed. The hereditary landlords of Britain are to be adequately taxed', or are called on to sell out, because the precious privileges inalienable for hundreds of years are slipping away from them. The'alicnation of great holdings means the decay of the power of hereditary holders over the people. These privileges slip away but gradually. Once they held the power of life and death in their hands, but that slipped away. Not long ago they could deport a man to Botany Bay for poaching. They cannot do so now. Within the memory of a nonagenarian they hanged a man in Britain for stealing my lord's sheep, but they didn't hang' my lord for killing a peasant in a brawl. My lord manages to kill a few with his motor oar yet. Once upon a time no one was in Parliament at the will of the people. The landlord saw to that with pence and beer. It was absurd that a laborer should get as much meat as one of my lord's foxhounds, or that he should riot in more than ten shilling!? a week, a sum my lord would spend on two courses. And everywhere in England,-tie people on whom the rich have built their power, have lately been asking ttl|e reason why. Eminence cannot be extinguished by poverty, or starvation, or the dominance of a class, and so there have arisen in the ranks of the people men who can lead the people to fight for what they have created but which they must not own. LloydGeorge and his Budget represent the collective figihting power of the people of Britain. The Budget is the collective "Why?" of the tens of thousands of people who never see a blade of grass because of hereditary territorial holding. Although one may choke back a sob for the man wlio leaves his ancestral home , when soma one of his name has possessed it for centuries, the grief must turn to joy if one watches the entrance of the men who made my lord and Old England, too. The great landholder"cannot show cause why he, a drone, should remain undisturbed. British men have educated the British under-dog, but the territorial nabob has not yet learnt his lesson. A great and wonderful change is coming over the Old Country, and maybe some day the landholders who are vacating their seats will discover that both they and the coster of Whiteehapel are made in the same image, and that the coster has as much right to the sweet earth as the partridge or the foxhound.