The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 23. MORE ABOUT LAND.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 192, 23 November 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 23. MORE ABOUT LAND.

An instance of the glowing generosity of the Great British land-owner has lately been furnished, and it seems necessary to seize on any such instance to show that landed peers have bowels of compassion. It has been seen that as a protest against the iniquity of the Budget large landowners are quitting portions of their property. At the moment every shred of evidence going to show what a splendid chap the owner of tens of thousands of acres can be is eagerly used by counsel for old conditions, and the British Press is absolutely pathetic with its stories of how the brave peer found that his chauffeur's cottage had no water-supply and spent £2 on conmeeting it, or how his gamekeeper's wife had no sink, and how his lordship ordered his steward to order his servant to order his plumber to order a man to get one, even though it ruined the peer. A medical officer lately invaded an area on a great estate and found that the conditions of the servants who occupied cottages were appalling. There were no real sanitary conveniences of any kind. When the matter had been duly reported the wealthy owner® "generously consented to build fifty new cottages if the urban authorities would put in the drains, etc." A paean of praise went up from admiring newspapers at this splendid action of the owners. The peer who at last recognises that his coachman needs a bath, or that liis groom's wife should have a watertap, would probably be found to have wings sprouting under his silk singlet. Mr. Arthur Withy is in this country as an organiser to the Land Values League, and he has fired off a few facts, showing what an admirable system the domination of the land by a few aristocrats really is. He mentioned, for instance, that the Duke of Sutherland, who is president of the Tariff Reform League, lias one million three hundred thousand acres of the seventy-seven million acres of the Mother Country. It is sincerely hoped that his Grace of Sutherland won't be asked to put in too many sinks for liis servants. The other side of the picture was given by Mr. Withy, who mentioned that a Finsbury 'landholder" put all his real estate in a flower-pot, which grew a sickly blossom. The quaint landowner had labelled his possession: "Trespassers will be prosecuted." This reminds us that no long ago a pauper woman was sent to gaol for three months —she had a six weeks' old baby—for "stealing" twigs valued at ninepence from the estate of a territorial nabob. We have mentioned this before, but it is worth repetition. To get back to Mr. Withy and his facts. He shows that the land taxes imposed by the Lloyd-George Budget are not really frightening the poor little British millionaires, but they are trembling in their boots at the thought that their estates will be revalued. The last valuation was by the Feudal Land Tax in 1692. It was 4s in the £. Another fact. The Land Tax brings in a trifling £70,000 a year—a sum two or three peers would spend on a yachting cruise in the Mediterranean or trying their luck at Monaco. If the tax were levied on the present known values the tax would bring in about sixty million pounds a year, which would certainly go towards buying biscuits for the Navy or supplying bully-beef for the Army. Mr. Withy made the point that is invariably made by students who argue the iniquity of the present system of valuation—that the fee-simple of the lands now held by territorial peers was granted to their ancestors on the conditions that the defence of the county and the upkeep of the Navy and Army was to be a first charge on the land. The landed class have held the greatest political power, and by beautiful degrees they have pushed the burden from their own shoulders to those of the people. In feudal times, the peasants and people were infinitely better off, for there were fewer of them, huge areas of land were "common," life and work were less strenuous, and peer and peasant were more or less united in the common bond of physical sympathy, the one being necessary to the other for mutual protection. But by some devilish device large proportions of the "commons" of Britain passed away from the people to swell the estates of the wealthy. Investigations are being now made by way of discovering how common property got into the hands of uncommon folk. One is earnestly asked to sympathise with his Grace of Sutherland, should he be called upon to put in any drains or to pay more than twelve shillings a week to farm laborers, or to fill in any of these atrocious LloydGeorge papers, or to disgorge an acre of his one million three hundred thousand. Further, the merest tyro must see that an insolent owner of landed estate in a flower-pot has no right to protest at t-he privileges of dukes, marquises, earls, millionaires, pickle lords or imported American meat packers who have become British squires. Anyone with half an eye can see that land which was valued at ten shillings an acre two centuries ago, and which is worth forty pounds an acre in 1910. should be taxed on the old basis. Any peer would =et one's mind at rest about it in two minutes. nnd prove to one that one's flowerpot full of street dirt should certainly pay a heavier tax than his ten thousand acre* of park. {