The Temuka Leader SATURDAY, JANUARY 19, 1884. LAND REFORM IN ENGLAND.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1128, 19 January 1884, Page 2

The Temuka Leader SATURDAY, JANUARY 19, 1884. LAND REFORM IN ENGLAND.

In writing of Mr Parnell and his followers not long since we prophesied that the day would come when they would be regarded as objects of admiration instead of scorn by the great majority of the inhabitants of England. We pointed out that the landlord system of England was only a modified form of that which was ruining Ireland, that the Irish agitators were opening the mind of the British agriculturist to this fact, that eventually the agitation would spread till a land law reform was effected, and that Mr Parnell and his followers would then be regarded as the instigators of the change. Our prophesy has been partly fulfilled much sooner than we expected. A Society, called the Land Reform Association of England, has been formed, and is spreading its ramifications throughout the country. It includes amongst its numbers, members of Parliament, clergymen, journalists, merchants, authors, etc., and has selected as one of its lecturers no less a person than Michael Davitt, the author of the Irish Land League. To us in this colony such a selection must appear very strange. Owing to the one-sided character of the news we receive we are led to believe that the Irish agitators are held in horror by the British public, but if this were so Mr Davitt, the Ticket-of-leave man and founder of the Land League, would not have been given the privilege of lecturing to this Society. It is evident therefore that sympathy with the Irish agitation is spreading through England, and it is our opinion that it would spread with greater rapidity, till a fusion of the democracy of both nationalities was effected, only for those internal fiends in human shape—the Dynamiters and Invincibles. If those miscreants could be swept off the face of the earth, the majority of Englishmen and Irishmen would soon unite to give battle to the natural enemy of both—the landland —and there would spring up a better fee'ing between the two nationalities than ever existed before.

On the very evening that the railway explosion took place in London Mr Davitt was addressing a crowded audience in St James’ flail, under the auspices of the Land Reform Association, the Rev. Stewart Headlaru being in the chair. In the course of his address, Mr Davitt said that in England, Scotland and Wales 8142 individuals owned inalienably 46,500,000 acres of land, yielding an annual income of over £35,000,000. He added to this sum £10,000,000, which the same class received from what is known as city ground rent, making in all their annual income £45,000,000, and pointed out that this was nothing more or less than a tax upon the industry of the masses. These 8142 people neither toil nor spin. They do nothing but spend the money in idleness and luxury, while millions of their fellow countrymen are starving for want of food. There was more land locked up by English landowners in deer parks, game preserves, etc., than was comprised in the whole kingdom of Belgium, which supported six millions of people in comfort and ease, and yet England had to send to other countries every year £100,000,000 to buy food for her people. He pointed out that landed property was not the result of labor but the creation of a monopoly, and showed how the landlord class had shifted the greater portion of taxation on the shoulders of the industrial classes. The annual valuation of landed property in the United Kingdom was 108 millions of pounds, and the amount this contributed to taxation was about millions. The annual valuation of house property, after deducting ground rent, was 83 millions, and this was taxed to the tune of nearly 20 millions. The total taxation on industry was 30 millions, while 45,000 millions of pounds worth of land escaped with only millions. It was no wonder the rich were getting richer and the poor poorer. He gave an interesting account of how the landlords had perpetrated this fraud. From the Conquest to 1692 the landlords bad to pay for all the wars England engaged in, in consideration of possessing the laud. This was, a special tax upon them. The Landlord Parliament of 1692, however, resolved to pay a rax of 4s in the £ instead, and it was thus the National Debt was created. The landlords repudiated their obligations to pay for the wars, the money had to be raised, and the industrial classes had to pay 28 millions in interest every year

on the debt the landlords ought to have paid. It was on condition that they would pay the expenses of wars they got the land, but that obligation they repudiated. In the reign of George 111. the Landlord Parliament made the tax of 4s in the £ on the then valuation of the laud permanent, and that is in existence still. The result is that as the valuation of the land has not been altered since Geoige 111. was king ; the land tax of the present day amounts only to £BOO,OOO, whereas if a new valuation was made, and the land rated at 4s in £ of its present value, it would yield an annual revenue of £20,000,000. As an instance of this, plots of laud in London, Liverpool, Manchester, etc,, a perch of which constituted a fortune owing to the increased value given to it by the industry of the people, contributes to the revenue now about the same amount as it did one hundred years ago, when it was only worth a few shillings per acre. Thus by a trick of legislature the landlords had defrauded the country of more money than would pay the National Debt several times over. He suggested the revaluation of the land, and the tax of 4s in the £ agreed to in 1692 to be levied on its present value. The revenue which this would yield would soon wipe away the National Debt. Mr Davitt then proceeded to discuss the advisability of nationalising the land. He referred to the large number of people who died of starvation annually in England, besides those who took refuge in workhouses, or sought their fortunes in foreign countries, and urged that if the laud of England were made to produce the same as Belgium it would support 50,000,000 people. But the monopoly held by a few individuals of the land prevented the people from producing sufficient to maintain the present population, and this was the root of all the misery, the rags and the pauperism that existed in Great Britain. The system that maintained a few people in idleness and luxury, while the masses were starving or flying to foreign countries, was wrong in principle, and ought to be altered m the direction of making the land national property. We have no time to give a fuller account of the lecture. It was an able one, and produced the result of a resolution being carried affirming the principle of nationalising the land. The fact that Mr Davitt has been invited, listened to, and applauded in London, by a purely English association, must lead to the conclusion that he is not regarded as the blood-stained villain Mr Forster painted him. The fact is the feudal land system in England is on its last legs; it has been destroyed in almost every country in Europe, and it is impossible that it can continue to exist much longer in so enlightened a country as Great Britain,