The Temuka Leader TUESDAY, MARCH 11, 1890. MR HENRY GEORGE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2018, 11 March 1890, Page 2

The Temuka Leader TUESDAY, MARCH 11, 1890. MR HENRY GEORGE.

Henbx Gkoege has arrived in Australia on his one-tax mission. It is, we presume, hardly necessary to introduce the author of “ Progress and Poverty.” He is a United States journalist, who has won world-wide fame by his advocacy of land nationalism. Mr George’s proposals are as follows: —“ He argues that private ownership of land is wrong; that all land should be in the hands of the Government, and administered for the good of the people at large. If this were the case, the rents which the land would yield to the Government would be more than sufficient to defray all State expenditure, and taxation would, therefore, be unnecessary.” Most people would, we think, like to see suoh\a system in vogue in this quite sympathise with it, anOAre of opinion that private property in land is the source of a great deal of the miseries and poverty throughout the world. To us it is quite obvious that private property in land is opposed to reason, to common sense, and to the general welfare of humanity. Gambling in land, as is well known, has led to ruin and misery in many lands. It was originally at the bottom of the depression in this colony, and it has remained there ever since In Melbourne last year a land boom ruined many, and so it has been all over the world, and so it will be while land can be bought and sold like a cow or a horse. To stop this, and establish State-ownership of land, is the object of Henry George’s mission, That has been the object of our perpetualleasing laws and the Land Acquisition Bill, hat Mr George’s method of attaining that end is of a more decided and practical character. He knows no half measures : he goes the “ whole hog ” at once, his proposal being to do away with all taxation, and place on land an impost sufficiently heavy to defray all the expenses of Government. He is willing to recognise property in land if the people wish it so, but all the expenses of State must be borne by the land, exactly as if it had been nationalised. The tax Mr George would, therefore, place on land would he equal to the rent one would have to pay if the whole of the land had still remained State property. While sympathising with the object of Mr George’s mission, we certainly cannot see our way to support the methods by which he proposes to gain the end he has in view. Ho great objection can be raised to his proposals so far as England and other old countries are concerned. 1 here land has been obtained by many of the forefathers of its owners by fraud, by conquest, and by plunder, but in Hew Zealand the circumstances are quite different. Here most of the people secured their present holdings by purchasing them with their very hardearned savings, and now to treat them as Crown tenants would amount to confiscating jbheir savings. Let them Grst of all get back the money they paid the State for the land; in all fairness they ought to get this, and to treat them otherwise would be dishonest. They paid their money to the State, and the State ought now to return it if it desires to treat them as Crown tenants. So long as private property in anything is recognised, the private property existent by reason of purchase in land ought to be acknowledged and compensated for if the State desires to resume its ownership. We, therefore, cannot support Mr George in his initial step, neither do we think that it would be for the good of the colony as a whole, or any portion of it, to adopt the one-tax policy. If this were adopted we should abolish the Customs duties, and that would result in destroying local industries. If we were to open our ports to the products of countries where men work 12 to 16 hours a day at half the wages paid in this colony the result would be that every industry in the colony would be destroyed in six months, and we should have ruin and starvation staring us in the face. These proposals may be right enough as applied to the old countries, but they are altogether unsuitable to the present condition of this or any of the Australian colonies. Still we welcome Henry George to our shores. He may possibly do good; he may awaken the people to a sense of the wrongs inflicted on them by land and other monopolists, and his visit may thus do good. We have no sympathy with land mononolists, but if they are to be “ burst up ” we think the fairest, the honestest, and the most straightforward way to do it is to return to them the money they have expended on the land.