POVERTY AND WEALTH.

Thames Star, Volume XIV, Issue 4591, 21 September 1883, Page 2

POVERTY AND WEALTH.

(To the Editor of the Erening Star.) 5K

Sib,—lnvariable sequence proves to demonstration, that all social misery and evils emanate from ignorance and inhu» manity. Intelligence, by removing the causes, will mitigate and correct the effects. Violence has done more barm than good to liberty. Intellect must encounter intellect, and man submit himself to be governed by reason. The progress that peace and intellectual exertion have made should cheer the advanced thinker and incite him to patient perseverance. It is marvellous to note how many thiDgs in politics, art, science, religion, and every department of life, that were in former times deemed fantastic, chimerical, . Utopian, impracticable, and impossible, \ have beea realised, adopted, and practised in Britain and other civilised countries. Universal suffrage, vote by ballot, annual parliaments, abolition of property qualification, and equal electoral districts, were all considered and treated a few years since as revolutionary and impossible, yet,. wholly or in part/they to»day form elemenis of constitutional law. The articulate expression of the misery and sense of wrong, felt by the working classes, both agricultural and artisan, which to-day is termed popular clamour, shall shortly hereafter be enacted into the essence of wisdom. The production ot life like portraits, landscape and astronomical pictures by the agency of light; to propel vessels on land and water by ex-

pun-ton; to talk and wme to people thousands of miles distant in ,a second of timo ; to light whole cities with a subtle and invisible fluid; to practically annihilate space and time, or to'effect any of the wonders wrought in art or science,'wete all deemed impossible, .yet - they are now great established facts. Over the signature of V Observer of Current Events," appears in your morning contemporary two uncommon and remarkable letters, which- are so plausible and sensible, and through which runs a current of earnestly suggestive philosophic catholic thought, so bristling : with new and sound political principles, as to demand careful attention and diligent study. The writer, in somewhat- tautological language, lays down principles that carry us further into a knowledge of the causes of wealth, and deeper into the remedies for poverty, than any former or present writer has ever done. He seems, to have seized the ideas which have escaped the notice of all political economists just as they appeared within their grasp. From the time of Eryxias, Plato, and Aristotle down to Stanley Jevons, in 1878, all seem to have had a glimmering flight on the subject, but were ignorant of some of the great elements and most of the details. They appear to have made shrewd guesses as to some of the principles, but could not fill out and make the science complete or exact. Henry George has partly accounted for these defects, by shewing that the inductive reasoning of political economists is based upon unsound foundations, such as wages being drawn from capital, that wages are determined by the ratio between capital and labor, that increasing population presses against the limits of subsistence, and similar erroneous premises; but to " Observer of current events " must bo awarded the praise of shewing that the present system of currency, and the consequent unjus% distribution of wealth, is injvrioag to the wealth-producers as private interest in land, and must undergo ! a sweeping reform before the people can realise to any appreciable extent the full benefits arising from nationalising 'the I• soil. The principle that ■." cost" should be " the limit of price," such cost being determined as suggested, by a scieafeific calculation of averages, would secure to the producer the full value of his labor, which, under the present gold and silver system of currency, he does not gefc. Let the starving millions of the ea?feh ask themselves if they get the full value of their labour. Of course, they may get the market value of their toil, but it is gold and silver that governs, and restricts market value. The sale of labour is forced, and its value diminished, while the purchaser increases its price before it reaches the consumer. Any system or medium of exchange which can be used as a purchasing power is dishonest, and therefore demoralising and degrading; operating against the interest of labour, by, depriving it of its just and honest reward. To the Thames Evening Stab is due the high praise of having some years since, and subsequently, caught and given form and able expression to the floating public ideas upon nationalising the land, and for educating the local and other newspapers and the public on the great questions. Had it not been for the bold and determined attitude of the Stab, and the liberality and fairness with which it opened its columns to the expression of all phases of opinions on the subject, such letters as have appeared in your contemporary would have been impossible.—l am, &c., Refobmee.