LEASING V. SELLING CROWN LANDS.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VII, Issue 386, 29 August 1874, Page 3

LEASING V. SELLING CROWN LANDS.

Mr. Stout, in addressing his constituents at Oavershatu on Tuesday evening, made the following quotations in the course of his speech on the great advantages to a new country of leasing instead of selling waste lands of the Crown. We have no doubt these extracts will be read with interest as showing the advanced opinions of modern thinkers on this great subject : — He had no more time than merely to touch upon this iheory of dealing with lands. The theory was that there was an increase in the value of the land not caused by the occupier, not caused by any improvements he might put upon it, but through the general improvement of the country — the increase in population, and the roads constructed, and. that the State should get the benefit of it, and not the individual, He should quote from various eminent political writers, two English, one German, and one French. He should read from" the last public address of John Stuart Mill, delivered on the occasion when addressing the Land Tenure Reform Association in London . — "We hold that land — in which term we include mines and the whole raw material of the globe — is a kind of property unlike any other. The rights of private individuals to something which they' did not make or help to "make, but which came to them by bequesU or inheritance from people who also did not make it or help to make it, are a totally different thing from the right of everyone to the product of his own labours and sacrifices, or to the labours and sacrifices of those who freely gave to him . What a man has earned by his labour or by the expenditure of what has been saved from previous earnings, he has a fair claim to do what he likes with, subject only to the general rules of morality. But he who detains the land — a thing not made by him, a thing necessary to life, and of which there is not enough for all is a privileged position. Whether it is right or wrong that he should be in such a position, he is so. He is, in a word, a monopolist ; and a monoply should be exercised, not at the mere will and ' pleasure of, the possessor, but in. the manner most consistent for the general good. The State haa the.same right to control it that it has to control, for instance, the railways. The land reformers are of opinion that the time has arrived for the Btate to re-assert this right, to correct the abuses of landed property, and adapt it better to the wants and interests of the community, considered as a whole. How far the modification should reach is a point on which all land reformers are not yet agreed. I need only speak of those which are advocated by the Land Tenure Reform Association. Without going the length of those who think that the nation should repossess itself of all private lands, subject to a just compensation, we yet maintain that at least no further appropriation of lands which are not already private property should be permittedf We protest against the conversion of public or. corporate, lands into private property." " The other of the two chief points of our programme -the claim* of the State to the unwarned increase of rent ' — requires rather more explanation, as it is not yet equally familar, though the time has already come when it is listened to, and it is probably destined to become an article of the creed of advanced Reformers. The land of the world — the raw material of the glode — in all prosperous countries constantly increases in value. The landlord need only sit still and let Nature work for him, or, to speak truly, not Nature, but the labour of other men. What is it that has produced the prodigiously increased demand for building land, which has created the colossal

fortunes of the Grosvenors, the Portmans, the Stanleys, and others of our great families ? It is the growtli of manufactures and the increase of towns. And what has produced that 1 Your labour and outlay ; not that of tho landlords. The same labour and outlay — namely, yours, not theirs — produces a steady increase of demand for agricultural and mining products, causing prices to rise and rents to increase. No other portion of the community has a Bimilar advantage. The laboi'ing classes do not find their wages steadily rising as their numbers increase ; and even capital — its interest and profit — instead of increasing, becomes a less and less percentage as wealth and population advance. The landlords alone are in possession of a strict monopoly, becoming more and more lucrative whether they do anything oi nothing for the soil. This is of little consequence in a country like America, where there is plenty of unused laud waiting for anyone who chooses to go and cultivate it ; but in an old country like ours, with limited land and a growing population, it is a great and increasing grievance. We want the people of England to say to the landlords, " Yon are welcome to every increase of rent that you can show to be the effect of anything you have done for the land, but what you get by the mere rise of the price of your commodity compared with others — what you gain by our los3 — is not the effect of your exertions, but of ours, and not you, but we, ought to have it." They will say, " But we bought our land as a property increasing in value, and the probable increase was considered in the price." Our answer to that' is, "If you are dissatisfied give up the land ; we will pay you b-tck what you gave for it, and even what you could have sold it for yesterday morning. That is all you have a right to ; we give you that, and the nation will gain the difference between ihe present and future value." This was what Mill termed tho unearned increment, and Spencer, in his Social Statics, denied the right of the State to give to any one man the solo right to the soil. Spencer said — "Briefly reviewing the argument, we see that the right of each man to the use of the earth, limited only by the like rights of his fellow men, is immediately deducible from the law of equal freedom. We see that the maintenance of this right necessarily forbids private property in land. ..... AYe find, lastly, that the theory of the heirship of all men to the soil is consistent with the highest civilisation, and that, however difficult it may be to embody that theory in fact, equity sternly commands it to be done." Roder, the German Professor writes thus : — " Things indispensable to all men cannot be the object of exclusive individual property. &ucli as me sea, tne water, anu aiso the soil. Land can never bear an individual mark as much as a moveable object. It is useful ouly by use, and not by consumption. This indicates that it mnst not be taken by an absolute and exclusive domain. The supreme title belongs to society." Now this mode of leasing the land was, he conceived, the only way in which they could meet the land in a new country. Even with deferred payments, the land would fall into the capitalist in a few years. If they kept up the selling system, they would introduce into the Colony all tho evila of feudalism and landlordism, and a host of evils that it would take ages to wipe off. There must be some monopoly in land, but it must be like the Corporation had in their estate in Dunedin, the revenues from which went for the public good.