REPLY TO "ENQUIRER."

Waikato Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 2594, 26 February 1889, Page 3

REPLY TO "ENQUIRER."

TO THK KDITOK. Sn:, —" Enquirer'' wishes nie to show how tho thrifty gain by the unthrifty. He quotes tho drones in a beehive to show that it there are drones there is less honey for tlio whole, and for the same icaaou if there are unthrifty people there is a loss to the people at large. " Enquirer" is quite right about the bees. But then they arc living under eonnnunistie laws : what belongs to one bee belongs to the other, and under that principle a drone of a bee. would live at the expense of 1 lie hard-workiug one. With men it is ditlerent. We do not hold property in eotninon, and it is quite easy to see that thrifty men do make by their being unthrifty men. If I was a thrifty mail, and a stranger came down hero to settle near mo, if iie was nilthrift, and if when lie came lie had iT>OO, in a very short time a good part of that £300 would have transferred itself from his pocket to mine. " Enquirer " wishes to know if I h;ul an aero of land here in llarapipi. which, is only worth .CIO (I will give him one for nothing), and if by some fluke a population of twenty thousand were to settle here, and by so doing the acre of land would be worth £1000, he wants to know if this increment of value should belong to mo or the State. Decidedly I say the £1000 belongs to me and I tell " Enquirer " if he was a servant of the State and was coine to take the £1000 fron: me in double quick time, I would put a hole into liiiu. A man may as well be hanged at once as live in the same state as the bees. 1 want to know how, if land h to be the property of the State, a man's house, or horse, or cow is not also to belong to tho State ? "Enquirer" will, perhaps, say God made the land, but man's own industry made the house, or the money to buy the cow or horse ; but I say God as much made the house or the industry as lie made the land. If Henry George, by his thoughts and brains, writes books, and by these books he gets money, according to the ideas of "Enquirer" tho money earned by these books ought to belong to the State. Sir, Henry George did not make his own brains. The truth is, if you go beyond the practical you get lost, and this doctrine of the State owning the land is going beyond what is practically beneficial, and in truth is a waste of energy to " Enquirer " or nie or ary one discussing ; the thing is not going to be, and 1 feel as if I was acting a part of tom-foolery in speaking at all upon it. If it had not appeared to me that I would have been showing disrespect to "Euquirer," I would not have replied to him. If " Enquirer," Sir G. Grey, or myself wore to join the Salvation Army for one day, and during that day we helped to reclaim one single outcast and make a man of liini, in that one act of practical goodness, we would do more to earn Heaven than if we devoted our whole life to preaching tho doctrine of the State owning the land, a doctrine which, if put iu practice, would end in us relapsing into barbarism. Do away with individual ownership, and we would soon be back to that state of society that we were in when we had the tails,—Yours truly, llAitAnri. llarapipi, -ird February. J 88!'.