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The depression in trade which has been more or less felt all over the world for some time past, has its origin in well-known, but complicated conditions of supply and demand in the various markets and centres of production. As no arrangements, however elaborately made, will enable a community to be for ever exempt from the ill consequences of bad seasons and unsatisfactory markets, or guard it from the effects of the competition and rivalry of other people, it is important to note the countries whose economic laws and conditions best enable them to meet adversity. The methods employed may be such as to enable a community to struggle through difficulties without any eventual loss of power and energy, and to bear with calmness and courage the ills that cannot be avoided. Any one who has a practical knowledge of the condition of the industrial classes in continental Europe and in England will be struck with the fact that in the latter, where the pressure of population is felt even in the beat of times, where competition is keenest, and where, perhaps, habits of personal saving and general family thrift are by comparison little practised, food and clothing and the complicated necessities of an advanced civilisation are more abundantly available, are of a higher standard, and are used
I hope to show in this short pamphlet that the same system which has made it possible for England to hold her own against the world, and against specially adverse conditions, will also enable our West Indian colonies to emerge eventually from their present dangerous state into a prosperous future.
The general impression about the industries followed by the people of our West Indian colonies is not a correct one. The popular notion is that the work to be done is purely agricultural and that it is exceedingly easy for a human being to exist comfortably out there by doing little work and earning little money; that, in fact, food can be almost picked up by the way-side and the struggle for existence is reduced to a minimum. As a matter of fact the industries pursued are quite half manufacturing industries. The making of sugar or rum from the cane, as it ought to be made, and as it must now be made to command a market, is not a less elaborate process than that which is followed in many of our factories
The food of the people of our West Indian colonies has to be imported from foreign countries in a far larger proportion than is the case even with England, and there would be starvation in the Islands of the West Indies within a short time were the supply to be cut off by untoward circumstances. In some of the Islands, however, a portion of the population undoubtedly does subsist almost wholly on roots of their own growth and on salted fish. The appearance and physique of these people is inferior. Anæmia is
The negro is a powerful man by nature, one of the most powerful that exist. It is, indeed, doubtful whether races can be found anywhere of greater physical strength than those to be met with in Africa. This characteristic has been built up by generations of men whose surroundings were favourable to physical development. It was doubtless due to this that the African race was so sought after as slaves and they fetched higher prices as slave labourers than any other people ever did before. They transformed the West Indies into gardens, and made millionnaires of their owners.
The same race now peoples the West Indies in larger numbers than ever, and yet the condition of the Islands is unsatisfactory; their industries are not well-sustained, and the position of all classes is precarious. Why is this? How comes it that islands by their position within easy reach of the best markets in the world, having the most suitable soil and climate for the raising of every description of valuable produce, inhabited by a labouring population of unsurpassed qualities, and with England behind them as the mother country, should be verging on bankruptcy and ruin?
The answer is simple enough. By artificial means food is made so scarce and dear, and the inflow of capital is so restricted, that both the money necessary to support the people's industries and the food the labourer should live on are placed out of reach; the local planter cannot keep up his cultivation to its proper standard for want of capital, and the local labourer cannot live decently because of the high customs tariffs. The market prices of most tropical commodities are now so low that the grower and manufacturer find it difficult to place them at a profit, at the same time these commodities
The remedy required in the West Indies is the application to them of our national policy. In his work, "Free Trade and Protection," page 52, the late Professor Fawcett said:—
"If by making food and oilier agricultural produce dearer, the general remuneration of capital and labour ii increased, the farmers and their labourers must share the advantage with the rest of the community, and there will be an advance both in agricultural profits and in agricultural wages. If, on the contrary, it can be shown that by making food dearer, every industry is carried on under greater difficulties, and labour and capital become generally less productive, then the farmers and their labourers will not be able to escape the loss caused by this decline in industrial prosperity, if the returns in their capital and labour lie diminished. It can, I think, be conclusively shown that the inevitable consequence of making food dear must be to diminish the productiveness both of labour and capita], and that in all industries including agriculture there will be a decline both in profit mid wages. It is not more certain that the returns to industry will be lessened by making food artificially dear, than it is that the efficient working of a machine will be impeded if unnecessary obstacles ate thrown in the way of its free movement. Suppose, for instance, that, by restricting importation, bread, butter, cheese, and other such articles of general consumption were all made 4° per cent, dearer, a labourer would find that what he was able before to purchase for 5s. now cost him 7s. In this event one of two things must occur. If his wages are not advanced in consequence of this rise in the price of food, a most serious loss will in: inflicted on him. His wages, though nominally the same as before, are really greatly reduced, for he finds that all that portion of his wages which he spends in procuring food and other articles which are made artificially dear, has lost a considerable part of its purchasing power. The loss which will lie thus inflicted on him will be more serious than that which others will have to bear; but it can be readily shown that the injury which is done to the labourers, Hill spread far and wide over the rest of the community."
The charges on bread-stuffs in the West Indies, on importation, make them 4° per cent, dearer, as a rule, than they would
The Professor also says, page 117, what could not be more apt if written expressly for these Islands:—
"When the commodities which are subjected to a duty are those in general use, the effect of this duty is precisely the same as if an income tax were levied from the entire community. Such a tax cannot be adjusted or equalised as is the case with the income tax in our own country; small incomes cannot be exempted, for, however poor a man maybe, the tax will fall with unerring certainty on all that portion of his income or his wages which are expended in the purchase of those articles which are protected."
It must be borne in mind that the West Indian industries are practically manufacturing industries. An agricultural people are supposed to grow food chiefly, and have enough for themselves in the first instance. Sugar and Other produce is grown and prepared mainly for export, indeed entirely so, and all the arguments against food tariffs that obtain in a purely manufacturing country apply therefore in even greater force to these Islands.
All the evils which were exposed years ago in the course of the free trade agitation in England exist in the West Indies, and prove the necessity for the application of that kind of fiscal legislation which here is predominant
The evidence taken in the Islands by the late Royal Commission is at times conflicting enough as regards the individual opinions of the parties examined; but there must have been something in the balance of fact against the system in operation for the Commissioners to recommend a lowering Of the tariffs on food, the abolition of export duties on produce,
"The greatest Want of the country is cheap living. I have seen men after two or three hours' labour in a complete slate of exhaustion and staggering from weakness. I attribute this to the want of proper food. I am speaking of the class who really labour, but from the dearness of imported articles cannot procure for themselves, and those dependent on them, the necessaries of life."
Mr. George Solomon said:—
"The total abolition of duty on flour would place it in the power of people to buy a barrel of common-grade Hour at 20s., and any half measures will benefit the importer only." Lower-grade flours only are imported into the West Indies. This causes the duties of customs—which ate specific duties—to tell heavily on them. The Jamaica duty of 8s. a barrel is often equal to 40 per cent, added to the first cost of flour at Kew York. The proposed reduction of the duty to 4s. 2d. a barrel will be equal to about 25 per cent, added to its price, at the present cost of flour. The customs duties levied on corn-meal are equal to a tax of 18 to 20 per cent, on its value at New York. The Royal Commissioners recommend the retention of these duties.
Of course those who held that the negro did not require bread-stuffs believed the tariffs did no harm. There are, however, other classes of people in the Islands, who have very limited means indeed, and to whom bread-stuffs are even now the staff of life, and these people—the whites and the half-castes—feel the high prices keenly, and they and their families suffer much in consequence. Thirty years ago provisions were much cheaper in the West Indies, and in many instance-they could be purchased fur half their present cost.
A duty on one bread-stuff necessitates a duty on all of them. A duty was put on made food—biscuits, &c.—to protect the
"If it had not been for duty on wheat, they would have imported it, used their own machinery, and made bread cheaper."
What are the amounts of the duties complained of? They are high. In some of our richer and greater colonies there are import duties equally onerous. But wages are also very high in these places, and this enables the people to meet the heavy cost of living. The duties levied on wheat and Indian com and their flours, on biscuits, rice, salt fish, and meat in the West Indies averaged £288,000 a year for the years Present cost of food in Jamaica:—Inferior quality rice, 2½ d. to 3½d. pier lb.; corn-meal, 4½d per quart; wheaten bread, 3d. per lb.; butter, 2s. per lb.; fresh beef, from 6d, per lb.; mutton, is. per lb.; salt beef and pork, ad, per lb.; fish, 3d. to 6d. per lb., according 10 quality.
The returns show that the amount of rice consumed per head of general population in Trinidad is 123 lb. a year, and in British Guiana 182 lb. These are the colonies where the estates are largely worked by Indian coolies imported to labour under indenture, and these people live mostly on rice. The average for the labouring population will be about 100 lb. per head a year in Trinidad, and 150 lb. in British Guiana. In Barbados the average is 54 lb. a head for the general population, and somewhat less for the labouring portion; in Jamaica it is only 17 lb. a head. In Trinidad the general population consume 105 lb. of wheaten flour per head, but the share of the labouring population is estimated to be only 33 lb. per head; and in the Island of St. Christopher, where the average per head is 1041b., the labouring population has only 26 lb. In Jamaica, where the average is 41 lb. of wheaten flour, the labouring population only gets 141b.; and in Barbados, where the average is 49 lb., the labourer gets 12 lb. of wheaten flour only in one year. Antigua and Barbados consume the most corn-meal, and this is only an average per head of 52 lb. to 54 lb. a year. In Jamaica and Trinidad it is 12 lb. per head a year. In Jamaica the labouring population consume therefore 28 lb. of bread-stuffs and 17 lb. of rice per head a year. The average in Barbados is 91 lb. of bread-stuffs and 54 lb. of rice, and in Trinidad 57 lbs. of bread-stuffs and 100 lb. of rice. These are three typical settlements from which the condition of the others
There is another aspect of the question, of much importance, that has now to be dealt with. It is, one may say, the common opinion, and it is also the opinion of the Royal Commissioners, and of many of the people examined by them, that bread-stuffs are not necessary for the food of the West Indian labourer. It is said he prefers sweet potatoes, yams, bananas, and other tropical roots and fruits for his chief diet, and after that he prefers corn-meal, but that bread is not his natural food. There is a good deal of truth in this, inasmuch that he has never been able to get bread. In Africa the black man has manioc, and many substances prepared from its flour, as well as sweet potatoes, yams, and other roots, but he has also a good
The nature and severity of the labour wanted in a sugar
"We regard it as the merest illusion to suppose that the severe drudgery of sugar-planting will be ever efficiently carried on in the West Indies by really free labour."
This is not an unnatural sentiment, and it would occur to any humane man who saw the work being accomplished by the half-starved and ragged gangs of semi-exhausted human beings. But if he goes to the States, and elsewhere where the black labourer has ample food, he will see the same and even severer labour cheerfully and well done.
The people of the Southern States, where the labour is chiefly performed by the African race, do not admit that roots, and some salt fish with a limited supply of corn flour, suffice to make a labourer efficient, The dietary there is chiefly bread and butter, fresh and salt pork, fried or boiled beef once or twice a week, baked or boiled potatoes and other vegetables, and a pint of coffee and milk. This without limit, and given three times a day. The efficiency of a man for hard work depends much on how he lives, and there is nothing in the climate of a warm or tropical country which will enable a man to work hard on a low diet, If the experience of the Southern States, where the people are comparatively prosperous, goes to prove that a liberal diet is necessary, the experience of the West Indies, where the people are not prosperous, is a proof that the inferior diet and lower standard of living make labour bad, or at all events so unreliable as to be inefficient.
What are the wages a labourer may earn in order to meet these conditions of life? In Jamaica the average for good labour on well-conducted estates is rs, to 1s, 3d, a day (6s. to 7s. 6d. a week), according to class of labour, in the fields.
Able-bodied women earn 10d. a day when their labour is wanted. In crop time, by extra work, 6d. to 1s. a day extra may be earned. In all other islands wages are about the same as in Jamaica; sometimes they may be a little higher and sometimes lower. We know that food is dear in the West Indies, and difficult to obtain by the labourer, and in the Southern States it is cheap and abundant. The wages paid to coloured labourers in the Southern States "Encyclopaedia Americana:" For
It matters very little practically, although in principle it has its value, to say that in the United States the tariffs are, in the main, imposed for purposes of protection, and in the West Indies for revenue purposes only. But I have also heard it said that the food tariffs in the West Indies did favour the growth of home provisions, by raising their selling price at all events, and the late Royal Commission alluded to the fact, and gave the opinion that a lax on land instead of on imported food would shift taxation from bread-stuffs to yams and plantains. If no corn, practically speaking, were grown in England, and a high duty on foreign flour made bread unprocurable by the people, would not a tax on land instead of on flour make potatoes and vegetables so dear that the fiscal
The freeing of bread-stuffs, fish and meat, in fact what is—or ought to be—the food of the people, from any customs charges, will, of course, cause a serious loss of revenue. The difficult)' is no doubt great, but it has been exaggerated. There are forms of taxation available that are now untouched. The facility of raising revenue by customs tariffs in the West Indies, where there was no educated public opinion strong enough to curb the fatal tendency, has resulted in an unusually large proportion of revenue being thus raised. Free trade principles are dominant in Great Britain, and are practised here because the people so will it, and are well informed enough to see the advantages and necessity of applying them. The influences that prevail in the West Indies are sectional, and the power is practically in the hands of classes who, in England, would not hesitate to reestablish protection, had they a like influence and control, and deemed it in their own interest to do so. The public mind of the Islands is also ignorant of what is really wanted; the people feel the pressure, but do not know of the remedies.
Fewer customs charges will cause a diminution of the expenditure of collection, and the force of events would, in the course of time, lead to a less public expenditure, not by diminution of salaries and less effectiveness of service, but by a further and needful concentration of offices. The various governments in the West Indies were founded when communication was difficult, and each island had therefore its own complete
Taxes on real and personal property could be made to contribute a far larger share of revenue if they were imposed in the manner adopted by most civilised countries. A tax on food falls ultimately on the proprietor and cultivator, through his available labour being made inefficient Customs charges are mostly unobserved in their immediate effects by the ignorant, who feel the pinch but do not trace whence it comes, and the well-to-do are directly little affected by them. The indirect consequences are those which arc most mischievous. In their present low condition any direct taxes on the people would he exceedingly unpopular and perhaps be resented; they would deem them fresh charges and look upon any promised relief from other quarters as delusive. They see the cost of government increasing every decade, while the prosperity of the Islands shows no stable advance in any direction, and often a falling away. On the whole no conclusive reason has been shown why land should not pay more of the public revenue. If a choice of evils has to be made, there can be no doubt the food taxes do irreparable and far-reaching injury. While the Islands were undergoing the transformation into free trade centres of industry, by the abolition of these tariffs, it may be that an Imperial loan would be required to aid the administration. But the prosperity that would certainly follow on the adoption of our fiscal system in the West Indies would enable them before long to repay the aid given.
The West Indies are very anxious to have sure and remunerative markets in the United States and elsewhere for their produce, but it will be in vain to expect to have this boon permanently anywhere unless they can also take some-
The tariffs on food not only interfere with and hinder the natural flow of supply and demand and the interchange of commodities, and therefore check trade and intercourse, but they lower the value of labour by lessening the purchasing power of wages, on which its physical strength depends. Mr. Mundella said in Parliament on the 31st of October last; "They must make Englishmen the most intelligent, the most thrifty, and the most competent workmen in the world, and then they would have nothing to fear from foreign competition." If the West Indies overlook the interests of the labourer so completely as they do now, they must not expect to succeed in competition with other countries which work on different lines.
Most of our West Indian settlements levy export duties on produce shipped from their ports. In their origin these duties were mostly intended to supply funds to support a local militia and yeomanry—sugar estates furnishing men, and the owners receiving for each man a grant of £,25 or £30. Some of the export duties were imposed for the purposes of keeping up the Established Church and for assisting planters to get coolies from India. Taxes of this nature, for whatever object imposed, had little or no injurious results in the days of high prices for sugar, but in these days it is unnecessary to dwell on their ill-effects. The Imperial expenditure in the maintenance of the land and sea forces in the West Indies cannot be less than £400,000 a year, and the few militia and yeomanry maintained at local cost would be of no use whatever in case of war and invasion. Some people deem such forces useful should it ever become necessary to suppress risings or insurrectionary movements among the people. All evidence up to date shows not only the inexpediency of keeping up such a force for such an object, but that it would be valueless at an emergency. A reliable civil police should be all that is wanted to keep internal order in a British colony.
In Jamaica an export duty of 5s. 9d. is levied on every hogshead of sugar, 4s. 6d. on every puncheon of rum, and 6s. on every tierce of coffee, &c. In Trinidad the export duty is 6s. on a hogshead of sugar. Antigua, under three separate ordinances, charges 5s. for every hogshead of sugar exported. St. Christopher charges export duties not only on sugar, but also on rum, molasses, and cotton. St. Vincent and Grenada include cacao, arrowroot, and spices. The small island of Monserrat taxes everything exported. The Virgin Islands, having no other produce to levy an export duty on, tax the cattle and food they send to the neighbouring market of St. Thomas.
The Royal Commissioners have recommended the abolition of export duties in all the West Indian Islands.
Unless the principles which political and social science deem essential to progress, are inapplicable to our West Indian colonies with their mixed races, it must be evident that our laws with reference to land in these Islands are in themselves almost sufficient to account for their adverse condition. It is doubtful whether any continental nation would have admitted into its colonies a system of monopoly such as Free Trade England has allowed her merchants to hold in the West Indies. As some of our own institutions are more the result of unconscious and unobserved development than the product of direct legislation, so in these Islands, the En-cumbered Estates Court, when formed in
The West Indian Encumbered Estates Court was established in v. Nesbitt—14 Ves. 448), which gives priority of claim to what is called the "consignees' lien" over any previous debt, or claim, or encumbrance, even if guaranteed by mortgage, or founded on a will or a settlement This "consignees' lien" is, in other words, the amount, on a balance of account, that may be owed by a proprietor to a merchant who happens to be dealing with an estate—buying the sugar and giving advances in the regular course of business. If, therefore, any person who knows and has confidence in the owner of an estate lends him money to cultivate it, and it becomes consequently of value, he may find his investment a secure one for years; but if the owner has dealings afterwards with a merchant, and gets involved, this merchant—who is perfectly aware of the incumbrance existing on the estate
The Royal Commissioners, in page 4° of "Windward Island Report," said:—
"The West India Committee in London, a body interested in, but' certainly not resident in, the Islands, has on occasion claimed sufficient influence to advice the imperial authorities that Ordinances passed by the Local Legislatures may be disallowed as being opposed to what this Committee consider to be the best interests of the Islands."
This great influence, wielded by absentees, and the representatives of one interest only, and that an interest often even opposed to the best interests of the people of the Islands, is entirely due to the action of the Encumbered Estates Court, which has thrown the land into the power of the mercantile class and has frightened away all other capital There is another and obvious evil consequence arising from this monopoly, and that is that planters are forced to deal with merchants for advances, as being the only parties who can be
The recent lamentable incident in the Island of Trinidad has drawn public attention in England to the fact that we have in some of our West Indian settlements large numbers of coolies.
At the Jubilee of the Anti-Slavery Society (1st August, 1S84), Mr. Forster said:—
"It was the duty of the Anti-Slavery Society to keep watch on the condition of our freed negroes, freed slaves in the West Indies and also at the Cape, and it was abundantly their duly to keep a jealous eye on the efforts to introduce slavery in another form—sham emigration and sham contracts.'
This is a very pregnant and suggestive statement I shall here only deal with that part of it which refers to the bringing of coolies to our West Indian Islands, where there already exist more than enough black labourers (freed negroes and their descendants) for the purposes of cultivation.
Free trade principles applied to labour must mean that the rates of wages paid shall be left to work to their natural level by the ordinary rules of supply and demand. In the majority of the West Indian Islands the liberated Africans refused to work for planters on the conditions offered to them. It has been shown in this paper that these conditions were in-sufficient. The planter, thereupon, with the aid of the public taxes, and assisted also by the authority and weight of the Imperial Government, sought labourers in India, where wages are very low, and brought them to the West Indies, where wages are much higher. The imported coolie labourers are bound to work for their employers for a term of years. In recent times
The result of this system of coolie importation may be seen in the creation by it of two classes of colonies. We have colonies outwardly prosperous, such as British Guiana and Trinidad, but where all cultivation is practically carried on for absentee proprietors by coolies under indenture, and if there are time-expired coolies working for hire among them, the wages of these latter will be more or less determined by the rate of remuneration accorded to the indentured coolies. We have also colonies where Africans are more largely in the majority, but these people refuse to work except irregularly, because the wages offered them are less than they demand. Coolies have also been imported into some of these latter settlements—into Jamaica, for instance—with the result of yet further demoralising the African labourers. Had the English Government left the employers of labour in our West Indian Islands to their own devices, they would undoubtedly have found means to conciliate the liberated Africans in these Islands, because the necessities of both parties would have urged them to reconcile their interests. The labourers would have received more pay, or the food taxes would have been abolished, or a superior method of cultivation would have been adopted, or all these three results might have been brought about, as has been the case in the United States.
Mr. G. D. Godkin, in the "The negro race does the work of the country—the sowing, hoeing, ploughing, picking, and reaping—apparently better than it ever did, and the black population has increased from 5,639,749 m Contemporary Review for
It is stated in the same article that since emancipation the cotton product of all the States taken together has increased by 90 per cent, that of wool by 517 per cent., that of wheat by 407 per cent., and that of Indian corn by 99 per cent. Mr. Godkin further says:—
"There is no difficulty in obtaining black labour of good quality by those who pay wages regularly in cash."
The blacks of African race are showing themselves capable citizens in every form of industry.
Our West Indian Islands are inhabited by exactly the same races, but a similar result has not followed their emancipation, because we have acted in an opposite spirit to that which has been followed out in the States. We make the higher-class foods so artificially dear that the labourer cannot procure them, and we introduce into the Islands another race of labourers who are forced by circumstances to be subservient to their masters on conditions the native-born labourers cannot afford to accept. Mr. Herbert Spencer has said:—
"Unless the mass of citizens have sentiments and beliefs in something like harmony with the social organisation in which they are incorporated, the organization cannot continue."
In our West Indian Islands the native races are all Christians, and if they were given a fair chance they would work and prosper materially, as they do in the States. The Indian coolie is either a Mahomedan or he belongs to one of the religions of India, and he has nothing in common with the people he is brought among.
The Royal Commissioners recommend a large State-subsidised and State-Supervised importation of coolies into all the West Indian Islands, because they consider the native labourers to be non-available for planting purposes. At the present prices of food and rate of wages the Commissioners are perhaps right
Vital statistics are to some extent a gauge of the condi-
If imports and exports are in any way indicative of the well-being of a population, the returns show considerable differences between the Islands. The following figures arc averages for the ten years
Taken as a whole the West Indies are showing but little signs of progress or vitality, while the trade of Venezuela has quadrupled within a few years and the people of the various states of Central America have been displaying much activity and enterprise. A large amount of American capital is invested in Campeachy and Yucatan amongst which about five millions of dollars in the cultivation of the The strong lustrous fibres of the Agave Americana, yielding the sisal hemp of commerce. Agave Americana are superior to every other species of Agave for ropes and cordage.
At the recent Jubilee of Emancipation, Lord Derby said:—
"What may be the future of the negro race (in the West Indies) is one with which we are only indirectly concerned. What does concern us is that we should do our duty by them. Let them have freedom, let them have a fair chance, let them be fairly matched in the race of life; and whether they win or lose our responsibility is covered. We are not answerable for their doing well; we arc answerable for [jutting no obstacles in their way to prevent them doing well."
The past success of the West Indian Islands was due to a condition of things that can never return—a state of things
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In the Land Question we must regard the people as divided into two distinct sections:—those who own land and those who do not. The real Land Question lies in the relation of these two sections of the community to each other. When we consider that land is essential to every man, as a dwelling-place and as the source whence all the necessaries of his life are derived, it is evident that every man, down to the very poorest, whatever his occupation may ho, is deeply interested in (he land, and that those who possess it have an immense power and advantage over those who do not. The latter class are, in fact, entirely dependent upon the former for the means of existence. Farther, as land is limited in quantity and cannot by any possibility be increased, while population increases rapidly, the relation between these two classes becomes more and more strained; the demand for land and its produce becomes more and more urgent, and the landlord's power accordingly more and more arbitrary.
Mr. Arthur Arnold, however, tells us that, while in France and in the United States of America there are only land-owners and tenants, in England we have no landowners,—only landlords and tenants. The distinction is a fine one, but it is significant, and, properly considered, will conduce materially to a solution of the question. It is true, the Nation is the only landowner, and has absolute power to resume possession whenever she thinks fit. What is it then that landlords actually possess? It is not the land itself, but a Power over the land, or rather over the people who dwell upon it. The land itself only marks the boundary within which this power may be exercised. We may discuss this power without personal reference to those who happen, for the time being, to be the depositories of it. Landlords are doubtless responsible to the nation for the way in which they use their power, but they are rot personally responsible for its existence. While the power exists it must be in some hands, and may as well be in those of its present holders as in any other.
What then is this Power which we may not inaptly call Landlordism? It is the power to determine absolutely who shall and who shall not dwell upon the land. It is the power
If so, the next question is, What order of things is to take its place? Perhaps I shall not be suspected of going very wildly wrong if I take the Duke of Argyll as my finger-post. At a meeting recently held under the auspices of influential landowners to form a limited liability company, whose business should be to purchase estates and resell them in small portions, the Duke of Argyll propounded two principles. Arguing in favour of increasing the number of landowners, his Grace said that it was a good thing to make a man a freeholder, to give him an interest in the soil; that it made him less revolutionary, more conservative, that is in a right sense, not a party sense. Very good. If this is true, then, the more men we can make freeholders the better. If it is a good thing to make a hundred men freeholders, it is a better thing to make' a thousand j still better, a million; best of all, the whole nation. Then we should be conservative in the highest degree, and perfectly secure against revolution. But it would not be expedient to cut up the land so as to give every man his slice. Certainly not. Nine out of ten would not know what to do with it, and would
is the nation's already; we have not to make it so. What is it then that stands between the nation and its willing workers? Nothing bat this incubus of landlordism, which excludes numbers from the soil they would gladly cultivate, repels capital which might be profitably employed in its improvement, and draws off every advantage gained from the national into the private pockets of the wealthy landlords.
Let us next glance at the remedies proposed for the admitted evils of our land system. First there is Mr. Arthur Arnold and his so-called "Free Land Li ague." The first object of this organization is to simplify and diminish the cost of conveyance. Who will benefit by this? None but landlords. Landlords will say to purchasers, Now you will have no cost for conveyance, you can therefore afford in give a higher price for my right in the land. Purchasers will look at it in the same light, and thus the only result will be to transfer to landlords the fees now paid to lawyers, and increase to a large extent the saleable value of their property. No wonder that landlords favour this scheme. Another object of this association is to abolish the right of primogeniture and restrict the power of entail. The former is virtually a dead letter, operating only when a landlord happens to die intestate. The latter will simply liberate future landlords from the control of their predecessors. Neither of these projects will in the
The next organization is that referred to above, set on foot by some great landlords in the form of a limited liability company, the professed object of which is to purchase estates in the market and resell them in small portions, spreading the purchase-money over a series of years. Now every one knows that a limited liability company is a costly piece of machinery; it must have paid officials and offices for the conduct of its business. To the cost, therefore, of the estates they purchase must be added the cost of conveyance to them, their office expenses, the interest they oiler to their shareholders, four or four and a half per cent., the cost of conveyance to their purchasers, and so much of the principal as may be necessary to liquidate the whole within a given time. Now if farmers on a large scale, with the aid of animal and mechanical labour-saving power, and paying a moderate rent, cannot make agriculture pay, can it be expected that men of small or no means, destitute of these advantages and paying a much heavier rent, can make it profitable? The consensus of opinion on all sides respecting peasant proprietors, both at home and abroad, even where the land is already their own and they have nothing to pay, is that the life is one of incessant toil and privation, a severe struggle for existence without any of those features which render life happy, enjoyable, or progressive. If such is the case in countries where the system is of natural growth under the most favourable circumstances, what is it likely to be if artificially introduced under less favourable circumstances in a country which has in reality passed beyond that stage of civilization?
Then there is Mr. Chamberlain's scheme to invest local authorities with power to purchase land and let or resell it in small allotments. This can be carried out only near villages or towns where land is most costly, and if such land is taken exceptionally and compulsorily Irons landlords, heavy compensation will be demanded, which, with other necessary expenses, will greatly exceed the value of the land for any agricultural purposes. If loss is incurred, who is to bear it? the ratepayers or the taxpayers of a wider area? A new species of poor-rate and pauperism. Where is the local authority disinterested enough, and free from the influence of
Mr. Broadhurst's proposal to give lessees compulsory power to purchase the freehold of their premises may be dismissed with a word or two. Whether it will he any advantage to the lessee depends upon the terms upon which he acquires the freehold. If carried out, the lessee becomes the landlord, and can exercise all landlord's powers over future tenants. It is simply the substitution of one landlord for another, with no advantage to any one beyond, hut with this disadvantage, that with the multiplication of such landlords, each claiming the right to do what he likes with his own, great injury may be done to property.
These proposed alterations in the law may cause some land to change hands, hut whether they will lead to any wider distribution is extremely doubtful. There will be the same opportunity and the same inducement, for the wealthy to accumulate land as now, and they will doubtless avail themselves of it. Again, suppose the number of landlords increased ten or a hundredfold; that will not make the land more accessible to those who want to utilize it. It may have the opposite effect, for great landlords can afford to be generous if they are so disposed, whereas small ones cannot, and tenants may therefore find themselves under harder conditions than before. The only way in which the land can he made accessible to all who wish to utilize it, whether on a large or a small scale, is for the nation to pension off the landlords and take it under their own care and management. Every legitimate want could then be satisfied without difficulty and without extravagant cost.
The schemes above referred to leave the main question un-touched. They simply shuttle the cards, or pass them from hand to hand. Landlordism with its baneful influence still remains.
Nor will any special legislation with a view to contract or regulate the power of landlords, or to limit the rents they shall receive, be of any avail. These partial measures disturb existing relations, but settle nothing. What an anachronism is a Land Court! If me are to have Land Courts to fix fair rents, why not Labour Courts to fix fair wages, Capital Courts to fix fair interest of money, Price-current Courts to fix fair prices? The paint law, the law of supply and demand, which regulates wages and interest and prices, will regulate rent. The fair rent of land is what any one will be willing to give for it in open competition with his fellow-man. Whoever has it for less has an undue advantage. The only effectual remedy is the total abolition of landlordism.
How is this to be effected? Happily we have a valuable precedent in our crown lands. Formerly a large part of the country belonged to the sovereign, and was as much his property as land is now the property of landlords. But sovereigns, setting little store Upon what cost them nothing, conferred large portions of it on courtiers and favourites, and then came to Parliament when they wanted money. Parliament at length determined that no more of the crown lauds should he thus alienated, took them tinder their own management, and allowed the sovereign a fixed income in compensation. These crown lands, though Mr. Arthur Arnold says they, in common with all corporate property, are the worst managed in the kingdom, now produce, I believe, a profit income of some £ 20,000 a year. If the whole of the land had been thus taken, as it might and ought to have been, instead of £20,000 a year, the nation might by this time have been making nearer twenty millions a year. We might now have been free from income-tax, house-tax, customs and excise duties, and the national debt might have been greatly reduced, if not extinguished altogether. This is what must be done now. Better late than never, hut the sooner the better. The nation must resume possession of the laud, and take it under its own management. It can then give freedom of action to those fundamental economic laws which govern the land in common with all human affairs, and, without difficulty, provide for all legitimate demands whether for small or large allotments. How can this be carried out? Will it not produce great social and monetary disturbance? Not at all. Parliament will decree that from and after a certain quarter-day, all rent of land will be due and payable
Do landlords object to this mode of settlement? We reply that the only legitimate property that landlords have in the land is the net income they derive from it. And since this income has been created mainly by the growing industry of the nation, it would not be unreasonable if they were required to surrender some portion of it back to the nation. The nation has full power over it as it is, to limit it either through land courts or by means of a land tax. Do they call this confiscation? What is it when a landlord diminishes the income of his tenant by increasing his rent? What is it when a landlord lake possession of tenants' improvements, of houses and buildings towards which he has not contributed a single brick? If landlords have speculated in the future, they have bought castles in the air, and must suffer the conse-
Some persons object to granting perpetual annuities on the ground that it entails a perpetual burden on the nation. They advocate terminable or life annuities. To this I reply that the annuities will be no additional burden to the State, inasmuch as the land will fully provide for them, and I think perpetual are preferable to terminable annuities, because 1st, we are bound to give as good a security as we take away: 2ndly, it will remove one serious ground of objection; 3rdly, the annual amount will be less. If we gave terminable or life annuities, we should have to give a larger sum, which would tax the present for the benefit of a future generation. Future generations, with a liberated land, will be well able to take care of themselves, and will have full power over these, as over all other annuities, to redeem, convert, or tax, if need be, for national purposes. Another proposal is to convert freeholds into life interests for two or more lives. This would be inequitable, inasmuch as some lives would drop early, while others might be jointly protracted for a century or more. All the evils of landlordism would be perpetuated for an indefinite period, and the nation would be debarred from making those effectual and economic arrangements for the management of the land which are essential to its advantageous possession.
There are some who would compromise this matter by levying a tax upon landlords' rents. To them I would say, "Freedom before money." No payment can compensate for the want of liberty; no monetary advantage can make the yoke of servile dependence sit easy on the neck of an otherwise free people. We want to be free to make those arrangements relative to land which shall give employment to the greatest number of our toiling population, and afford them the largest return for their labour. This cannot be done while the ghost of landlordism remains. Taxes as rent would ultimately find their way back to the pockets of our despotic masters if we allow them to retain their power. We must be our own masters or nothing.
What, it may be asked, are the advantages which may be
Some may object to commit such a power to a government department, on the ground that government departments are not trustworthy. This would be reasonable where the government is a power independent of, and irresponsible to the people; but, happily, in England a government department is and must be just what the people permit it to be. We have already a department of Woods and Forests, which has the management of the crown or national property; but at present it can act only along landlord lines, and must not be a hard landlord. It has only to be enlarged sufficiently to undertake this greater work on clearly defined principles laid down by Parliament. The country would have the pick of the ablest and most experienced men to act on its behalf, and as every act would be public, corruption or mismanagement would be impossible, except with the connivance of the people, or from their neglect to exercise that watchful supervision which their interests require.
To sum up:—
Free Land—what does it mean? Does it mean that the eldest son of a landlord who dies intestate shall not succeed to the whole power of his father, but share it with his younger brothers? Does it mean that landlords shall not have power to fix the descent of their despotism to generations yet unborn?
Does it mean greater facility to landlords for buying and selling the fettered victims of their rule, the flesh and blood of the toiling millions dependent on their will? Let us not be deceived by a false cry. We ask for bread and they offer us a stone; we demand fish and they give us scorpions. The only Free Land is land free from personal control; land open to every one who will bid a fair rent for it, a rent fixed in open market and paid to the national exchequer for the national benefit. Will Mr. Chamberlain give us free land in this sense? If so, let him place himself at the head of this movement and we will support him. There is no one more able; no one more worthy, as the champion of Free Land, to occupy a pedestal beside the glorious hero of Free Trade. Victory is as certain in the one case as it was in the other.
Fellow-countrymen! are you disposed longer to endure this despotic yoke of landlordism? Are you content to submit to this degrading servitude? If not, let us be up and doing. The time is propitious. Let us with a firm, unanimous voice assert our freedom. Let us form our National Free Laud or Anti-Landlord League, with ramifications throughout every county, town, and village. Put this paper into every hand; read it; think about it; discuss it with your comrades in private and in public. Make anti-landlordism the watchword on every political platform. Enrol the name of every one you can get to adhere to the principle. Affecting, as it does, the very foundation of our national existence, its importance is paramount above all other questions. Let a bill be ready for introduction on the first day that Parliament meets. Let every member be armed with a petition bearing every obtainable signature within his constituency. Let us spare no effort till we have liberated our country from this last relic of feudal despotism, and our people from a debasing servitude. Let us relax not our energies till we have obtained Free Land in a true sense; till we have made every man a freeholder; have given every man a country he can truly call his own; a country to love,—a country to defend,—a country to live for,—aye, and if it need be, a country to die for!
Hen Nationalisation of the Land is advocated, a great many people reply. "I don't see the good of Nationalisation I prefer freeholders to State-tenants." Let us therefore see what are the comparative advantages of the two modes of tenure.
In order that the greatest number of people may become freeholders, many liberals advocate the abolition of all restrictions on the sale and transfer of land. They say, make every man who owns land an absolute owner, with power to sell, or divide, or bequeath as he pleases, and plenty of land will come into the market. Then, every one who wants land can buy it, if able to do so; and if the mode of transfer is also made simple and cheap everything will have been done that need be done. We shall then have free trade in land; there will be no limited or encumbered estates, and capital will flow to land and develop its resources.
But people who talk thus forget that we have already had two great experiments of this nature, both supported by these very arguments, and that both have utterly failed. Thirty years ago the dreadful condition of the Irish peasantry was imputed to the prevalence of entailed and encumbered estates, the owners of which had no money to spend on improvements, and a most radical measure was passed, by which all these estates were brought into
The second example of the utter uselessness of pouring capital into a country so long as the people are denied any right to the use of land is afforded by Scotland. In the early part of this century, the great demand for wool made sheep-farming profitable, and many of the highland landlords were persuaded that they could double their incomes by establishing great sheep-farms on their vast estates. They did so. Many thousands of valuable sheep were introduced; much money was spent in fencing and in building new farm houses for the lowland farmers, while the rights of the hereditary dwellers on the soil were utterly ignored, and, by a series of barbarous evictions, these poor people were banished to the sea shore, or forced to emigrate. The result was, for a time, beneficial to the landlords, who proclaimed the scheme a great success; but it was most disastrous to the people, who, ever since, had been kept in a state of perpetual serfdom and pauperism. The present condition of the Highlands is a direct consequence of the application of capital to the land by landlords while the rights of the people were ignored; and the result of these two great experiments in Ireland and Scotland should teach us that any similar experiment in England cannot possibly lead to good results. It is true the conditions of society in England are different. There are here more
As land is ever getting scarcer in proportion to population, and in private hands must necessarily be a monopoly, it offers the greatest temptation to speculators, who even now, frequently buy up estates offered for sale and resell them in small plots at competition prices which no poor man can afford to give: and this will continue to be the case so long as land is treated as a commodity to be bought and sold for profit. We maintain that this is a monstrous wrong and should never be permitted. Land is the first necessary of life, the source of food and of all kinds of wealth, and a sufficiency for health and enjoyment is absolutely needed by every one. It is political crime to permit land to be monopolised by a few, to allow the wealthy to enjoy it for mere sport or aggrandisement, while thousands live in misery and have to suffer disease and want because they are denied the right to live and labour upon it.
In order that all may have equal rights to use and enjoy the land of their birth, it must become not theoretically only, but actually, the property of the State, in trust for all; and for all to derive equal advantages from it, those who occupy it must pay a rental to the State for its use. This is the only way to equalise the advantages derived by the several occupiers of land of different qualities and in different situations,—the only way to enable the whole community to benefit by the increased value which the community itself gives to land.
The use of land is twofold. Its chief and primary use is to supply to every household in the kingdom, the conditions for healthy existence, and whenever possible, some portion at least of their daily food. When all are thus supplied with the land necessary for a healthy home, the remainder should be devoted to cultivation in such a way as to produce the maximum of food, and at the same time to support and bring up the maximum number of healthy and happy food-producers. All experience shows that these two things go together, and that in any country the maximum of food is produced when the greatest possible population live upon and by the land. At one extreme we have the great farms of S. Australia, and California, cultivated with the minimum of human labour and producing a net return of about ten bushels of wheat per acre, and at the other extreme the allotments of our farm labourers producing food to the value of £40 per acre.
But in order that our labourers and mechanics may each be enabled to have, say, an acre of land to live on, and an acre or two more to cultivate, if they require it, with the power of getting a small farm of, from 10 to 40 acres, whenever they have obtained money enough to stock it, the land must be let, not sold to them. For at first a man wants all his little capital to enable him to cultivate even the smallest plot of land, and if he has to buy it, even by the easiest instalments, he is to that extent crippled. Moreover it is a bad thing for him to own the land absolutely, because he is then open to the temptations of the money-lender. Instead of economising and pinching in bad seasons, he borrows money and mortgages his land, and thus falls under a tyranny as bad as that of the hardest landlord. In every part of the world the small freeholder falls a victim to the money-lender.
As a State-tenant the occupier would have all the essential rights and advantages of a freeholder. His tenure would be practically perpetual. He would have the right to sell or bequeath his
There is one more point to be considered, which is of great importance, that under a general system of small freeholders, one half of these would very soon be ruined by the other half—would be obliged to sell their farms to money-lenders or lawyers, and thus great estates would again monopolise the land. The way this would necessarily come about (as it always has come about) is as follows. Suppose there are a body of peasant-proprietors all over the country. Their land necessarily varies in quality and position, and, therefore, in value from fifteen or twenty shillings an acre up to two, three, or four pounds an acre; and all being freeholders, none of them pay rent. But the owner of the better land can afford to sell his produce of all kinds at a lower rate than the owner of the inferior land, because prices which will enable the former to live and save money, will be starvation to the latter. Hence an unequal competition will arise between the two classes in which the one must necessarily starve out the other. The payment of rent in proportion to the This danger has been at tempted to be obviated on the continent by the farms consisting of scores or hundreds of scattered patches of land of different qualities. But this system renders economical cultivation impossible, and the remedy is worse than the disease.inherent value of the land equalises the position of all. The occupier of poor land at a low rent can fairly compete
small proprietors is sure to fail, a system of occupiers, under the State, combines all the essential elements
Thus far we have considered the question solely from the economical and practical point of view, but the great superiority
Briefly to sum up the argument: Small Freeholders are Bad because,—
purchase which can be better invested in the cultivation of the soil.
In all these respects State-tenancy is greatly to re preferred to small-freeholdings, and a general system of State-tenancy can only be secured by a complete Nationalisation of the Land.
Shaw & Sparks, Printers, Dockhead, London, S.E.
Land Nationalisation Society,
57 & 59 Ludgate Hill, E. C.
Object—To equitably restore the Land of the Nation to the Nation, so that all may have equal facilities to use and enjoy the Land and may equally benefit by the revenue from it.
President—Alfred Russel Wallace, LL.D., FR.G.S., Frith Hill, Godalming, Surrey.
Treasurer—A. C. Swinton, Maybank, the Avenue, Upper Norwood. London, S.E.
All who are interested (and who are not?) in Land Law Reform are cordially invited to become members of the Society and to assist it in the formation of branches. Copies of the Society's detailed Scheme, Rules, and other literature may be had on application.
The Council supply Lecturers where friends find a Chairman and a Public Room, and are always glad to hear from those willing to co-operate in the movement.
The Society earnestly desires to enlarge the area of its work, but the vigour of its action depends, of course, upon the means at its disposal. Special appeal is there fore made to all who realise that the gigantic and perilous pauperism and demoralisation of the nation are mainly due to the existing land system, to give them strenuous aid.
Remittances should be in favour of A. C. Swinton, Cheques to be crossed "The Union Bank of London, Charing Cross." P.O.O. payable at Ludgate Circus, E.C.
Crown 8vo., p.p. xiv.—244. Original Edition. Cloth, Price 5s. Cheap Edition, payer cover, 8d., by post lid.; limp cloth, Is. 6d., by post Is. 9d.
Land Nationalisation;
Its Necessity and its Aims.
Being a Comparison of the System of Landlord and Tenant with that of Occupying Ownership in their influence on the well-being of the people.
By Alfred Russel Wallace,
Author of "The Malay Archipelago," "Island Life," &c., &c.
Land Nationalisation Society Tracts.
Comprised the Following:
Lord Brabazon (President of the National Association for State-Directed Colonization),
Mr. Alfred Simmons (Secretary of same),
Mr. Frederick Young (Colonial Institute),
Mr. F. D. Mocatta,
Capt. J. C. R. Colomb,
Mr. J. Anthony Froude,
Sir J. G. T. Sinclair, Bart, M.P.,
Mr. Penrose Fitzgerald, M.P.,
Mr. Walter Shirley, M.P.,
Mr. Howard Vincent, M.P.,
Sir H. E. Maxwell, Bart, M.P.,
Lieut.-General Lowry, C.B.,
Mr. H. W. L. Lawson, M.P.,
Mr. J. A. Youl, C.M.G.,
Mr. John Wilson, M.P.,
Mr. Stephen Kennard,
Rev. W. H. Grove (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge),
Mr. Jas. Rankin, & Mr. Paton (Central Emigration Society),
Rev. G. P. Merrick (Colonial Emigration Society),
Mr. J. Maudsley (Manchester Operative Cotton Spinners),
Mr. D. Merrick (Leicester Unemployed Committee),
Mr. E. Memmott (Sheffield Labour Council),
Mr. Councillor J. C. Laird (Newcastle-on-Tyne Trades Council),
Mr. B. C. Brown (Mayor of Newcastle-on-Tyne),
Mr. Arnold White,
Mr. Ritchie,
Mr. T. Sutherst,
Miss M. S. Rye,
The Honble. Miss E. Joyce, and Mrs. Ross (Girls' Friendly Society and Emigration Association),
Mrs. E. L. Blanchard, and Mrs. Reeves (Colonial Emigration Society),
Mrs. Rose,
Mr. H. N. Hamilton Hoare,
Mr. Colin Mackenzie,
Rev. A. G. Joyce,
Mr. C. Geary,
Capt. Andrew Hamilton (East End Emigration Fund),
The Rev. W. E. Batty (Fulham),
Mr. Leppard and a Deputation (Kent and Sussex Labourers Union),
The Rev. H. W. Robinson (Shoreditch),
Mr. T. J. Hester (South London Friendly Societies' Committee),
M.r. George Palmer,
Mr. J. H. de Ricci,
Mr. A. A. Hollingsworth (Stratford),
Mr. T. Smith (Cab Drivers Association),
Mr. Augustus Cooper (Brighton Emigration Society),
Mr. Shirley Blackburne (Doncaster),
The Rev. W. P. Insley (Bow),
Mr. R. H. Garnlen (Gray's Inn),
Lieut. G. Mansfield Smith, R.N.,
The Rev. W. H. Wood (Kensal Green),
The Rev. Hugh Huleatt (Stamford),
Mr. G. B. Kent,
Rev. E. P. Green (Bethnal Green),
Mr. W. Stanforth,
Mr. Sydney Hoare,
Capt. Harrel, R.N., Mr. Arthur J. Hill,
The Rev. Edgell Wyatt-Edgell, Mr. C. H. Yell,
The Hon. Reginald Capel,
Mr. H. Seymour Trower,
Mr. Mortimor Millington,
Mr. E. Fulchen,
and Representatives from a large number of Working Men's Clubs and Friendly Societies in London.
The Deputation comprised about 300 persons.
Lord Brabazon, in introducing the deputation, said: My Lord, I have the honour to introduce to you this large deputation, for the purpose of bringing before you the question of State-Directed Colonization. I lay stress upon "Colonization," because although in our programme we include Emigration, we lay much greater stress upon Colonization, because there are less difficulties and fewer objections to Colonization than to Emigration. I am not going to detain your Lordship to-day by making a speech. My views are well known—they have already appeared several times in print—and I would much rather ask you to listen to the representatives of the working-classes, who have come long distances to-day in order to
Mr. Alfred Simmons (Secretary of the National Association for State-Directed Colonization, and who also represented the Agricultural Labourers of the counties of Kent and Sussex) said: My Lord,—Rising on behalf of this deputation, to place before you our proposals, I am sure I shall be doing that which will be a satisfaction to my friends if I say that we thank your Lordship very much for your kindness in receiving us here today, (Hear, hear.) We feel sure that your Lordship must experience a keen sympathy with the large numbers of poor, unemployed people who are in a very deplorable condition; and knowing and feeling that—knowing as your Lordship does that, to working people, want of employment means want of bread—we feel sure that if we can place before your Lordship proposals that meet with your approval, you will do what you can to enable us to alleviate, or to assist in alleviating, the terrible condition in which so many of poorer fellow-creatures are placed to-day. Not only from London, but from all parts of the country the cry reaches us that there are multitudes of men and women and children, who, from continuous non-employment, have become absolutely poverty-stricken, and these are appealing to people, who, like ourselves, are striving to perform our duty on their behalf; numbers of them are appealing to us, asking us the question, "Why cannot we receive some assistance, so that we may go to those British possessions where we can honourably labour and secure food for ourselves and our families, instead of being kept here, where we
Mr. J. Maudsley (Manchester Trades' Council): My Lord, with regard to this business I have come from one of our large manufacturing centres. It may be presumed, in the first place, that we are not, perhaps, so directly interested in this question as in others, inasmuch as we could not for a moment presume that we could transfer our artisans and mechanical workers to agricultural districts, and make them into agriculturalists, all at once. We are none the less, however,
Mr. Merrick (Leicester Unemployed Committee): My Lord, I come from the Midland Counties, where there is a general expression of sympathy in the objects which our deputation to-day are seeking to accomplish. The condition of many of the working people in our districts is very wretched indeed; they would work, but they cannot get it to do. Some hundreds, if not thousands, are either totally out of employment, or only partially employed. That state of things has been actually increasing during the last ten years. We see, as my friend has just stated, in manufacturing centres, that the improvements in machinery go on more rapidly, producing large quantities of goods, and that means a much lesser number to be employed, and there is a greatly increased population. And therefore it follows that some steps must be taken to remove the surplus population of the unemployed labourers, or the result may be most disastrous. I quite believe that there are remedies which may be adopted in our own country to reduce the evil to a certain extent; but the extent to which the working-class is unemployed is so very great, and the probability is, according to the law of natural increase, the population will go on increasing—so that this would be a permanent means, as well as a present help, to reduce the present numbers of the unemployed in our midst. I am sure your Lordship will know the condition of the people is such that only those who witness it from day to day could at all form any adequate conception of it. What is really needed, if possible, would be present help; but if that cannot be obtained, the earnest and prompt attention of the Government should certainly be directed to some means by which the distress of the country could be relieved from the condition in which the people are found at present in large numbers. Therefore, I hope your Lordship will be kind enough to entertain the proposal made, and give it your most favorable consideration. (Hear, hear.)
Mr. J. Anthony Froude: My Lord, the very few remarks it will be necessary for me to make, or that I should wish to make, on this occasion, will be limited to that part of the subject which the previous speakers have not yet touched upon.
They are far better able than I am to lay before your Lordship the difficulties in which the population is at home, and how much it needs relief, and what a relief it would be if large numbers of them could be transported into the Colonies. But what I would wish to say is something about the Colonies themselves, and the feelings which they are likely to have on the subject, because it is impossible for us to do, or attempt to do anything considerable, in the way of Emigration, without the entire co-operation of the Colonial Governments, and a thorough understanding between our Government and theirs as to what we are doing. But, on the other hand, any steadily organised system of Colonization, by which those who form the surplus population of this country could find a home in our Colonies, instead of going, as by far the great majority of them now do, to the United States—that, I think, the Colonies would regard as the highest benefit that could be conferred upon them. A growing and a healthy population, in fact, is their own wealth; and if it could only be introduced to them by degrees, if I may say so, they would be able to absorb it by some steadily organised system, and nothing could be invented which could tend to draw the Colonies closer to this country, and so unite us all as one people, as we all ought to be. I know the feeling is very strong on this subject in the Colonies, and I am quite sure the Governments of the Colonies would meet the Government in the most cordial way, if there is any chance that any wise and well-thought-out system, in which we can all join, could be hit upon.
Mr. E. Memmott (Sheffield Labour Council): My Lord, I am very sorry, following the strain of some of the previous speakers, to inform your Lordship that very great distress prevails in our town; so much so that the Mayor of Sheffield to-day is calling a public meeting in order to see what temporary relief can be given. But, my Lord, we are wanting a system to be inaugurated that shall give permanent relief. We are tired of wasting our energies month after month, and year after year, to see our people walking about for work, and cannot find it. It behoves us to adopt some means whereby these
Mr. Councillor J. C. Laird (of the Newcastle-on-Tyne Trades Council): My Lord, I do not know that I can add much to that which has been already said. The subject has been so forcibly brought before your Lordship's attention that I think anything I might say almost might be superfluous. I speak now as a representative of a very large section of the community. At the present time we see that depression which is, unfortunately, almost spread over a large portion of the country, and we have a very great number unemployed, through no fault of their own. I may tell your Lordship that at the present time, on the North-east Coast, in one particular industry alone—I allude more especially to iron ship-building—we have about thirty thousand unemployed, who are willing to work. I am also accompanied by his worship the Mayor of Newcastle, who himself is a very large employer in this particular. Some few months ago, my Lord, we had a large and enthusiastic meeting called for the purpose of considering this question in one of our halls in Newcastle, at which the then Mayor presided. The resolutions were unanimously adopted, asking Her Majesty's Government to enter into some correspondence whereby the Colonies and the Home Government might act in harmony on these questions. We do not want, my Lord, to have it in the shape of simple Emigration, or to remove, as it were, one class of evil from one centre to another; we want a system of Colonization, instead of ordinary Emigration. Were your Lordship but to enter into some of the places it has been my unfortunate position to enter into—to see those who are willing and anxious to work—to see the bread-winner deprived of it-I feel certain, my Lord, that you, at all events, would bring it strongly before Her Majesty's Government. Could you see the man that is too proud to beg, the man that is too honest to steal, with his children weeping round him, asking only for an opportunity to earn that bread; and when you have relieved him, or got to understand his circumstances, to see that strong man burst into tears, it would melt—I care not how hard it be-it would melt the heart of any man. Those, my Lord, are the men we want to help; those are the cases that we want to send beyond the seas, in order that they may become a portion of
Mr. John Wilson, M.P. (Scottish Emigration Association): My Lord, I am expected to say one word upon this subject. I was asked to join the deputation to-day to your Lordship to represent the interest that was taken in this matter of Colonization in the City of Edinburgh, and that I have very great pleasure in doing. I can supplement and endorse all that has been said by previous speakers as to the great desirability, both for this country and the Colonies, of a wise measure of colonization being as speedily as possible arranged. The previous spasmodic methods of transferring, or rather helping to transfer, the movement of the population of our mother country
Lord Brabazon said he did not purpose addressing any observations to his Lordship, but wished to direct attention to the very representative character of the deputation. He would
Earl Granville: Lord Brabazon, Ladies, and Gentlemen,—Mr. Simmons, in terms of courtesy, expressed some thanks to me for receiving you here to-day, and Lord Brabazon has been good enough to allude to the patience with which I have listened to what has been said. Now, I cannot conceive of anybody in my position, who has lately come into an office which he has left some 16 years ago, that he should not be deeply grateful to have the advantage of hearing what a deputation of this sort, so singularly representative in its character, has to say upon the most important question which you have brought before me. With regard to my patience, I may say that Lord Brabazon must think me of a singularly impatient disposition if he thinks it was difficult for me to listen with attention to the very short but very pregnant addresses which have been delivered during the last three-quarters of an hour. I would even have kept such a fund of patience that I think I could have made up my mind to listen with decent apparent attention, if Lord Brabazon, who has distinguished himself so much in everything that bears a philanthropic character, would have been good enough to speak on this occasion, instead of leaving it to others to do so. Now, I gather from the representations that have been made, what indeed I was aware of before, that the object of those who are represented here to-day is very nearly this: that though they are stimulated by the distress which at this moment exists, they wish to deal permanently with the evil which recurs from time to time with regard to a country where the geographical extent is small, and the population is increasing—that they wish to do this—to do that which they think would not only relieve those at home, but would be an absolute advantage to those Colonists, between whom and the mother country the connection appears to me to be getting closer every day, to confer upon them a benefit, and at the same time to look forward to the benefit of the mother country and of the Colony, by increasing the trading relations between the two. I believe that it has been for many years
Lord Brabazon: I think, my Lord, he said it was "not from the rates or the taxes." I think Mr. Simmons's proposal is t a loan could be raised.
Mr. Simmons: That is so.
Earl Granville: With regard to that, I should be extremely obliged if I might have in writing the character of the loan, and the conditions which would attach to it, in order that I might submit it to the Treasury. The Treasury look at these proposals with a critical eye, and I am the very last person in the world to blame them. They have charge of the public purse, and they are absolutely bound to look with a critical eye at all proposals bearing in any way upon the finance of the country, derivable from the public exchequer. But if there is a new plan, as I understood Mr. Simmons to state, I should like to have it in writing, to submit it to my colleagues and to the examination of the Treasury. The appeals made to me personally I received with great pleasure, as indicating a belief how fully I sympathise with the distress that is felt, and how anxious I should be to find means of alleviating it; but you will remark that, as Colonial Secretary, and unofficially, apart from my being a member of the Government, there is one portion of
Lord Brabazon having thanked his Lordship for his encouraging observations, the deputation then withdrew.
My Lords and Gentlemen, I have been requested to take the chair on this occasion, with the view of laying before you the Annual Report of the Liberty and Property Defence League, and with a view also, I hope, of advancing the objects of that League, and of considering how best those objects can be promoted by a short discussion here to-day. Looking at this matter in a general way I cannot help observing that in the history of modern Europe, and in fact of the world, there has been an extraordinary change in the last 100 years in respect of freedom. The contest which has been carried on for more than that period, beginning, perhaps, in the American colonies and taking place in most countries of Europe, and even within the shores of our own country, has been one for political freedom. It has been one for a greater share of the right of governing, for the extension of the privilege of taking a part in directing the affairs of the nation, so that by degrees, in the course of time, a very large proportion of our countrymen here—a large proportion of mankind in the civilised countries of Europe, have gradually acquired a share in the directing power of the State. This has practically been a great revolution. It has been a revolution accompanied by violence in many cases, by great civil convulsions in others, while in some cases it has been a quiet revolution. But not the less has it been a revolution; and the result has been that practically, we may say, that in most of those countries and in our own the majority rules. It is
The struggle, therefore, which will ensue in the coming century and which is beginning now, as I think you will observe, in many parts of the world and also in our own country, is the struggle of the few to endeavour to limit the arbitrary power which may be exercised over them by the tyranny of the many. Now, this question is one of the utmost importance, not merely in abstract politics, but in practical politics. We know that a very great philosopher who has recently departed this life, Mr. Carlyle, talked about mankind, as being "mostly fools." Perhaps, that was a rather strong way of putting it, but we know, for certain, that a great portion of mankind owing to their having no comparative leisure—owing to their not having engaged in studies which would have enlightened them, are influenced by impulses, and feelings, and passions, which are not of an enlightened character, and we know also that there is in our own country especially, a strong tinge of fanaticism in matters religious and connected with religion, which if once associated with what may be called the folly of mankind, would, in the arbitrary exercise
bruta fulmina. They may, to a certain extent, have been put into force by the decision of the law courts; but, so far as these enactments were alien to the habits and feelings of the mass of the people, and contrary to the natural course of trade, they were probably, in many cases, a dead letter. And, I believe, that is an explanation of why you find such a large number of these Acts in the old statute-books re-enacted, again and again, for pre-cisely the same objects. There was the sense of evil to be over-come, some uneasiness of feeling, which originally prompted the desire to have an Act of Parliament, which it was fancied would prove a remedy. This Act was proved a dead letter; and, consequently, there was a constant re-enactment of the existing statutes, while in the recital of those old Acts it was set forth, that as the laws previously enacted had continued to be unobserved, it was therefore necessary to re-enact them. Now, in these days, we have armies of policemen all over the country; we have battalions of Inspectors of every kind. The catalogue of them is endless. I have put down from memory a few of the inspectors, who have come into existence in recent years; some for a good purpose, and some for a questionable one. There are, for instance, Prison inspectors, Factory inspectors, Mine inspectors, Workshops inspectors, Brickfields inspectors, Asylum inspectors, School inspectors, Boiler inspectors, and a whole long list of others. This system of constant inspection, though something may be said for it with a view to preventing offences against the law, brings, on the other hand, the Government into close and imme-
There is a school now—an able school, too—who contend that it is the business of the Government, by the revenues raised from the taxation of the people at large, to endeavour by artificial means to alter the condition of those who have to toil for their maintenance and for existence—that toil which is imposed upon the bulk of us as a burden, and which, practically, is unavoidable as long as mankind and the present world continue to exist. There is, I say, this one school—the school of socialism. But there is another school which even goes much further than that, as we know, which contends that all property is a mistake. First of all it contends, that property in land is entirely wrong and indefensible, though I have never been able to understand what distinction there is between land and other property. But, further, this school says that all property is entirely wrong; that a period is comimg when there will be no property, and everybody will be all the richer and happier. The difficulty is, as has been suggested by a French writer, that everybody will have to be taxed to give everybody else a salary. But these questions, again, I say, are no new ones. They are questions that have sprung to the surface in former times, and which have been thrashed out, and the foundations of which have been shown by absolute demonstration to be unstable and unsound. These questions originated with the first outburst of the Reformation, with the revival of letters, and with the consideration which was then given by learned and able men to what is, after all, the main question at the bottom of all these matters of discussion, namely, why should there be suffering and sorrow, and misery and toil amongst mankind? The very word "Utopian" points to the
"Whereas, notwithstanding all former laws and provisions already made, the inordinate and extreme vice of excessive drinking and drunkenness doth more and more abound, to the great offence of Almighty God and the wasteful destruction of God's good creatures."
This proves that the same views prevailed then that are current now with a large class of well-meaning people; and that the endeavours then to legislate in this sense wholly failed in their purposes. I look upon the like attempts of modern days exactly in the same light. Nobody can stand up to defend intemperance; nobody can say but that drinking to excess is a vice which leads to many other evil consequences, but the question is whether you can stop it in this way; whether, as in this Bill, the State is entitled to say that the houses men choose to go to for an innocent purpose—for rest and refreshment are innocent purposes—shall be shut up entirely one day in the week, because some people happen to drink to excess, and many people believe a thing to be wrong on a Sunday which is innocent on another day. I may on this point differ from some of you, but it seems to me that is distinctly an infringement of just personal liberty. I don't understand how I can be regarded as having the rights of a free man if during one day of the week, when I am travelling in a populous district like Durham, for instance, I am to be debarred from going to a public inn to find a place of rest and refreshment, because it has pleased a certain number of people in that county to say that all public-houses shall be shut on the Sunday, and that I am to have no place of rest, as a stranger, on the day of rest. And apart from the general objections which I feel very strongly to such a proposal, which I am confident will not bear discussion with unprejudiced people—apart altogether from this, I say, what can be more ridiculous and absurd in this kind of legislation, than to say that while you shut up these houses in Durham, and in the prosperous, town of Gateshead on the south side of the Tyne, you may, if you walk across the bridge to Newcastle, find all these houses open in Northumberland just as they were before
Now here is the preamble of another Act which was passed in the reign of James I., 276 years ago, for "repressing the loathsome and odious sin of drunkenness."
"Whereas the loathsome and odious sin of drunkenness is of late grown into common use in this realm, being the root and foundation of many other enormous sins, as bloodshed, stabbing, murder, swearing, fornication, adultery and such like, to the great dishonour of God and of our nation, the overthrow of many good acts and manual trades, the dishonour of divers workmen and the general impoverishing of many good subjects, and wasting the good creatures of God."
This has the ring of an Alliance denunciation, but this statute and others with the same object in those times wholly failed.
Then, again, you will find a series of old statutes, which are called by lawyers the "Tippling Acts," passed, not for the Sunday merely, but for every day in the week, to prohibit anybody staying more than an hour in a public-house, for the purpose of drinking and eating. And this is the class of legislation now again sought to be imposed upon the free people of England. The same class of wiseacres who got these passed then, are trying to get them passed now; and if they succeed in getting them, there will be the same result—a failure. We are very much unlike our forefathers if we are likely to submit to this kind of legislation. It is an attempt by foolish well-meaning people to make other people good, in their own way.
The principle of such interference is unsound. So long as I do no harm to my neighbour, and use my rights so as not to harm him, or infringe his right to equal liberty, so long he has no just
The new gospel of prosperity is that we are to have the making of contracts taken out of the hands of those who have the best means of making such as suit their interest, and settled by public authority for them. Grown men are not to be supposed capable of taking care of themselves, and their fortunes, but they are to be nursed and dandled by Act of Parliament. This is the old doctrine of Protection revived. The Agricultural Holdings Act is founded on that doctrine. Why especially are the tenants of land supposed to be incapable of taking care of themselves? And why are land and contracts as to it to be made the special subject of Legislative interference? Only on the assumption that those concerned in its cultivation have a claim to special privileges—that is, to protection. I thought
"Forasmuch as the encouraging of tillage ought to be in a special manner regarded and endeavoured, and the surest and effectuallest means of promoting and advancing any trade, occupation, or mystery, being by rendering it profitable to the users thereof, and great quantities of land within this kingdom for the present lying in a manner waste and yielding little, which might thereby be improved to considerable profit and advantage if sufficient encouragement were given for the laying out of cost and labour on the same, and thereby much more corn produced, greater number of people, horses, and cattle employed, and other lands also rendered more valuable."
It looks as if with the new extended constituencies the whole battle of freedom against restriction, of liberty against State meddling will have to be fought over again. I have no doubt myself that the true doctrine is, that the greater the freedom, the greater the amount of prosperity and enjoyment. We have by long experience realised the truth of this maxim, and that has been the source of the wealth and the greatness and the power of the country which have exceeded that of any other country in the world at any time. If we as Englishmen once allow a complete change to come over the spirit of our dream in that respect, go back to what we once did, as I have shown, and attempt to find our happiness in the pposite system of restriction and protection, we shall reap our reward in loss, in suffering, and in misery.
For my part, I have always been a believer in the old doctrine which I learned at school, which was that one Englishman was equal to three Frenchmen, and I really believe that there was some foundation for that prejudice. The reason of it is that, as compared with the French people, for many centuries the Englishman has been comparatively a free man, whereas the Frenchman has not. The system which has prevailed in France has always been till very recent times one of Government interference,
gendarme, who from time to time shouted out, "doucement, monsieur, pas si fort, sil vous plait," "not so fast—gently, man, if you please," for fear the batter should be damaged. This is the system of protection. Here we have to take care of ourselves, and on the whole we do it better than if we had the protection accorded to our neighbours, who are treated as babies. If we are treated as babies, we grow up and behave as babies. I believe all these schemes and notions for State meddling, directing and protecting are essentially and inherently wrong. Freedom is the true solution for many of our troubles—the utmost freedom that can be given to industry—the utmost freedom for a man to contract, or to bestow his labour upon any subject he chooses, without State interference, while the only protection which the Government has a right and a duty to extend over its subjects is the protection to life, liberty, limb, and property, from injury by others; which protection they are bound to give to the humblest of our fellow-citizens.
Self-Help versus State-Help.
Liberty & Property Defence League.
For resisting Over legislation, for maintaining Freedom of Contract, and for advocating Individualism as opposed to Socialism, entirely irrespective of Party Politics.
Central Offices:—4, Westminster Chambers, Victoria Street, London, S.W.
Provincial Branches:—
England—Liverpool: Hon. Secretary, Francis Hartley, Esq., Castle Chambers, 26, Castle Street.
Manchester: [appointment pending.]
Leeds: Hon. Secretary, Walter Rowley, Esq., 74, Albion Street.
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Nottingham: [appointment pending.]
York: Hon. Secretary, F. H. Anderson, Esq., 41, Stonegate.
Bristol: Hon. Secretary, H. J. Brown, Esq., 43, High Street.
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Bournemouth: Hon. Secretary, J. R. Pretyman, Esq., Richmond Lodge.
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Aberdeenshire: Hon. Secretary, Colonel W. Ross-King, Tertowie House, Kinaldie.
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The League opposes all attempts to introduce the State as competitor or regulator into the various departments of social activity and industry, which would otherwise be spontaneously and adequately conducted by private enterprise.
Questions of the structure or constitution of the State and those of foreign policy do not come within the scope of the League. It is exclusively concerned with the internal functions or duties of the State.
During the last 15 years all interests in the country have successively suffered at the hands of the State an increasing loss of their self-government. These apparently disconnected invasions of individual freedom of action by the central authority are in reality so many instances of a general movement towards State-Socialism, the deadening effect of which on all branches of industry and originality the working classes will be the first to feel.
Each interest conducting its self-defence without any reference to the others has, on every occasion, hitherto failed to oppose successfully the full force of this movement concentrated in turn against itself by the permanent officials and the government in power for the time being.
The League resists every particular case of this common evil by securing the co-operation of all persons individually opposed to the principle of State-Socialism in all or any one of its instances, and by focussing into a system of mutual defence the forces of the "Defence Associations or Societies" of the various interests of the country.
As regards such defence societies, companies, and corporate bodies, this co-operation is effected without any interference with the independent action of each body on matters specially affecting its own interest.
Each society passes a resolution formally placing itself in correspondence with the League. The League in return supplies every such society with information concerning each fresh symptom of State interference; it places the various societies and interests in communication with one another with a view to their mutual assistance inside and outside parliament; and, at the same time, it combines for the common end the forces of the several societies and interests with those of the League itself and its members in both Houses of Parliament.
The chairman (or his nominee) of every society, company or corporate body thus in correspondence with the League is an ex-officio member of the Council of the League, and receives notice to attend all its meetings. The corporate action of the League in every case of overlegislation where any interest is affected is regulated by the decision of the ordinary members of Council, acting in conjunction with its ex-officio members.
Persons wishing to join the League are requested to send their subscription (voluntary from Five shillings upwards) and address to Messrs. Herries, Farquhar & Co., Bankers, 16, St. James's Street, S. W. Particulars and Publications of the League, can be had from the Secretary, W. C. Crofts, at the Central Offices.
Liberty & Property Defence League.
Central Offices:–4. Westminster Chambers,
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The following recent Publications of the League can be had, on application, from the Central Offices; and from all booksellers:—
Nationalisation of Land. By Lord Bramwell. Second Edition; price 2d. A Review of Mr. Henry George's Progress and Poverty.
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Socialism at St. Stephen's in
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The State and the Slums. By Edward Stanley Robertson. Price 2d.
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Communism. By the same Author. Price 2d.
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Principles of Plutology. By Wordsworth Donisthorpe. Price 7s. An Inquiry into the True Method of the Science of Wealth.
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Serfdom, Wagedom and Freedom. By the same Author. Price is. A solution of the Labour Question.
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The evolution in question is especially of species in physical nature. It is an interesting circumstance that there is not one clear case of actual evolution of species in the history of nature as known to mankind. That was intimated a few months ago by the late Sir Wyville Thomson, an avowed Evolutionist, of Challenger reputation as a nature list of highest class, in what I suppose to have been his last inaugural address. It was of course admitted by Mr. Huxley, the living apostle of evolutionism, when with his charming frankness, he said that we might have seen a case of actual evolution if we had been there—as of course we might., if the evolution was there. And it is implied in the well known evolutionary postulate, that of this process of nature the result at every time must be supposed to be infinitesimally small, so as to be imperceptible to a microscopic onlooker on the spot.
The circumstance is impressive in relation to the question of fact, whether there is such a thing as evolution in physical nature. If the evolution was there, why are there no clear traces of it here and now? A vast army, horse, foot, artillery and baggage, has marched across a green field, and left no trace of the transition; but the turf unbroken, the primrose upright on the stem, while "ilka blade o' grass keps its ain drap o' dew." Yet other things, even the tiniest, have left their traces clearly legible: the footprint of birds, the trail of earth worms, the mark of rain drops, the ripple of gentle breezes on fine sands. Surely that army is a phantom host, like that of the avenging Teutons in vision of Erckmaun Chatrian's crazy German schoolmaster, on their way from Fatherland across the Rhine to reconquest of Elsatz and Lothringen.
Other processes of nature, that is, those really known to us, gravitation, for instance, and ordinary generation, bear witness to their reality every day before our eyes, in actual cases of gravitation and generation countlessly multitudinous, infinitely more numerous than the stars in the firmament or the sands on the seashore. How comes it, then, that this alleged process of nature is fruitless in appearance as a long extinct volcano? A volcano can become extinct, as gas is turned off at the meter, or a fire burns down in the grate. But what can be meant by exhaustion of a great fundamental process of nature, while nature herself remains in full vigour of productiveness, as shown in her processes of generation and gravitation?
Besides, an extinct volcano leaves traces to all future ages of its activity in the past; although, as compared with the alleged evolution, its action can have been only as one evening watch fire in a series of great campaigns. The evolution must have extended over the whole history of origination, through all the vast aeons, Palaeozoic, Mezozoic, and Tertiary, recorded and depicted for our learning in the Geologic Pictorial History of Origination, vols. I., II., III., of which the grand finale of our Quaternary with Man is only as the last page with a Finis at the foot. Yet, we are told, it has left no" foot-print on the sands of time."
And further, that fundamental process of nature, why should we have vainly to look for it only in the records of the past? Why do we not see it in operation at this hour? Why are there not clear cases now occurring of actual origination of new species? Not only around man throned and crowned as lord of all, but higher than he, and yet higher, and higher still, like the steps of the ladder of angels at Mahanaim? It is true that we cannot at any moment see the grass growing; but we can see it grown; so that it is to-day in the summer where it was not in the early spring. The new species, though they should be long on their way toward completeness, ought, as the result of evolution, to be every day arriving at completeness, coming into manifestation as new and distinct; ranks hitherto unseen ever coming into view on the heels of those which have become visible before, as the ranks of an endless army, in wave after wave, appearing on the orest of origination in the dawning, where the morn of life is jocund, ever new—if, indeed, on the misty mountain top. We might have seen a case, you say, if we had been there. But we are there: on the theatre of the evolutionary process of nature—if, indeed, there be any such process, of a nature which is alive in the present as in the past.
The previous question, to which our attention is now to be directed, is of what lawyers call the issue in the case: How are we to bring this matter into shape, for a judgment upon it according to truth? I propose that we should look upon it from the view point of science in the strict sense of physical or natural science, constituted by interpretation of physical nature in her facts for ascertainment of her doctrines. It is true that in a general sense, which is a true sense, science includes all reasoned information that is solid, all knowledge that rises above simple apprehension of details into comprehension of them through relative principle, or, to perception of principle in pervasive domination of details. Regarding a process of nature we may have such information that is not derived from nature; as we may obtain some knowledge of watch-work, not only through study of machinery and material, but also from such relatively external sources as the testimony of a competent witness. And if we have such information regarding origin of species, the circumstance of its being extra natural in source need not hinder it from being truly scientific in quality. We therefore shall reserve the right of all real knowledge of the matter to be taken into account in the final judgment of science regarding evolution. But for the present we shall contemplate the matter simply in the light of natural or physical science, self-restricted to ascertainment of nature's process from nature herself in her facts, observed, collected, tested and digested.
The previous question being—How are we to judge the claims of the evolution hypothesis to be received as a theory of the origin of species, I find the answer to be: By forming a "clear and distinct idea," (1) Of the fact of the alleged process of nature, (2) Of the specific nature of the process, and (3) Of its alleged extent in physical nature. (1) Is it alleged as a reality of nature? (2) What precisely is it said to be? (3) How far is it supposed to extend in operation? The Cartesian prescription of "clear and distinct ideas" is important in relation to all questions of physical science; for it is in clearness that science lives, and by distinctness that she moves, progressing through differentiation to; victorious ascertainment. And it is peculiarly important in the present case, because in connection with evolution there appears to be a peculiar proclivity toward
Science takes an interest in a hypothesis or doctrine only so far as it alleges a fact of physical nature-nature disclosing its process through its history. Thus her doctrine of gravitation is nature's fact of the apple's fall comprehended by reason, so that the apple's fall is for her the doctrine of
1. Baseless naturalistic speculation about origin is represented by the "specs I growed' of clever childish Topsy, and by the daydream of primeval Athenians and others, in the clever childhood of peoples, regarding autochthonic origination of their fathers from their soil of fatherland. Such things are humanly interesting, as phases of the pathetic history of human guesses at truth near the deep springs of life. But by science they are disregarded as guess-work, not solidly built up on ground of nature from her facts, but floating in air, on wings of imagination or fancy; or they are by her regarded with aversion as dangerous to solid ascertainment of truth, all the more hateful if they be plausible, so as to be peculiarly dangerous impostures. Such, in relation to the world as a whole, was the ancient cosmogony; to us represented by the noble poem of Lucretius, whose rerum natura is, not simply the system of things, but their genesis as a system, their systematic origination as a world, of cosmos, "order," or mundus, "the beautiful." We shall pause for a little in view of that speculation, which has lessons to our present from its past.
The method of inductive science, which had hardly begun to dawn upon the ancient masters of speculation, has in our new time come to be almost a second nature of inherited habit through generations of induction as a science and a practice; so that a petit maitre in our schools can easily obtain exact and full information about wide regions which were as worlds unknown, not only to the deep and far penetrative industry of
The place became religion; and the heart ran o'er In silent worship of the great of old! Those dead, but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule Our spirits from their urns.
And yet, moonlight is not daylight. We are the children of a distinctively modern day of science. We must judge, as we shall be judged, according to our lights. And in the new light of our day we perceive that that speculation was not science. To poetry, in her love of beauty and grandeur, it has a fascination in its magnificent unity in vast and varied multiplicity of movement and life. To philosophy it might be welcome as a rain-bow ladder of ascending through physica of nature to metaphysica of being. It may even be made subservient to theology as a discipline of religion, in her aspiration, on wings of the soul, "to follow nature up to nature's God." For she can distinguish the glorious poetry of a Lucretius from his Epicurean metaphysic, and transfigure his poetry into her psalmody more glorious, apprehending his natura as being also creatura, the physis a ktisis, meet theme of nobler song than his. But it was not the result of solid ascertainment of Nature's doctrine from her facts. Origination was apprehended as a sort of universal growth-pangenesis-with perhaps an unconscious anima mundi, or non rational "soul in nature," as vital principle of the great evolutionary movement. And this gave rise to song—in the strain of—
But poetry is not science. The hypothesis of universal growth, at the core of the representation, and in pervasive domination of it all, was essentially guess-work like the "spec's I growed," and the day dream about autochthones. Ionian Anaximander adduced on behalf of it the fact of a spontaneous origination of life from the slime of subsiding seas in sweltering primeval heat of the sun. But that fact was a
To us it may come in the deeper disguise of a master of modern science in the third century of our new Baconian epoch of Induction. It may call itself a scientific evolutionism. And he may regard with scorn such as will not receive his speculation, denouncing them in the spirit of the saying, "This people, who know not the law, are cursed." For there is a phariseeism of science as well as of religion: professed teachers of the law who make the law of none effect by vain traditions of their coteries; idolatry of the theatre of system, or of the cave of cloistral isolation, to say nothing of the baser idolatry of the market place, which can sink into pandering to low cravings of the unreflecting by pungent contradictions or inuendos against received beliefs. And science, having no passions, may not repay that scorn with scorn. But she will guard herself by remembering that, while there may be a really scientific evolutionism, ostensibly built up on ground of nature from her facts, a viewy speculation floating in air is not science but imposture, even though the impostor should be himself a believer—
Corresponding to that ancient cosmogony, there is an ideal construction of nature, now-a-days calling itself materialistic philosophy, and really being a hybrid of physics and metaphysics, both misunderstood, which may be set forth as follows. We assume, to begin with, one infinite homogeneous substance, inhabited by one force working equally in all directions. And from that we imagine the universe as arising in a manner such as might have been suggested to Kant, if he bad not been either a philosopher or a physicist, by his categorical imperative, "Act from a maxim fit to become law in a system of universal legislation" Here the germinal idea is "fitness." In the government of a rational universe, nothing is "fit" to hang together as a system but morality, and nothing but what is moral is "fit" to hold abiding place in such a system as precept of detail. Let us apply this idea to the wholly different case of origination of a physical universe. The universe will rise into being through a vast process of unconscious experimentation, on a principle of what we call "survival of the fittest," though a clear-eyed philosopher might prefer to say "instatement of the fit," First, in that laboratory, by all round operation of the one force, all conceivable worlds, every one of them with all conceivable infinitude of variety in details, rise toward inchoate being; but while yet only nascent, not instated in being, like Milton's half-created lion: "pawing to be free," are flung back into nonexistence by friction or strain of "unfitness:" the totality proving "unfit" to hang together as a world, or one or more details in an infinite infinitude of details proving "unfit" for adjustment into harmony with the whole. At last, by a sort of physical abscissio infiniti, there is attained an evolutionary
The idealism of this construction is clumsy and coarse as compared with the methodology of Hegelians, Chinese, and other speculative barbarians, who deduce the universe by process of logic from a characterless Being equal to Nothing. The speculation, thus crude and crass intellectually, is inferior to the Epicurean materialism in respect both of simplicity and of that cynical frankness, of confessed guess-work, which underlies the Epicurean suggestion of a fortuitous concourse of atoms. The assumption which it has in place of that guess, the one substance with one force, is a purely arbitrary creation of man's will; "shooting," as Hegel said of a kindred speculation," the universe out of a pistol." In fact, the universe is assumed as begun, before we have begun to begin it. And this oddly fatalistic universe, thus originated by man's will before it begins to originate itself by necessity of physical nature, has in it a fatal incapacity of "marching" either through the origination or to it. For the speculation has no provision for either setting the one force in operation or sustaining it in operation once begun. And it is bewildering to try to think whether the resources of mathematical symbolism can conceivably furnish an expression for the infinite infinitude of infinity of chances against the origination, by one force always dispersing itself aimless in ail conceivable directions, of a
2. At the opposite extreme, we seek to avoid entanglement with the supranaturalistic doctrine of creation. Some appear to regard evolution simply as the antithesis of creation. And many are under the impression that the one is of course exclusive of the other. But science knows not any matter of course. She will believe only what she perceives in the nature of the things in question. She therefore disregards any "strife of tongues" that may be among zealots of either science or theology. For zeal may be "not according to knowledge," nor conformable to the maxim, "He that believeth shall not make haste." And men may consult their ambition more than their qualification before rushing into a controversy so momentous in its issues, both for true rational science and for true rational theology. Disregarding then, "vain janglings," of [men who perhaps "know not what they say nor whereof they affirm," let us look into the nature of the things in this case. It is represented by the expressions, respectively, process of nature, and will: evolution is, origination by process of nature, and creation is, origination by will. Here then there is difference with coincidence and connection. But that does not make a manifest necessity of collision. There is difference with coincidence and connection, yet there is no reality of collision, nor indeed possibility of it, in the case of space and time as related to one event, and in the case of colour and sound in relation to one body. And in the clear light of science we can see that there is no real necessity of collision between evolutionism and creationism in their own true natures.
On the face of the matter we see that while creationism with its will has to do only with extranatural, supernatural, relatively metaphysical, evolutionism, as an hypothesis of science, has to do only with the physica of nature and its process. Every thing extra-natural is as such outside of the province of physical science as such, be-yond her jurisdiction and her ken, her power of right to judge or to think. Assuming the substantive reality of nature, she does not further inquire whether that reality reposes on supernatural, or whether it may not be self-existent and eternal, or whether it may not be constituted by chance assemblage of atoms. To any such question she cannot say either yes or no without so far ceasing to be as physical science. It would be suicidal on her part to think about anything metaphysical, supernatural, extranatural, even in her dreams. In relation to everything but physical nature she is bound by her constitution, under penalty of death by "the happy despatch," to be dumb because deaf and blind, as Babbage's calculating machine.
An Evolutionist, it is true, besides being thus far a man of science in profession, may further in practice of thought or speech be a metaphysician—perhaps without knowing it, like the man who spoke prose. In this capacity he may, beyond inquiring into realities of nature, speculate about the ultimate constitution of the universe. And speculation may land him in the panphysicist doctrine, that physical nature is the only reality; so that what he sees in the looking-glass is a sublimated beast; and that correspondingly it is weak unscientific unreason to believe, with the Great Father of Modern Science, that most assuredly in the judgment of reason "this universe frame is" not "without a mind" (Bacon's Essays: "Of Atheism"). Or, speculation may root him and ground him in the doctrine, that, while physical nature is real and substantial, there is a supernatural not less real and substantial at each of her poles, both in man at our terrestrial pole of wondering contemplation, and in God at the celestial pole of sovereign gubernation and origination: that
instanter from physical science, as distinctly as Daniel O'Rourke fell out of the moon. And if we dissolve from strict science into considerate philosophy for the occasion, and look into the heart of the matter, still we shall find no apparent necessity of collision.
Where creationism is at its highest, most eminently characteristic in supernaturalism express, there most clearly all possibility of collision is completely out of the question. It is inconceivable that there should be even contact. For there there is no ideal possibility either of evolution or of any other process of physical nature. I refer to what is called "immediate creation;" that is, the primary origination, with no employment of material or medium, by—(rhema, not logos, He. 11: 3)—pure and simple fiat of will. This extends to rational spirits or souls and to the raw material of the physical world. And in the origination of these it is inconceivable that there should be any process of physical nature; as it is that there should be "a natural body" outside of space and time. The rational spirit or soul in view of creationism does not belong to physical nature. It is not of her world even when in it: though here among her physica, it is gershom, "stranger here." Physical science as such, so far from having any theory of its origin, is not competently aware of its existence; she does not know, and even cannot competently inquire, whether any such thing as a rational soul has ever existed anywhere in the universe. Not less clearly the origination of the raw material of the physical world is altogether beyond her competency of knowledge. A raw material—hule—which may be for metaphysic as ens rationis-is not for physical science as a concrete entity, an object of knowledge or distinct conception. As raw, formless, indeterminate, chaotic, it is to her apprehension only as an abyssmal darkness, to look upon which is to be struck blind. In order to have fur her a cognisable existence, the matter must be fortiori, it is beyond the competency of science to frame any hypothesis of the origination of a raw material of nature or of world. To speak of a natural process of originating nature's raw material is like speaking of a mar's being the father of his grandfather.
The secondary origination which has place in a formed world introduces us to the doctrine of a "mediate" creation. Here Theology recognises the previously existing nature with its process. Thus, in the origination of individuals, parentage with generation. This she makes to be employed by the Creator as his material or medium. But in so doing she does not ostensibly annul the nature in respect of reality, nor cancel the process in respect of validity. On the contrary, she validates and conserves, and that in two ways. First, generally, all creation secures the reality of nature as resulting consequent. For a true creation is a positing of something real; so that if the creature be unreal the creation is illusory, and providence is without a sphere of preservation and government. And second and specially, mediate creation further demands the validity of nature in her process as antecedent condition. For here the Creator employs the previously existing nature as his medium. And only what is real can be really so employed: to employ is not to destroy but to conserve, in employment, for the employer. So of the origination of individuals. And so, conceivably, of the origination of species. If it be ascertained that the origination of species is, like that of individuals, by process of nature, for Theology the result needs to be only her finding, that the creation of species, like that of individuals, is not immediate but mediate.
The finding does not need to be for her an unwelcome surprise, as if thrust upon her by necessity of conforming to new ascertainments of science. Her doctrine of a mediate creation was formulated in her schools many
Physical science, on the other hand, on behalf of an hypothesis of origination by process of nature, has no call of interest, nor power of right, to quarrel with theology as affirming origination by will. We know that there can be an origination which is at once by process of nature and at the same time by will. For in the inner world of mind, while the origination of logical conclusions is wholly by process of nature intellectual, and while the origination of true poetry is wholly by process of nature aesthetic-imaginative, at the same time the origination in both eases is wholly by will, designing free agency, of the person as reasoner or poet. We do not know that it is otherwise in relation to the outer world of physical nature. For aught that we can really see there may be there a rational agency along with the physical, yet distinct from it, as light is from atmosphere in space which by each of them is filled "all in all;" rational causation may be there in concourse with physical, to one and the same effect, as light blends with heat in effect of the sunbeam; the physical may be employed as a second cause by the rational as first cause, witness the "voluntary" action of our body, always conformable to its laws of body, but always controlled by the mind. So we reason; and that from the view point of physical science.
So it is even when there is no origination of life in the question. In ordinary course of nature's history her falling apple makes us aware of a process of gravitation; the uniform direction of this becomes for us the revelation of a law; and through know-ledge of that we rise iuto comprehension of the mechanical system of the universe. But what is this force thus proceeding through nature, or whose? May not that which here in nature appears as a law have its unseen fountain in sovereign personality as a statute or decree? May not this force be wielded for the purpose, if not ultimately reposed in the will, or even constituted in its operation by the stable persistent volition, of a supernatural free agent—an angel or a God? Questioning to which physical science cannot answer. This matter, metaphysical, is beyond her: here she has "nothing to draw with, and the well is deep." Hersciolist, not knowing himself nor her, may be dogmatic in the presumption of ignorance, dreaming of omniscience where nesience—docta inscitia—is her deepest wisdom. But she, knowing herself, can school him, with the world's great master of wisdom in song-" There are things in heaven and earth, Horatio, that are not dreamed of in our philosophy." And her Newton, knowing himself and her, will subscribe to the confession of her reverent humility, and speak of himself as a child who gathers a few pebbles or shells on the sea shore, while the great ocean they came from remains to him ever an unfathomable and unsearchable deep.
It is not enough to say generally, this evolution is a process of nature, in origination from a previously existing something. For definition here has to be specific. And in that general sense there are various other evolutionary processes of nature, from which, in order to adequate clearness of science, the process in the present case has to be distinguished. There are the twain evolutions of growth and decay, the generative evolution of individual offspring from parentage, the logical evolution of conclusion from premisses, and the aesthetic imaginative evolution of poetry, from what in the "maker's" mind is "sown a natural body" to be "raised a spiritual body." What, then, is the distinctive in the present case as compared with those other cases. And the answer, doubtless, is—Contribution of real specific difference. This is not merely said by us. It is seen by
On behalf of Evolutionism it has been contended that the distinctness in a species, resulting from process of nature, does not, except in degree, amount to more than the distinctness in a variety, producible by directing intervention of man. If that be so, then a species may natively be only a variety that has hardened into stereotype. And correspondingly it may conceivably, without violence to nature, soften back into the variety,—perhaps on its way toward final delinquescence into protoplasm, or dissolution into that slime which the Challenger has found in place of the bathybius of Evolutionary imagination. And so the distinctness in species as in variety will be, not permanent because essential as the form in a statue of bronze, but only complexional and therefore evanescent, like a fading picture on canvas, or dyer's colour in cloth, or discolouration of a flooded river. Here then, when we come to propositions, may rise a question of the reality of species in nature; or, of the reality of nature as specific; and consequently, of the possibility or competency of natural scieice, as distinguished from a mere natural history which, in absence of knowledge of specific natures, can be only a more or less elevated gossip, about illusory surface aspects of a nature that is unreal. But at our present stage of definitions, we need only say that, though species should L e really the same sort of thing as variety, nevertheless a new species has in it something new, distinct from all else in the world; and that this new something, in respect of which the species differs, is of course a specific difference, so far as it goes and so long as it endures. Though it should be superficial and fleeting as the ripple on the lake, the shadow on the hill side, or e'en—
still, the origination of it is a contribution of a specific difference, constituting the ne" species, giving it being as new and The "Note of Criticism" following are
Notes of criticism of two famous phrases—signature—of evolutiouism, "spotaneous generation" and "natural selection." They are
The emphasis laid on cosmical condition in the general system of the world around,
Pharisaic tradition made the law of none effect, because arbitrary construction of a law really puts the interpreter in place of the law. A corporation water or gas, by being doled out at the discretion of private owners, is shown to be not a public gift of nature to all, like the sunshine or the rain. And the two postulates of evolutionism, on which I now proceed to comment, appear to me as thus wounding evolutionism in the house of its friends—with a wound in each case fatal. First, as to breadth of area, it is restricted so as not to include the origination of life at the outset and of man at the close of the history: as if the water and gas were cut off from the houses of the people and the palace of the king, and sent only to the stables and the streets. And second, in respect of depth, or amount of result where it is operative, the evolution is made to be infinitesimally small, practically nothing; as if the town water had been refined into invisible vapour, or the gas had been lowered so as to leave everything in the dark. These proposed restrictions either arise out of the nature of the case, or they do not. If they do not, then the Evolutionist who makes them shows that he does not thoroughly and intelligently believe in the hypothesis. If they do, the hypothesis is mistaken, evolution is not a reality of physical nature, the water and gas are imaginary.
(1.) As to breadth. From eozoon Canadense, at the base of the pyramid of life, to man shining on the summit, there is said to be an unbroken reign and progress of natural evolution of species from species. But the wondrous transition from lifeless to life, or the more wondrous transition from brute to reason and conscience and worship, is by this and that Evolutionist not ascribed to that process of nature. Here their faith fails them. They faint into incapacity of believing confession of what everywhere else is owned by them as with exulting psalms of nature. The evolutionism swoons to death in their heart.
On their part, therefore, evolutionism is not a real theory of the system of origination of mundane life; as that is not a real account of the drama of "Hamlet" which excludes the part of Hamlet in the drama. A history of origination that does not include man is like a system without a sun. An hypothesis that does not apply either to the culmination of mundane life in him, or to the first introduction of life into the world, is like an ancient Hebrew hypothesis of astronomy that should, while claiming to account for the movements of "the eleven stars," be confessedly inapplicable to "the sun and the moon"—an incoherence "not for Joseph," even in his dreams. A hypothesis thus abandoned in relation to main constitutive details of the system is virtually abandoned in relation to the whole system, as an arch gives way with its keystone.
Further, wherefore that shrinking in these two cases? Whence that fainting of faith, that deadly swoon, precisely where the evolution, if it be at all in nature, might be expected to show itself illustriously? The thing that here is shrunk from is—evolution: the same kind of thing which everywhere else is joyfully owned as the public secret of origination. Only here the thing, if it be at all, has to be on such a scale that the true nature of it becomes "clear and distinct" while elsewhere it can be thought of as present in so low a degree, small infinitesimally, practically nothing, that the supposed presence of it makes on the mind no real impression of its nature. That is to say, here, and here only, evolutionism sees itself, in its own true nature, looks on its own natural face, "clear and distinct," as in a faithful mirror. And—it dies, as of horror and affright. A fair suggestion is, that that kind of thing is in some way monstrous in nature, so as to be revolting to reason; that the revulsion from it on the part of an Evolutionist is a revolt of the rationality in the deep of his soul against the speculation on the surface of his mind. And that suggestion finds corroboration in the "light of nature," as shining through the universal mind of mankind in its catholic human apprehension of physical nature.
Science, as interpretation of nature, is dependent for materials upon a primary obser-
Nil in intellectuquod non prius in sensu. She cannot make for herself even Leibnitz's exception, nisi intellectus ipse. For information about nature she does not look in upon herself, but looks out upon nature as the sole fountain of life-giving light. And that light of life she receives with the eyes, and into the heart, of an intuition of reality that is given to all men. Otherwise she perishes through lack of knowledge. Science can be only as intellection of what is given by nature to that intuition: her material for the laboratory can be only what she gathers from nature in the fields. To dispute, therefore, the competency of that intuition, which is the root exercise of reason, would for science be not only irrational, abnegation of common sense, but self-contradictory and suicidal, plucking out her own eyes, stabbing herself to the heart. Well—
In that primary observation of nature, man perceives an essential distinctness of natures. To the view of his intuition, nature discloses distinct species in her reality of being, as a constitutive essence, or principium essendi. We see a bovine nature, an equine nature, a feline nature, a canine nature, a human nature, distinct from everything else in the world, in every individual of all conceivable varieties of ox kind, horse kind, cat kind, dog kind, man kind. We not only see it, but are under inward necessity of owning it as real. No sane man ever seriously believed in his heart, no one can really believe, that a horse may become a cow, or a dog a cat; any more than, that a circle can become a square. The mathematical absurdity is logically of higher grade than the physical; but psychologically, the impossibility of serious belief is as real in the one case as in the other. The popular interest attaching to evolutionism may thus be secretly sustained by unbelief in it; thus far like the interest of amused amazement with which we see species after species brought by sleight of hand from a conjuror's hat—along with something of that fearful joy which children have in unhallowed Black Arts. And this impossibility of believing, while it reposes on nature's testimony in her principium essendi, is rooted in the fundamental rationality of man, enabling Adam to give names to the creatures through perception of their natures.
Along with that principium essendi, in the being of species as distinct realities, nature has a principium cognoscendi, a "mark" of true species, which is a credential demonstration of that real distinctness. That is, fertility in the line of true species alone. The sterility of hybrids is nature's own genos, gens, kind, clan—which we find among human languages as if spontaneously originated from the human mind, I are an ever living family of witnesses to the I fact, that mankind has, ever since the beginning of nature's teaching, had this imprinted on its mind from her types, that she sacredly guards the distinctness of kind in the line off descent, and revolts from all mixture as incestuous abomination. The principiun cognoscendi corroborates the principium esscndi, while each has an independent evidence of its own: as the two sides of a roof, though in isolation they should be unable to stand, are in combination steadfast as an oak or a rock. And all this light of nature, of evidence comparatively a priori, is corroborated a posteriori by what we now shall see as follows.—
2. As regards depth or measure of amount. Evolutionists make it to be all but of the essence of their hypothesis to hold, that the result of evolution is always at every time infinitesimally small, practically nothing; that the movement of origination is never by I leaps or bounds, nor even by perceptible steps; but only by a sliding progression as on! the smoothest conceivable ice, at a rate so slow I that the movement would not be perceptible to an observer in a lifetime, though his life should extend to 6000 ears. Hence, for the work of origination, they have demanded an! "immensity" of time; time "practically infinite." Thus Darwin, for one small part of the work, bespoke at least 300 millions of years.
We happen to know that the "immensity" of time required has in fact no existence, ex-cept for an immensity of imaginative credulity. Evolutionists now, aware that they have only a sternly limited amount of time to come and go upon, will no doubt cut according to their cloth. Such free handling of an alleged process of nature, as if it had been a private property of their own, is still suggestive of their unconsciously being under influence of
Their dependence upon time, as that which is to bring about the origination of a world of life, again betrays the working of loose imagination in place of exact thought. It turns the metaphor of," time works wonders," into dogmatic assertion of real fact; as if in the sense of science time had been a potency, working wonders of itself, instead of being only, like space, a condition for the working of potencies in nature. As it is not space, but gravitation, that causes to a body the gain of momentum which it makes by moving in space, so it is not the Summer time that ripens the corn. That auspicious time, chromos, is only the kairos, "season" or opportunity for operation of nature's workers, the sun and rain and fruitful soil. Besides, though time had been a worker, and not simply a theatre of work, it could never work the wonder of bringing something out of nothing, so that a process of doing practically nothing shall in course of time result in the origination of a world. And finally, and above all, though Time had been Omnipotence instead of impotence, even Omnipotence cannot work a miracle that is unnatural or monstrous. But such is the miracle alleged by evolutionism.
First, the alleged evolution is unnatural, as a departure from the analogy of nature so far as really known to us. The line of origination, alleged by evolutionism, is not the line of known origination in nature, but always crosses that line. Nature's line as really known to us is always horizontal, parallel to the base of the pyramid of life, the origination proceeding by similia e similibus, like ever producing like, on the same level as itself. The evolutionary line is always at an angle to the base, an angle of elevation, like ever producing unlike, on a higher level than itself, all the way up the sloping pyramid, thus continually crossing the only line of origination that we really know. What we really know of nature is crossed by evolution. It isimportant that we should mark this fact, which is clear and distinct whenever we pause to consider. For there is a confused impression that evolution is somehow in accordance with the system of nature in her facts. Let us, then, here distinctly mark the plain fact that, on the contrary, evolutionary origination, being on an ascending line, continually crosses the only line of origination really known to us in nature.
From the analogy of what is below the base of life's pyramid, the inorganic world, we cannot reason with much confidence; because lifeless is dissimilar to life. But there we see as a general fact that the line of origination, by the only process known to us, mechanical and chemical, is horizontal thus far, that the consecution is simply of one form of inorganic matter followed by another form of matter inorganic. From the base of the pyramid up to its apex we see clearly. The lines of natural origination are countless in number, as many as the species, varieties, pairs, that have ever been in our world of life since the dawning of life in our world. But the direction of the line has been only one, that is, horizontal. The only process of origination of life really known to us in nature, ordinary generation, is thus only horizontal, like ever producing like, offspring ever of the same kind as parent. Evolution is thus ostensibly unnatural, as involving a continuous departure from the analogy of nature as really known.
Second, and especially, the alleged evolution is ostensibly monstrous, as involving an essential change in the nature of things. "Natur'," said a philosopher in Dickens, "natur', she's a rum'un;" and another said—"It's a rum go, is life." Their moralisings might have been occasioned by evolutionism. For evolution makes nature in history of life to be continually, not only moving up hill, and throwing herself inside out, but at the same time everywhere destroying herself and concealing the suicide—continually running away from the memory of her having by her own hand ceased to exist. Even Omnipotence does not work the monstrosity of changing the essential nature of things, so that a lie shall become truth, or a circle be evolved out of a square, or corn be grown out of sand. But this is the very essence of what is ascribed to nature by evolutionism. It alleges an essential change of nature, as real as that from triangle to quadrangle, and from quadrangle to curved enclosure though it be a different species of change, as physical differs from mathemetical. This on a grand scale is the meaning of the distribution of the history of origination into Palaeozoic, Mezozoic, and Tertiary divisions. It
In order to see clearly and distinctly the kind of thing under consideration, we must take into view the whole pyramid, from Bathybius to man. Does the reason within us revolt from a change of slime into Shakespeare, and Plato, and Paul? That is the kind of thing which, upon the hypothesis, has been working in the history all through, at every minutest subdivision of time, in every infinitesimal shade of a touch of nature's formative finger. Though sense perceives only the grass grown, reason sees it growing. What reason sees is the growing;—that is, formation by one indivisible process, ah through the spring and summer from seed to ripened fruit. The curve is in the minutest segment of a circle as truly as in the whole. And, no matter how far we may minimise the mere amount of result, as nearly as conceivable to nothing, to reason that makes no difference when the question is, whether the alleged kind of thing has any reality in nature.
A small monstrosity is as truly impossible in nature as a great one. A fib is morally impossible in the same sense as a perjury. A square can no more turn into a slightly curved figure than into a perfect circle. The meanest of all grasses can no more grow out of sand than the highest nobility of corn. It is the angularity of the angle that here makes the wonder, of crossing nature's line; and an angle is angular, as truly though it include only a 300-millionth part "of a degree as if it had embraced all the 90deg. of a rectangle. It is the contrariness to nature that makes the monstrosity: a river can no more run up the gentlest slope than it can leap straight perpendicular up to the zenith. It is the fact of such progress, not the mere rate of it, that makes the incredibility: progress is progress, as really though it should extend only to a 300 millionth part of an inch in a thousand years, as if it should shoot in one instant to the remotest of the fixed stars. Here, as the French say, the first step is what costs.
To avoid that first step, of which confessedly nature has nowhere left a trace Evolutionists make evolution to be practically nothing in result at every time. They have to do so, in order to avoid the monstrosity of an essential change of the nature of things. But in doing so they back out of evolutionism under the name of explaining it. Planing the result of it down to practically nothing, they explain the process away into practically nothing. For out of nothing it is that nothing comes. An evolution which is practically nothing in result is practically nothing as a process. If the result be practically nothing at every time, it is practically nothing though the process should be extended through all time or through all eternity. Multiply nothing by an infinity of infinities, and still you have only nothing at the end. Thus evolutionism is "hoist with its own petard," destroyed by its own defensive postulate: made by itself into practically nothing, but a weak nonsensical guess, that out of nothing something comes, if you give it an "immensity" of time.
"If." The calf-idol here shows a truly simple foolish face. The consolation derivable from an "if" is not scientific; and in the present case the "if" is blown away by real science. Mathematical Physics undertakes to demonstrate that there has not been, of time available for the work of origination, anything in the least resembling that "immensity." Geological calculation (Dana: Manual of Geology) based upon measurement of the thickness of the sedimentary rocks, has resulted in a maximum limit of 100 millions of years, beyond which the earth was in such a condition of heat that no life of any sort was possible on her surface. Nearly the same result was obtained by Sir William Thomson, the greatest mathematical physicist in the world, from combination of independent lines of evidence, contributed respectively by the three orders of the hierarcy of our solar system;—the sun's radiation of energy, the moon's retarding influence on the circumaxial rotation of the earth, and the earth's emission of central heat from her surface (North Brit. Review, Recent Advances in Physical Science) that the maximum limit had already contracted from 98 millions of years to 10 millions. That is to say, this real science, speaking through the greatest of her masters, allows, for the whole work of origination, not more at the utmost than a thirtieth part of what Darwin reckoned indispensable for one small part of the work.
To evolutionism the utterance of real science here is like the explosion of a bombshell in a balloon. Even the approach of real science appears to have such an effect upon it as the cool air has upon an air-bubble, which quickly vanishes into "air, into thin air," and like the baseless fabric of a vision, leaves not a wrack behind.
Now looking back to our starting point, the impressive circumstance that there is not one case of actual evolution of species in the known history of the world, we recall to mind the truth, that evolution has in some way to be shown to be a reality of physical nature. It is only on the profession to be thus founded on fact that evolutionism can have any claim to be so much as considered at the bar of physical science. Excepting as professedly founded on fact, it is a mere speculative romance, like the ancient cosmogony.
Then we remember that the fact in profession has itself to be tested. "Nothing," says Canning, "is so fallacious as figures-but facts." Mere accumulation of facts may only burden the mind so as to prevent thinking, like a haystack suppressing vegetation where it stands; so that it is conceivable that natural science should perish—in the mind of a professor-under a mountain-load of accumulated observations in natural history. And the facts must not only be comprehended, but rightly comprehended. Otherwise, they may be worse than useless—misleading. An irrelevant fact is a false witness swearing away the life of truth. To multiply such facts is only to multiply the mischief: a million of them is only a nation of citizens misled, by blind leaders, into conspiring to crucify their king, and to drown his true testimonies in the multitudinous brayings of their emptiness. Thus, if a variety be in reality of nature an essentially different sort of thing from a species, then to accumulate facts regarding variety, as if they had been relevant to the case of species, may be only to bury the truth regarding species beneath a mountain of plausible irrelevancy, which the populations may admire as a shining white pyramid of science. Again, an irrelevant fact is all the more mischievous if it be real, and seemingly to the purpose; as a white lie is more dangerous to truth than a black one. No one is misled by the famous demonstration,—The reason why summer days are long while winter ones are short is, that heat expands but cold contracts. But some appear to have been influenced in favour of the supposition, that one species is changed into an essentially different species, extending through generations of individuals, by the fact that an individual foetus in embryo passes through a series of changing aspects in a species remaining unchanged. And—though it seems incredible—some rational creatures have apparently been under some confused impression, that the origination of species is shown to be the same physical process as production of variety by the fact, that the directing intelligence, which is present in the one case, is absent from the other. This, I suppose, is the nearest thing that ever was in real life to the reasoning in the farce:—"Have you, have you—a mole on your left shoulder? No! Then you are my brother-r-rr." As to the origination of life from lifeless by sleight of human hand. This fact is like the Sea Serpent, now and then caught sight of, but somehow never satisfactorily caught, so as to remain in so id reality for judicial examination. When it is caught, then we may set ourselves to consider the question, whether the production of life by intelligence of man proves that there has been production of life by physical nature without intelligence.
In the meantime we may observe that on the ground of real ascertained facts of detail, there appears to be for evolutionism "no case" calling for serious consideration. But on the other hand, even on this ground, there is offered a disproof of evolutionism. I mean, supposing for argument's sake that the sort of thing is not unnatural or monstrous, and that there has been time enough for the evolutionary origination if it had been otherwise physically possible. It may be unreasonable to call for proof of a negative. But it is right to consider it if it be offered. And we cannot be said to have fairly considered the previous question, so as to have the case matured in our mind for a judgment, unless
The fact is connected with the ascending progress of origination. That there has been an ascending order, in respect both of cosmical conditions and of individual bodies, has always been understood—as appears from the most ancient books representing a catholic human tradition of origination; and it is now fully established by palaeontological history. Although the order had been exactly what the hypothesis requires, it would not follow that evolutionism is true. For it it might nevertheless be accounted for, without supposing evolution, as the result simply of unfolding execution of a creative plan, placing species in nature as we place them in a museum. And certain curious resemblances and analogies, connecting types of life otherwise most widely different or contrasted, might be accounted for in the same way, as resulting from that creative plan, adumbrations of the mind which knows the whole from the beginning—foot-prints of the Eternal on His creative way through time. On the other hand evolutionism cannot be true if the actual historical order be different from the hypothetical order; much more it cannot be true if the historical order be the reverse of that which the hypothesis requires.
A curiously, almost dramatically, interesting case in point has emerged within the last three years. [Nature, nautilus pompilius of the present. Such is the history which the brilliant professor laid before the world three years ago, staking his case upon it, offering it as the proof of evolutionism. It really is no proof, but has I turned into disproof. It is no proof; for the Professor's history could be accounted for, without evolution, simply by supposing that immediate creation of the species proceeded in that historical order. But it has turned into disproof; for inquiry has shown that the professor's history is imaginary, and the real historical order is to some extent the reverse of the order which his hypothesis demands, [Victoria Institute, Journal of Transactions
Here we note the value of facts in evidence. Though a million of real facts may, because irrelevant, be worth nothing, one fact, constituting demonstration clear as the sun—like the production in life of the man supposed to have been murdered—may be of evidential value equal to infinity. And so may be two or three facts, though they should separately be worth little more than nothing, if in combination they form a system of evidence
Many such facts are spoken of in the books; where the humble trilobites achieve posthumous renown on account of their pertinency as monumental evidence. The argument here is illustrated by Hugh Miller, starting from the Asterolepis, in his classic work, Footprints of the Creator"—While (so it runs) evolutionism requires that fishes of high rank should be late in appearance, the geologic fact is, that fishes of a high rank came early in time. This argument is approved by Agassiz, in a prefatory memoir of Miller, and is repeated in a separate tract by the great naturalist himself—published, I think, after his death. Miller states generally that the appearance of types of life in an historical order the reverse of the hypothetical is so well o known geologically, that no great palaeontologist has ever been an asserter of the development hypothesis.
A different order, though not so strikingly, may be as really conclusive as a reverse order. The hypothesis requires that the order should be unbroken continuous, like sliding on the smoothest conceivable ice. Geology shows (Dawson: The Chain of Life) that in fact there have been something like leaps and bounds, and still more, perceptible steps. Historically, the advancing movement of origination has been rhythmical even in its continuity, like the rising tide, with its waves relapsing as they advance, and here and there its great waves, e g., the proverbial third or ninth. And within the great divisions there have been so many cycles as of great years, great spring-like outbursts of origination, followed by what, in respect of origin of new species, are comparatively only as summers, autumns, or even winters. If this be in the least degree like truth, evolutionism cannot be true.
At the close, acknowledging the courtesy with, which the paper had been received and criticised, Dr. Macgregor said that the meaning of previous question "had been explained by him at the outset, and illustrated in the paper. It was in effect. What is evolution? And how, conceivably, may it be proved or disproved? With that question he had dealt. The statement that in opposing evolution he was Times, i he point of his statement was against the representation that evolutionism is a received theory of science The representation, he maintained, was a shameful misrepresentation; science was disgraced by it. The
Take the famous evolutionary phrase—vox signata—"spontaneous generation." This is said of the process of nature in the first introduction of life into our world. As a definition it is loose metaphor instead of scientific exactness. It shows a surface of smooth familiar meaning which really is a slide from seeming sense to no-sense, constituting a case in point of Campbell's question (Philosophy of Rhetoric), Why so frequently nonsense passes undetected? The adjective "spontaneous" here is not simply Latin for "spec's I growed," ascribing the origination to a process of nature. It is also and especially intended as meaning, that the origination is not from any life previously existing. But this, in the same breath, is contradicted by the substantive "generation," which has no meaning except as descriptive of an origination that is from a previously existing life—parental. Here there is nonsensical incoherence of adjective to substantive. This comes clearly into view if we throw out the "generation," and say "spontaneous evolution." That in a proposition has a fairly tolerable meaning; but as a definition it is mere mist, sheer vapour-bath of tautology or truism; as if one had said,] spontaneous spontaneity, evolutionary evolution, a process of nature in which nature proceeds-cloudy baptism that would be meet initiation to worship of a calf in the wilderness, or veiled Isis of the Egyptians.
Further, the mist is effective mystification The logical or verbal confusion has the' rhetorical effect of delusion. It misleads from the solid way of truth by concealing or obscuring that distinctive, which is the one thing that in definition ought to be placed in clear light, as a guiding pillar of flame. A chain, which hitherto has been copper or zinc, henceforward is bronze. Inquiring after truth regarding origin of bronze chain, we have no way of truth but concentration of mind upon the distinctive, that peculiar process through which bronze comes to be now where there was only zinc or copper before. Baptism of cloud, throwing dust into the eyes of inquiry, leading the feet astray from the path of light, is made by verbiage drawing attention away to irrelevant commonplace, the general process of the prolongation of all chains by addition of link after link. Though "genera-
something like her familiar process in origination of life from previously existing life of parentage. And it effectively clouds from view the fact, which here is the vital point for expiscation, that the process must needs be essentially different from ordinary generation, and from every other thing in nature; as formation of new metal is essentially different from prolongation of old chain, and from everything else in art metallurgic. So of the other famous phrase of Evolutionism,—"Natural Selection." It is sometimes printed thus with capital initials, as if it had been the proper name of an evolutionary deity. In argument—-not to say, reasoning—it some-times plays the part that would have become a word of power creative and divine. It is famous exceedingly, as a very Diana of the Ephesians. But it is in effect a double—faced Janus of the Romans, if not a double-tongued oracular Apollo of the Delphians. It is, moreover, a variable Proteus or chameleon, changing its aspects of meaning, even as emanating from the great original enunciator of it—who was not the original enunciator of it. And withal, both on the face of it, and in the heart of it, it is a simple foolish calf. For a controversy about the meaning of it means, that it has not a meaning "clear and distinct" as becometh science; while Darwin's variation in his exposition of it shews, that it had no firmly—defined significance in his mind. Here, too, loose metaphor usurps the place of exact definition; with a surface of smooth familiar sense there is a slide from seeming sense to no-sense; there is nonsensical incoherence of self-contradiction of substantive to adjective. And the effect of the logical confusion is practical delusion, leading the mind away from the true point in question by intrusion of what really has nothing to do with the question, of the truth or falsehood of evolutionism, in relation to which it has been made to play so great a part.
"Selection" has no meaning except as implying intention, directing intelligence, in the choice of means for fore-ordained end. That meaning is here pointed by the reference here implied to the case of producing a new variety of animal or plant, through directing intelligence of man adjusting the conditions for that purpose. But that meaning is here excluded, pointedly and with emphasis of contrast, by the adjective "natural." By this is meant here, pointedly and emphatically, that the origination of species is to be regarded as taking place by process of nature alone, to the exclusion of such directing intelligence as that exercised by man in adjusting the conditions for producing new species. The incoherence is thus in the very mind and heart of the speaker, as if the drift of his thought had been into such nonsense as, non-rational selection, intelligent mechanism, designing free-agency of blind physical necessity. And the logical incoherence leads into practical mistake.
The baptism of cloud here begins with a confused impression that somehow the absence or presence of directing intelligence, adjusting the conditions for the process of nature, makes a difference in the intrinsic nature of the process of origination of species as compared with production of variety. That impression is a delusion. It is true that if it had not been for the adjustment by man's directing intelligence, the variety might not have been produced at all; as also it is true that the origination of species may not have been without adjustment of the conditions by another intelligence, like man's, distinct from physical nature, while working through her and her process. But the presence or absence of intelligence, as thus extrinsically occasioning the process, really has nothing to do with the process intrinsically, as it is in itself. In itself it is unchanging as nature, no matter what may be the extrinsic occasion,—e.g., design, or accident, or fate. The intrinsic occasion of the formation of zinc may, tautologically speaking, be "artificial selection," designed adjustment of conditions: say, by human artificer placing copper and zinc together in the furnace for his purpose; or say, if you will, by agency superhuman, angelic, or divine, perhaps in manifest miracle, fusing the two metals into one without fire. Or, nonsensically speaking, the occasion may be "natural selection," as if, undesigned adjustment of conditions: whether, as we say, accidentally, as by chance incidence of lighting flame on copper and zinc in fortuitous juxtaposition; or, fatalistically to our apprehension, by sheer irresistible necessity of nature. But in any case, and in all cases alike, the natural process, no matter what may be the
The thing in Darwin's view, in his use of the expression, was a distinction in respect of the manner in which nature, when originating species, makes her contribution of specific difference. Supposing that in fact she makes the contribution at all, that in physical nature there really is any such process, then there are two conceivable modes in which the natural evolution may take place. It may be either by, so to speak, direct evolution, or by indirect evolution—a distinction reminding us of that between immediate creation and mediate, only thus far putting dead nature in place of living God and Creator. In the indirect evolution nature contributes the specific difference through the medium of parentage with generation, or of previously existing specific nature with its process—working on the individual body previously existing to the effect of transmutation of old species into new. The previously existing specific nature is thus regarded as having always had in itself the true seed of the new species; only the seed has hitherto lain dormant and latent, as the mummy seed in the Egyptian pyramid, until now at last it breaks out into manifested life, perhaps under the influence of favourable conditions in the general system of the world around, as the mummy wheat is made to shew itself in life when it is taken out into air, and sunshine and rain, with the coffin which imprisoned it now crumbling into a fruitful soil to cherish it into futurition of life manifested. The other view of the evolution, as direct, which is the one contended for by Darwin, makes the contribution of specific difference to come simply from the system of nature, assuming the character of cosmical conditions, of fitness for working not simply on the previously existing individual body of a specific nature, but "in, along with, or through"—in, cum, vel sub—the parentage with generation, to the effect of a naturalistic transubstantiation of one species into another species. The parentage with generation is thus only as the soil and sunshine and rain are to the mummy wheat; or as the sparrow and her nest are to the cuckoo's egg.
The two views thus differ as to the location of the true seed, or efficient cause of the of the specific differentiation. The one view places it in the individual body of previously existing specific nature, making the surroundings of cosmical condition to be only the occasion of calling it into patent operation. The other view places it in the cosmical conditions of general nature around, operating upon the parentage with generation as a sort of naturalistic hoc est corpus, for which the corrupt vulgar English is hocus pocus. The two views can easily run into one another in the mind of men who do not see any real essential distinctness of species in nature. And Darwin's variation on Darwinism appears to have consisted in his latterly coming to recognise the individual body of previously existing specific nature as making some part of the contribution of specific difference, which at first he ascribed to the cosmical conditions exclusively.
But all this has really nothing to do with the question of the truth or falsehood of evolutionism. On the contrary, the two views alike proceed upon the supposition that evolutionism is true. They both imply that species are originated by evolutionary process of nature, that the contribution of specific difference is made by physical nature. And if that is assumed, then, so far as the truth of evolutionism is concerned, it matters not how, precisely, that contribution is made, whether directly from the general system of nature, or indirectly through a previously existing specific nature. But the result of raising great discussions here about the mode of evolution has been, the mistaken impression that somehow the fact of evolution has been shewn, while in reality there is effective concealment of the question of fact as being the real onecalling for an answer.
A very large part of what has made go j much noise in the world will thus take rank in history as a memorable sample of fallacia plurium inlerrogationum—seeking a verdict on one question through vehement declaration on another which is essentially different from it. So that here again there is initiation through baptism of cloud into delusive idolatry of a wilderness calf.
Mackay, Risk, & Munro, Printers, Moray. Place, Dunedin.
See quotation in speech.In publishing a verbatim report of what I recently said in the House of Lords, when calling attention to the Socialistic Legislation of the last fifteen years, I take the opportunity of offering a few remarks on the criticisms on my speech made by Lord Salisbury, as the forms of the House did not admit of my replying to them at the time. Lord Salisbury "repudiated with energy the insinuation" he supposed me to have made, "that in advocating the doctrines he had advocated with reference to the housing of the working classes, he was abandoning any of the distinct principles of the party to which he belonged." A reference to my speech will show that I made no such insinuation. What I said, and say is, that the reasoning and action of Lord Salisbury in the matter of the housing of the poor, and the construction of the Regent's Canal City and Docks Railway, were contrary to sound principles, and calculated in the long run to injure those whom he sought to benefit. I further expressed a hope that the Conservatives would recall common sense and
I would add a few words to guard myself and the members of the Liberty and Property Defence League, against mis-
object, no reasonable opponents of State-socialism would take exception. Under this head come Factory, Mines Regulation, and Merchant Shipping Acts, the intention of which is to give, if possible, physical protection to the weak, i.e., women and children; and to give security, as far as practicable, to life and limb. So, likewise, it might be admitted that within certain limits it may be desirable, simply as a matter of police, and for the protection of the sober many against the nuisance of the drunken few, that beer-houses should be specially regulated, and drunkards who misconduct themselves in the street made subject to penalty. Traders, again, who profess to sell unadulterated articles, according to standard weight or measure, ought equally to be called upon to make full restitution when found guilty of fraud. Other examples of permissible State-interference might possibly be cited, such as the forbidding of the letting of unsanitary houses, &c. But, while admitting this much, it must be borne in mind that experience has shown that the action of the State, in the vast majority of cases, fails to secure the desired end. Thus, the attempt to regulate the working of mines, so as to ensure the safety of those to whose hard toil the world owes so much—an attempt in which I heartily co-operated—has been less successful than was anticipated in some quarters, and, in
caveat emptor that his interest most safely rests.
But among the measures passed of late years, and in the Bills before Parliament, we further find Acts and measures that come under a different category;
Now, all who have anything to lose, all who hope by thrift, or work of brain or hand, some day to have acquired something that will be worth the stealing, would do well to ponder these things before they run after State-socialism. And it would be well for them to remember that all this State-inter-
even where honestly meant, is after all a vain attempt to make water run up hill; for it would be as reasonable in physics to ignore the law of gravitation, as it is in social politics to set aside the generalised deductions of common sense from the every-day experiences of human life and action, as set forth in past history; in other words, to banish political economy to the outer planets. Yet this is what so many honest, earnest men, anxious to benefit their fellows, fail to see; and failure necessarily follows in their track.
My Lords,—In calling attention to the socialistic character of the legislation of the last fifteen years, I must throw myself on your lordships' indulgence; and if, in order to enforce the subject and give weight to my words which they would not otherwise have, I quote at some length from authorities upon this question to which even your lordships must bow, I trust your lordships will bear with me.
My lords, I gave this notice, or an equivalent notice, in the autumn of last year; but I did not bring the matter forward, because it appeared to me as time went on that the socialistic character of our legislation was so apparent, and that from writings in the press and from public speeches, the spread and advance of socialism were so manifest, that I ought not needlessly to occupy your lordships' time by bringing the subject under your consideration. I felt, indeed, that I should be like unto a man holding up a lantern to the sun. But, a short time back, my noble friend, the Duke of Argyll, in calling attention to the circumstances under which the change of Government had taken place, made use of these words or words to the effect:—"That upon social questions there was little or no difference between the two parties in the State,"
My lords, I hold that to be the truth, and that this is the one great danger of the present time—the danger of a socialistic rivalry between the two great parties in the State. Now a word of warning with reference to this matter was given by a distinguished statesman, a very prominent member of the other House of Parliament. I mean Mr. Fawcett, who unhappily is now no more. Mr. Fawcett, long ago, in one of his essays on social subjects, said—I had better read his words, for they are very forcible, and words which I think statesmen on both sides of the House would do well to take to heart:—
"Unlike the socialism of former days, those who at the present time are under the influence of the socialistic sentiment are beginning to place their chief reliance upon state-intervention. This growing tendency to rely upon the State is fraught with greater danger to England than to any foreign empire. The two great political sections that contend for place and power, have a constant temptation held out to them to bid against each other for popular support. Under the pressure of this temptation it may consequently happen that they will accept doctrines, against which, if their judgment were unbiassed, they would be the first to protest themselves. This peril will hang over the country." Essays by Henry Fawcett
I believe then, that this is not only a peril which hangs over the country, but an evil from which we are now suffering.
In calling attention to this question, I am well aware of the vastness of the subject. I well recollect being
My lords, there are various kinds of socialism. There is the socialism of the communist, or what I might call the socialism of the street; for that kind of socialism has been fought out more than once in the streets of Paris, and may some day have to be fought out even in the streets of London. Then there is the socialism of the professor, or, as the Germans call it, the socialism of the chair; and there is also the socialism of the statesman.
The socialism of the communist may be treated very shortly. There are four very happy lines which I think accurately describe the communist:—
That, I believe, to be a very fair description of a communist, with the exception that I greatly doubt his
I come next to the socialism of the professor-the socialism of the chair. Now, we live, in a time when, perhaps, more than in any other, men feel for the sufferings of their fellow-creatures. It is essentially an era of humanitarianism. Philosophers and professors in their writings, are casting aside the old school of political economy and laissez-faire, and advocate State-intervention as a cure for all evils. They look to the State to protect the weak against the strong, and to equalize the conditions of life. I believe, my lords, that all these attempts will end in signal failure, and that in the long run, it will be proved that the older school of political economy is on the whole sounder, aye, and more humane than that of the modern humanitarian school of philosophy. For all philosophy of the kind, whether right or wrong, which is evolved out of the heart and the inner consciousness of the writer, I have, for one, the utmost respect. But, my lords, there is another kind of professor, the professor of political economy who squares his principles
I pass on to the socialism of the statesman. Now, there are also two distinct types of socialistic statesmen. There is the truly genuine philanhropic statesman, who, seeing the evils with which the world is encumbered, the suffering and distress, the oppression and cruelty by which we are surrounded, and acting on the impulses of a noble nature, makes war on these evils, and that, too, with all his energy and soul. Occasionally he succeeds, and in some cases he perhaps does good to his fellow-men; and if in the course of his warfare against
My lords, I do not wish to trouble your lordships more than I have done with definitions and the theory of socialism. I thought the best way to bring it home to your lordships was to illustrate it in the way I have done. I have, however, now done with theory, and would come to the concrete, and invite your consideration of Bills that have been passed during the last fifteen years, all of which show, more or less, a socialistic tendency on the part of both parties, and especially on the part of the Radical party, in the State. Now, I have put in my notice that I would call attention to the tendency of legislation during the last fifteen
pèrt microbe," as the French call the germ of the cholera poison. And when my noble friend, the Duke of Argyll—I regret that he is not here—makes eloquent speeches and writes able letters, denouncing the evil effects of the Irish Land Act of
My lords, I will now point out what our recent legislation has been. It would be absurd to go into too many details, but I can classify some of the chief measures under different heads.
First, we have, as regards
Land and Houses:—
Seven Acts, viz.:—
Eight Bills, Session
Well, my lords, all of these measures assume the right of the State to regulate the management of or to confiscate real property—steps in the direction of substituting "land nationalization" for individual ownership.
We then come to the question of corporate property, and we find that corporate property, like individual property, is now equally handed over to the spoiler by the State. Thus we have affecting
Corporate Property:—
Livery Companies.:—
Two Bills, Session
Water Companies:—
Two Bills, Session
This year there was a bill introduced called the Corporate Property Security Bill, which was a most comical bill. The object of the bill was nominally to secure corporate property. But for whom? Not for the owners, but for those who wished to get hold of it in another session. It provided the security which the butcher extends to his sheep, when he pens them preparatory to slaughter. These bills with regard to corporate property assume, contrary to all historical evidence, that what is absolutely private property is public property, and then proceed to subject it to State-management. As to the Water Companies; my noble friend Lord Bramwell, showed the other day how your lordships were about to confiscate to a great extent the property of Water Companies. These measures both run in the same direction. They are attempts to subject the chartered rights of private
Then we come to
Ships:—
Nine Acts, viz.:—
All these are successive assertions by the Board of Trade of its right to regulate private enterprise and individual management in the mercantile marine; with the result of complete failure, as confessed by the Board of Trade in its memorandum of
Then we find Acts dealing with
Mines:—
Six Acts, viz.:—
These acts constitute a State code for the regulation of the mining industry, with the effect of lessening the sense of personal responsibility among mine owners, and of promoting a fallacious confidence in government inspection; and as these Acts in the main, fail to effect their purpose, further legislation is asked for, more inspectors are demanded, and the Home Office, fearing unpopularity, listens to the demand. There is accordingly a perfect army of inspectors growing up in consequence of this kind of legislation.
Then there are Acts regulating
Railways:—
Six Acts, viz.:—
All these are encroachments by the Board of Trade upon the self-government of private enterprise in railways; successive steps in the direction of State railways.
In reference to trade and commerce, there are the following Acts, and Bills now before Parliament this Session, regulating
Manufactures, Trades, &c.:—
Nine Acts, viz.:—
There Bills, Session,
These measures may be summed up as being invasions by the State of the self-government of the various interests of the country, and curtailments of freedom of contract between employers and employed. I must, just in passing, allude to the Pawnbrokers' Act of monts de piété in France. Then you have the Parcel Post Act of
When we come to liquor, the following is the state of things. We find for the regulation of the trade in
Liquor:—
Twenty Acts, viz:—
Six Bills, Session,
Now what are all these liquor measures? I was speaking just now as to the action of philanthropic and partizan statesmen with reference to liquor, and the tyranny of majorities over minorities, but these and all similar measures are nothing less than backward legislation. In physiology,
Next, we have Acts and Bills dealing with the
Dwellings of the Working Classes, etc.:—
Sixteen Acts, viz.:—
There Bills, Session
All of these embody the principle that it is the duty of the State to provide dwellings, private gardens, and other conveniences for the working classes, and assume its right to appropriate land for these purposes.
We have the following Acts and Bills pushing to an unlimited extent the principle of State-interference in the matter of
Education:—
Nine Acts, viz.:—
Four Bills, Session
All these measures are based on the assumption that it is the duty of the State to act in loco parentis; and they constitute a progressive code of State education, which, by being supplied at less than the market value is bringing about the extinction of voluntary systems and" free trade "in education, and their
Then there are Acts regarding
Recreation:—
Four Acts, viz.:—
Whereby the State having educated the people in common school-rooms, proceeds to provide them with common reading rooms, and afterwards turns them out at stated times into the street for common holidays.
Besides these, there are
Local Government Provisional Orders.
Local "Improvement" Acts and Bills.
These measures constitute a vast mass of local legislation, which is every session smuggled through Parliament, containing interferences in every conceivable particular with liberty and property. They afford an indication of the evil effects of the example set by State socialists to municipal socialists.
Now, my lords, I have said enough, I think, with reference to the tendency of the legislation of the last fifteen years. I have explained what the character of the legislation is. Now what is its economic effect?
I believe I may justly summarise it as follows:—liberty curtailed, property plundered, robbery rampant, land unsaleable, enterprise checked, capital flying away, and industry crippled. I believe all this legislation has checked enterprise and banished capital; and, in proof of the fact, that capital is flying from the country, and that people are investing money rather in foreign than English funds, I will mention a conversation I had with a wealthy Liberal Peer eighteen months ago. He said, "What do you think of the state of things?" I answered, "I think they are as bad as can be." He replied, "So do I," and then went on to say—" I thought land was safe; I find it is not. I comforted myself with the reflection that house property was at any rate secure. It turns out to be no more safe than land. There remains, I said to myself, at least the funds—Childers has abolished them! I will tell you what I have done—I have put all my money into the Dutch 2½ per cents." We have thus realised Lord Sherbrooke's saying in This sum is really an under-estimate of the capitalised value of compensation for disturbance, tenants' improvements, right of free sale of tenancies, and State-enforced reductions of rent.—W. Lord Carlingford.
And, as to "general demoralisation," it is not confined to Irish tenants, or Scotch crofters; it is visible everywhere. Even some of the Scotch Lowland farmers are asking to have their leases broken, rents fixed by the State, fixity of tenure, and to be repaid all the money which they have expended on their holdings during the currency of their lease. Do not think, moreover, that demoralisation is confined to Scotland or to Ireland. It has even penetrated to Grosvenor Square, and to Belgravia. The other day a West-End friend entertained me with a denunciation of the monstrous injustice to which he was subject through his landlord, at the end of his lease, having the power to confiscate—as he expressed it—his town tenants' improvements. In other words, my lords, he might have said it was monstrous that he should have made a bad bargain for himself. Yes, my lords, I was not ill-advised, when two years
And why have we now a block of business in Parliament? Because the table has been for years encumbered with unnecessary bills, which no sooner become acts than they lead to and necessitate further legislation on the same lines. While on the continent people are thinking and vapouring about socialism, we in this country are adopting it in our legislation. Louise Michel, the French Communist, epitomised the matter very effectively when she said, "that whereas in France socialists stand in the dock, in England they sit in the House of Commons." She might have added, "and Communism in the Cabinet."
My lords, I have now shown, I think, with sufficient clearness, the direction in which we have been, and are travelling; but to fully appreciate the situation, we require a gauge of pace. Here it is. It is is only twenty years since Lord Palmerston died, and he, be it remembered, said that "tenant right was landlord wrong." Again, Lord Sherbrooke, speaking in
Lastly, we have had communism in the form of Mr. Chamberlain in the late Cabinet. Mr. Chamberlain is reported recently to have said:—
"If you will go back to the origin o things, you will find that when our social arrangements first began to shape themselves, every man was born into the world with natural rights, with a right to a share in the great inheritance of the community, with a right to a part of the land of his birth. But all these rights have passed away. The common rights of ownership have disappeared. Some of them have been sold; some of them have been given away by people who had no right to dispose of them; some of them have been lost through apathy and ignorance; some have been stolen by fraud; and some have been acquired by violence. Private ownership has taken the place of these communal rights,.and this system has become so interwoven with our habits and usages, it has been so sanctioned by law and protected by custom, that it might be very difficult, and, perhaps, impossible to reverse it. Speech of the Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain. M.P., at the Town Hall, Birmingham, But then, I ask, what ransom will property pay for the security which it enjoys? What substitute will it find for the natural rights which have ceased to be recognised?"
Now, my lords, we have here what purports to be a discovery of natural rights, and I would, in opposition to this view, draw your lordships' attention to what Bentham said upon this subject in "Nature, say some of the interpreters of the pretended law of nature—nature gave to each man a right to everything; which is, in effect, but another way of saying-nature has given no such right to anybody; for in regard to most rights, it is as true that what is every man's right is no man's right, as that what is every man's business is no man's business. Nature gave—gave to every man a right to everything—be it so-true; and hence the necessity of human government and human laws, to give to every man his own right, without which no right whatsoever would amount to anything. Nature gave every man a right to everything before the existence of laws, and in default of laws . . . How stands the truth of things? That there are no such things as natural rights—no such things as rights anterior to the establishment of government—no such things as natural rights opposed to, in contradistinction to, legal; that the expression is merely figurative; that when used, in the moment you attempt to give it a literal meaning, it leads to error, and to that sort of error that leads to mischief-to the extremity of mischief. . . . Contemporary criticism by Bentham on the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen" decreed in the Constituent Assembly of France in Natural rights is simple nonsense; natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense,-nonsense upon stilts. But this rhetorical nonsense ends in the old strain of mischievous nonsense. . . Right, the substantive right, is the child of law; from real laws comes real rights; but from imaginary laws, from laws of nature, fancied and invented by poets, rhetoricians, and dealers in moral and intellectual poisons, comes imaginary rights, a bastard brood of monsters, "gorgons and chimaeras dire." And thus
legal rights, the offspring of law and friends of peace, come anti-legal rights, the mortal enemies of law, the subverters of government and the assassins of security." et seq.
Which, then, do your lordships prefer—the old philosophy of Bentham, or the new philosophy of Birmingham? But I do wrong to call it new; in reality it is a very old philosophy. You will see it any day in the Zoological Gardens, where the monkeys having nuts are made war upon by those who have none; it is, at any rate, as old as Barabbas, and may be termed the "Barabbasian philosophy." It has, ineeed, in all times and in all lands had many professors; but they have not all been successful in their vocation, for, happily for the human race, the majority of them find their way, here at least, to Broadmoor, Pentonville, and other similar establishments, where they are maintained at the public expense.
My lords, I have now traced this question down to the time when the late Government left office. How they found themselves in a minority I care not. I shall not speculate as to how it came about that the House of Commons that had stuck to them through all their hopeless vacillations in foreign policy, that waded along with them through oceans of purposeless bloodshed, that had connived at and condoned the
How long the present Government will remain in office, what the result of the general election will be, I do not pretend to say; but my own impression is, that the new agricultural voters will follow the blatent brazen agitator who makes the largest promises, pointing to what has been done in Ireland in the matter of land as earnest of their fulfilment. I know one county where the agricultural labourer is saying:—"No more parsons—no more landlords-no more farmers-the land is ours." And elsewhere candidates are saying to the labourer—" Do you want a new cottage and three or four acres of land? You shall have them." While the farmer is addressed thus: "I should like you to have security of tenure, the payment by the landlord of all your improvements, whether made with or without his consent; and something besides—this, no doubt, will be difficult to estimate, but it can be done. I further wish to see copartnery established between the landlord and tenant. I wish him to be a shareholder in the land." This, my lords, is no
But be this as it may, looking at the state of things which has grown up under the late Government, both at home and abroad, I confess that I heard of their defeat with satisfaction; so much so, indeed, that I gave expression to my feelings in the words with which the late Cannon Kingsley, in the title of a very pleasant little book, described the realization of his life-long longing to visit the West Indian Islands. I, from the bottom of my soul, exclaimed "At Last!"
And now we have a new Government, what are we to expect from them? I feel that in the matter of foreign policy, my noble friend at the head of Her Majesty's Government will do much, be his time of office long or short, to tie up the broken threads of our traditional foreign policy, to the undoing of which it was the boast of the late Prime Minister that he had given his thoughts by day, and his dreams by night; and I hope that my noble friend will so tie these broken threads, that, be his successor who he may, he will not be able, even if he wished, again to break them; and we shall have the further security that the undoing of the policy of a predecessor has not been so successful as to encourage its repetition.
But what will the present Government do with reference to economic and social questions. A fortnight ago, I should have expressed hopes on this point, not fears; but we have had a taste of the quality of the Prime Minister lately; and, giving as I do, full credit to my noble friends desire to benefit the poor, still, in his proposals and in the arguments by which he supported them, I see a danger of that socialistic race between the two parties in the State, foretold by Mr. Fawcett. The noble Marquis supported a bogus railway in Regent's Park, Lord Salisbury: "Not bogus." Lord Wemyss: Then I will drop the bogus and stick to my noble friend's argument. He suspended a standing order of your lordships' House, on the ground that employment was scarce in London; and if that argument means anything, it means travaux publiques. Again, my noble friend has defended his Housing of the Working-classes Bill on the ground, that it is the duty of the State to provide, or by selling property below its value, to help to provide houses for those in its employ. Where, let me ask, will he draw the line—will he house the Foreign Office clerks, and all others in Government employment, including the tide waiters and police? And, if not, why not? What otherwise does he propose, but the most glaring class legislation.
Now, my lords, I believe all this to be a mistake—a mistake, as regards those for whose supposed benefit sound principles are set aside, which in the long run, never answers.
A mistake as regards the Conservative party; for there are many in this country who hoped that the Conservative party on their return to power, would recall common sense and experience in the government of men from Jupiter and Saturn. We trusted, that as regards the intervention of the State, they would have taken their stand upon the firm ground so clearly laid down by Lord Macaulay forty years ago in a passage I will now read:
"It is not by the intermeddling of the omnipotent and omniscient State, but by the prudence, energy, and foresight of its inhabitants, that England has been hitherto carried forward in civilization; and it is to the same energy, prudence and foresight that we shall look forward with comfort and good hope. Our rulers will best promote the improvement of the nation by strictly confining themselves to their own legitimate duties, by leaving capital to find its most lucrative course, commodoties their fair price, industry and intelligence their natural reward, idleness and folly their natural punishment; by maintaining peace, by defending property, by diminishing the price of law, and by observing strict economy in every department of the State. Let the Government do this and the people will assuredly do the rest."
I believe, my lords, that this is far safer ground for the Conservative party to stand upon than that of socialistic administration. If the Conservative Government stand upon this ground, there is hope, good hope alike for true Conservatism and our nation. But if they enter upon a race of
And let it not be supposed that there is not a strong feeling already aroused upon this subject. Why, the Liberty and Property Defence League has already in three years federated sixty-one Defence Associations for the protection of individual liberty and property. And, be it remembered, this desire is not confined to the well-to-do classes. Hear what Mr. Bradlaugh said upon this subject a year ago, when in speaking in the name of the working-men in St. James's Hall, on the occasion of a great socialistic tournament he had with Mr. Hyndman, he, to use a well-known phrase, "knocked him into a cocked hat":—
"The Socialists thought that the State could cure these evils; he thought that the State could not remedy them, but that they could only be cured slowly and gradually by the action of individuals . . . And who were those against whom they talked of using force? Why the great majority of our countrymen. It was not true that the majority of the working-class is on or near the verge of starvation. The number of depositors in savings' banks, members of benefit clubs and building societies, and holders of small plots of land, represent at least 10,000,000 of the population, and these would fight for the principle of private property."
Speech of Mr. Charles Bradlaugh, M.P., against Socialism, St. James's Hall,
I have now only to thank your lordships, which I do from my heart, for the patience with which you have listened to my story; and, in conclusion, I would quote the words of one of the ablest and most independent writers on social questions, I mean Mr. Herbert Spencer, to show the tendency of all this legislation:—
"The incident is recalled to me on contemplating the ideas of the so-called 11 practical "politician, into whose mind there enters no thought of such a thing as political momentum, still less of apolitical momentum which, instead of diminishing or remaining constant, increases . . . He never asks whether the political momentum set up by his measure, in some cases decreasing, but in other cases greatly increasing, will or will not have the same general direction with other such momenta; and whether it may not join them in presently producing an aggregate energy working changes never thought of. Dwelling only on the effects of his particular stream of legislation, and not observing how other such streams already existing, and still other streams which will follow his initiative, persue the same average course, it never occurs to him that they may presently unite into a voluminous flood utterly changing the face of things . . . . . The numerous socialistic changes made by Act of Parliament, joined with the numerous others presently to be made, will by-and-by be all merged in State-socialism-swallowed in the vast wave which they have little by little raised."
Having thus pointed the moral of my tale, I am satisfied to leave the matter in your lordships' hands. I will only add, that General Gordon, in that admirable journal of his * "The Man versus the State," by Herbert Spencer. Page 23. et seq.
Self-help versus State-help.
Liberty & Property Defence League.
For resisting Over legislation, for maintaining Freedom of Contract, and for advocating Individualism as opposed to Socialism, entirely irrespective of Party Politics.
Central Offices:—4, Westminster Chambers, Victoria Street, London, S.W.
Council—
Ordinary Members:—
The Right Hon. the Earl of Wemyss, Chairman.E. Pleydell BouverieLord Bramwell.Frederick Bramwell, F.R.S.Wm. J. R. Cotton, M.P.Wordsworth Donisthorpe, Esq.Earl Fortescue.Captair Hamber.Earl of Pembroke.Lord Penzance.,H. D. Pochin, Esq.H. C. Stephens, Esq.Ed. W. Watkin, Bart., M.P.W. Wells, Esq.
Ex-Officio Members:—
The Chairmen (or their Nominees) of Defence Societies, Companies, and Corporate Bodies in federation with the League.
Parliamentary Committee:—
Lord Bramwell.Wordsworth Donisthorpe, Esq.Earl Fortescue.Earl of Pembroke.H. C. Stephens, Esq.Earl of Wemyss.,
Honorary Treasurer:—
Sir Walter, R. Farquhar, Bart.
Solicitors:—
Harris, Powell & Sieveking, 34, Essex Street, Strand, W.C.
Bankers:—
Herries, Farquhar & Co., 16, St. James's Street, S.W.
Auditors:—
Grey, Prideaux & Booker, 48, Lincoln's Inn Fields, W.C.Secretary: W. C. Crofts.
Branches:—
England—North London:—Hon. Sec., J. Ashbridge Telfer, Esq., Aldborough Lodge, Amhurst Park, N.Liverpool:—Hon. Sec., Francis Hartley, Esq., Castle Chambers, 26, Castle Street,Leeds,:—Hon. Sec., Walter Rowley, Esq., 74, Albion Street.Sheffield:—Hon. Sec., Percy Sorby, Esq., 11, George Street.Nottingham:—Hon. Sec., Harvey, Hadden, Esq., Edwalton.York:—Hon. Sec., F. H. Anderson, Esq., 41, Stonegate.Plymouth:—Hon. Sec., R. S. Clark, Esq., 4, Athenaeum Terrace.Bournemouth: Hon. Sec., J. R. Pretyman, Esq., Richmond Lodge.Scotland—Glasgow, and the West of Scotland:—Hon. Sec., J. Lorne Stewart, Esq., County Club, Ayr.Aberdeenshire: Hon. Sec., Colonel W., Ross-King, Tertowie House, Kinaldie.Ireland—Dublin:—Hon. Sec,., E. Stanley-Robertson, Esq., 49, Wellington Place, Clyde Road.
The League opposes all attempts to introduce the State as competitor or regulator into the various departments of social activity and industry, which would otherwise be spontaneously and adequately conducted by private enterprise.
Questions of the structure or constitution of the State and those of foreign policy do not come within the scope of the League. It is exclusively concerned with the internal functions or duties of the State.
During the last 15 years all interests in the country have successively suffered at the hands of the State an increasing loss of their self-government. These apparently disconnected invasions of individual freedom of action by the central authority are in reality so many instances of a general movement towards State-Socialism, the deadening effect of which on all branches of industry and originality the working-classes will be the first to feel.
Each interest conducting its self-defence without any reference to the others has on every occasion, hitherto failed to oppose successfully the full force of this movement concentrated in turn against itself by the permanent officials and the government in power for the time being.
The League resists every particular case of this common evil, by securing the co-operation of all persons individually opposed to the principles of State-Socialism in all or any one of its instances, and by focussing into a system of mutual defence the forces of the "Defence Associations or Societies" of the various interests of the country.
As regards such defence societies, companies, and corporate bodies, this co-operation is effected without any interference with the independent action of each body in matters specially affecting its own interest.
Each society passes a resolution formally placing itself in federation with the League. The League in return supplies every such society with information concerning each fresh system of State interference; it places the various societies and interests in communication with one another with a view to their mutual assistance inside and outside Parliament; and, at the same time, it combines for the common end the forces of the several societies and interests with those of the League itself and its members in both Houses of Parliament.
The chairman (or his nominee) of every society, company or corporate body thus in federation with the League, is an ex-officio member of the Council of the League, and receives notice to attend all its meetings. The corporate action of the League in every case of overlegislation where any interest is affected, is regulated by the decision of the ordinary members of Council, acting in conjunction with its ex-officio members.
Persons and Corporate bodies wishing to join the League are requested to send their subscription (voluntary from one shilling upwards) and address to Messrs. Herries, Farquhar & Co., Bankers, 16, St. James's Street, S. W. The Annual Report will be sent to all members; and subscribers of ten shillings and upwards will receive all publications issued during the year by the League. Particulars and Publications of the League can be had from the Secretary at the Central Offices.
Liberty & Property Defence League.
Central Offices:—4, Westminster Chambers, Victoria Street, London, S.W.
The following Publications of the League can be had, on application, from the Central Offices; and from all Booksellers:—
Nationalisation of Land. By Lord Bramwell. Fifth Edition. Price 2d. A Review of Mr. Henry George's "Progress and Poverty."
"Has not received the attention its acuteness and brilliancy merit."
Laissez Faire. By the same Author. Tenth Thousand.
Price 2d. A reply to State Socialists.
"It is much to be desired in the interests of everyone who values either his liberty or his property that it should circulate widely and be read with attention."
Drink. By the same Author. Seventieth Thousand. Price id. An argument against the revival of "Tippling Acts."
"Lord Bramwell wins an easy victory over the bigots or enthusiasts, who would abolish alcohol in order to extirpate drunkenness."
Rate-and-Tax-Aided Education. By Earl Fortescue. Fourth Edition, Price 2d. An Indictment of State Education.
"A manly and vigorous protest against the centralisation which is perverting our elementary schools."
The Province of Government. By the Right Hon. E. Pleydell Bouverie. Price 3d.
State Monopoly or Private Enterprise? By Sir Frederick Bramwell, F.R.S. Second Edition. Price 4d. A criticism of commercial overlegislation.
"A vigorous protest."
Overlegislation in
"We have seldom read anything more amusing."
Overlegislation in
"Has a tale to tell of its own which is well worth listening to."
Liberty of Law? By Wordsworth Donisthorpe, Barrister-at-Law. Third Edition. Eighth Thousand. Price 6d. A plea for Let-be.
"A vigorous essay."
"Forcible and clearly put."
Socialism at St. Stephen's in
"Will help even the most casual reader to understand the broad principles upon which the League is based."
The State and the Slums. By Edward Stanley Robertson. Third Edition. Price 2d.
"The difficulties of the theory that the State should provide houses for the working classes are lucidly stated."
Communism. By the same Author. Second Edition. Price 2d.
Private Liberty. By J. R. Pretyman. Second Edition, Price 2d.
Land. Fifth Thousand. Price 3d. A refutation of agrarian socialism.
Liberty and Socialism. By the Earl of Pembroke.
An enquiry into the limits of individual liberty.
Municipal Socialism. By W. C. Crofts. A criticism of Local Government.
Progress or Plunder? By M. J. Lyons. Third Edition. Price id. A defence of Individualism addressed to working men.
"A remarkable lecture."
Radicalism or Ransom? By the same Author. Price 1d.
At the same offices can be obtained:—
Principles of Plutology. By Wordsworth Donisthorpe. Price 7s. An Inquiry into the True Method of the Science of Wealth.
"His criticism is conceived in a genuinely scientific spirit."
"Is worth reading as a critical investigation."
"Treating an essentially dry and technical subject with a pleasant freshness and aptness of illustration."
"We have met with no work on political economy more suggestive than the present."
Serfdom, Wagedom and Freedom. By the same Author. Price is. A solution of the Labour Question.
Dispauperization. By J. R. Pretyman. Second Edition.
Printed By G. Harmsworth & Co.,
42, Hart Street, Covent Garden, London, W.C.
A lecture, with the above alliterative title, was delivered by Mr. M. J. Lyons, of the Liberty and Property Defence League, in the large Lecture Hall of the North London Working Men's Club, one of the largest, if not the largest, club in this district of the metropolis. The spacious hall was well filled, and the lecture was listened to throughout with the most rapt attention by this exceptionally intelligent and respectable assembly of working men. A brief discussion followed at the close of the lecture, but as the points raised were on minor issues and did not affect the main argument, we confine ourselves to the following report of the lecturer's address, omitting, also, the frequent bursts of applause with which the telling points, and they were not few, were hailed.
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen,—I was met on the threshold of this lecture by a difficulty which at first seemed to me well-nigh insurmountable, viz.: the difficulty of a definition. Modern Radicalism is a creed so Protean in shape, so chameleon-like in hue, that I was placed in a similar state of perplexity to that of the poor English peasant who had lived to see all his old associations uprooted, and the firm ground on which he had fixed himself take life and move off into unknown seas. The few thoughts
But since their time a race has arisen, calling themselves Radicals, whose objects I find it difficult, nay impossible, to reconcile with the doctrines of the eminent men whose names I have just given. Those looked upon liberty as the panacea for all social ills, and strenuously, vehemently protested against grandmotherly, protective and restrictive legislation. Their one demand was "Let us alone;" and they had their triumphs; the great victory of i.e., the modern Radicals) have ornamented or disfigured the statute book by a series of acts which restrict freedom of contract, and are all framed with the benevolent intention of protecting men and women against the punitive results of their own folly.
"There is nothing new under the sun," said the philo-
I would now ask:—Is this an unfair or over-drawn picture of the policy of the Radical party of to-day? No candid man who has made himself at all acquainted with the huge congeries of legislation, effected or projected, can deny that although Macaulay had in his mind the Tory of his day, the Radical of to-day might have sat for the picture, photographic in its fidelity. And it is this curious rapprochement of the two parties which constitutes the strangest political phenomenon of our time. And yet it would appear, at least so Mr. Herbert Spencer thinks, to admit of philosophic explanation. His theory is that all animals, man not excepted, have a tendency to "throw back," as breeders call it; "a reversion of type," as naturalists call it; in man it is designated "atavism." To give an instance:—the numerous varieties of rabbits obtained by artificial selection would, if unattended to, it is known, speedily revert to the wild type
There is no more vicious political superstition than this childish belief in the power of Parliament to do whatever it wills. This positively pathetic reliance on
The men of the Manchester school were believers in a more manly faith. They argued, that left to themselves the people either were or would become too intelligent to purchase adulterated goods, or to occupy insanitary dwellings. They argued that the evil of unwholesome buildings would cure itself under the influence of the natural economic law of competition. But no, the army of State socialists, miscalled Radicals, were too numerous, and the soldiers of Freedom were doomed to see outwork after outwork carried, and in possession of the enemy, who, unimpeded in his onward march, uses each vantage point as a base for fresh attacks. "The whole tendency," says a writer in the Edinburgh Review," of the extreme party, both in foreign coun-
And what is most ominous, is the rivalry which obtains between the two great parties, each vieing with the other when they do not actually coalesce, rendering it anything but a pleasant task for the friends of freedom to look into the next few years. They see around them forces at work, silent, apparently disconnected and independent, the one of the other, but all tending in the same direction, the destruction of individuality. When these scattered guerilla bands are united under one master mind as leader, the crisis is not far distant. I have no fear as to the ultimate result, though it may and can only be reached through suffering and sorrow. The pessimism of this creed may seem to some worthy of mockery; but to any such I would say, look around and note the signs of the times. What but evil can come of the unholy alliance of Mr. Broadhurst and Lord Randolph Churchill, united on what they call the enfranchisement of leaseholds in towns? Sir Richard Cross and Sir Charles Dilke we find uniting in the socialist effort to provide, at the cost of the nation, dwellings for the poor. Mr. Jesse Collings claims votes for labourers who have had medical relief, and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach trumps his trick by bringing in a bill of his own. Lord Salisbury and Mr. Chamberlain dispute as to whom is due the credit of initiating a system of local government.
No good can come from this partnership, a partnership of men whose every act seems to be directed in
It would be perhaps an impertinence to inquire how far or how much this rage for legislation is stimulated by the knowledge that zeal may be rewarded by office. If the multiplication of officials only proceed at its present rate of increase, the time is not far distant when the regulators shall be as numerous as the reguiated; and the Millennium will
A brief enumeration of recent socialist measures will satisfy the most thoughtless of the great, the portentous revolution which is being silently accomplished in our very midst, almost without notice. We have got so accustomed to them that our feelings, our perceptions, are blunted. The Industrial Dwellings Act is but in its infancy, but it will grow rapidly. Mr. Arch's Compulsory Cultivation Bill has not yet become law; but with the new electorate, who have a firm faith that the Liberal Government is pledged to give every man "three acres of land, and the grass of a cow," what wonders may not be achieved? State ownership of railways is more than talked about; the Democratic Federation claim to have settled even the minor details. Then there are the numerous industries connected with the railways; all these will have to be taken over by the Government when the railways are purchased or confiscated—the latter for preference. The Government is already exclusive letter-carrier, has the telegraph in its possession, and is in a fair way to become exclusive carrier of goods. It builds harbours, docks, and breakwaters; it builds ships, casts cannon, makes ammunition, clothing, boots, &c.; and it requires no strong imagination to picture the time when the State shall own all the houses, land, factories, steamships, in a word, to use the comprehensive expression of the Democratic Federation, "all the instruments of production."
If you now place each of these propositions singly before the typical Radical, there is not one which he does not think would be better managed by Government than by private persons, sole or corporate. If this be so, wherein does he differ from a Socialist? This will, I trust, have in some measure accounted for the perplexity to which I pleaded guilty at the beginning of this lecture, a perplexity which increases the more I study the subject. I will therefore conclude this, the first part of my address, by quoting a passage, the authorship of which I have for the moment forgotten: "Those who would interfere by Acts of Parliament are deaf to the grand harmony of nature, which no one ever interrupts with impunity."
If there is one thing more than another calculated to impress the careful student of history—the man who, not satisfied with the mere barren record of the births, loves, marriages, wars, and deaths of kings and rulers, pursues his researches into the social and economic condition of the nation—it is the marvellous power of adaptability to altered conditions which the English people have exhibited preeminently in the present century. With the boundaries of their country sharply defined, incapable, as in America, of indefinite expansion, the population has yet increased at a rate of which no mere bald array of figures will give us any but a shadowy notion; and speaking generally, the means of subsistence have increased, if not more rapidly, at least pari-passu, with this increment. Let me endeavour to put before you in a popular and striking form the wonderful results of this self-adjustment. In the last ten years this country has added to the population, exclusive of those who emigrated in that period, a number
The marvel is, that the evil of over-crowding, which I deplore as much as anyone, is not more intense than it is. For the purposes of my argument this almost fabulous increase of a population—better fed, better clad, and better housed than any preceding generation—may be compared to a rush for gold to new diggings. The hardy miners do not waste time in useless supplications to Jupiter or his incarnation, the Government; but manfully make light of the inevitable hardships at the first, and strenuously set themselves to work to provide accommodation. The simile will be all the closer when we remember that there is not only this increase throughout the whole country, but that the difficulty of making provision for it is intensified and exacerbated by that which can only be described as a "rush" towards the great towns from the rural districts. And yet private enterprise—which quietly, unostentatiously, with no flourish of trumpets, adds every year to this already overgrown metropolis, accommodation for a population equal to that of Bristol—does its work, if not perfectly, at least indifferently well. That slums exist, cannot and ought not to be laid to the charge of the present generation. Sanitary science was not only in its infancy, indeed it may be said it was not born at the time of the erection of most of these dwellings, called slums; and men are no more to be blamed for their erection, than for
For the present, I am most concerned with the first-named of the trio; and his famous if not notorious doctrine of "Ransom." Let me give the passage in extenso. The speech, you will remember, was delivered at Birmingham on January 5th, of this year, and is as follows: "If you will go back," says Mr. Chamberlain, "to the earlier history of our social system, you will find that when our social arrangements first began to shape themselves, every man was born into the world with natural rights, with a right to a share in the great inheritance of the community, with a right to a part of the land of his birth; but all these rights have passed away. The common rights of ownership have disappeared; some of these have been sold; some of them have been given away by people who had no right to dispose of them; some of them have been lost through apathy and ignorance; some have been destroyed by fraud; and some have been acquired by violence But then I ask what ransom will property pay for the security which it enjoys? What substitute will it find for the natural rights which have ceased to be recognised? Society is banded together in order to protect itself against the instinct of those of its members who would make very short work of private ownership if they were left
Mr. Chamberlain is an able man and a shrewd, and one is lost in wonderment for what object these wild and whirling words were given wing. Was it to promote the prosperity of England, or the rule of the Birmingham caucus, or the ambition of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain? Let us examine the Ransom theory first, bearing in mind the fact, that at Ipswich he altered the word "ransom" to "insurance;" but it is the first word which has become, and will remain historic; and it is with that I propose to deal here this morning.
Nature brings not back the mastodon, nor do sensible men dream of restoring the Heptarchy; but if Mr. Chamberlain's words have meaning, they point to a return to the tribal system, when wild in woods the noble savage ran; when, also, the principal clothes of the same respected progenitor were a ring through the nose, and a patch of blue paint on the forehead. Private ownership of land seems to be anathema maranatha in Mr. Chamberlain's eyes. It may be only a coincidence; but I have heard it stated that this gentleman's wealth is not invested in land. Be this as it may, all history proves that no progress is possible without private ownership, and that in proportion as the title to land is secure, in the same proportion is all property secure, and the prosperity of the country assured. Every school boy knows that in the infancy of every country the natural occupation of man is that of hunting; next the pastoral condition obtains; and finally
All our social ills, poverty, crime, ignorance, in so far as they exist, would seem inferentially, according to Mr. Chamberlain, to arise from private ownership in land. The exact opposite is the truth; human misery and degredation are more intense where private property in land is unknown, and the sum of human happiness greatest where it is most recognised and respected. It may be urged that Mr. Chamberlain does not nakedly, and in terms, urge a return to the tribal system; but if his words have any meaning at all, they either point to this
Thus we see that as barbarous nations progress towards civilization, the absolute right to private property in land becomes correspondingly recognised; while when a civilised state, like the Americans, become suddenly seized of an immense and fertile territory, they forthwith proceed to parcel it out to individuals, obeying in each case an instinct so universal that it may be regarded as a law of our nature.
But, says Mr. Chamberlain, much of the land of this country has been acquired by fraud, much by force, or by gifts from those who had themselves no right to it. True. And, it may be added, that the process is still going on in South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, the Fiji Islands; and our
à fortiori, the statute apply in the case on which the stability of all industries depends? "If Time destroys the evidence of title, the laws have wisely and humanely made length of possession a substitute for that which has been destroyed. He comes with his scythe in one hand to mow down the muniments of our rights; but in the other hand the law-giver has placed an hour-glass by which he metes out incessantly those portions of duration which render needless the evidence he has swept away." Not more than six years ago the period of limitation was shortened from twenty years to twelve, and now we are told that centuries of undisputed possession will not suffice.
Mr. Chamberlain, rumour has it, is a wealthy man-and I am sure, I hope Dame Rumour does not exaggerate; but his wealth is not expressed in land. In whatever form invested it is the stored-up savings of the results of labour. I assert
"All rent is robbery," says the Socialist. Is it? Let us take an illustration. Dissatisfied with the condition of things in this country, where population presses closely on, if it does not overtake the means of subsistence, we determine to seek fresh fields and pastures new; and disposing of our household goods and gods, we emigrate. Separating ourselves from all the associations which made life tolerable if not enjoyable; turning our backs upon "the ashes of our fathers, the temples of our gods," we, with our wife and children, plunge into the trackless forests of the far west, and there in the wilderness, after years of patient unremitting toil, we succeed in rearing ourselves a habitation, rude, it may be, but comfortable; and the land over which, previous to our coming, "wild in woods the naked savage ran," has been won from the wilderness and brought to a condition in which, if you tickle it with a plough, it laughs with a harvest. In the meantime, our children, the young birds, have left the nest; have taken to themselves mates and are building nests for their own broods in similar
interest. Interest on £3,000, at the rate of five per cent., will leave him £350 for working expenses. He jumps at my proposal and forthwith rent is created. I become that enemy of the human race, a landlord, according to Messrs. Chamberlain and Co., and my quondam servant blooms into a tenant. Where is now the injustice? Does any one imagine that I should ever have emigrated, and spent the best years of my life in laborious toil, if at the end I were not free to dispose of and enjoy the fruits of my labour?
This is no fancy picture. We see the process going on; and this is just the process by which our, and all civilised countries were settled centuries ago. Well might Lord Salisbury retort that although the word
But the land is not the only form of property from which, as it appears, "Ransom" is to be exacted. The nation, it seems, is to be asked to provide industrial dwellings for the poor at less than cost price. A Royal Commission has collected, I cannot say collated, evidence bearing on the housing of the poor, and has presented its report in a form which irresistibly reminds us of Mr. Samuel Weller, who, we are told, "folded his newspaper with neatness, so as to bring the police reports under his eye.'" The Royal Commission appears to have entered on its duties with a view, not to find out the truth, but to give prominence to all facts in favour of, to suppress all facts militating against, their preconceived theory. Much hearsay, for instance, was accepted as evidence; though we know, on the authority of that memorable case, Bardwell v. Pickwick, that "what the soldier said" is not evidence at all. This parish of Clerkenwell, where I have resided for the last four years, has been specially singled out for animadversion. I am not in any way connected with the government of the parish, and I may, therefore, claim to have my opinion considered, and treated as unbiassed. I have visited or resided in nearly every considerable town in the three kingdoms, and I unhesitatingly declare that Clerkenwell is better paved, lighted, watered, scavenged, than the vast majority of those towns. But what will be the inevitable result of the socialist legislation proposed in one House by Lord Salisbury—in the other
Yes. This is the further "Ransom" which men are now called upon to pay for the crime of being and continuing respectable. These conclusions lie so apparently on the surface that I can only credit the advocates of this scheme with sincerity when it can be proved that they are deficient in intelligence.
In conclusion let me say that if history proves anything, it is the folly of attempting to resist the operation of economic laws by legislative enactments, and in this age of progress and enlightenment it is truly pitiable to see so many old world fallacies revived—they were not dead, it seems, but hybernating—and not only believed in by the unthinking
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All well-informed and observant men are aware that the great battle of life—the struggle to make both ends meet and keep that unwelcome guest Poverty at a safe and respectful distance, has been daily growing more and more cruelly severe for the last ten years.
A vast, a truly alarming proportion of those engaged in agricultural, commercial, and industrial pursuits, in almost every land, now find to their dismay, and proclaim with one voice, that, in spite of every possible care and effort on their part, they are gradually being ground down, lower and lower, from bad to worse, by the force of circumstances over which they have absolutely no control; that they can no longer, in fact, meet their engagements and liabilities, or provide by their labour as heretofore an honest living for themselves and those dependent upon them.
It is an undeniable fact, acknowledged by all, that the steady and progressive fall in general prices since
J. S. Mill tells us that "a general rise or general fall in prices is merely tantamount to an alteration in the value of money," and Professor Fawcett likewise exposes what he calls "the erroneous nature of a statement not unfrequently made that there is a general rise or fall in the value of all commodities"—proving clearly that nothing more than "an increase in the demand for gold is evidenced by a fall in the price of commodities," and demonstrating beyond dispute that "a general rise or fall in prices means that the standard of value is altered."
Economists point out that the changes in the purchasing power of money, causing high or low prices, are of two kinds. They may be either those transient fluctuations which occur periodically from the expansion and contraction of credit during the vicissitudes of speculation, or permanent ones, arising from an alteration in the exchange value of the precious metals of which money is composed, resulting from an increase or decrease in the cost of their production or some change in the proportion between supply and demand.
Let us examine these two radical causes of financial disturbance a little more closely, and endeavour to discover, if possible, from which of them the world is now suffering.
All civilised communities are so familiar with the periodical fluctuations of the market arising from over-speculation or the abuse of oredit that they require very little explanation. They commonly occur somewhat in this manner. When under the influence of panic prices have fallen—as they invariably do at such times—far below their natural level, a reaction must speedily set in, and since those who speculate when prices are at low-water mark realise large profits, many are tempted to follow their example, and each speculative purchase tends to enhance market prices till the safe and proper margin is again gradually passed, and, in the fictitious prosperity that ensues, credit is both given and accepted in the most reckless manner, since all think themselves, and appear to others, to be thriving. Fancy prices may be thus kept up upon credit for a considerable period. Human credulity, however, has its limit, like everything else, and when speculators are at last afraid to venture further, many over burdened holders of land and property of various kinds are soon obliged to realise at any sacrifice to meet their pressing liabilities, which bursts the speculative bubble, and a commercial crash speedily ensues.
Thus, where there is no deep disturbing element to counteract them, alternate waves of inflation and depression, caused by commercial gambling, generally follow one another in regular cycles every few years. Their essential and unmistakable peculiarities are that they are not universal, or at least do not affect all communities simultaneously, and the gradual improvement in prices for a considerable period is
After a severe depression values advance slowly for several years, as men speculate cautiously at first even upon a rising market, but when the disastrous ebb tide of falling prices once fairly sets in, all who are merely holding property on speculation, as so many do, at once rush into the market, being naturally eager to save themselves from the ruinous consequences of being caught under full sail by the whole force of the coming storm, which would of course involve financial shipwreck.
On the other hand, when the decline in prices is the result of a permanent change in the standard of value arising from its increased cost of production, or from the supply of that metal from any cause falling short of the ever-increasing demand, instead of the more or less local disturbance, and the gradual rise in prices followed by panic, and a sudden and severe crash, and speedy recovery to a certain extent, the whole course of change is just the opposite The depression is not necessarily preceded by excessive speculation, while the fall in prices is gradual and persistent and as universal as the standard, and goes on steadily increasing in severity from year to year till the cause is removed.
The purchasing power of money gradually declined for several centuries after the discovery of America, falling no less than three and a half-fold, in consequence of the increased supply of the precious metals lowering their exchange value, and unparalleled progress was the result. From
Between
Thus while the annual production of gold is steadily declining, the whole burden of the currency has been suddenly thrown upon that one metal, instead of being, as previously, borne by two In this manner, during the last ten or twelve years, the supply of the standard of value has been wantonly reduced by bungling statesmen from 40 to 18 millions sterling, a fact which, in spite of Mr. Mulhall's extraordinary assertion to the contrary, all intelligent men must at once perceive is alone quite sufficient to account for the steady and persistent rise in the value of gold, or, as we commonly say, fall in general prices now going on.
When it was first proposed to institute a general crusade against silver, the disastrous effect that such a wholesale change would have upon industry was pointed out by the Economist. Laveleye, Seyd, Bagehot, and other authorities too numerous to mention. Disraeli said. "I attribute the monetary disturbance that has occurred, and is now to a certain degree acting very injuriously to trade, to the great changes which the Governments of Europe are making in reference to their standard of value. . . . It is quite evident that we must prepare for great convulsions in the money market not occasioned by speculation or any old cause, but by a new cause with which we are not sufficiently acquainted." And that able statesman, Mr. Goschen, said in
Both high financial authorities and practical business men are now rapidly realising j the palpable fact that the present depression is mainly the result of the appreciation of j gold; and a very powerful and influential organisation has suddenly and simultaneously (sprung into vigorous life in Great Britain, Germany, and the United States, advocating; bimetallism or demanding some other immediate remedy for that deplorable modern! blunder, the demonetisation of silver, which has so speedily entailed incalculable misery upon every nation that has been a party to it.
Eminent British statesmen are already calling upon the electors to investigate this momentous problem. Lord Churchill, late Secretary of State for India, and now Chancellor of the Exchequer, said in one of his recent public addresses, "It will be for you in Lancashire to turn your attention to the dark and apparently unfathomable question of the relative value of silver and gold, and endeavour to ascertain, by your ingenuity
At the annual meeting of the Institute of Bankers held in London on the 19th of May last, as reported in the London Times, no less an authority than Mr. Giffen, alluding in a paper, which he read upon "Bimetallism," to the evils that have already resulted from the late proscription of silver, said, "The primary offender in the matter was perhaps Germany, which made a mistake, I believe, in substituting gold for silver as the standard money of the country. . . . More recently a great deal of evil has been caused by the unfortunate legislation of the United States. No doubt the pressure upon gold would have been more severe than it has been, if the United States had not passed the 4 'Bland Coinage Law' (an Act providing that £5,000,000 worth of silver dollars may still be coined annually). To some extent Italy has also been an offender in this matter; the resumption of specie payments in that country upon a gold basis being entirely a work of superfluity, the resumption on a silver basis would have been preferable."
Another member of the Institute remarked, that" what bimetallists wanted was to preserve the world from the dire calamity that would happen if the silver question were not dealt with." A third said, that "if nothing were done with the silver question, prices would fall to one-half what they were now. He believed that if silver were monetised over a wide area of the world to the old ratio there would be, not a fall, but a rise in prices all over Europe of 10 to 20 per cent."
Mr. Shaw Lefevre, M.P., asked, "Was the fall that had been caused by the appreciation of gold any disadvantage to the country? Debtors were adversely affected, but creditors were benefited, and it was to be remembered that England was the creditor of the world." A cruel joke, indeed, at our expense.
Another said, "That according to the report of the United States Mint of
Of the total yearly production of gold, now about £18,000,000 sterling, Soetbeer estimates that £12,000,000 are annually consumed in the arts and manufactures; £4,000,000 are absorbed in the East; leaving only £2,000,000 to supply the whole civilised world with a medium of exchange. That small supply, moreover, is steadily decreasing, while the demand for gold for various purposes is rapidly increasing in every quarter of the globe.
The famous economist, M. Laveleye, who has long been calling public attention to this momentous social problem, writing in the Contemporary Review of May last, said, "It can no longer be concealed that the gold budget presents a really alarming aspect. ... If losses and wear and tear are taken into consideration, there remains only £1,000,000 to cover the monetary requirements of the entire world with all its growing population and trade. Should not this single fact suffice to open the eyes of statesmen, if they could for a single instant turn their eyes in this direction? The quantity of gold available for currency being insufficient now silver is proscribed, it is quite certain that we are approaching a universal régime of paper money."
If any further proof of the contraction of the currency is required, we have it in the fact that the coinage of all European nations, with the solitary exception of Russia, has of late years come almost to a standstill. The amount annually issued by the English Mint during the last six years has averaged only £1,318,805, or less than one-third as much as for some years previously, a large proportion of which is only the recoinage of old sovereigns, and the authority just quoted concludes, from careful calculation, that her stock of coin, estimated by the Director of her Mint at £120,000,000 sterling, has decreased nearly one-fourth since
Even the great gold producing countries now have little to spare. Australia, which from
In the United States likewise, between except the uncertainly as to the standard of value which is caused by the coinage of low priced silver dollars? . . If all doubt as to the stability of the currency could be again removed by the cessation of the coinage of silver, a period of activity and prosperity might quickly come." Whereas, as we have just been told by Mr Giffen, the greatest living authority upon such questions, the law providing for the annual coinage of a small quantity of silver dollars in the United States is really the only safety-valve that prevents the disastrous pressure upon our gold standard from being more severe than it is at present.
India, Russia, Austria, and China are comparatively unaffected by the growing scarcity of gold since they yet adhere almost exclusively to silver as their medium of exchange, and that metal still maintains its relative price to the products of industry, although, like all other commodities, it is seriously depreciated as compared with its costly rival, which has risen so enormously in value since
It is a very common error to suppose that the fall in the price of silver of late years has arisen from its excessive production as compared with gold. Mr. Mulhall's calculations however clearly demonstrate that that ground is quite untenable, since, according to his estimate, the quantity of silver possessed by mankind is now only nineteen times as much as the amount of gold, while in
Professor Fawcett, writing in
Sir George Grey said truly, in one of his late public addresses in Auckland, that the industrial depression was largely caused by the increased severity of competition from India; but ho did not explain why that competition had become so formidable during the last ten years. Let us pursue the inquiry a little, and endeavour to ascertain why it is that the enterprising and industrious Anglo-Saxon is now unable to hold his own as proudly as formerly against inferior and semi-barbarous races. Have our industrial classes the bone and sinew of the nation-degenerated? Or have they rather been unjustly handicapped in the great battle of life by blind statesmen and bungling legislation?
Let us first put the farmer in the witness-box, since his occupation is the sheet anchor and mainstay of every country. Ask him why he has to throw up the sponge and confess himself beaten at his own trade by the semi-barbarous hordes of India and Russia, and other silver-using countries that now easily undersell him in all the great markets of the world.
His plain matter-of-fact statement is simply this:—That while for a given quantity of produce, costing say £900, he formerly received £1,000 in the London market, leaving him £100 for his labour, now, since prices have fallen 10 per cent., he receives for a similiar shipment a draft on his banker for only £900, leaving him absolutely no margin of profit whatsoever.
On the other hand the same quantity of wheat or other produce shipped from India to London also sold till within the last ten years for £1,000, which was returned to the Indian producer in the form of a draft on his banker for 10,000 silver rupees, the currency of his country, leaving him likewise a profit of one tenth, or 1,000 rupees. The £900, however, which the same quantity of produce at present realises in London is now remitted to India in the shape of a bank draft for 12,000 rupees, since the exchange value of the rupee, as estimated in England's gold coin, has fallen twenty-five per cent., or from 2s. to Is 6d. But since the purchasing power of silver has not declined in India, as pointed out by Professor Fawcett, and clearly proved by the
Thus while the profits of all nations using a gold standard and currency have, upon such exports, been already swept away by the appreciation of that metal, which is still rapidly rising in value, the profits on the exported productions of those that still possess a silver standard, have been actually trebled at their expense. For although we have selected India as an example, the same of course holds equally true of frozen meat, hides, wool, tallow, and every export of Russia and all other countries that still adhere to silver.
The farmer is not alone in his trouble, for all branches of industry now suffer alike, and the looms of Manchester pay just as heavy a tribute to rival competitors through the incapacity of our tardy and bungling statesmen as the virgin pastures, wheat fields, and forests of Australia.
While our public men are looking listlessly on, or calling in vain upon Jupiter for help, instead of putting their shoulders promptly to the wheel to protect the interests of a proud and high-spirited nation, the very life-blood of the Anglo-Saxon race is being crushed out of them for the benefit of our great European rival, and the teeming hordes of India, China, and other semi-barbarous countries.
It is hardly necessary to call attention to the obvious fact that the late rise in the value of gold of 25 per cent., as compared with silver, is precisely equivalent to a protective duty of that amount to exclude the produce and manufactures of those nations that have a gold standard from all states that employ silver for that purpose. Hence the large export of silver to those countries in exchange for their products.
To any one who is cognizant of the great financial changes now in progress it is really painful in the extreme to witness our industrious settlers struggling manfully with strong arms and brave and willing hearts to bear up against such terrible odds, and striving in vain to keep their heads above water under the crushing burden of that unjust competition of which their blind rulers seem to be about as unconscious as the man in the moon.
From
In all countries where the coinage is based upon gold the enterprising business man now finds his once profitable game most uncertain and precarious, for in what can he safely invest or speculate when all values are daily depreciating?
The merchant not only has to bear the full loss arising from the fall in the value of his own property, but may be utterly ruined from the inability of those whom he habitually crusts to meet their liabilities in such trying times. The farmer finds the value of his land, his stock-in-trade, and all he produces falling perpetually lower and lower, while at the same time his financial burdens are proportionately increased, since, in consequence of the fall in prices, it will take just so much more stock or produce to meet a given sum for wages, interest, rent, or taxes.
Joint stock companies, in which such a large proportion of every community are interested, are, with the exception of banks, loan offices, and a few close monopolies, among the first and severest sufferers from a rise in the standard of value, since they usually have their capital fully invested, and heavy liabilities, and cannot curtail expenses and contract operations as speedily as private individual
The wage-earning class are generally the last to realise the full effects of a fall in prices from the appreciation of the standard, since custom keeps the rate of wages up for a time, and employers keep their works going for a year or two, even at a loss, in hopes of prices rallying; but as such unprofitable business steadily contracts, the ranks of the unemployed are gradually swollen to alarming proportions, and having nothing to fall back upon, the masses are reduced to the verge of starvation. Thus workmen are invariably the severest sufferers in the end. Employers are now probably feeling the pinch most severely, but their servants must necessarily soon share their calamity.
The question, then, that naturally suggests itself is this—How can prudent men best hold their own until the electors are sufficiently aroused to compel statesmen to provide a remedy for the iniquitously unjust standard and currency now in use?
The President of the Bank of New Zealand said truly at a late meeting of the
Sir Julius Vogel said, in his late public address in Wellington, that statistics showed that the market prices of both imports and exports had fallen more than 14 per cent, during the last five years. Assuming his figures to be correct, if anyone had lent, say, £1,000 five years ago, that money, if now called in, would be worth—in addition to the interest received—14 per cent, more real wealth, the fruits of industry, than it was when lent, or an increase of £140 worth—a difference arising solely from the unearned increase in the value of gold. Those, however, who have had their capital invested in joint stock companies engaged in agricultural or industrial pursuits know from bitter experience that the difference since
Capital is proverbially sensitive to its own interests, and although moneyed men as a rule probably know very little about the appreciation of gold, they are undoubtedly learning wisdom very quickly by practical experience, for while they will now leave their money lying idle rather than invest it in the most tempting ventures, they will lend it out at very low rates of interest and eagerly tender for Government loans at a nominal figure.
The authority just quoted said, in his late financial statement, that "within the last two years only there has been a fall all round in the rate of interest of about 2 per cent., and that fall is continuing," which clearly points in that direction.
Some may imagine that a low rate of interest would show that there is no increase in the exchange value of gold, but the truth is that it is the very strongest possible proof of the contrary, for when industry becomes unprofitable from the persistent fall in prices, or rise in the purchasing power of money, there is but little demand for it on loan, since the unearned increase in the value of gold is a crushing tax upon borrowers.
M. Laveleye, writing in May last, says: "It is a very singular but a perfectly evident fact that if half the coin in circulation were suddenly suppressed, the other half, instead of being insufficient, would be superabundant. If an article formerly! worth £1 can be purchased for 10s., exchanges can be effected with as much facility as before, only on a basis of prices reduced one-half. In addition to this there would be a terrible disturbance throughout the economic world, all business would be suspended, and a quantity of money would lie idle. This is precisely the present situation."
Mill and other economists clearly point out the gross and cruel injustice that it done to the taxpayer and all private debtors by the appreciation of the standard If prices fall 50 per cent, all national and other debts are thereby doubled. To meet a given sum of interest upon a foreign loan a colony would have to export twice as much produce as before, and the man who had borrowed money to purchase a homestead or invest in farming or other enterprises would have to dispose of twice as much of the fruits of industry as that gold was worth when he borrowed it, to repay the amount, which would of course mean utter ruin to the great majority of debtors from no fault of their own.
When men once realise the indisputable fact that gold is now steadily growing in value, they must instantly perceive that under such circumstances a borrowing policy, for either State or individual, is perilous in the extreme, and must, if persisted in, end eventually in either bankruptcy or repudiation. To borrow gold while it is daily becoming more and more scarce, to speculate upon a falling market, is nothing more or less than recklessly and wilfully committing financial suicide. England has been making great efforts to reduce her national debt ever since the battle of Waterloo, and has paid off about £100,000,000 sterling, but it is an indisputable fact that the late change in the standard of value has increased that burden more, as estimated in the fruits of industry during the last seven years, than the weary, struggling taxpayer had reduced it in seventy, without giving him one fraction in return for that munificent gift to bond-holders.
A fact which calls forcibly to mind an incident related by Sir Edward Parry, who tells us that upon one occasion, during his Arctic explorations, when his party were making, as they thought, great progress in sledges over the icebergs towards the goal of their ambition, scientific observations revealed the startling fact that the whole ice
Unlike the proverbial ill wind, there is no single redeeming feature in a depression arising from a contraction of the currency. As Laveleye says," All incomes diminish, whether they are derived from land, from industry, or from commerce. The entire social body is in a state of decline." The only persons who really gain are bondholders, and those who have fixed and stated incomes, since they, of course, daily grow richer and richer while prices are falling from the very cause that is reducing the rest of the community to poverty, augmenting the burden of taxation, and so terribly increasing the bitter struggle of life. So far, however, as official salaries are concerned, that advantage can only last just so long as the electors fail to grasp the problem which we are considering. The Premier tried to introduce a clause into the Civil Service Reform Bill this session to provide for the readjustment of all official salaries periodically in proportion to the decrease in the cost of the necessaries of life, which shows how short-lived the present advantage derived by civil servants from the late fall in prices is likely to be—a temporary gain, probably in most cases far more than outweighed by the fall in the value of property in which they are directly or indirectly interested.
As the Edinburgh Review justly said, in an able article on The Scarcity of Gold," in January last: Our only consolation is that, "fortunately, the source of our present difficulties is no longer the mystery that it was even to our statesmen in former times. The tact that nowadays it can be traced to its fundamental cause constitutes the best hope amidst our present difficulties.
Adam Smith foresaw the possibility of a precious metals, and pointed out the only rational remedy in the first chapter of the fourth book of "Wealth of Nations," saying: "If gold and silver should ever fall short in a country that has wherewithal to purchase them, there are more expedients for supplying their place than that of almost any other commodity. If the materials of manufacture are wanted, industry must stop. If provisions are wanted, the people must starve; but if money is wanted barter will supply its place, though with a good deal of inconveniency. Buying and selling upon credit, and the different dealers compensating their credits with one another once a month, or once a year, will supply it with less inconveniency. A well regulated paper money will supply it not only without any inconveniency, but in some cases with some advantages" over the precious metals themselves.
What he meant by a well regulated paper money he explains in the second chapter of the second book of his great work, where he says: "A prince who should enact that a certain proportion of h s taxes should be paid in a paper money of a certain kind, might thereby give a certain value to this paper money, even though the term of its final discharge and redemption should depend altogether upon the will of the prince. If the bank which issued this paper was careful to keep the quantity of it always somewhat below what could easily be employed in this manner, the demand for it might be such as to make it even bear a premium, or sell for somewhat more in the market than the quantity of gold and silver currency for which it was issued."
J. S. Mill was a most bitter opponent of paper money, since he wrote just at the time when the precious metals were so plentiful that there seemed no chance of a growing scarcity of gold, but quite the reverse, yet he frankly acknowledged that "if the issue of inconvertible paper were subjected to strict rules, one rule being that whenever bullion rose above the mint price the issues should be contracted until the market price of bullion and the mint price were again in accordance, such a currency would not be subject to any of the evils usually deemed inherent in an inconvertible paper."
How the exact balance between the price of paper and bullion could be easily maintained has been pointed out very clearly by the great economist, Ricardo, so justly famous for solving abstruse social questions.
In his "Proposals for an Economic and Secure Currency," he says: "To secure the public against any other variations in the value of the currency than those to which the standard itself is subject, and at the same time carry on the circulation with a medium the least expensive, is to attain the most perfect state to which a currency can be brought, and we should possess all these advantages by subjecting the bank to the delivery of uncoined gold or silver at the mint standard and price in exchange for its notes, instead of the delivery of guineas; by which means paper would never fall below the value of bullion without being followed by the reduction of its quantity. To prevent the rise of paper above the value of bullion, the bank should be obliged to give its paper in exchange for standard gold at the price of £3 17s per ounce."
No writer up to the present day has exposed in detail all the fallacies of the multitudinous schemes propounded for creating wealth by the issue of paper money, with as
a greater quantity of it shall not be issued than if it were convertible into gold. If more than this is issued it will be followed by the same result as attends an excessive issue of silver, it will fall to a discount, which in this case is depreciation; and the necessary consequence of a depreciated currency will follow, viz., the market price (or paper price) of bullion will rise above the mint price, and the foreign exchanges will fall.
"Now if such a state of things happens, the proper remedy is to diminish the quantity of the paper in circulation until the market price of bullion is reduced to the level of the mint price. If the direct power of demanding five sovereigns be taken away from the holder of a £5 note, still if he can purchase bullion with it in the market to the amount of five sovereigns, it is an infallible proof that the note is current at par, and the limitation need not proceed beyond that. . . .
"It becomes in all respects a new standard just as much as gold or silver, and its value will be affected by the same principles as these two, viz., by the sole question of the quantity of it in circulation compared to the operations it represents.
"If the direct power of demanding coin be taken away by the State, the power of commanding a certain amount of bullion in the market still equally remains as the only test of its value."
This conversion of paper money at pleasure into uncoined gold or silver, is, of course, just what Ricardo's famous suggestion provides for. Such an arrangement is probably the very best that could be made, for it would relieve the State from the necessity of keeping any coin, and replace all the metallic currency but small change by State notes, and thus effect an enormous saving and greatly relieve the strain upon gold, and, at the same time, prevent the possibility of State paper depreciating, for if it fell in the slightest degree it would be immediately exchanged for the precious metals for export.
Some may imagine that the State would have to keep a large quantity of uncoined treasure on hand to meet the ordinary demand for money for foreign trade, but that is a great mistake.
J. S. Mill says: "All interchange is, in substance and effect, barter, . . . and so of nations—their trade is a mere exchange of exports for imports; and whether money is employed or not, things are only in their permanent state when the exports and imports exactly pay for each other. When this is the case, equal sums of money are due from each country to the other, the debts are settled by bills, and there is no balance to be paid in the precious metals."
And Professor Fawcett points out that even the interest upon foreign loans is paid, not in gold and silver, but by an excess of exports of the fruits of industry over those imported by means of bills of exchange.
Since we have no State bank to serve as a clearinghouse, some of our banks are now constantly exporting coin while others are importing it, which entails a great and quite unnecessary risk and loss, for which their customers, of course, have to pay. How little coin, however, is really required for export, is proved by the fact that our exports and imports of money very nearly balance each other. Thus, in
During great and protracted wars nations are obliged to issue large quantities of absolutely inconvertible paper, which is, of course, simply raiding enforced loans from their subjects, and it has been justly suggested by modern economists, that upon such occasions, when the public safety demands the issue of paper for which bullion is not forthcoming on demand, State notes should be convertible at pleasure into Government bonds bearing a fair rate of interest.
With such a provision for the security of holders of State paper, it could never have fluctuated in price as it did to the great disturbance of business during the long struggle with Napoleon, when for twenty-two years Bank of England notes were absolutely inconvertible, or as the notorious American green-backs more recently did.
Anyone who is cognizant of the world-wide distress already prevailing, and so rapidly increasing, must, we think, come to the conclusion that since its fundamental cause is now clearly recognised, the little narrow prejudices of bankers, bondholders, and bullionists will be soon disregarded, for men as a rule speedily open their eyes in cases where their daily bread, the interest of themselves and their families, is so nearly
It is absolutely essential that something should be done as speedily as possible to put a stop to the wholesale spoliation of debtors which is now going on through the appreciation of gold, to the utter ruin of the most enterprising and energetic men in every community where that metal is employed as the standard of value.
Justice revolts at the very idea of systematically robbing either debtors or creditors through the means of a standard which is rapidly changing in value in either direction. It is nothing more or less than the public use of false weights and measures to plunder one class to enrich another. How debtors now stand such treatment so patiently to the utter sacrifice of the interests of themselves and their families passes all comprehension. Their apathy probably only shows that they have hitherto failed to grasp this problem rather than any wilful and unmanly neglect of the first law of nature—self-defence.
J. S. Mill says "there cannot be intrinsically a more insignificant thing in the economy of society than money, except in the character of a contrivance for saving time and labour." Experience, however, proves that the adequate or inadequale supply of that "contrivance for saving time and labour" just makes all the difference between the bright golden age through which we have so recently passed and the death-like stagnation which is now draping the whole civilised world in mourning from one end of the globe to the other.
The same great authority tells us that "credit coined into notes as bullion is
If men could only realise this great fact, and perceive that the note which the State pays a workman to-day may pass through many different hands in the
The discovery of a great gold field, for which men now long so anxiously to remove the depression, could do no more than provide material for augmenting the quantiy of that machinery by means of which barter is facilitated, and since the value of all money is purely artificial, that machinery could be provided just as well by a paper currency cased upon uncoined treasure as suggested by Ricardo and other econonists.
Let us row glance at the popular arguments most commonly urged against a State paper currency.
1. We are sometimes gravely told that Government notes would infallibly come to grief at the first bank they entered—that they could not possibly float.
That objection takes it for granted that all private banks could exchange State
2. Again, it is said people would mist-rust State paper money.
That objection implies that men are such fools that they would rather rely upon the credit of a few private speculators, whose sole object is to fieece them, than
3. Others maintain that since our note circulation is now less than one million, the annual saving at present from a State issue could not possibly exceed £40,000.
This very common assertion is based upon the supposition that State notes would only displace that paper money now in circulation, whereas they could largely supersede our metallic currency as well which is about twice as much. Our note circulation in March last was actually £42,528 less than in the corresponding month seven years ago, although our population had enormously increased during that period. Hence we may fairly conclude that our paper currency could be very considerably augmented by the judicious management of our finances, and expenditure of public money, with immense advantage to the whole community. We maintain that the present depression is largely attributable to the contraction of the currency. Those who absurdly imagine that all that is required is to secure for the public treasury the comparatively trifling profit which private banks now make upon their note circulation propose to secure that by increasing the tax upon their paper issues. So far however from such a cheeseparing policy mending matters, the certain result of depriving the existing banks of the profit now made upon their notes, without issuing State paper to take their place, would be to augment the depression by contracting the currency still further, since bankers, in self defence, would naturally decrease their note circulation in the same proportion as it was rendered unprofitable by increased taxation.
4. Interested alarmists pretend that if private issues were driven out of circulation by State paper the existing banks could come down upon the colony for heavy compensation.
If, through bungling legislation, they have secured any such monstrous and unjust monopoly let their claim by all means be settled immediately before any further liability is incurred. The Hon. J. Bathgate, however, said in the Legislative Council only a few weeks since, "The banks here have no especial charter or vested or exclusive right granted to them of issue. In every one of their acts there is a special saving clause reserving the rights of the crown and of every corporation. They have no exclusive privilege conferred upon them." That the existing note circulation here is entirely under the control of the State, is proved by the fact that the banks now pay a tax upon their paper issue of two per cent., which the Parliament has the power to increase at pleasure.
We do not, however, propose to interfere with legitimate banking in any way. The banks would be the greatest gainers through the influence of State paper in arresting the depression and promoting prosperity. In the words of the authority just quoted from Hansard, "If we wish our monetary institutions to survive the period of hurricane rapidly approaching, we must fill their coffers with notes of legal tender that will have a right to circulate throughout the colony without question."
One of the greatest perils at present under the existing system is, that our banks must collapse one after another, causing widespread misery and ruin, just so fast as their securities become rotten with the progress of the depression and the consequent depreciation in the value of land.
The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone has told us that "private issues should disappear like private mints, and each kingdom have one uniform paper circulation, issued from a single central State department more resembling a mint than a bank," contending that "the profit of issues belongs to the State, and what is much more important than the profit, the responsibility of issues also belongs to the State." Again, in his famous oration on Home Rule in April last, he said: "Ireland might think fit to pass a law providing for the extinction of private issues of notes in Ireland, and providing that no bank notes be issued in Ireland excepting under the authority and for the advantage of the State. I own that it is my opinion that Ireland would do an extremely sensible thing if it should pass such a measure. It is my strongest and most decided opinion that we ought to have such a measure, but the block of business has prevented that and many other good things towards which we are now going to open and clear the way."
It is easy to paint glowing pictures of the folly of issuing paper, or metallic money either, in excess of legitimate requirements, for every schoolboy knows that it is not only utterly useless but absolutely dishonest to depreciate the currency, but it has yet to be shown—in spite of all the ridicule that has been ignorantly or selfishly heaped upon it—that national paper money based upon sound economic principles, would not, preserve the equilibrium of the standard an prove an incalculable blessing to mankind.
None can possibly dispute the economy of substituting paper for a metallic currency. Adam Smith compared such a change to replacing old-fashioned and costly machinery with the latest modern inventions and then adding the difference saved thereby to a nation's productive capital.
McCulloch estimated and pointed out how many millions sterling were annually lost by civilised nations in the shape of interest, and wear and tear, upon their costly medium of exchange. And J. S. Mill said, "the substitution of paper for a metallic
Professor Fawcett endorses the same view, saying, "The economy of this substitution is obvious; gold is a valuable commodity requiring much labour and capital to obtain it."
To quote one colonial authority, W. E. Hearn, LL.D., Professor of Political Economy in the University of Melbourne, says in his able work "Plutology":" The precious metals, as their name denotes, require much time and trouble for their attainment. It is not every nation that can afford to use such expensive machinery. There is no community so opulent as not to derive a perceptible relief from the substitution of an equally efficient but less costly medium," as he justly styles paper money.
While gold was rapidly depreciating in value between
Some over sanguine people now apparently imagine that the world wide depression is just at an end because the wool market has somewhat recovered, and the effect of the late improvement in the value of that staple commodity must be immense in wool-growing localities, but that the price of that article had been unduly depressed was obvious, since its value had fallen out of all proportion to that of other products of industry. This was clearly pointed out by Sir Julius Vogel in his financial statement just before the late partial recovery occurred. He said: "Lest it may be supposed that what I have said about the present depression means that I think its principal cause—the reduced value of wool—is likely to continue, I must say that such is not my opinion. It seems to me that a sharp rally in prices must occur. I am one of those, who believe that all commodities have fallen in nominal value because of the appreciation of gold, but the fall in wool has been disproportionately great."
Some argue, like Mulhall and Atkinson, that gold cannot be growing scarce, because, since all commodities have fallen quite irrespective of whether there has been any such saving in the cost of production or not.
A doctrine very common in the commercial world is that credit instruments of various kinds are increasing with sufficient rapidity to facilitate exchanges as gold becomes more and more scarce. But Mr. Giffen himself says: "I much doubt whether any serious economy has been effected with regard to the exchanges accomplished by the substitution of credit for gold." Recent reports tell us that the clearings in London have been gradually decreasing of late years, which plainly shows, as might naturally have been anticipated, that, under existing arrangements, the volume of credit instruments contracts rather than expands as industrial stagnation increases from the growing scarcity of gold.
Many imagine that the production of wealth could not be either stimulated or retarded by any alteration in the standard of value since the purchasing power of money rises or falls in exact proportion; but, as J. S. Mill says, "there is a disturbance, in short, of fixed money contracts, and this is an evil whether it takes place in the debtor's favour or the creditor's," and he fully explains that the effect of the appreciation of gold is to despoil the active members of every community for the benefit of the do-nothings.
Some, again, contend that a growing scarcity of gold would only sacrifice present debtors to enrich their creditors, which would certainly be bad enough, since most energetic men who are engaged in active enterprises have serious liabilities. Unfortunately, however, the trouble will not end there, for while gold is steadily rising in
Writing upon this subject, the Edinburgh Review lately said: "The doctrine that changes in the amount of the circulating medium are really of no consequence, in-asmuch as such an increase or decrease is pari passu attended by a proportionate change in the value of money, so that the effective power of the currency remains unaltered, is now all but extinct, and can survive only in minds which are impervious to the remarkable lessons of the last 30 years." Those lessons that teach us that the mighty march of human progress which accompanied the development of modern gold fields between
The poor, as they deplore the scarcity of employment, often attribute their hard fate to labour saving machinery, forgetting that experience in every age has proved that countries like England and America, which have become famous for the excellency of their mechanical appliances, have invariably rewarded labour far better than any other nations upon earth. In proportion as industry becomes more or less profitable, all engaged in it must feel the consequences in the world-wide competition.
The effect which the increased application of capital and machinery to industrial pursuits has upon the wage-earning classes was clearly defined by Bastiat in his "Harmonies of Political Economy "thus:" In proportion to the increase of capital, the absolute share of the total product falling to the capitalist is augmented, but his relative share is diminished; while, on the contrary, the share of the labourer is increased both absolutely and relatively."
The rich, on the other hand, who often look upon the stagnation of industry as a curse brought upon civilisation by the extravagance and extortion of the working classes are equally oblivious of the fact, clearly demonstrated by no less an authority than the great economist McCulloch, namely, that the inevitable result of a high rate of wages is to bring labour-saving machinery to greater perfection and thus, instead of destroying a nation's industries, enable it to distance all competitors. This, as he points out, is proved alike both by theory and experience. He therefore justly concludes that "the best interests of society require that wages should be elevated as high as possible—that a taste for the comforts, luxuries, and enjoyments of life should be widely diffused, and if possible interwoven with the national habits and prejudices."
And that most rigidly conservative writer, E. Atkinson, tells us, in his work on "The Distribution of Products," that "low rates of wages are not essential to a low cost of production, but, on the contrary, usually indicate a high cost of production. . . The cheapest labour is the best paid labour; it is the best paid labour applied to machinery that assures the largest product in ratio to the capital invested."
Many ridicule the very idea of trying to relieve industrial stagnation by Act of Parliament, but what, we should like to know, but wise legislation enables man to accumulate wealth at all? It is cowardly in the extreme to shut our eyes to stubborn facts or hide our heads like the ostrich in the face of danger instead of boldly meeting such questions like men.
If, as is pretended by monometallists, it is absolutely essential that our domestic currency should mainly consist, as at present, of gold, which is now failing us, the future prospects of our race appear gloomy in the extreme. If, as others maintain, the great march of human progress depends upon brain and muscle, or brave and willing hearts and strong arms, guided by wise legislation, rather than upon a few tons of one of the most intrinsically valueless of metals, then mankind have the remedy for the present depression entirely in their own hands; and when the electors imperatively demand some adequate machinery for the interchange of the fruits of their industry, it will be speedily forthcoming, to the injury of no man, but the incalculable benefit of all.
If coal or iron were running short, we might well tremble for the consequences, but reason distinctly tells us that gold and silver are merely toys which, when prejudices are outgrown, can be easily dispensed with. Those who are not wilfully blind must clearly perceive that civilisation is now tottering ominously upon the brink of a great crisis—one that may either overwhelm it for ever, or prove the dawn of an industrial millenium.
When reason can clearly trace the present world-wide calamity to some absurd blunder of statesmen—some defect in the currency laws—shall we superstitiously hesitate to try and retrace our steps, and, if possible, improve upon that circulating medium which was adopted by our barbarous ancestors to supply their little wants,
The forlorn ships of State with their precious freights—the lives of millions-are drifting rapidly towards unknown dangers for want of able and far-seeing commanders to guide them, far more than from any lack of bold, enterprising, and industrious crews Who can deny that if equal facilities were afforded them the Anglo-Saxon race would be just as able and willing to create wealth of every description to-day as they were ten years ago. They have far better tools and machinery, and nature is just as bountiful as ever. No man living can assign any logical reason why, if supplied with a sufficiency of a reliable medium of exchange, and a just standard of value, the industrial classes could not now create wealth and prosperity on all sides just as rapidly as they did during the best days of the goldfields, or indeed far faster, for the supply of currency even then was always costly and uncertain, while the medium of exchange should be inexpensive, economical, and perfectly accessible at all times to any who are willing to give good value in exchange for it, since it has no conceivable limit short of the legitimate requirements of civilisation for the distribution of the fruits of industry. Any State that could contrive to keep all its people, who were willing to work, fully occupied in creating wealth, would soon be the greatest and richest nation upon earth.
When our settlers wish once more to find a ready and profitable sale for their produce, and to see their lands and other property grow steadily in value with the increase of population and the march of progress, as in former times, and are satisfied that they have had a sufficiency of cheerless and ever-increasing poverty, they will rise like one man and demand that their interests shall be protected against unjust foreign competition, by the adoption of an honest standard of value, and an adequate and inexpensive paper currency, such as suggested by economists, in lieu of that costly, contracted, and starving metallic one, for which we are now paying such a ruinous price.
The time has certainly fully arrived for Englishmen to decide once and for ever how much further they are willing to sacrifice the interests of themselves and their country to satisfy the unjust greed and rapacity of bondholders and bullionists, and enrich those teeming hordes of barbarians who still possess a silver standard.
To show how rapidly this question is now coming into prominence in Europe, we extract the following from that influential journal the "Is there a palpable and increasing scarcity in the gold supply? Has this scarcity, coupled with the large demands on gold, caused a corresponding contraction in our currency? To these questions we say yes. . . An undue inflation and enhancement of gold have occurred, increasing its purchasing power as against silver and every other commodity. And what does this increase of power signify other than low unremunerative prices all round—a positive check to all forms of industry, leading to partial cessation of labour, enforced lowering of wages, and a general paralysis in every branch of commercial and industrial enterprise? The farmer, for instance, keenly feels the brunt of the formidable competition with Indian cereals—an assertion easy of demonstration. The appreciation of gold,"the writer continues," is a sort of shifting, ponderous millstone, by which British manufacturers and farmers are handicapped and overborne. Those must, in sooth, be very long-suffering individuals in a matter where the exercise of such forbearance is quite misplaced, if they do not rise to a right conviction of the gravity of the situation, and think the matter out for themselves. Their sturdy reliance on their own exertions and their refusal to own to any inferiority, enable them to regard with some equanimity our sorely-tried system of free trade; but the unfair competition, however, to which they are subjected, because of our insular views of the sanctity attaching to the golden calf, entails a refinement of gratuitous and self-imposed burdens. . . . Does it not seem right that this canker to our industries should be arrested by means that need not be of any heroic character, provided such means are taken in due time; while the disease, if allowed to continue its headlong course, uncontrolled and unchecked, may before long become the parent of irreparable mischief. And the awaking will be a rude one?"Nineteenth Century of June last:—
Men may believe it or not, just as they please, but the fact is, as time will quickly prove, that all civilised nations are now being gradually reduced to the verge of starvation simply because the great artificial wheel of exchange has broken down under the excessive burden now imposed upon gold. It remains to be seen how long it will be before our statesmen rise equal to the simple task of again restoring it to
Industry is manifestly suffering not from over-production but under consumption, the natural result of a contraction of the medium of exchange. This is proved to demonstration by the fact that all countries, except those using silver, are now both importing and exporting less than formerly—an infallible symptom of industrial and commercial decline. The marvels so lately effected by the untiring energy of man when the currency of the world was augmented by the recent gold discoveries have abundantly shown what labour can easily accomplish when supplied with a medium of exchange capable of expanding indefinitely in the same ratio as the legitimate requirements of industry and civilisation.
All lovers of peace and order must surely hope that public men will soon awake from their dangerous lethargy and realise without delay the awful responsibility that now rests upon them, and not cling madly to their golden idol till all existing institutions are overthrown to be succeeded perhaps by a reign of terror and brute force.
The great financial enigma now presented to all Governments which have adopted a gold standard, is like the riddle of the Sphinx—they must either solve it, and solve it speedily, or perish ignominiously. There is no alternative.
Bondholders and other interested parties taking advantage of the ignorance of the masses upon such questions, may contrive by ridicule—the usual cloak: of injustice—to throw dust in the eyes of the electors for a limited period, but hunger, which drives the wolf from the forest, will undoubtedly soon effectually arouse them to make a firm, determined, and united stand in self-defence. The apathy and criminal negligence of public men in this momentous crisis, when multitudes of willing, able, and industrious settlers are clamouring in vain for the humble privilege of being allowed to earn bread by the sweat of their brow to keep themselves and their families from starving, call vividly to mind the famous satire passed upon the aristocracy by Napoleon, when he compared the British army to a host of lions led on by a pack of asses.
We can only say, in conclusion, that we sincerely trust that, in spite of crafty, scheming bondholders, and blundering, shortsighted statesmen, the enterprising and indomitable Anglo-Saxon race is now only taking a step backwards to leap boldly forward the better in the immediate future.
We disdain to believe for an instant that when British workmen once fully realise what is now going on through the appreciation of gold they will tamely submit to be drained of their life-blood, and ground systematically down to poverty, degradation, and famine, to pamper and fatten their greedy and grasping rivals—the teeming and semi barbarous hordes of Northern Europe and Asia.
Although by means of an artificially contracted currency, and a viciously unjust standard of value they are now hopelessly handicapped out of the race of life, let their rulers only give them fair play and they can safely defy competition and hold their own fearlessly against every nation upon the face of the earth.
Printed by H. Brett, Evening Star Office, Shortland and Fort Streets, Auckland.
The use and occupation of the public estate of the colony of Victoria is regulated by two legislative enactments, viz.:—"The Malice Pastoral Leases Act
The Mallee Pastoral Leases Act came into operation on the 1st
The occupation of this portion of territory is acquired under leases, all of which will simultaneously expire twenty years after the commencement of the Act, and, on the expiration of this term, the land so leased, and all improvements thereon, revert absolutely to Her Majesty, her heirs, and successors.
The leases to be issued are classed under two divisions—the one having reference to Mallee allotments the other to Mallee blocks.
Mallee allotments range in area from one to thirty-two square miles each; they abut directly on or are adjacent to lands held either under lease or in fee-simple under the provisions of previous Land Acts.
The annual rent reserved on such allotments ranges from ten shillings to forty shillings per square mile, according to the natural grazing capability of the country included in such allotments.
Mallee blocks range in area from 10¾ square miles to 583 square miles, and are situated immediately to the north of the Mallee allotments, extending northward up to the banks of the River Murray.
The annual rent payable in respect of these blocks is calculated on the basis of 2d. for each sheep or 1s. for every head of cattle actually depastured on the block during the first five years, 4d. for each sheep or 2s. for each head of cattle during the succeeding five years, and 6d. for each sheep or 3s. for every head of cattle during the remainder of the term of the lease; but in no case is the annual rent of a block to be rated at less than 2s. 6d. per square mile.
Every Mallee block is subdivided into two moieties, the one of which, after being occupied by the lessee for a term of five years, reverts to the Crown, the other remaining in the occupation of the lessee for the full term of twenty years from the commencement of the Act.
The moieties so reverting to the Crown at the termination of the five years shall be dealt with as Parliament directs, and in default of such direction may be again leased as Mallee blocks or Mallee allotments, provided the term for which such land is so demised shall expire not later than twenty years after the commencement of this Act.
The right to a lease of any Mallee block is offered for by auction, and is acquired by the person who bids the highest sum by way of premium. If there be no bidder at auction, the right to a lease is granted to the first person who may thereafter lodge an application for the same and pay the annual rent assessed on the same.
The conditions under which Mallee land shall be held under lease are as follow:—
Government Gazette, possession of any land demised by the lease, upon payment to lessee for is interest in such lease, together with the value of all permanent improvements thereon.
If houses, fences, wells, reservoirs, tanks, dams, or other permanent improvements are, with the sanction of the Board, erected on the moiety of a leasehold held for the term of five years only, the lessee shall, on the termination of the occupation of such moiety, be entitled to compensation therefor not to exceed the amount actually expended.
No land forming part of the Mallee country demised under the provision of this Act shall be alienated in fee-simple.
Upon the resumption of any portion of the leasehold, or upon the termination of the period of the lease, the lessee shall be paid the value of all wells, reservoirs, tanks, or dams of a permanent character constructed by him during currency of lease, and calculated to increase the carrying capability of the leasehold.
The interest of a lessee in the value of any buildings or fencing erected by him is gradually extinguished as the termination of the lease is approached, except in the case of improvements being effected with the previous consent of the Board during the last five years of the lease, in which case full valuation for the same will be allowed.
Every transfer of a lease shall be registered at the office of the Board of Land and Works.
To ensure the destruction of vermin within the Mallee country, the Governor in Council may declare all or any portion thereof to be a Vermin District, whereupon the owners, lessees, and occupiers of land within such district shall elect local committees. Such local committees shall take measures to carry out the destruction of vermin within their several districts, and with that object may recommend for the approval of the Governor an annual rate or assessment to be paid by the owners, lessees, or occupiers in respect of each square mile of land, and also in respect of the sheep and cattle depasturing thereon, within such districts; but the payment of such rate or assessment does not relieve the lessees or occupiers from any obligation imposed on them by this Act to destroy vermin upon the land leased or occupied by them, and to keep the same free from vermin.
This Act came into operation on the
Under this Act the public estate is divided into 8 classes:—
These classes, and the scheme of subdivision in the two first, arc shown on separate county maps by distinctive colours and symbols.
These maps may be obtained at Lands Office, Melbourne, or any of the District Survey Offices throughout the colony, at the price of 2s. 6d. per copy.
These lands are divided into allotments varying in area from 5,000 acres to 40,000, with a capability of from 1,000 to 4,000 sheep or 150 to 500 head of cattle, the annual rent thereon being calculated on the basis of one shilling per head of sheep or five shillings per head of cattle.
The term of any lease under which such land may be occupied shall expire not later than fourteen years after the commencement of the Act.
When the rents of a pastoral allotment have been fixed, notice is given in the Government Gazette of a date on and after which applications to lease will be received and dealt with. If on that day or any subsequent day only one application be lodged in respect of a particular allotment, the applicant becomes entitled to a lease at the gazetted rental. If two or more applications be lodged, the right to obtain a lease is, after thirty days' Gazette notice, offered to public competition at auction, at which the person who bids the highest sum by way of premium becomes entitled to the lease.
The conditions of lease are as follow:—
Upon expiry of the term of the lease, the lessee, his executors, &c., shall be paid by an incoming tenant the value of all fences, wells, reservoirs, tanks, and dams erected or constructed by the lessee and calculated to increase the grazing capability of the land; but the sum to be paid in respect of such improvements shall not exceed that actually expended by the lessee thereon, and in no case exceed the sum of 2s. 6d. per acre of such land.
The lessee of a pastoral allotment at any time during the currency of the lease may select a portion of such allotment, not exceeding 320 acres in extent, as a homestead, in one block, and on payment of 20s. per acre may obtain a grant of the same.
With this exception, no pastoral land shall be alienated in fee-simple under the porvisions of this Act.
Grazing areas may vary in size, but shall not in any case exceed 1,000 acres, and not more than one grazing area shall be granted to or held by any one and the same person.
The term of all leases of grazing areas shall expire not later than fourteen years after the commencement of the Act.
The annual rent to be reserved in every lease of a grazing area shall be not less than 2d. and not more than 4d. per acre, and shall be payable in advance by half-yearly moieties.
Applications are to be lodged at the Land Office of the district in which the land is situated. A Local Land Board, in cases where more than one implication is made for the same land, investigates the applications and reports to the Minister.
Any person of the age of 18 years, not being a selector under any previous Land Act or Acts, is entitled to take up as a grazing area, and may, after issue of the lease, select thereout an agricultural allotment to an extent not exceeding 320 acres, which shall thereupon be excised from the lease. This privilege of so selecting an agricultural allotment out of a grazing area, however, is not permitted to a married woman who has not obtained a judicial separation.
Any selector under previous Land Act or Acts may take up a grazing area the acreage of which added to that previously selected by him shall not exceed 1,000 acres, and if he have not already selected the maximum of 320 acres allowed under previous Land Acts may, out of the grazing area leased by him, make up the deficiency in the selection hitherto obtained by him at any time, and hold the same under conditions of selection so long as the entire area so selected shall not exceed 320 acres.
In the covenants of a lease of a grazing area it is provided—
Upon the expiry of the term of a lease the lessee, his executors, &c., shall be paid by an incoming tenant the value of fences, wells, reservoirs, tanks, and dams erected or constructed on the leasehold, provided the amount so paid does not exceed the sum actually expended thereon, but in no case shall exceed the sum of 10s. per acre over the land comprised in such leasehold.
A licence to occupy an agricultural allotment is subject to the following limitations and conditions:—
The area to be held under licence may in no case exceed 320 acres. No licence shall be issued to any person who has selected under any previous Land-Act or Acts the maximum of 320 acres, or who has taken up a preemptive right to that extent, or is under 18 years of age, or who is a married woman, not having obtained a decree of judicial separation.
The conditions of such licence are as follow:—
If the above conditions are fulfilled by the licensee, he shall be entitled to obtain a grant of the land so licensed to him on payment of 14s. per acre, or may obtain a lease for a term of 14 years at a yearly rental of Is., payable in half-yearly moieties, and on the complete payment of 14s., reserved under lease, shall be entitled to a grant.
The Governor may also issue a "non-residence licence," to improve an agricultural allotment, for a period of six years, at a fee of 2s. per acre per annum, to any person entitled to become a licensee of an agricultural allotment under this Act who has applied for such licence and paid a half-year's fee in advance.
Under such a licence the land shall be enclosed within six years, and permanent and substantial improvements effected to the extent of 20s. per acre before the end of the third year of the currency of the licence, and before the end of the sixth year of the value of 20s. additional, on which the licensee may obtain a lease, the condition of which shall be the payment of 2s. per acre per annum for a term of 14 years—the entire sum payable in respect of the purchase-money of an allotment held under a "non-residential licence" being 40s. per acre.
Except as provided above, no lands included in the agricultural and grazing class shall be alienated in fee simple.
Such land may be held under licences issued for a period not exceeding one year, under which the licensees may reside on or cultivate any land coloured as auriferous on the county maps, and not situated within any city, town, or borough. Any such licence shall not cover more than 20 acres; and not more than one licence shall be granted to or held by any one and the same person.
No land coloured as auriferous on the county maps shall be alienated in fee-simple.
Annual licences for purely grazing purposes may be issued for the occupation of auriferous land that may not be required for mining purposes. Such licences are renewable annually for a period not exceeding five years. Such licence shall not be for a greater area than 1,000 acres, and no person shall so hold more than 1,000 acres of such auriferous land.
The annual rent per acre to be reserved in every such licence shall be fixed by valuers appointed by the Board of Land and Works.
The country lands that may be sold by auction are shown by a distinguishing colour on the county maps, but before any such lands are offered for sale a schedule of the lands proposed to be sold shall be laid before both Houses of Parliament.
The Crown lands within any city, town, or borough proclaimed before the passing of this Act, and any land proclaimed by the Governor in Council as a township, shall be sold by auction.
Notice of every such sale by auction shall be given in the Government Gazette at least 30 days before the date at which such sale shall take place.
The conditions of any sale by auction are that the purchaser shall pay the survey charge at the time of sale and a deposit in cash of 25 per cent, of the whole price, and that the residue of the price shall be payable by twelve equal quarterly instalments, bearing interest at the rate of 6 per cent, per annum, computed with respect to each instalment for the period elapsed between the time of sale and the time of the payment of such instalment.
From and after
There shall be inserted in every Crown grant of lands alienated in fee simple, and in every licence or lease of land demised with the right of acquiring the fee-simple thereof, a condition that such lands are granted or demised subject to the right of the holder of a miner's right or of a mining lease to erect and occupy mining plant or machinery in the same manner as if such land were Crown land, provided that compensation be paid for surface damage, and the payment thereof shall be a condition precedent to such right of entry.
These lands, as shown on the county lithograph plans, shall not be alienated in fee simple; but may be drained and reclaimed by prison or other labour, and when so reclaimed the Governor in Council may grant leases of such swamp lands so drained and reclaimed, in allotments not exceeding 160 acres, for a term of 21 years; particulars of every such lease to be laid before Parliament within one month of the execution thereof.
The lands comprised within State forests are shown on the county lithograph maps by a distinguishing symbol, and shall not be alienated for any freehold estate, but licences may be issued for grazing or residence thereon or to cut timber in any State forest, or any part thereof, subject to the payment of such licence fee and on such other conditions as may be approved by the Governor in Council.
These reserves, shown on the county lithographed plans by a distinguishing symbol, shall not be alienated in fee simple; but from time to time, as they may become denuded of timber and the same is notified in the Government Gazette, such lands so denuded may be added to the pastoral lands or agricultural and grazing lands, and dealt with under the provisions of this Act applicable to such lands.
Grazing licences or licences to cut timber on any timber reserve may be issued subject to the payment of such licence fee and under such conditions as the Governor in Council may approve.
No lands shown on the county lithograph maps as water reserves shall be alienated in fee simple.
Leases of any Crown lands not exceeding (except in the cases of leases for obtaining guano or other manure) three acres for a term not exceeding 21 years from the date thereof, at a yearly rental not less than £5, may be granted for any of the following purposes, provided that, in cases where it is proposed to issue a lease for a longer term than seven years, the application for the same shall be notified in four consecutive numbers of the Government Gazette, at least one month before the issue of such lease:—
Before any lease can be obtained for any of the purposes aforesaid within the boundaries of any city, town, or borough, the right to such lease shall be offered for sale by auction.
The person who offers the highest rent shall be entitled to the lease.
Licences may be issued to enter upon any Crown lands not under licence or lease as an agricultural allotment for the following purposes:—
Every such licence to bear date of the day on which it is issued, and may continue in force for a period not exceeding 12 months; and payments shall be made of such amount of fee as may be fixed by regulation.
All commons heretofore or hereafter to be proclaimed are, subject to the provisions of this Act, to be dealt with in the same manner as other portions of the areas in which they are included on the coloured lithographed county maps.
The managers of commons are appointed by the Governor in Council. They have power to distrain any cattle trespassing on the common under their management, and are to be taken to be occupiers of the common within the meaning of any Impounding Act, and shall be deemed to be the owners within the meaning of "The Rabbit Suppression Act
A grazing licence may be issued to any applicant to enter with cattle, sheep, or other animals upon any park lands, reserves, or other Crown lands not forming part of any common or held under lease or licence, and therewith to depasture the same; but such licence shall not prevent any person from obtaining a lease of portion of the same as a grazing area. Such licences can be obtained only after tenders have been duly invited for the occupation of the land.
The recent enactment known as "The Crown Lands Act of
Among the prominent features introduced are—(a) The territorial division of the colony into the Eastern, Central, and Western divisions, for the dealing with lands differently influenced by climate, settlement, and other causes; (b) the division of the several pastoral runs each into two fairly equal portions, of which the one is resumed by the Crown for subsequent alienation, leasehold, or reserve, the other remaining in the leasehold occupation of the pastoralist, under fixity of tenure for a term of years; (c) the creation of new classes of leasehold (explained in detail post); (d) the conservation of the landed security of the colony by a limitation of the aggregate area of Crown lands permitted to be annually sold by auction; (e) the abolition of the lessees' right to purchase by virtue of improvements; (f) the decentralization of the machinery for the working of the Act; together with (g) regulations of a stringent character intended to ensure the bona fides of those seeking the advantages of the law.
From the short period which has elapsed since the date of the commencement of the Act, it would be futile to endeavour to show any important statistical result of its actual working.
The condition of the public estate as on the
The total area of the colony being 195,882,000 acres, is divided thus—
The area alienated at that date may be estimated, in round numbers, as 37.000,000 acres; the relative proportion of alienated to gross area being—in the Eastern division, about one-third; in the Central, between one-third and one-fourth; and in the Western division, only a little more than one-fortieth.
In connection with these figures, it should be observed that the Eastern division has a greater and more regular rainfall, a denser population, and greater accessibility to market than either the Central or Western divisions, and land is consequently more in demand in the former, although railway construction is causing the Central division to become an important field for agriculture; while, except in special areas, the Western division remains the chief grazing tract of the colony.
Proceeding to view the Act in detail, we may first refer to its general administrative provisions.
For this purpose the colony is divided into a number of land districts, to which are allotted land agents, the duties of each of whom may extend over one district, or several adjoining districts, as may be directed. There are at present ninety-five such districts, with eighty-nine land offices, at each of which latter a land agent presides. Many important stages in the land system are conducted through these officers.
The policy of decentralization has brought into existence, by the new law, local courts, Known as Local Land Boards, each comprised of not more than three nor less than two members; the chairman being a salaried officer, and the members, who are locally selected, being entitled to fees.
Each Board is ministerial or judicial according to the nature of the proceeding to be dealt with. Several matters which have been commenced, but not concluded, under the repealed law, and some things which will require investigation under the existing law, may be referred to a Board for appraisement, inquiry, or report. In these cases the Board acts ministerially merely, and makes a report or recommendation to the Minister. In nearly all cases arising under the present law a Board acts judicially. Its proceedings are conducted analogously to those of a court of petty sessions; parties to causes before it may be heard by counsel, attorney, or agent; and, failing appeal to the Minister (in whom the appellate jurisdiction is vested, but who may in certain cases refer back to the court of first instance, and who may, if he desire, state a case for the Supreme Court), its decisions are final and binding upon the parties, with power vested in its hands to compel execution of its judgments. It may hear complaints, examine into caveats, direct reports, and demand evidence; and while its powers are for the most part set in motion by promovents, it retains an inquisitorial authority for the detection of illicit acts.
The Local Land Boards have their several districts, but, for convenience, the chairman is not necessarily the presiding member of one Board alone; and the head-office, which forms his head-quarters, is that of the various Boards over which he presides; thus in scattered parts of the colony avoiding unnecessary distribution of the machinery of the system.
There are now ninety-five Local Land Boards, with sixteen head-offices. For the impartial conduct of business, it is enacted that any member of such Board, sitting or acting in any case in which he is directly or indirectly interested, shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding £500. District surveyors and other officers are provided, whose advice and assistance are essential to the Boards.
It is computed that, at the
The land policy of former years had allowed the intending selector to establish a statutory claim to a limited area by entry and residence (certain forms of application, &c., being complied with) upon any unimproved part of the run occupied by the Crown lessee, which was under lease to him, and not specially reserved from sale.
The existing law requires the various run-holders (who have, as a body, conformed with the Act) to furnish plans of their holdings within 120 days from its commencement, showing a fairly even division of each, the Minister finally deciding, after amendment, if necessary, which half shall be resumed to the Crown, and for which remaining half a new lease should be granted to the present occupant on a firmer basis, as explained under "Occupation," post. In order to facilitate the division, where freeholds exist in situations rendering division a matter of difficulty, provision has been made for exchange or surrender to the Crown with compensation. Upon the determination of the division, the resumed portion may be occupied by the original lessee under occupation license (see post), until withdrawn by the granting of any lease or the sale of any land, the various methods of which latter may be dealt with under—
Land may be acquired—
In the Eastern division (which may be generally described as extending westerly from the coast line, with a maximum breadth of about 170 and a minimum of about 120 miles therefrom, running from the Victorian border in a north-easterly direction so far as geographical centres will allow), the conditional purchase is incepted by the intending selector lodging his application with the land agent on any "land office day"—a day notified for the purpose—for the area he desires to acquire, which in this division may not be less than 40 nor more than 640 acres. If the land be unmeasured, he must mark it and properly identify it. Should improvements exist thereon, the fact must be stated. Land structurally improved, other than by fencing to the extent of £1 per acre and upwards, in special cases, is exempt from conditional sale, but the selector can amend his application to exclude the improvements if he desire. If the land selected contain improvements of a less value than £1 per acre, the Local Land Board appraises their value, and payment, if the Crown be owner thereof, is made by the purchaser to the Government by annual instalments of a quarter of the appraised value; if the improvements are private property, the owner and purchaser arrange the terms of payment, the Board intervening in cases where the parties do not agree. But if the removal of the improvements be not likely to permanently injure the land, there is nothing to prevent the owner removing them within three months from the confirmation of the selection. Where improvements have been effected since the
Upon tender of application, the applicant deposits a sum of 2s. per acre for every acre applied for, together with a declaration of good faith and intention, with questions to be answered somewhat similar to the forms employed in the United States and in Victoria, but of rather less inquisitorial character. There is besides a stringent confiscatory clause to secure the integrity of these declarations, supported by provisions voiding any collusive agreements between persons inducing others to contract for the
The application for the conditional purchase being considered in open court by the Board, the surveyor's report being satisfactory, and no caveat or objection lodged, the applicant receives a certificate of confirmation, which is official recognition of his status as a conditional purchaser.
But this certificate cannot be issued until all caveats, objections, or appeals be disposed of. The purchaser then enters upon a five years' term of residence, within the first two years of which he must fence the area with a fence of the prescribed character at least four feet in height. (There is a latitude which may be exercised by the Board in this particular, both as to time and the natural features, upon application.) At the end of the third year from the confirmation referred to, or three months thereafter, the selector is required to declare that he has so far complied with the conditions essential, and to pay an instalment of 1s. per acre, to be annually continued until the balance of 17s. per acre, with 4 per cent, interest added, be liquidated. A further declaration is required at the end of five years (or three months after) that he has fulfilled the whole of the conditions, expect payment of balance; and the Board, after due enquiry, and no obstacles intervening, issues to him a certificate of fulfilment of conditions, known as the certificate of conformity. Every provision is made to ensure the proper attention to caveats or objections, and for appeal by aggrieved persons to the Minister; but having obtained this certificate, which is a transferable document if lodged with the transfer, the holder is competent to transfer his estate, with the contingent liability as to payment of balance, &c. (see "Transfer," post). Additional conditional purchases may be transferred with the original purchase, but cannot be separated until all the conditions have been fulfilled. The purchaser may, if he desire it, at this period pay off the remainder of his indebtedness to the Crown, and secure a deed of grant upon tender of the stipulated small fees; and he may equally, if he prefer, extend the time of purchase to a term of 30 years from the payment of the first instalment of Is. per acre (inclusive), the period being so lengthened by the collection at each annual payment of the interest chargeable. In default of the fulfilment of the residence and fencing conditions (which may at any time be the subject of an investigation by the Board), the purchase may be declared forfeited, and the land revert to the Crown, together with any additional conditional purchase or conditional lease acquired in virtue thereof. After the issue of the certificate of conformity, the payment of instalments in each purchase must be maintained, or each holding is equally liable to forfeiture.
These, then, are briefly the leading details attending alienation by conditional purchase in the Eastern division.
In the Central division the system is so far identical, with this exception that the area which may be taken in the original conditional purchase has a larger maximum, viz., 2,560 acres.
The Central division may be shortly referred to as having for its eastern boundary the western boundary of the Eastern division, and for its western boundary a line bearing about north-north-easterly from about the Lachlan-Murray junction to the Queensland border, with a mean width of about 117 miles, and watered by the Murray, Murrumbidgee, Lachlan, Macquarie, Namoi, and other rivers and tributaries.
The Western Division—which is bounded on the east by the Central Division, on the south by the Victorian border, on the west by the South Australian, and on the north by the Queensland border, and is chiefly watered by the Darling, Warrego, Barwon, and Lachlan rivers and tributaries—is unalienable by conditional purchase except within special areas.
Special areas may be proclaimed as set apart in any of the three divisions. In such areas not more than 160 acres may be conditionally purchased, the price (not less than 30s. per acre), deposits, and instalments, being notified in the proclamation.
The holder of a conditional purchase of less than 160 acres in a special area in any division may similarly, by additional purchase, bring it to that equivalent.
The combined purchase may be dealt with as one holding, and the selector may reside on the first selection to qualify both, and may fence the area as if there were no dividing line between the purchases. If he adopt the latter course, he may make the declaration of fulfilment of conditions required for the additional purchase at any time; but if he desire to extend a holding which is already 640 acres, and acquired under former acts, by addition under the present Statute, he must reside on either the original or the additional purchase for a further term of five years in order to qualify the latter. In all other respects conditional purchases under the repealed Acts may, equally with those under the existing law, form the qualification for the application for the additional area. The declarations and the payments to be made, as also the method and times of payment, are similar to those for the original purchases under the present Act, except in the matter of interest, which is reduced from 5 per cent, to 4 per cent.; but in cases where the prescribed declarations have been made for the
This is a concession by which an area of not less than 40 nor more than 320 acres may be acquired, with certain restrictions, without residence. The applicant must be of the age of 21 years or upwards, and not at any time previously have been a conditional purchaser. The purchase-money is payable in like manner as for the ordinary conditional purchase, but is double the amount. The purchaser must properly fence the land within twelve months after survey—a certain latitude being allowed in exceptional circumstances—and must produce to the Local Land Board, after an interval of five years from survey,' evidence that he expended not less than £1 per acre in improvements besides fencing. Upon producing such evidence he receives a certificate of conformity, and may then, and not till then, transfer, alienate, or mortgage his interest. The estate may, however, devolve "by operation of law" at any time, upon payment of the instalments due. If the purchaser, in his original application, had not taken the full area of 320 acres, he may acquire the unselected balance by additional purchase. Once, however, having availed himself of this method of selection to the maximum area, he is debarred from making any other conditional purchase whatever.
Special provision is made to enable residents on gold-fields to obtain the land upon which they have erected their residences or places of business. This they may do at a price to be fixed by the Local Land Board, not being less than £8 per acre for town lands, nor than £2 10s. for suburban or other lands, nor than £2 10s. for any area less than one acre.
The improvements to qualify the purchase need not be of greater value than these minimum rates. One person cannot purchase more than quarter of an acre of town land, nor over an acre of suburban or other land, nor can he make two purchases within three miles of each other. The purchaser must pay the full price within three months of notice, or be liable to a 10 per cent, penalty; and if he fail to pay the full price and penalty within six months, his right to purchase lapses. Lands in proclaimed gold-fields, within reserved areas, cannot be conditionally purchased, nor can lands lawfully occupied for mining purposes under any Mining Act; and further, all alienations of land under this Act are subject to the proviso that gold may be searched for thereon by persons properly licensed, and if the land be found auriferous the sale may be cancelled, wholly or in part, and the area become Crown lands, to be dealt with under the Statutes relating to mining in New South Wales. Any improvements which may be on the land at the time of such cancellation are to be compensated for to the owner, at their normal value, without reference to any enhancement from the discovery of the precious metal.
This form of tenure first appears in the Statute-book as part of the present Act, and may be described as a contingent leasehold privilege attaching to a conditional purchase, with a preferent right of conditional purchase in some cases, without residence after five years' tenure, or, sinking the preferent right, with an extension of the lease for a further five years, with residence.
By the system of pre-emptive leases in the land policy now repealed, a grazing right was accorded to the conditional purchaser of three times the area of his selection, which right was at any time liable to be reduced, or even cancelled, by alienation to other selectors. The system of conditional leases, on the other hand, gives a much more secure tenure. These leases are only obtainable in the Eastern and Central divisions, and may be granted to any applicant for a conditional or additional conditional purchase, or any holder of a conditional-purchase under any of the repealed Acts (special areas excepted); the area being limited to three times that of the purchase, the area of the purchase and lease together not to aggregate more than 1,280 acres in the Eastern, and 2,560 in the Central divisions; a smaller area—not less than 40 acres—being allotted if there be not more available.
The application may be confirmed or disallowed as in the case of conditional purchase, and if confirmed, the Local Land Board, with the approval, of the Minister, fixes the rent payable, which cannot be less than 2d. per acre. The holder may, if he
The preferent right to purchase the whole or part of the leasehold matures at the end of five years from the confirmation of the application, and should he so elect, the leaseholder may thereby become the conditional purchaser thereof, in the following manner:—He first lodges his application with the Local Land Board for a certificate of fulfilment of conditions of the leasehold, which, if granted, is prim âfacie evidence of his right to purchase the leasehold in whole or in part. If he prefer to purchase a part only, such part must adjoin the prior purchase. Furnished with this certificate, tie lodges' his application with the land agent for the preferent purchase, paying a deposit of 2s. per acre, which application is dealt with by the Board in open court; and failing caveat or objections, he ultimately, having paid the balance of the instalments as in the case of other conditional purchases, obtains the freehold.
Provision has been made for the conversion of pre-emptive leases under the repealed Acts (for which application was necessary within ninety days from
Residence on these converted leases is not essential, but the preferent right to purchase does not attach thereto.
The aggregate area allowed to be sold by auction, for the whole colony, in any one year, is 200,000 acres. Two to three months' notice is always given of any sale, and the minimum upset 'prices are fixed for town lands at £8; suburban lands, £2 10s.; and other lands, £1 5s. per acre. But a higher upset may be determined upon, and the value of any improvements be added thereto; and if the improvements were made in misapprehension, their value may be remitted to the improver. Twenty-five per cent, of the purchase-money must be paid at time of sale, and the balance within three months, or the deposit may be forfeited and the sale declared void. The maximum area which may be sold under the empowering section, is in the case of town lands, one-half acre; suburban, 20; and country lands, 640 acres.
This is a provision for enabling the public in certain cases to obtain the freehold of water frontage to their properties, which had been previously reserved from sale; to reclaim land beyond high-water mark in continuity of their freeholds; to secure slips of land inconvenient for conditional sale; and to procure the closing and inclusion m their purchased area of unnecessary roads previously excluded therefrom.
In the latter case, if the original purchase be conditional, the payments may be made as for a conditional purchase.
The price for the reclaimed land is based upon one-half the net market value, less cost of reclamation, as appraised by the Board; the prices for the intervening small areas are determined by the Minister or by the Board, but to be not less than the minimum upset price for the class of land if sold by auction; and the water frontage area must also be paid for in like manner. All costs, charges, survey fees, and purchase moneys must be paid within three months after approval of purchase, under penalty of lapsing thereof.
The aggregate area of country which was in the occupation of pastoral lessees from the Crown as at
The division of runs under the present Act has already been explained. One portion is dealt with as pastoral leaseholds, and the lessee can also hold the resumed portion under occupation license until alienated, reserved, or otherwise leased or dealt with.
The pastoral leases under the present statute, in the Western division, are for the term of fifteen years, commencing at the determination of the existing lease; or, if the same person is the holder of more than one lease, at the mean date of determination of the whole;
The rent is determined by the Minister, after appraisement by the Board, with a minimum of 1d. per acre for the first, increased for the second five years by one-fourth, and for the remainder of term the leave may have to run, by one-half. At the end of the third period an extension of the lease may be obtained on further appraisement, for a further term of five years, bearing a rental not less than that charged for the last period of the former currency. By giving two years' notice before the expiration of
Subdivision may be made of a pastoral lease upon application, subject to ministerial approval. Upon expiration, forfeiture, or surrender of any pastoral lease, the area may be either resumed or re-let, in the above or some other manner,
The principles governing the issue of pastoral leases in the Central division are similar; except that in this division the term is ten years, with right of extension for a further term of five years at a rental based on appraisement, the lease commencing from the date of notification of the division of the run, and the minimum rent being 1½d. per acre for the first five years, and increased by 25 per cent, for the remainder of the term.
In the Eastern division the minimum rent is 1d. per acre for the whole term of lease, which is five years; but there is an equal right of extension for a further five years at an appraised rent.
Should any rent be not paid within the prescribed time, or within three months' thereafter, plus 5 per cent., or six months plus 10 per cent., the lease is liable to forfeiture, which does not however extinguish the lessee's debt to the Crown in respect thereof.
The holder of a pastoral lease, at the time of making his application therefor, could also apply for a licence to occupy the resumed area until disposed of, paying at the same time a deposit of £2 per square mile in advance, until appraisement by the Local Land Board with that amount as a minimum licence fee.
The amount of licence fee as determined must be paid within sixty days of notification thereof in the Gazette, under penalty of loss of renewal, these licences being annual from the 1st of January in each year.
Failing application for the use of the land by the pastoral lessee, the licence may be disposed of by auction or tender.
Proportionate refund of license fee is made for area withdrawn from occupation licence, as well as compensation for improvements thereon, subject to appraisement by the Board and Ministerial approval; proportionate reduction in future fee pro rata is also made in similar circumstances.
This is the second of the new forms of leasehold tenure referred to at the commencement of this paper, and is only applicable to the Western division. It is a description of holding eminently suited to the small grazier, a class of persons hitherto not provided for; the maximum area procurable being 10,240, and the minimum 5,760 acres. The term of lease is fifteen years, and there is a right of extension for a further period of five years. The area selected as a homestead leasehold must be within a resumed area or vacant lands. The deposit required to be lodged with the application is 1d. per acre, in anticipation of the appraisement, and payment is also required for any improvements upon the land. The conditional requirements are (1) the fencing of the outside boundaries of the leasehold within two years from entry thereon (which latter must be within ninety days from the notification of approval of the issue of lease in the Gazette), subject to a certain latitude, by consent of the Board, on cause shown; and (2) residence for at least six months during each of the first five years of the lease.
A pastoral lessee, during currency of the tenure, cannot himself, or by others, hold a homestead lease; and vice versa, a homestead lessee cannot become a pastoral lessee during the currency of his homestead lease; nor can more than one homestead lease be held by the same person, under penalty, in each case, of forfeiture of the whole of his leasehold interest, for which purpose every part owner of a lease is reckoned as a principal; but exception is made where the registered holder is so registered for his security as mortgagee of one, or more than one, of either or both. A homestead lease may be transferred after the fulfilment of the residence conditions.
Are granted for areas not exceeding 1,920 acres, and are disposed of by auction or tender, the minimum upset annual rental being £2 per 040 acres or lesser area, or, if there be no bidding, may be let at the upset. Due notice is given of such auction sales or of the dates when tenders may be lodged. These leases are open to renewal, and 25 per cent, may thereupon be added to the former rental, but annual leasehold docs not exempt the land so leased from sale, or special or conditional lease.
Annual auction lease held under the former Acts (in the Eastern and Central division) are convertible into the above class of tenure, but if a higher rental has been paid than the minimum above quoted, no reduction can be made.
Are granted on equitable terms for the clearing of scrub lands, in which case, should the operations to that end have been satisfactorily initiated and pursued, concession is granted of an exemption from rent in certain cases for a limited period; and the holder of a pastoral or homestead lease may apply to convert the scrub part of his holding, if over 640 acres, into a holding of this description, but the area of the scrub lease may not exceed 10,240 acres. Special leases are also granted for purposes of irrigation, dams, tanks, bridges, sawmills, tramways, and other uses; and lands under water are also so obtainable. The lessee of lands where coal exists and is being worked pays a royalty of 6d. per ton, and is required to assist the Government inspector or other proper officer at all times to gauge the output, &c.
There is power to make reservations for the use of travelling stock and other public purposes.
It is estimated that no less than 35,000,000 acres at least are now under reserve in the interests of the public, including mining. There is provision in the Act for the dedication of land to the public, with or without trustees, and the reservation of lands along railway lines, and for towns, villages, commons, &c.-in fact for any public purpose within the meaning of the Act. For purposes of communication, land may be resumed for roads.
Proper forms are provided for this purpose, suited to the class of tenure. The cost is 10s. besides stamp duty (if any), and the instructions on the forms are so explicit that any non-professional person can prepare and complete them for registration. In the case of conditional purchases, the original and any additional may be transferred together after completion of residence, but not separately until all the conditions applicable to the whole (except payment of balance) have been fulfilled. Nor can a conditional lease be transferred except together with its qualifying conditional purchase. The registration of transfers under this Act, in the office of the Registrar-General, gives an important legal effect thereto.
Lessees are not permitted to ring-bark trees on their leases, except by permission and on payment of a fee of £2 for each 1,920 acres or lesser area. In order to conserve the timber and forests of the colony, provision is made for the reservation of areas as State forests, subdivisible into blocks either entirely reserved from destruction or thrown open for cutting by licensed persons only, at certain rentals, or on payment of certain prescribed fees. The limitations as to class of timber, girth, height, &c., are fully laid down, and further provision is also made for the detection and punishment of persons guilty of any infringement of the regulations, for which purpose forest rangers and other officers are appointed.
There are the necessary clauses giving legal force to acts properly performed under the statute, for conserving the rights of the Crown, and securing the proper disposal of the public estate.
It may be mentioned that the object of the foregoing paper has been to briefly epitomize the leading features of the land system of New South Wales. Care has been taken to keep close to facts, and avoid everything likely to confuse or mislead the reader.
The several Acts of Parliament under which alienation of the Crown lands was secured have been repealed by "The Crown Lands Act of
The administration of the Act is entrusted mainly to a "Land Board" specially constituted for the purpose, who from time to time hold public courts throughout the colony, at which all matters relating to inquiry, appeal, decision, costs, &c., are
For the purposes of this Act the colony is divided into two parts by an irregular line, starting about latitude 28° S., longitude 142° E., on the borders of New South Wales and South Australia; thence northerly in a north-easterly direction to within thirty miles of the coast, at 16° south latitude; and thence continuing round the whole peninsula., at a distance of about thirty miles from the sea, till it strikes the west boundary at thirty miles from the Gulf of Carpentaria, as described in Schedule 1 of the Act. That part between such line and the sea-coast is available, under the provisions of the Act, for agricultural and pastoral settlement. At the same time, a lessee beyond the limits just described may, if he think proper, come under the operation of the Act, and take advantage of the benefits derived therefrom.
Pastoral lessees, within the Schedule, who have brought their runs under the Act, receive a new lease for ten or fifteen years for a portion of their runs, estimated by the Board, according to rules laid down in the Act, at rents varying between 10s. and 90s. per square mile of available country.
In cases where lessees are holders of two or more conterminous runs, the entire holding is considered as consolidated, and treated as one block; and where the portion resumed by the Government is not required for immediate settlement, the pastoral lessee may continue to depasture his stock thereon (until the lands are disposed of). The rent payable for such grazing right is determined by the Land Board, but must not exceed that previously paid under the surrender pastoral lease. This rental will be subject to reductions if any of the country is required for selection. Unavailable country, on the resumed half for which a grazing right is granted, will also be allowed for as on the leased half.
In an "agricultural area" the maximum which may be selected by one person is 1,280 acres, but the Land Board have power to limit such maximum in any one district to a smaller area, not being less than 320 acres. This does not prevent any person from selecting up to the maximum area in other districts.
In "grazing areas" the maximum may vary from 20,000 to 2,560 acres, as may be determined by the Board.
The annual rental payable to the Crown for such lands is made public by proclamation. The minimum price for land in an agricultural area is 3d., and in a grazing area per acre per annum.
After an application to select has been confirmed by the Land Board, a licence to occupy is issued. A grazing farm must be fenced in within three years; and in the case of an agricultural farm, the selector must, within five years, either enclose the land with a fence or expend an amount equal to such fencing in improvements. The selector is then in a position to claim a certificate of fulfilment of conditions; such being notified to the Board, a lease issues, in the case of an agricultural farm for fifty years, and in the case of a grazing farm for thirty years. The rent payable for the first ten years is that stated in the proclamation declaring the land open to selection. Subsequent rents for each period of five years after the first ten years shall be determined by the Board.
The lessee must occupy the land continuously during the term of the lease, either personally or by bailiff.
Leases may be mortgaged, under-let in whole or part, or transferred.
Selectors under existing Acts may bring their holdings under this Act, receiving fresh leases and being allowed for the rents already paid, which, in most cases, will be found ample to prepay rents under the present Act for some years in advance.
In agricultural areas, the fee-simple may be acquired after ten years' personal occupation at the purchase price proclaimed in the proclamation.
Special provision, is also made in certain cases for acquiring freeholds not exceeding 160 acres at 2s. 6d. per acre after personal occupation for five years. (This is commonly called Homestead Selection.)
Occupation licences may be granted from year to year for any Crown lands not subject to a right of depasturing; such licence expires on the 31st December of the year in which it is granted, unless renewed, and the rental will be published when the land is proclaimed open to licence. It will be open to selection, and any area selected as a grazing farm or agricultural farm will be allowed for. No protection will be granted for any improvements erected during the licence to occupy.
Provision is also made for special grants, leases, reserves, and for compensation. All Crown grants issued under this Act contain reservations of all gold in or under the land comprised therein.
In South Australia the public estate is divided into country lands and town and, Land system
For country lands the minimum price is £1 per acre, this price being increased in the Price of country lands.
Lands not already held can be leased for pastoral purposes, without right of purchase, Pastoral leases.
No Crown lands are allowed to be selected until after they have been surveyed and declared open for sale.
When land is declared open for selection, the sections are offered for sale by auction, Mode of selection.
Within thirty-five days of the purchase, the purchaser has to sign an agreement Conditions attached to credit purchases.
All amounts paid by the purchaser on credit are regarded as purchase money. One-tenth Payments on credit purchases.
Persons who, having bid for land, refuse or neglect to make the necessary payments, Penalty for not taking land bid for.
Lands sold on credit are not allowed to be transferred, unless with the approval of Transfer of lands sold on credit.
Country lands offered at auction for cash and not sold, and which remain after-wards Leases for ten years.
Leases for twenty-one years.
About two million acres of land in the south-eastern portion of the colony are classified as "drainage lands," "first-class lands," and "second-class lands, ad these are reserved for leasing to personal residents only. Any one person may
Leases to be offered at auction.
Conditions of leases.
Extent allowed to be leased.
Town and suburban lands.
Mining leases.
The head of the department of lands is the Commissioner of Crown Lands, who
The colony is divided into five land districts, viz., Central, Central-Eastern, Soul Eastern, North, and Kimberley.
In the Central or Home district, land is alienated to the first applicant at 10s. acre, in lots of any size not less than 40 acres, except for garden purposes,
In the Central-Eastern, South-Eastern, and North districts land is sold in
In the Kimberley district land is sold at 10s. an acre to the first applicant, in blocks of not less than 200 acres, and leased for pasture at 10s. per 1,000 acres, in blocks of not less than 50,000 acres on frontages, and 20,000 where there is no frontage. Leases in this district terminate also at the end of
Leases and licences can be transferred with the approval of the Commissioner of Crown Lands, and on payment of a fee of 10s.
New regulations will be proclaimed before
Lessees are entitled to receive from the purchasers of land within their leaseholds the actual value of any improvements they have made on the land purchased.
Town lands are sold by public auction, the upset price being fixed by the Government.
Timber.—Licences to cut timber are issued at 5s. a month for each man employed. Special licences, at £20 per annum for each 640 acres, are also issued. To encourage timber companies on a large scale, special concessions are given.
Minerals.—Leases for areas not less than 20 acres are granted for seven years, on certain conditions, at a rental of 5s. an acre, and the land can be purchased by the lessee at £3 an acre, provided certain machinery has been erected and that the mine has been properly worked.
This Act, sometimes known as the "Torrens Act," has been in force several years, and is of great importance as affording an easy and cheap means of dealing with land. All Crown grants are issued under its provisions.
This new district comprises that portion of the colony lying to the north of 19° 30′ south latitude. Its area is about 134,000 square miles, of which 62,084 square miles arc leased from the Crown, and the remainder (about 71,916 square miles) is open to selection at 10s. per 1,000 acres per annum.
Free selection to purchase, subject to approval, is allowed; and land in any quantity over 200 acres can be bought at 10s. per acre.
A town site named "Derby" has been surveyed on the eastern shore of King Sound, and a Government station (with a magistrate) has been formed there. When the last returns were sent in there were 46,839 sheep, 960 cattle, and 287 horses on the Fitzroy and Lennard rivers, near Derby, besides a large number of cattle on the Upper Ord river that have been driven across from Queensland. The country on the Ord river is now being surveyed, and will no doubt be speedily settled; and Cambridge Gulf, the natural outlet of this portion of the district, will probably become a place of some importance. This magnificent harbour has recently been visited by Staff-Commander Coghlan, R.N., and his interesting and valuable report has been printed and can be obtained on application to the Survey Office, Perth.
Running streams are numerous in the northern portions of this district, and splendid alluvial plains exist in the valleys of the rivers, which it is hoped may be suitable for tropical culture.
A very great deal of attention has been drawn to it from the eastern colonies, and extensive areas are held on lease by outside capitalists.
Horses, cattle, and sheep thrive well, and it is believed by all those best qualified to judge that it will be a large wool-producing country.
The Government have already expend led £10,000 in surveying the district and examining its geology, and there appears to be a good prospect of a payable gold-field being discovered. In his report on the geology of the district, Mr. Hardman, the Government Geologist, states:—" I am glad to be able to report that I have discovered a large area of country which I believe will prove to be auriferous to a payable degree. This country is traversed by the Margaret, Mary, Elvire, Panton, and Ord rivers, and
"On the whole, the indications I have met with point, as I believe, to the great probability of payable gold being obtained in this part of Kimberley, and are, 1 consider, sufficient to justify the expenditure, either by the Government or private individuals, of a reasonable sum of money in fitting out a party to thoroughly test the country, and I should strongly recommend such an undertaking. I would also suggest the advisability of parties going up for this purpose providing themselves with some simple apparatus for crushing and washing some of the reef-quartz, as in one very rudely conducted experiment of this kind I obtained a small quantity of gold."
Land system.
Agricultural lands.
Price and mode of payment.
And so in proportion for any greater or smaller area than 100 acres.
The land may be selected before survey, but must be surveyed afterwards, Selection before survey.
The selector must, under the penalty of forfeiture of his allotment, either in person Residence neccssary.
Until the time the purchase is completed, only one lot is allowed to be held by an One lot only to be selectod.
As soon as 500 acres, in not less than ten adjoining or closely contiguous lots, have Construction of roads.
Minors not being legally able to enter into contract for the purchase of land, are not Family selections.
The balance of the purchase money of any lands selected, or taken up on credit, may Balance may be paid off.
No portion of land of which the price is less than £15 sterling is allowed to be purchased Price of credit lands must exceed £15.
No purchaser of land on credit is allowed to transfer his interest in such land unless Transfer of interest.
Town lands are sold only by auction, the upset price being fixed by the Crown Town lands.
Agricultural lands may also be sold by auction in lots of not less than 320 acres each. Agricultural lands.
Pastoral lands embrace all lands not included in the foregoing classes. They are Pastoral lands.
In the case of lands of all classes sold by auction, the cost of survey and of the grant Cost of survey and Crown grant.
With the exception of town lands situated within five miles of the city of Hobart Lands passed at auction.
Rent of runs.
Land system.
Town and suburban lands.
Village lands
Rural lands.
Mode of payment for land.
Deferred payments.
Residence compulsory.
The holder under the deferred payment system of suburban lands must bring into Improvements.
Any selector who has complied with the conditions of his purchase for a period of three years may apply to have the value of the unpaid instalments capitalized at the present value of an annuity of the same amount as the payments required to be made by the selector and payable for the same period. Interest shall thereafter be paid at the rate of 5 per cent, per annum by the selector instead of the half-yearly instalments. The interest is payable on the 1st January and 1st July in each year. After the capitalized value has been ascertained any selector may immediately pay off the whole, or he may, on the 1st January or 1st July, pay any portion of such capitalized value in sums of not less than £10, and thereafter the interest payable shall be proportionately reduced. At any time between six and fourteen years of the date of his licence the selector shall be entitled to his Crown grant, if he has paid the whole of the capitalized value, with interest at the due dates.
Land within proclaimed gold-fields is let under agricultural leases, under conditions Agricultural leases on gold-fields.
The homestead system is Homestead system.
Original holders of pastoral licences are entitled to the pre-emption of 320 acres in Pre-emptive rights.
Any person who does not own the freehold of, or who does not hold a licence or lease Leasing with perpetual rights of renewal
Leases are submitted to public competition at an upset rental equal to 5 per cent, on Auction and price.
The term of each lease is 30 years; renewal at periods of 21 years. Term.
Surrenders are permitted with the consent of the Land Board. Surrenders.
The same as in the case of deferred payment lands. Residence and improvement.
Any lessee holding a lease outside a gold-field shall have the right of purchase if he Rights to acquire freehold.
Three years before the end of the term of the lease valuations are made by arbitration Renewals.
If the lessee will not accept a fresh lease on the new valuation, the lease is submitted to auction, and if another takes the place of the lessee he has to pay the value of the improvements to the outgoing lessee.
Number forming an association and areas which may be taken up. Reserves. Survey.
Price and mode of payment. One-third returned for local roads.
Residence
Improvements.
Mode of disposal. Extent. May be resumed for settlement. Homestead Saving for improvements. Leases may be for 21 years. Disqualification for holding pastoral leases.
Land remaining unsold.
Note—Since the above was written, the terms and conditions of land settlement in New Zealand have been considerably modified by the Land Act Victorian Year-Book.
By Authority: John Ferres, Government Printer, Melbourne.
No country has invested her resources to greater advantage than Britain has invested hers, in planting and peopling her splendid Colonies and Dependencies. For India and Canada Britain fought many a battle, and paid a high sum. But Australia cost scarcely any amount, except, if we may so say, the money value of the men and women sent thither to work. From in esse or in posse, developed already, or as yet only partially developed, represented in this magnificent Exhibition? Sovereigns have been wont to invite one another, and especially those whom they most dreaded, to witness their military or naval forces at grand reviews or parades. Her Majesty the Queen invites the world to witness the imposing resources of her Empire, happily destined not to destroy, but to feed, clothe, and comfort the sons and daughters of toil all the world over.
The British Colonial Empire has been constructed, not under instruction or guidance of authority, not on the initiation or dictation of the State, but by the spontaneous action of the people, who, as by instinct, sought the countries best suited for their labour and wants, or most likely to open for them a new field for trade and commerce. And experience shows how vastly superior is a colonial system, free and untrammelled, over one close and fettered. So long as India was the monopoly of a commercial company the commercial relations between England and India were of the most limited nature. Immediately the monopoly ended the trade with India immensely increased. Happily, all the other colonies were made free from the very first to all comers, and they are to this day the land of promise to every strong arm and stout heart willing and ready to land on their shores. The conditions of a virgin soil like Australia and British North America, previously lying helpless for want of workers, and a
par excellence.
We must, however, not look backward, but forward, and the question before us is this: Given conditions of labour in this country by no means reassuring, given actual difficulties in getting work for a large and an ever-increasing number of workpeople, and wages at home scarcely equal to the actual cost of living, what may be the prospects of emigrating to this or to that colony? Quite apart from any chance of meeting any extraordinary good luck from gold discoveries or other wonderful occurrences, altogether beyond prevision, would a workman, or any one, really improve his condition by paying his fare and going? Many are the causes which induce emigration. A natural desire to improve oneself, or to provide better prospects for one's children, love of venture and restlessness of character, the invitation of friends already gone, or misfortunes, or wreck in character or industry, as well as the constant inducements offered by emigration societies and shipping companies, all stimulate moving. But certain sober questions must be answered affirmatively before the resolve can be safely made. Has the intending emigrant a sufficiently robust constitution to stand fatigue, hardships, and privations? Has he the strong will to overcome difficulties, and to defy, if need be, disasters or hindrances? Has he the self-mastery needed to combat any temptation in himself, either of vice or excesses? Has he shrewdness of intellect and good reasoning power to plan and design right? Is he ready to turn his hands to anything he can find to do, or to take any employment, however uncongenial? If the intending emigrant does really possess these qualities let him go. If not, let him stay.
But then there is the question of ways and means. Here he knows what he can get, and what are his weekly expenses. Is there any mode of estimating what is the relation of wages to the cost of living in the colonies? Let us see. From any calculations of this character we must, of course, exclude the cost of all extravagances or wasteful habits, which may be indulged in anywhere. We must take into account the cost of only what is required to maintain a life of health and usefulness; though even within the limits of
But if we cannot get at the absolute cost of living of any family, in all the colonies, by any definite standard, we may arrive at their relative cost by taking the prices of certain leading commodities used by a working man's family in this country, and comparing what the same quantities of each will cost here and in the colonies. Supposing, for instance, that a working man's family, consisting of father, mother, and three children, will, in England, consume weekly say 28lb. bread, 41b. of meat, 1lb. butter,½lb. cheese, 3lb. sugar, and½ lb. tea, what will be their cost in each colony? The cost of food doubtless is only a portion of the cost of living. There is clothing, there is house rent, there are fire and light. There are education, church, and charity. There are expenses of travelling and amusements, to say nothing of the doctor's bill and the tax-gatherer's call. Generally, however, the cost of food carries away full sixty per cent, of the personal expenditure of a family. Fortunately for our purpose, the statistical tables published by the Board of Trade relating to the colonial and other possessions of the United Kingdom, the latest number of which refers to
In the Cost of Living given at page 6, the cost of Bread in England is put down at 6d. per lb., instead of 6d. the quartern loaf; the weekly cost being 3s. 6d., instead of 14s. Accordingly, the total weekly cost of the articles named is 10s. 6½d., or annually I £27 8s. 2½d., making a total, with other things, of £54 8s. 2½d., thus leaving a surplus income of £16.
It will be seen from the table that the same quantities of articles of food which in England cost 21s. per week, or £54 per annum, in Australia would cost 9s. 9½d. a week, or £25 a year; in Canada, 13s. 2d. per week, or £34 a year; in the Asiatic Colonies, 12s. 5d. per week, ox £32 a year; in the West Indian Colonies, 16s. 3d. per week, or £43 a year; and in the African Colonies, 22s. per week, or £57 a year. But what is more interesting is that when we add 50 per cent, for other items of expenditure, and place against the whole the income based on the wages of the best paid class of labourers, the Budget for the year shows a handsome surplus in Australia, Canada, and at the Cape or Natal, but an absolute deficiency everywhere else, which is tantamount to saying that many of the articles of food which are accounted as necessaries in England must be dispensed with in every colony except Australia, Canada, and the Cape. Only nature provides other articles of food more suited to the climate, and the whole course of life is different. The wages are high in Australia and Canada, but not so in other colonies where native labourers are numerous.
Widely different, again, from all this is the condition of labour in British India. From official reports published in connection with the recent famine, regarding the daily life and circumstances of cultivators, and from a return of the average annual prices of food, grains, and salt, with the wages of skilled and unskilled labour, published in Calcutta, it appears that the average wages of an able-bodied agricultural labourer in India may be taken at six rupees per month, and the average wages of a common mason, carpenter, or blacksmith at fifteen rupees per month. At is. 6d. per rupee, such wages give little more than £6 and £13 per annum respectively.
If India and several British colonies offer but little scope for saving to British emigrants, Australia, Canada, and the Cape leave abundant margin for thrift and accumulation. A comparison of banking deposits in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom gives the following results. In
No better evidence can, moreover, be given of the appreciation of emigration by the emigrants themselves, and of the scope afforded for accumulation, than the facts that those who have emigrated are constantly sending money home to pay for the passage of their relatives and friends. Within the six months from
To the emigrant, next to the relation of wages to the cost of living is certainly the consideration of climate and health. The British Islands enjoy a temperate and, for the most part, an eminently healthy climate, their situation in the middle latitude of the temperate zone comparing most favourably with that of other regions of the globe. It is not likely, therefore, that the emigrant will prefer going to live under a tropical sun, as in the West African Settlements or the West
Climate, language, religion, laws, determine the choice of colonies. Of 100 emigrants from the United Kingdom, 75.86 go to North America, 18.98 to Australia, and 5.16 to other countries. Of 100 emigrants from Germany 95.83 go to North America, 3.24 to Central and South America, and 0.93 to other countries. Of 100 from Italy 75.22 go to Central and South America, 18.59 to North America, and 6.19 to other countries.
The great attraction, however, for an emigrant in leaving the mother country is the chance of ready employment. Generally speaking, what the emigrant proposes is either to get some land and cultivate it, or to work at the mines, or to engage in domestic service. It is not for the production of manufactures, or the cultivation of the fine arts, or literature, but to work the land and produce raw materials, or articles of food, that he leaves his home. What he must be prepared to do is to produce sugar and molasses, coffee and rum, in the West Indies; wool and meat in Australia; wool and wine at the Cape; coffee in Ceylon, wheat in Canada, and ever so many more articles in other colonies, or perchance go in search of gold in Australia, or of diamonds at the Cape of Good Hope. And in so doing he fulfils the highest economic mission of creating wealth where no wealth was created before. It has been suggested that for national purposes, if not on economic grounds, manufacturing industry ought to be fostered in the colonies, even at the expense of imposing heavy protective duties. And Canada and Victoria have so far acted on this principle that they have imposed high import duties in the hope that they will some day become great manufacturing centres. But is not this going against nature? Surely the colonies have a noble place assigned to them in the world's division of labour, when they
To the commerce of the United Kingdom the growth of the British colonies and India is of immense value, for they provide the United Kingdom with many of the raw materials and articles of food of which she stands in need, and they are consumers of goods and produce of which Britain can dispose in abundance. In
The following table shows the progress of imports and exports in some of the principal colonies and India per head of the population in
Much has been said of late on the assumed change of front on the part of public writers respecting the real value of colonies. No economist has ever doubted the immense advantage resulting from the superior productiveness of capital and labour when applied in a new country, and fresh soil, or the relief which the colonies have afforded, and still afford, to the pressure of population on the means
The number of emigrants from the United Kingdom of British or Irish origin, in proportion to population, was as follows:—
In the year
The Exports of British Produce and Manufacture from
A fresh impetus has recently been given to colonial enterprise by the action of foreign States, and by England also. Within the last few years France has sought fresh territory in Tonquin, Germany has joined in a scramble for Africa, Italy has obtained a footing on the coast of the Red Sea, Belgium has undertaken to establish and civilise the Congo territory, whilst England has advanced to Burmah and made fresh annexations in North Borneo. It is well to remember that a simple acquisition of territory is of but little value unless its economic conditions are likewise favourable. British colonies, favourably situated by climatic conditions and economic resources, have prospered. Those otherwise placed are more a burden than a benefit. Foreign States should moreover, remember that the source of increase lies in the people much more than in the State. British colonies have prospered because the Anglo-Saxons are a prolific people, of insular, yet of a roaming disposition-a people, too, possessed of much tact, skill, and perseverance. The French colonies have not prospered because the French themselves have never shown disposition either to increase in numbers or to emigrate, and have neither the tact nor the skill to regulate their affairs less by abstract theories than by practical experience.
It is about three hundred years since Sir Walter Raleigh, having obtained a charter of colonisation, dispatched a fleet laden with colonists to Virginia, and about two hundred years since William Penn obtained a grant of the extensive territory called Pennsylvania, which he wished to constitute "a free colony for all mankind." See what the United States of America, only about one hundred years old, are now, with their fifty millions of people; and who can tell how many millions will yet people Australia The Government Statist of Victoria, Sir Henry Kelyn Hayter, C. M. G., in his last report, stated that the rate of increase of the population of Australia, combined with Tasmania and New Zealand, in the decennial period intervening between the two last Censuses, was 42 per cent, and that, supposing the same rate of increase to be maintained, the probable population Australasia, which in
Those marked with an * and the Officers constitute the Executive Committee.
It is with much regret we have to announce that since the Annual Meeting, our late Treasurer, Mr. A. C. Swinton, has been compelled, by ill health and defective sight, to relinquish active duties for a while. He still remains a member of the Council with undiminished interest in the Society's work, and will, we hope, at not a distant date, resume his accustomed activity in the cause.
Mr. Wallace began by remarking that there were several indications of the essential principles of Land Nationalisation having made progress in quarters where it had hitherto been received with little favour. He instanced Mr. Jesse Colling's Allotment and Small Holdings Bill, which, he was informed, was now modified so that local authorities were no longer empowered to sell the freehold of land to occupiers, but were in all cases to retain a perpetual ground rent equivalent to about half its nominal value. This may be considered to ensure that the occupier shall always be owner of the tenant-right and pay a rental for the bare land at a low valuation.
Mr. Bradlaugh's Land Cultivation Bill adopted the principle that the State should take possession of all lands which had been a allowed to go out of cultivation, paying the landlords the rental for 25 years as full compensation, and thereafter letting (not selling) the land to working cultivators
It is worthy of note in this connection that under the old Saxon law of England "the mere neglect to cultivate or inhabit the land involved its confiscation to the King's hand," and that this law was continued during feudal times is shown by the fact stated by Hume in his History of England, "that in the year The statements as to these laws are taken from a pamphlet, "Land Lessons, Irish Parliaments, and Constitutional Criticisms," by Clio. James Duffy & Sons 1, Paternoster Row.
As an instance of the extraordinary carelessness with which people write upon the laud question he might mention, that, in last month's issue of the Nineteenth Century there was an article by Lady Verney who quoted a French economic writer, M. Lafargue, as follows, as regards the peasant proprietors of France:—"There are ten millions of small proprietors in France who, with their families, consume as much as they produce; they eke out a scanty subsistence, and vegetate miserably, condemned by their voluntary isolation to a labour as severe as it is unproductive. The condition of agriculture brought about by our subdivision of the land, and the distance from each other of the morsels belonging to one owner, condemn a man to work such as animals and machines ought to execute; and not only reduces him to the level of a beast, but curses the soil with sterility..... Three millions of the small proprietors are on the pauper list of France."
Now it had never struck Lady Vernon or the editor of the Average 3.71 to a household-37 millions proprietors-rather more than The actual peasant-proprietors of France are about 2½ Nineteenth Century that such a state of things was absolutely impossible. Ten millions of proprietors and their families would amount to 87,000,000, the total population of France being 86,900,000! The real number of peasant proprietors was about three millions.total Population! 1 Total population, 36,900,000.millions, and this is perhaps an over-estimate, because those having land in different communes will often be counted twice.
Mr. Wallace then suggested that what they required in the future would be to get some members of Parliament to put forward preliminary resolutions or motions, or to bring in bills something to this effect. The first should be a resolution that no land the property of the State should be ever sold or permanently alienated. Hitherto the practice had been just the reverse. Secondly, that all manorial rights should become the property of the State, holders being compensated on a fair basis. It would be a comparatively easy and small operation on the basis of the actual net proceeds. Thirdly, that all Crown, State, Municipal, or Corporation lands should be let out in small holdings on our principle—that is, at a quit-rent for the bare land, the tenant to purchase the improvements, and the quit-rent to be revised at long periods. If that was applied to the Crown lands, Municipal lands, and vast Corporation lands, especially in Ireland, it would at once throw open a large area of land on which the experiment of Land Nationalisation could be tried. Fourthly, the total abolition of the Game Laws, which not only create crime, but keep land out of cultivation, and set up a barrier against land reform. He would further suggest that a memorial, or petition, should be got up to the effect that, in any proposal for buying out the Irish landlords, the land should be retained by the State to let out at quit-rents on a permanent tenure. This would lay down the general principle that the State should never alienate the land of the country whenever it has been in any way obtained by the State.
Mr. Wallace then made some remarks on the mode of compensating landlords by means of terminable annuities, which he had first suggested, and which had been adopted by the Society. He had found by conversation with many intelligent persons not opposed to the principle of Land Nationalisation, that there was a great objection to this method as being opposed to popular ideas of giving full value for the land, and also of giving the landlords a marketable security which it was thought a terminable annuity would not be. His attention had just been called to this subject by reading Mr. Wicksteed's able book, "The Land for the People," in which that gentleman had suggested a mode of dealing with the landlords more acceptable perhaps to the bulk of the middle and upper classes than the mode their Society had advocated. Mr. Wick-steed proposed that the landlords should be paid in bonds, bearing 3½ per cent, interest at 30 years' purchase of their ground rents, and he showed very clearly from the past history of the increased value of ground rents in this country that, from their steady increase in value, which there was no reason to believe would stop, these bonds could be bought up and altogether paid off in 40 years, supposing the increase went on as at present, namely, at the rate of two per cent, per annum. That was a point of the greatest importance. If we gave 2-5 years' purchase it would be done still more easily, and if we took a little longer term, say 50 or 60 years, we might get year by year a large decrease of taxation; and you would have what you specially want, viz., the means of showing the people that, though you pay the Landlords the full market value of the land, the result would be that, owing to the continuous increase in the value of the land, they would be able, by paying off these bonds, to extinguish the debt altogether in a comparatively short period—say of two generations—and at the same time year by year reduce taxation, and at last, when the debt was all paid off, the whole of the ground rents would become the property of the State and serve in lieu of taxation altogether.
From the report of the last Agricultural Commission he found that considerable pains had been taken to ascertain the real cost of management of great estates and it was stated that it varied from 15 to 20 and sometimes 80 per cent. It was, therefore, not the actual rental of the land the landlords would require to be compensated for, but the net rental, viz.—the rental less this percentage. The State would receive the rents, less say 2 per cent, for collection, and the balance, after paying the landlord's interest, would be clear profit and go to reduce taxation. The system of terminable annuities was always objected to as giving a temporary instead of a permanent security. If by adopting Mr. Wicksteeds plan we could do away with this objection by giving the landlords consols and yet pay them off in 40 or 50 years we should get all the benefits of Land Nationalisation even more certainly and quickly than by the present scheme of the Society.
"First. Value the ground rental of the country (by ground rental I mean the rent of the land), without buildings or removable improvements." "Second. Compensate the landowners by giving them Government bonds to the amount of 30 times the ground rent, bearing a fixed interest of 3½ per cent, per annum, which would be the amount of the ground rent. For the re-assurance of those who may regard these terms as too liberal to the landholders, Mr. Wicksteed stated at the Society's Annual General Meeting that he by no means bound himself to the proportions here indicated. These marked the limits of national generosity. Any reduction in these terms would, of course, hasten the process of Land Nationalisation. "Third. As the land was valued and the bonds were given to the landowners, the land so valued would fall under the control of Land Boards to be created, or of some local body already in existence. These bodies would collect the rents and pay the interest on the bonds through the Imperial exchequer."Note.—The following extracts from Mr. Charles Wicksteed's book. "The Land for the People" (Reeves, 188, Fleet Street, E.C.), will give further information respecting his method of expropriation:—
"Fourth. Assuming that the rent would increase, devote any excess over the original amount of interest to the redemption of the bonds.
"Fifth. As the bonds are paid off, use the interest thus set free, not in redeeming the bonds but in relieving taxation, pp. 8, 9. (Mr. Wicksteed goes on to show that rents, taking town and country together), have always been increasing during the last 300 years, that they have increased with great rapidity during the last fifty years, and must continue to do so while population grows; that they will increase more rapidly than ever if our industries are liberated by the Nationalisation of Land. But assuming the increase of rents during the past 10 years to be the normal one in the future, then the Nation's liability, by his method, will be extinguished in 10 years, an immense reduction of general taxation going on the meanwhile. Assuming, however, that the increase be only half this, still the Nation's liability will cease in 71 years.
A remarkable coincidence in treatment of the question is shown by an important letter in last week's "Mr. Giffen takes the judical rent to be £8,000,000, equivalent, at 20 years' purchase, to a capital of £160,000,000. Why should not the Irish Government, when constituted, create the requisite amount of Irish three per cent. Consols, transfer the stock to the landlords in discharge of all claims, and make the agricultural soil of Ireland national property. "The interest charge on £160,000,000 at 3 per cent, is £4,800,000. A rental of £8,000,000 leaves a big margin for redemption by sinking fund. One per cent, or £1,600,000, just half the surplus, would cancel the entire debt in less than fifty years. The debt redeemed, the rents would become a substantial unencumbered addition to the Irish revenue. I adduce Mr. Giffen's figures, without adopting them, merely to show how the scheme would work financially." "For the landlords the terms suggested would be less favourable than those contained in Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill by just the difference in value between English and Irish credit."Statist in which Mr. H. Seymour Trower makes a very similar suggestion as regards Ireland. He says:—
"The tenure of land in Ireland is based on confiscation in the past. The landowners of to-day, although not responsible for that past, owe their inheritance to it. It is impossible they should altogether escape the Nemesis of wrongs upon which their entire claim for compensation ultimately rests.
Again, our new treasurer, Mr. Soper, in his tract on "Landlordism: What it is; What it does; and what should be done with it," makes an almost identical proposal by compensating landlords by means of bonds which will give them an income equal to their rentals, less costs of management and losses from bad tenants and bad seasons.
Mr. Wallace concluded with the following remarks:—
"Here we have a remarkable identity of plans proposed by three original thinkers. It is more in accordance with general public opinion than our plan, it will enlist in its favour a large body of the upper and the commercial classes who have an almost superstitious regard for what they consider to be a permanent and negotiable security; and as we can give them this and retain all the essential advantages of our plan, I certainly think it will be true wisdom and sound policy to adopt it. As the originator of this plan of terminable annuities I may be supposed to look upon it with some parental affection; but the success of Land Nationalization is more to me than any scheme, and as I feel that this success will be ensured by the adoption of State Land Bonds or Consols in lieu of terminable rentals to compensate landlords, I willingly sacrifice my weakly offspring for the public good, and I strongly recommend the Society to make this alteration in its programme."
Mr. Wallace then announced his proposed lecture tour to America and Australia, which would necessitate his absence at the next Annual Meeting—a matter of little importance to the Society, as there were several talented Vice-Presidents who would worthily occupy his place.
The Society earnestly desires to enlarge the area of its work, but the vigour of its action depends upon the financial means at its disposal. Special appeal is therefore made to all who realise that the extent of the Nation's trade depression and perilous pauperism is primarily due to the existing system of land tenure, Reformers are invited to give effect to their convictions either by personal effort in connection with the Society, or by such pecuniary aid as they can afford to give it.
Concurrence with the Society's principle of Land Nationalisation, and Annual Subscription to its funds, are the conditions of membership. A Donation of £5 5s., or more, confers Life membership.
Remittances may be sent to the Treasurer, F. L. Soper, Esq., 57, Charing Cross, London, W. Cheques to be crossed "London and County Bank, Covent Garden." P.O. Orders to be made payable at Bedford Street, W.C.
All who are interested (and who are not?) in Land Law Reform are cordially invited to become members of the Society, and to assist it in the formation of Branches. Copies of the Society's detailed Scheme Rules, and other Literature may be had on application.
The Council, as far as possible, supply Lecturers where friends find a Chairman and a Public Room, and are always glad to hear from those willing to co-operate in the movement.
"The first thing the Student has to do, is to get rid of the idea of absolute ownership. Such an idea is quite unknown in English law. No man in the law is the absolute owner of his lands. He can only hold an estate in them."
"No man made the land; it is the original inheritance of the whole species! The land of every country belongs to the people of that country."
From the sudden and unavoidable circumstances referred to at the last Annual Meeting, an officially audited Financial Statement could not then be presented. On the present occasion, therefore, Balance Sheets for the last two years are submitted, showing for
In consequence of the heavy expenditure incurred by the Society during the last General Election, and the unfavourable state of the times for financial support to any public work, the Executive accepted the resignation of the Assistant Secretary, Mr. R. B. Holt, last February, and since then all the Society's work has again been voluntarily carried on. In stating this the Executive record their sense of the earnestness and devotion of Mr. Holt in the cause of Land Nationalisation.
Either by means of the Press, or by correspondence, and the circulation of literature—which have hitherto been the Society's three main modes of Educational action-no opportunity has been lost of appealing to every one who has, within the knowledge of the Executive, shown an open spirit to thorough Land Reform. But the concentration of public interest on Parliamentary subjects during the past twelve months, to a large extent diverted attention from the essential Land Reform movement; and, thereby, the number of Lectures delivered on behalf of the Society, although somewhat more than that of last year, has been less than it otherwise would have been. The necessitated absence abroad of Miss Helen Taylor has also further lessened the Society's work in this direction. Since the last Annual Meeting the number of Lectures delivered is twenty two, as follows:—Miss Helen Taylor, 1, at Clay Cross; the Rev. T. G. Dyke, 3, at Margate; A. Halstead, 1, at Harrogate; R. B. Holt, 4, at Maidstone, Camberwell, Southampton, and Croydon; H. Hutchinson, 1, at Burton on-Trent; W. Jameson, 10, at the Eleusis Club, Chelsea, at Camden Town, Hackney, Hammersmith, and various other clubs and societies; the liev. Dr. E. Pan Jones, in South Wales; T. W. Taunton, 1, at Manor Park, and C. W. Windust, 1, at South Bermondsey.
From Wales we have frequent and pressing enquiry, but until the General Election is over, a thorough campaign there is improbable. In February last Mr. Michael Davitt delivered several powerful addresses in favour of Land Nationalisation; three of the Society's officers also did what they could to further the cause there, as two of them are still doing. The Rev. Dr. E. Pan Jones, whose recent lecture is mentioned above, is also frequently addressing audiences on the subject, and as our Literature is being judiciously circulated (its translation into Welsh has been proposed), we fully hope to see prolific results in the Principality,
From the list of our Members and ablest Honorary Lecturers we have very regretfully to record the loss of Mr. Lloyd Jones, whose decease occurred on the 22nd ulto. As one of the foremost advocates of the co-operative movement, he was also one of the earliest and most energetic representatives of our cause.
Believing that work could be more economically and rapidly done by appointing District Hon. Secretaries till sufficient strength existed in a locality for a vigorous Branch, the Executive have selected the best representatives they could find throughout the country, and some forty District Hon. Secretaries have been appointed, instead of fresh Branches. Several of these gentlemen have been doing effective secretarial work through the local Press and otherwise, and it is hoped that this mode of action may be largely extended.
In view of the last General Election, early preparation was made to extend the influence of the Society's literature. A pamphlet, entitled "State Tenants versus Freeholders," was written by our President, showing the great political advantages to all, and especially to small Freeholders and the agricultural labourer, of Land Nationalisation over so called "Free Trade in Land." Two leaflets were also prepared. The first is entitled the "Six Points of the People's Land Charter," being a popular abridgment of the Society's programme. The second is a "Resolution," being a statement, with authorities appended, of the great fact that the absolute ownership of land by a subject, is now, and has always been, expressly denied by the law of the country.
These publications, together with those already on our list, have been widely circulated. Altogether, upwards of 310,000 leaflets and tracts have been distributed during the twelve months.
The Resolution leaflet, already named, has, we believe, been of considerable service to the cause of Land Nationalisation during the General Election. It was sent to all Parliamentary Candidates, to 900 Clubs, and to 150 leading Newspapers. The "Saturday Review" devoted a column and a half to its condemnation; a cheering fact, which we venture to regard as prophetic of the acceptance of this resolution, ere long, by Parliament. Among other kindred societies, the Financial Reform Association has cordially endorsed it, and co-operated with us. The direct representation that our cause now has in Parliament, and also the probability of this strength being largely augmented by the majority of the Irish members, is a hopeful result of the Educational work hitherto done. It is therefore our confident hope—based not alone on these indications of the movement of public thought, but also on the ever increasing necessity for Land Nationalisation, which the continued depression of trade discloses—that, at no distant date, the vital principle of Land Nationalisation may be fully debated in the House of Commons, and that, starting from the Constitutional fact which the Resolution declares, the present Stewards of British Land may be required to render an account of their Stewardship.
In our last year's report we noticed that landlords had formed a "National Land Co. Limited." Now we learn that there is an Association of Landlords for the voluntary extension of Allotments, under the presidency of the Duke of Westminster It appears that 340 Landlords and 380 Clergymen are already quickened for "the amelioration of the condition of the labourers," as members of this association.
At the Fabian Society's Conference held on June 9th and the two following days, at the South Place Institute, a paper was read by Mr. Jameson, as delegate from this Society, on the "Utilization of Land." Our President also spoke in the discussion that followed, elucidating points in our programme which the enforced brevity of the paper read had caused to be untouched. The aim of this paper was
The robust activity of Land Nationalisation abroad—in America, and especially in Australia, if not so much in New Zealand—seems to satisfactorily increase. "Under date of December 4th, an Australian paper, adverse to the movement, states that over 4,000 people had lately migrated from South Australia and Victoria owing to depression of trade, and that still the distress seemed unabated. This paper also makes the significant statement that a mass meeting of 2,000 persons held in Adelaide Town Hall to consider the condition of things was chiefly composed of members of the South Australian Land Nationalisation Society. It seems, therefore, that the public, even in our thinly populated colonies, are beginning to realize in a practical, though bitter way, how much the monopoly of the material source of life and wealth causes trade depression, by barring the natural flow and employment of labour and capital, by preventing the just diffusion of wealth, by minimising consumption; and, incomparably more than anything else, by promoting chronic pauperism.
It is cheering to record, further, that a movement to Nationalise the land has commenced in the capital of Prussia.
The following Subscriptions were received too late to be include in Financial Statement:—
Crown 8vo. pp. xiv.—244, Original Edition Cloth, price 5s. Cheap Edition, paper Cover, 8d., by post 11d. Limp cloth, 1s. 6d., by post 1s. 9d.
By
Author of "The Malay Archipelago" "Island Life," &c &c.
Land Nationalisation Society Tracts.
The time is ripe for promoting practical measures of land law reform and for urging such measures upon the attention of those who will have to elect the next House of Commons.
For the interested consideration of such proposals the present circumstances of agriculture are extremely favourable.
With the intention of renewing such efforts as I have made in that direction, I wish to ask your opinion of the following programme. I believe it would establish that policy of "free land" of which you were one of the earliest advocates.
Our present laws encourage separation of ownership from occupation of land. That tendency is not in harmony with the general interests of the people.
The position of the occupier demands fuller security; such, at least, as Sir James Caird suggested by way of amendment of the Agricultural Holdings Act, in order to secure the sitting tenant against liability to lose his share of increased letting value consequent upon his improvements, by a rise of rent or by exaction of an unfair rent, to which he can offer no resistance except by notice to quit, involving serious depreciation of his stock in trade.
The extension in principle and under proper safeguards of the purchase clauses of Irish Land Acts to Great Britain and the enfranchisement of leaseholds are practical matters which should be admitted into full and fair consideration.
More than 2,000,000 acres of the best land are held by corporations in mortmain. This tenure involves serious evils, including absentee ownership in perpetuity and a most unjust exemption from taxation.
I have met with no exposition of this policy more concise and
I have received with much pleasure your letter of the 6th inst, and have read with much interest your suggestions on the reform of our land laws, the great question which will demand, and I hope receive, the attention of the Parliament which will be elected in November next.
I look back with intense satisfaction on the reform of our tariff, begun by Sir Robert Peel in the year
My lamented friend Mr. Cobden, who did not underrate the result of the struggle in which he had taken so eminent a part, on more than one occasion expressed the belief that the men or the Minister who should hereafter free the land of the United Kingdom from the fetters which have hitherto bound it, would confer as great a blessing on our people as that bestowed upon them by the freedom of the produce of the soil.
The time has now come when this new great land question must be discussed and settled. It is well that some plans just to the nation and not less just to the possessors of the land should be brought before the attention of our people. In the suggestions which you have submitted to me you offer such a plan, and I cannot but hope that it will receive, as I believe it will deserve, a very large measure of support throughout the country.
There have been wild schemes brought before some portions of our people, schemes not based on any just principle; your suggestions seem to me just and calculated to do good to landowner, to tenant farmer, to the industrious labourer on the soil, and to the millions whose families subsist upon its produce.
I cannot enter into anything like a great movement in connection with this question, but I hope we may soon see a movement in the constituencies and in Parliament, and that another great measure of reform may soon be added to those by which our time and our generation are already distinguished.
Messrs. Cassell is Company, Limited, La Belle Sauvage, London, E.C., supply this Leaflet in packets of 100, price 1s.
Retaliation is a useless weapon in our hands.
To lower foreign tariffs was not the sole or principal object of the authors of our present policy. They would have adopted that policy had they known that no foreign tariff would be lowered.
All duties are impediments to trade; the fewer duties, the fewer impediments. We can remove our own duties; we cannot remove our neighbours'.
No tariff is an absolute barrier; and a Free-Trade country has such advantages in production that it can compete with a Protectionist country, even for the home market of the latter.
Exports involve imports; all Protectionist countries desire to export, and must therefore import. Where a Protectionist country exports to another country, the second country must pay in goods, if not directly to the Protectionist country, indirectly through some third country.
There are many free and many neutral markets, and in all of them a Free-trading country has advantages over a Protectionist rival.
Protection has not, so far as we can judge, advanced trade and manufacture in France, Germany, or the United States, but the reverse.
The trade of a country depends on many things besides Free
For the above reasons, there is no fear of our losing our market, and the case for Retaliation fails.
Retaliation must, in its immediate consequences, be injurious to ourselves.
Retaliation is calculated to defeat its own object, and to provoke further Retaliation.
The Cobden treaty affords no ground whatever for Reciprocity or Retaliation.
The simplicity of the Free Trade position is obscured by the vastness and complexity of modern business. But it is in truth simple in the extreme. Very much that has been written on the subject is only an expansion of the following elementary truths:—
No one who is master of these simple and obvious truths will be misled by Protectionist sophisms.
[All the above statements are most clearly and fully proved in Sir T. H. Farrer's book, entitled "
Messrs. Cassell & Company, Limited, La Belle Sauvage, London, E.C., supply this Leaflet in packets of 100, price 1s.
You tell me you have always been a Free Trader, and have always regarded the interference with trade caused by the Customs Duties as a serious evil. Such interference, you say, raises the price to the con-sumer, decreases the production throughout all trades-doing thus a double injury to the labourer—prevents men of small capital competing for their share in the profits of industry, and, denying a free use of the blessings of civilisation, delays the time when the good things of the world shall be more fairly distributed than they are now. Accordingly you tell me you have always been against Bounties as one of the worst forms of such interference. You want, however, to know what line to take, with some few of your fellow-workmen, who, though they claim to be Free Traders, yet want to put a tax on the cheap sugar that comes into England, because they say it is cheap owing to Foreign Bounties. You don't think Bounties good, but you can't feel sure that it can ever be right to tax trade; and you ask me to tell you whether I think we ought to interfere with the Sugar Trade and levy a tax in order to increase the price of sugar made cheap by the Foreign Bounties. I could answer that question very shortly if I liked by saying, "Never look a gift horse in the mouth; never let any one persuade you to tax anything because it comes into England too cheap. Nothing can be too cheap." I will not, however, content myself with such an answer, but I will put before you some facts, which I can hardly believe it possible that a man can read and still want to tax foreign sugar, unless he should happen to be a sugar refiner. I think if we attend to these facts we shall not be greatly concerned whether sugar is getting cheaper because the Germans understand how to cultivate and manufacture beetroot to perfection, or because of their ignorance of the science of wealth, or for whatever other reason.
I will try to state shortly what has happened in England since any one who likes has been allowed to bring sugar into England without any interference from the Custom House.
In the year
1841 , when we still had a heavy duty levied on sugar, the average consumption per head in the United Kingdom was about 17lbs. of sugar. This amount, at the prices caused by the policy of interference with trade, could not be bought under 9s. 7 1/1 d. At the present time (that is, in the year1884 ), when sugar is free, the average consumption per head is 681bs., and the cost for this vastly increased quantity is 10s. 4d, or only 8½ d. more. That is, under Free Trade and the development which has come with it, the average consumption of each person has trebled, while, instead of the price having trebled, it has remained nearly the same. An English family, thanks to Free Trade, can now use in the year three times the amount of sugar they used forty years ago, and yet only have their yearly expenses increased by a few pence. This is what has come from letting the Sugar Trade alone.Now let us see how the nations get on that have not got Free Trade, but give Bounties to any one who will take sugar out of their countries and sell it below cost price to us. Let us take the case of America. There, though the country produces sugar-cane, and though the West Indies are so near, the people have, by reason of their system of duties, to pay 3½ d. for a pound of sugar, while we Free Traders are paying only 2d. a pound. In Germany, where
the most beautiful sugar is made, the poor Germans do not get the benefit themselves, because the Bounties make it more profitable to carry the sugar out of the country than to sell it at home. There is no Bounty for selling it to their own people; only a Bounty for making a present of it to foreigners. The consequence is that the Germans have to use an inferior sugar and pay for it a larger price than we do. While the German housewife—to borrow an illustration from Sir Thomas Farrer—can only afford to put in one spoonful of sugar to sweeten the children's pudding, her English sister can put in two; and that is not all, for the German spoonful is only half as sweet as the English. But I don't want you to think that getting more sugar for our tea and our puddings is all the good we get as a nation by letting the Sugar Trade alone. Let us look beyond this. Let us look at the trade benefited and the labour employed in getting all the enormously increased amount of sugar now consumed manufactured and then distributed to the consumers. First look at the work for our ships to bring it over raw or refined; then for the manufacturers who make it eatable; for the railways and other carriers that take it all over the country; for the extra shops, the extra counters, and the extra shopmen that are required to sell it; for the men who make the paper and fold the bags in which it is sold. A plentiful supply of cheap sugar is to the general trade of the country a shower of gold that finds its way everywhere.
And this is not all. Think of the other manufactures in which sugar is used, and which can only be carried on at all when sugar is cheap. Think of the jam and the confectionery, of the jars and bottles, each with its lid or cork stopper and printed label, in which the jam and the sweetstuffs are contained, and which are all made in England. Think of the profits to agriculture which can be derived from growing fruit if there is a demand for jam among the poor; and there can only be such a demand when sugar is very cheap. Think of the biscuits that are made because sugar is cheap, and of the highly-paid labour that is called into employment thereby, for making and packing the biscuits, and for carrying them about England and the whole world; for, since sugar is cheap in England, the English have become the biscuit makers of the world. Think of the chocolate and the cocoa manufacturies which flourish on cheap sugar. Think of the sugar used in brewing, and in the making of those invaluable feeding stuffs for cattle which enable our farmers to fatten stock cheaply and well, and so increase our supplies of meat Think of the artificial waters, like gingerade and lemonade and so many others, which have sprung into popular favour since the Sugar Trade has been let alone, and which employ so many thousands of men in their production. These occur to me as I write. You, who know so much of our productive trades, will remember a hundred other industries which, if they are to be worked at all, must be worked with cheap sugar.
It is most gratifying to see how cheap sugar has been the means of introducing, even into the poorest country districts, articles of luxury and comfort never known before. I talked only the other day to a country grocer, in a large business with the poor, about some of the facts which had come under his own notice.
What he told me was astonishing. He put his hand on a great glass bottle of mint dumps-those sweets the children and the old women are so fond of in country places—and he said, "Look at these. Where I used to sell a pound of these, I now sell a hundredweight." I looked up at his shelves next—at the pear-drops and acid-drops. "Yes," he said, "those are now a halfpenny an ounce; they used to be one penny." The trade set going in sweets has been enormous, while the comfort and enjoyment obtained by the poor have been equally great. In France, though they excel in the arts of confectionery, such things are only for the rich. I have been into plenty of village shops in France, but in them you see no sweets. The poor never get them.
In France they do not leave their Sugar Trade alone. My friend the grocer told me something also about jams. He opened a splendid great earthenware pot of gooseberry jam, smelling most deliciously, and he showed me how clear and wholesome it was. "We have just ordered eleven tons of this. We used not to keep jam five or six years ago. When it was high we could not sell it; now it is an article of food for quite poor people. At the school treats the children used to think bread and jam a great pleasure; now they would rather have bread and butter: they are so accustomed to jam."What a difference to a poor family! Before we let the Sugar Trade alone they had to eat their bread dry; now they can make their bread not only far nicer, but far more nourishing, by spreading some jam on it. I would advise you to ask your fellow-workmen to think, not only whether they don't save a great deal each week in sugar, but whether they don't see a great deal more jam about, and a great deal more sweetstuffs and chocolate, a great deal more biscuits, a great deal more gingerade and other temperance drinks, and whether, if they follow out each one of these trades, the letting our Sugar Trade alone has not done a vast deal to bring work to the English working man.
However, there are two sides to every question. Let us hear the other side's arguments to persuade us to give up the blessings of cheap sugar. They say, first, that Bounties are very bad things. In this we heartily agree, and we wish foreign nations, for the sake of their own poor people, would do away with them. They go on to say that sugar is cheap because of these Bounties, and that this is not fair to our refiners and their workmen, and that, accordingly, we ought to put a tax on sugar equal to the Bounties. Now, I will begin by observing that we must not forget that the good intentions for which a tax is put on make no difference to its effects. A tax put on commodities to pay for the most necessary acts of Government will have just the same effect on trade as a tax put on for the most selfish interests of the home manufacturers. A tax put on sugar to teach the foreign nations sound political economy will be just as oppressive to the consumer and just as shackling to trade as a duty put on with the
avowed intent of letting the Sugar Refining Businesses pay 5 instead of 2 per cent. Fortunately, however, we need not go into the arguments whether, if the Refining Trade of England was being killed by Bounties, it could be saved by a tax on sugar, because, as a matter of fact, the Refining Trade is not being killed at all. Trade is never killed by freedom. These are the facts on which agitators have actually had the audacity to declare that the Refining Industry was being killed, and that the working men were losing £15000,000 annually in wages: In
1881 it was no doubt shown that since1864 the Refining Trade of England had lost 50,000 tons of loaf sugar, but then the Refining Trade has also gained 30,000 tons of other hard sugars, and 300,000 tons of moist sugar. Cheap sugar has not caused a loss, but has given a net gain of 280,000 tons of sugar of all kinds. Since1880 the quantity of sugar refined at home has risen from 653,000 tons to 816,000 tons, and, along with this increase, there has been a proportionate increase in the number of men employed. The refined sugar sent us by the foreigner is only 39,000 tons more than it was in1877 (being in1884 210,000 tons, against 171,000 tons in1877 ), while the refined sugar we sent out of the country has increased by 9,000 tons since1877 . It was in1884 65,000 tons, against 56,000 tons in1877 .As Sir Thomas Farrer says, "These are not the figures of a declining trade." They are a sufficient answer to the foolish outcry that the Germans could first kill our industry with Bounties and then raise the price on the English consumer.
The amount of the capital in the Sugar Trade has been greatly exaggerated. Probably there is not more than £3,000,000 of capital engaged in it altogether-a sum far less than the capital engaged in those trades which, as I showed before, only exist with cheap sugar. It is the same with the workmen. The workmen in the refineries are by no means so numerous as the men who sail the ships and drive the engines and carts, who make the bags and bottles, who grow the fruit and pick it, and fill the pots, and who make the biscuits, sweet bread, and confectionery which are required extra by the consumer when sugar is cheap.
Now there is another point which has come to the front in this sugar question. Are our West Indian Colonies being ruined by competition of Bounty-fed sugar? I am afraid there is no doubt that certain classes in the West Indies are suffering, and I know that you, as an English working man, are the last person to say that we need not think about them. We ought to think about them just as we do about our own sugar refiners, and remove all restriction on their trade; but, at the same time, refuse to sacrifice the poor consumers and producers at home to the interests of any class. Nor, even if we would, could we really help the West Indies by a tax on Bounty-fed sugar. Their case is more difficult than that. The competition of beetroot sugar, though not helped by Bounties, is their danger. They must look to improving their methods of extracting the sugar from the cane. Those who know most about the subject declare that great improvements could be made. Let the energies of the West India sugar planters be turned in this direction, rather than in the direction of converting England to interfering with the Sugar Trade; give them Free Trade in food, and we may soon hope to see them again taking the greatest share of the profits of sugar-growing.
There is one more fallacy in this controversy that I would warn you against—that is, the argument of certain men who pretend to be Free Traders, but who say that, though everything which is naturally cheap should be allowed to enter England free, nothing that is artificially cheap should be allowed to pass without paying duty. On this ground, our present sugar is said to be artificially cheap because of the Bounties, and so ought to be made to pay. I will ask these pretended Free Traders one or two questions which I have asked them before.
Is it not the essence of Free Trade that the consumer should be unhindered by legislation from buying in the cheapest market?
Is there any reason for the consumer to inquire why sugar is cheap, and to accept it if he fancies he has found out that it is only cheap by reason of good soil or improved manufacture, and to reject it if it is cheap by reason of the mistaken policy of a foreign State?
Is it not as little Free Trade to protect a home industry for one reason as for the other?
If the sugar workman asks for protection against German Bounties, may not the farmer just as fairly demand it against the low rates of the American railways or "the unfair" fertility of a virgin soil?
Besides, no one can really tell how much the sugar is made cheap by natural, how much by artificial, Bounty causes. Bounties take endless forms. Some countries give them in hard cash, some in drawbacks and exemption from taxation, some in free grants of land, some in free transport by railway, road, and canal, some by subsidies to steamship companies. In truth, no scheme based on the distinction between artificially cheap and naturally cheap will hold.
I have tried to show some of the advantages derived from letting the Sugar Trade alone for ten years. I implore the working men of England not to throw away these blessings by beginning to interfere again with the Sugar Trade. No one can hate Bounties more than I do; no one would more gladly see the foreign nations persuaded to abolish them; but, I ask, is it the way to persuade them to leave off their interference with trade by beginning a fresh interference ourselves? Besides, countervailing the Bounties by a duty would do no good, for the Bounties would only be raised in turn, and we should enter into a miserable war of tariffs with the great nations of Europe, and should lose for ourselves the blessings of cheap sugar. Unless the countervailing duty proposed raised the price of sugar, it would do no good. If it raised the price, perhaps a few refineries might begin to pay, and, as a set-off to that, ruin would be spread throughout the country. Not only would the poor man's wages lose a great deal of their purchasing power, but on all sides jam factories, sweetmeat factories, mineral water factories, biscuit bakeries, cattle feeding factories, and all the other trades that rest on them, would begin, first to shrink and contract their businesses, and then to fall in headlong ruin. Free Trade has built a gallant tower, but undermine its foundations and it cannot stand.
Believe me, it is not the Bounties that have made sugar cheap, but it is the letting the Sugar Trade alone. A good authority, Sir Louis Mallet, declared before Mr. Ritchie's Committee that he did not believe that the effect of the Bounties was to enable the receivers of the Bounty to sell their produce at a very much lower rate than they would be able to sell it without the bounty. And in this he was, I am sure, correct. Plenty of sugar will come to us, whether there are Bounties or not. I doubt whether sugar would rise in price if Bounties were swept away to-morrow; but I know this, that if we try to sweep them away by interfering with and hampering the Sugar Trade, we shall not weaken the Bounty system in the slightest-we shall only give a reason for increasing it—and the price of sugar in England will rise, not only by the amount of the countervailing duty, but by a much larger amount. It is not the actual duty, but the Custom House friction which kills trade and raises prices; it is not Sugar Bounties, but leaving our trade alone that has given us the benefits of cheap sugar.
Let me again insist that nothing can alter the fact that to refuse, in the interests of a particular industry, goods cheap by reason of Bounties, is simply to put a tax on the many for the benefit of the few—or, shortly, Protection. Shall the mining, the agricultural, the domestic, the manufacturing population of England be taxed for the benefit of the Bounty-injured industries—that is, for the benefit of those capitalists whose money is invested in sugar-refining? For the workmen, it must be remembered, will not be helped. Their wages are settled, not by the profits of the industry, but by the competition of the labour market. This cry of Protection under a new name is not without danger for the English workmen. Let them remember that there is one, and only one, safe maxim in regard to all matters of trade—the maxim of "Hands off." Let no specious pleas, no pretexts of goods being artificially cheap, reconcile the working classes to any manipulation of our Free-Trade policy, for by such manipulation it is they who must be the losers.
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It Proposes—
To put Import Duties on Foreign Goods, which would make all of you who consume such goods pay dearer for them.To thereby Diminish the Quantity that will be imported of such Goods, and therefore to diminish the Quantity of our staple articles that we now send abroad to pay for the same. For Goods are paid for in Goods, and Imports and Exports rise and fall together.To throw out of Employment a number of Working Men now engaged in producing those staple articles. For if you Export less you must Manufacture less.To Diminish our Foreign Trade in order to punish the Foreigners for not increasing it. For if we both Import and Export less there will be fewer Ships, fewer Seamen, fewer Docks, and fewer Labourers of all kinds wanted.To imitate the very Policy which we condemn in Foreigners; and instead of going on exchanging our Cheap Goods for their Cheap Goods, to leave off taking the latter, and, as a necessary consequence, to leave off making the former.To do a foolish thing because other Countries will not do a wise one.
It must be either Food and Raw Materials which form about nine-tenths, or Foreign Manufactures which form about one-tenth of our Total Imports. Now—
If Food,—Are you prepared to go back to the old pauperising Corn Laws and the Dear Quartern Loaf?
If Raw Materials,—Are you prepared to add to the cost of our Manufactures, and thus assist the Foreigner to undersell us in Neutral Markets?
If Manufactures,—Are you prepared to raise their price to the Consumer and to curtail our Imports and Exports-to diminish our present production of staple manufactures-and throw out of employment the Working Men now employed in them?
Electors! if you are not in favour of Dear Food and Less Work, you must oppose all Reciprocity Candidates.
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I observe that your Tory candidate and his friends are seeking support as fair traders in opposition to free traders. They complain that we are allowed by our Government and our tariff to buy freely all the products of foreign countries, but that, owing to some foreign tariffs, we cannot sell our own products as freely as we wish to do. We can fix the duties in our own tariff and on our own imports, but we cannot fix the duties in the tariffs of foreign countries and on their imports. All this is true enough and plain enough, but what is not plain and not true is the strange belief held by fair traders that, being injured by not being able to sell so freely as we wish to do, owing to duties in foreign tariffs, we should remedy the evil by giving up the power to buy freely by putting duties on our own tariff.
"To sell freely would be a great advantage, as to buy freely is a great advantage, but neither to buy freely nor to sell freely as the fair traders recommend would, in my view, enormously increase the injury to our trade arising from the foreign tariffs which now obstruct our foreign trade.
"Let your workmen reflect on the change in their condition which free trade has made within the last 40 years, since the reform of our tariff. The Corn Law was intended to keep wheat at the price of 80s. the quarter; it is now under 40s. the quarter. The price of tea is now less than the duty which was paid upon it in former days. Sugar is not more than one-third of its cost when a monopoly of East and West India sugar existed. As to wages, in Lancashire and Yorkshire the weekly income of the thousands of workers in factories is nearly, if not quite, double that paid before the time when free trade was established. The wages of domestic servants in the county from which I come are, in most cases, doubled since that time. A working brick-setter told me lately that his wages are now 7s. 6d. per day; formerly he worked at the rate of 4s. per day. Some weeks ago I asked an eminent upholsterer in a great town in Scotland what had been the change in wages in his trade? He said that 30 to 40 years ago he paid a cabinet-maker 12s. per week; he now pays him 28s.
"The fair traders tell you that trade in some branches is depressed, which is true, though their statements are greatly exaggerated. We have had a depression in agriculture, caused mainly by several seasons of bad harvests, and some of our traders have suffered much from a too rapid extension in prosperous years. I have known the depression in trade to be much greater than it is now, and the sufferings of traders and workmen during our time of protection, previous to
"In foreign countries where higher tariffs exist—say, in Russia, in France, and in the United States—the disturbance and depression of manufacturing industries is far greater at this moment than with us. Their tariffs make it impossible for them to have a larger foreign trade: we have a wide field for our exports which they cannot enter.
"We have an open market, for the most part, in South America, in China, in Japan; and with a population of more than 200 millions in our Indian Empire, and in our colonies, with the exception of Canada and the province of Victoria, in Australia, the field for our manufacturing industry is far wider than that for any other manufacturing nation in the world, and I cannot doubt that we shall gradually rise from the existing depression and shall reap even greater gain from our policy of free trade in the future than we have reaped in the past In
"If I have any influence with you or with any electors, let me assure you and them that for centuries past there has been no change of our national policy which has conferred and will confer so great good on our industrious people as that policy of free trade which the two greatest Ministers of our time—Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Gladstone-have fixed, 1 cannot doubt for ever, on the Statute-book of our country.
"The recent contest in the United States has overthrown the party of protection and monopoly. It may prove a great blessing to the English nation on the American continent. When England and America shall have embraced the policy of free industry, the whole fabric of monopoly the world over will totter to its fall.
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"Fair Trade" is now declared to mean a Food Tax.
Peace is largely assured by the interest of foreign nations in keeping I open our free market for their surplus food.
Our success in competition, as manufacturers, rests entirely upon cheap untaxed food.
If food were taxed our people would suffer poverty, because the rise in the cost of manufacture would drive us out of foreign markets.
Cheap food brings high wages, because when food is cheap, work-.: men have more to spend in the purchase of manufactures.
Taxation of food, which is the avowed policy of the so-called fair-traders, is demanded for the support of a Land System, condemned by all economists, such as no Government in Europe could impose without causing revolt
A fair sample of its fruits is that 700 persons own one-fourth of England and Wales; that 1,700 persons own nine-tenths of Scotland; and that 292 persons own one-third of Ireland.
You are told that the soil will pass out of cultivation if the price of produce be not raised by a tax to be paid by your labour.
Wheat is now selling at 35s. per quarter.
Remember that in the beginning of the Free Trade struggle, the same class declared in evidence before Parliament that the same calamity would happen unless they obtained 80s. per quarter.
The most productive employment for capital is in agriculture, because the forces of nature co-operate with the powers of man, and if the distribution of land were subject to the operation of economic laws, it is not possible that where capital is so abundant, climate so good, and the demand for food so large, agriculture should not be highly profitable.
Resist the Food Tax as you would avert the ruin of the Country.
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The only reply to each of these questions is " Yes!" and the answer is conclusive against any change in our laws, except that which would give us a free breakfast-table, and abolish all duties on food of whatever kind.
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Certain landlords, farmers, and manufacturers, because their profits at present are not so great as formerly, are attempting to prejudice the people against Free Trade, which has made food and clothing, the necessaries and many of the luxuries of life, cheaper than they ever have been in any civilised state.
The labourers, however, are not likely to be deceived.
Before the Corn Laws were repealed—under the old Protective policy—when times were bad, the masses suffered severely; starving multitudes assembled in the streets, bread riots took place, and scenes of destitution and misery were common in town and country.
The effect of our new commercial system has been to diffuse comfort far more widely among the population, so that when masters have smaller income, the men are not driven to beg or apply to the workhouse.
Consumers in Great Britain never could buy as cheaply as they can now, and, although owing to bad seasons and over-production, many industries are in a state of long-continued depression, the operatives as a rule have no cause to complain, and are not likely to help an agitation, the object of which is simply to raise the price of all articles which they use.
If they will compare the selling rate of everything they eat and wear now with what it was forty years ago, they will be astonished and thankful, and resolved to oppose any attempt to increase the cost of living to them for the benefit of any class.
Duties of every kind are prejudicial to the working men, and their object ought to be, not to go back on laws which kept food of all kinds dear, but to get quit of custom-houses altogether.
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Joe, you and I will have to make up our minds how to vote at the Election; how do you intend to vote?
Well, master, I haven't thought much about it, but I suppose you would like me to vote the same as you do?
Well, yes, so I would, if I can persuade you to see things as I see them. I shall vote for Plow-right.
What! you vote for that free-trader! one of them as has ruined the country?
What makes you think the free-traders have ruined the country?
Well, when I was at Alkerton last fair-day, I went to the meeting, and I heerd the young squire, and Lord George, and Mr. Peabody from Glassford, and they showed it all as plain as could be; that it was along of the wheat that comes to Liverpool from America, and the ribbons from France, and things they calls girders from Beljum—or some such name—as ruined the farmers and the manufacturers; and Lord George, he says, that if we will send him to Parliament, he will make the 'mericans pay 5s. a quarter on wheat, and the French and the Beljums summat on the stuff as they sends over; and that '11 put an end to the distress, and set the farmer and the working man on their legs again.
Yes, so I saw in the Advertiser; and do you know what occurred to me? I thought it is not so long since Lord George and his friends were in the Government, and they neither put 5s. on wheat, nor anything on ribbons or girders.
Well, master, you know it is never too late to mend; and it do seem hard that the country is to be ruined because the foreigner, who they say pays no rates nor taxes, is allowed to take the bread from them as employs us, and so the working man has to starve.
We will talk another time about the foreigner paying no rates or taxes. I see the French farmers say theirs are more than twice as heavy as ours. But tell me, Joe, I think you lived on the farm in my father's time, before I was born?
Yes, and my father before me.
How old are you, Joe?
Fifty, come next Michaelmas.
Then you are too young to remember all about the Corn Laws; but I suppose you have heard your father speak of the time when he was a young man?
Well, master, yes, many a time, and my mother too.
Did you ever hear your father say what were his wages in those days?
I have heerd him say that your father was a kind master, but them was hard times for farming men. Shepherds, they got ten shillings, but his wages was only nine; and there was them as screwed their men, and I heerd tell that some in our village got no more than seven.
I think your father had a large family?
We was eight; and I've heerd my mother tell that if it hadn't been that some was took, and that Jenny and Tom, as was older nor me, went to work in the factories, there'd been nothing for us but the work' us. Bread was ninepence and more the quartern loaf many a time those days, so she said; and they never saw a bit of bacon from year end to year end.
At that time, you know, there was a duty on
Well, master, times they had, and times they hadn't; but I've heerd my brother Tom tell of the hard times in 'Forty-two, when all the mills was shut in the North, and there was rioting, and people dropt wi' fever. I hope we shall never see such times as them in our lives.
Perhaps you don't know it, but in those days no live animals were allowed to come into the country, and American bacon and cheese were never seen in our shops. Still, butcher's meat and bacon and butter were much cheaper then than they are now.
Why, master, how could that be, when they was not so plentiful?
I will tell you. It was because the working people were so poor that they could not afford to buy them. But, Joe, suppose the four-pound loaf were a penny dearer than it is, do you think that would be a good thing for the farming man?
Well, that shows you are not a poor man, or you would not ax me such a silly question; as if times wasn't hard enough, that we are to pay sixpence a week more for the bread for our children!
And if your wife had to pay a penny a yard more for the stuff she buys in the town, would that help you?
You had better ax our Sally!
Then, perhaps, those who took the duties off all these things were not such enemies to the poor man, whether he be a farm-labourer or a mechanic, after all?
Well, master, I declare I never saw it in that light before!
Then I should not be surprised if you thought twice before you made up your mind to vote for those fair-trading gentlemen?
I don't know what I may do; but what I can't understand is how you as gets your living by the land can vote for a free-trader.
Joe, do you think it would do me any more good than you if I had to pay more money for everything I have to buy?
Certainly not; but then, if we had fair trade, you would get more for all you have to sell.
I am afraid I should not get more for all I have to sell. I get more for my cattle, and for my butter and cheese, than my father did in the old fair-trade times, when the working man could not afford to buy them.
Yes, but look at the price of wheat!
Well, I must try to grow less wheat, and make more beef and mutton, and butter and cheese, and pork, and things that spoil if they are brought from a distance; and my landlord will have to let me have my land on such terms that I can compete with the foreigner. He must not compel me to make dung of my straw if I can sell it for fifty shillings a ton, nor to consume my clover if I can get four or five pounds a ton in the market for my hay, and can buy Indian corn from America, worth twice as much for my cattle, with the same money, or thereabouts. No, Joe; don't let us be humbugged by the fair-traders. It is not fair trade, but fair rents and Fair Play that the farmer wants. Other countries that have fair trade are worse off than we are. There is no market for the farmer like old England with free trade. Only let the farmer and the labourer stand shoulder to shoulder, give us sunshine and fair play, and we will hold our own against the world.
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England is the only great nation which has abolished Protectionist tariffs, and has established a system of Free Imports.
Thereby she has become the greatest trading nation in the world.
She possesses more than one half of the effective ocean tonnage of the world.
No other nation approaches her in the volume and money value of her foreign commerce.
Reckoning per head of population
England's food and her materials being untaxed,
In the protected market of The United States England undersells France and Germany, and does! more trade with them than either of these countries.
In the protected market of France England has a similar advantage.
In the protected market of Germany there is the same result.
In neutral markets England beats all other nations hollow.
This is owing to her system of Free Imports.
When Fair Traders say that her goods are excluded from the world's markets by Protectionist tariffs they state that which is absurdly untrue. The fact is that these tariffs protect and foster British trade, and will continue to do so until they are abolished.
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That out of the £400,000,000 worth of our annual imports, something like £355,000,000 are for food, and materials for our own manufactures, while only £45,000,000 are for finished products.
That while Fair Traders differ among themselves as to the policy of taxing food and materials, they are all agreed that these £45,000,000 should be subjected to duties, the object being either to exclude them, or to make the foreigner pay the tax.
However, that any tax paid on these imports would be paid by the British consumer, and not the foreign exporter.
Also, that if any portion of these £45,000,000 were excluded, owing to tariff, just to the amount of such exclusion would there cease to be a demand for British labour; it being impossible for the foreigner to buy in our markets unless he be allowed to sell therein.
That, except in a very trifling proportion, nations pay each other by goods, and not by gold or silver. Every pound's worth of foreign goods, of whatever sort, sold here gives rise to a purchase, directly or indirectly, of a pound's worth of British goods of some kind or other; and thus, instead of curtailing British labour, causes a demand for it.
Therefore, that no more fatal thing could be done than to tax foreign imports with the idea that the British artizan would thereby be benefited.
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The letter which appears below was the last letter Mr. Cobden ever wrote. It was addressed to Mr. Thomas Bayley Potter, who had sent to Mr. Cobden a letter he had received from Mr. John Stuart Mill on the subject of Minority Voting and Proportional Representation. Mr. Potter asked Mr. Cobden's opinion, and this letter was the result. At the present juncture Mr. Cobden's opinion will have a general interest, and cannot be too widely known. It was dated "Everything from Mr. Mill is entitled to respectful consideration. But I confess, after the best attention to the proposed representation of minorities which I can give it, I am so stupid as to fail to see its merits. He speaks of 50,000 electors having to elect five members, and that 30,000 may elect them all, and to obviate this he would give the 20,000 minority two votes. But I would give only one vote to each elector, and one representative to each constituency. Instead of the 50,000 returning five in a lump, I would have five constituencies of 10,000, each returning one member. Thus, if the metropolis, for example, were entitled, with a fair distribution of electoral power, to 40 votes, I would divide it into 40 districts or wards, each to return one member; and in this way every class and every variety of opinion would have a chance of a fair representation. Belgravia, Marylebone, St. James's, St. Giles's, Whitechapel, Spitalfields, &c., would each and all have their members. I don't know any better plan for giving all opinions a chance of being heard; and, after all, it is opinions that are to be represented. If the minority have a faith that their opinions, and not those of the majority, are the true ones, then let them agitate and discuss until their principles are in the ascendant.
On the "This brings me to the question of the Re-distribution of the Franchise, and I would say, gentlemen, I have a very strong opinion that where you have to give, as you would have to give in any new Reform Bill, a considerable number of new members to your large cities—as, for instance, Manchester, Liverpool, and the like, and Rochdale will, of course, be included in the number—it would be the most convenient and the fairest plan if you apportioned your large towns into wards and gave one representative for each ward. I mean that instead of lumping two or four members together and letting them be the representatives of a whole town or city, I would divide the place into four wards, and I would let each ward send one member. I think there is a fairness and convenience about that plan which ought to recommend it to Lord John Russell and to every one who has to handle a new Reform Bill. For instance, you will find in a town, generally, that what is called the aristocracy of the town live in one part, and the working classes live in another. Now, I say if, in dividing a town into three or four wards, it should happen that one of the districts where the working class predominates should have the opportunity of sending a member which that class may consider will most fairly represent their views, and if in another part of the town another class, living there, choose a member that more completely represents theirs, I do not see why the different classes or parties in the community should not have that opportunity of giving expression to their opinions. I think it would be much better than having two or four members for one borough; for I have observed, in watching the progress of elections in England, that where you have one member representing a borough, as in the case of Rochdale, there is a tendency to maintain a higher degree of public spirit—there is a more decided line of demarcation in parties; and men are more earnest in their political views, than where they have two members to a borough; for I have frequently seen, as in the case of Liverpool, Blackburn, and many other towns that I could name, that the people begin to get tired of contests, and acquiesce in a division of the town. They say, let us vote one and one, and do not let us have any more political contests. That is a very bad state of things, because if a country is to maintain its free institutions, it must constantly have political discussions and contests."
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Evidently the labour crisis in France is much more advanced than in this country, and to-day our Paris Correspondent gives us particulars of what would have been a bread riot, had the rioters been the really hungry classes, and not the Revolutionists who make capital out of distress.
French Statesmen are alive to the difficulties which confront them, but were it not that we have at home a few preachers of wild economic heresies it would be difficult to believe that the French Government is about to return to a Tax upon Corn as a means of making the nation contented and prosperous. The fact is so, how-ever, and having made up its mind to take this course, M. Ferry's Cabinet is little likely to be turned from its resolution by any arguments or advice tendered to it by Free Traders at home or abroad. Its whole fiscal policy seems, indeed, to be based upon what its members think the best place-insuring expedient of the hour. It bends before the clamours of the great Agricultural interest, in the hope of winning its support, with the same disregard of principle which it displayed in dealing with the demands of the Lyons manufacturers. Had these latter been strong enough, they might have obtained a concession in the matter of the duties on cotton yarns in a Free Trade direction, though the Ministry as a body cares nothing about Free Trade; but the cotton spinners of the North have so far been too powerful for them, and the satin and velvet industries of Lyons may be doomed to languish because the Ministry contents itself with yielding to the strongest, thus playing off interest against interest.
It is upon this ground that the agricultural community may be expected to triumph, for it is larger and more influential in France than any half-dozen other interests combined, and must at all costs be pacified.
Free Traders cannot, in the long run, have anything to fear
M. Tony-Revillon may have over-estimated the distress existing in the ouvrier quarters of Paris when he declared in the Chamber last Thursday that only two men in three had coats, and towages had fallen by more than fifteen per cent, in two years; but that the distress is serious no one ventures to deny. The very efforts of the Ministry to find the people employment prove it to be so. In other words, the prolonged over-taxation of France is producing its natural consequences.
This is the time, when exports are declining, when business is bad, and distress increasing amongst the population of the great towns, that the French Government has chosen for increasing the cost of subsistence by an addition to the Tax on Corn.
Already bread is dearer in France than in any great European country—much dearer than in England. This is not altogether because imported grain has continued to be taxed in France, while in England it is free, for the existing tax is scarcely as much a threepence per cwt. In towns the local octrois play a much more important part in raising prices than the Customs duty.
But, whatever the cause, bread is dear, so dear in Paris that the Government has been solicited to revive the dormant but unrepealed law of
Surely this is the strangest possible method of restoring prose perity to the people, and a very dangerous method as well.
Granting that it gives a passing gleam of prosperity to the
A Correspondent, for example, whose letter is printed in another column, points out the disastrous effects which a Corn Duty will have on the prosperous and advancing semolina and macaroni manufactures of Marseilles; but that is only one striking example among hundreds.
Can it be expected that the velveteen weavers of Lyons will fare better against the competition of less burdened producers in other countries, if twenty-five or thirty per cent, be added to the cost of their daily bread?
And if the spinners of Lille or Amiens have enough to do to make ends meet now, sheltered behind high Customs duties as they are, will they be better off when the agricultural interest prospers at their expense?
Such questions have but to be asked to enable all men of sense to answer them.
Economically speaking, nothing could well be more depressing than the spectacle now presented by France. There is no enlightened purpose of any kind visible in the measures adopted to tide over or mitigate the crisis which a long period of trade languor, indifferent harvests, and burdensome taxation has created. All is confusion, ignorance, quackery.
The intelligence displayed in the adoption of these expedients is of the sort employed by the proverbial Irishman who, in order to lengthen his blanket, cut a piece from the bottom and sewed it to the top.
It is odd, that after all these years people still need to be told that wealth is nowhere produced by the imposition of a tax.
A few may become rich by its means, but the masses are of necessity poorer, because the tax means money taken from their pockets to be wasted, or, at all events, to be spent by the State.
In the case of this Corn Tax, which is to render the French Farmers happy, the result must be larger expenditure upon relief works in the towns—amongst the poor everywhere.
The money taken from the consumers must in great part go to help to feed the poor at the expense of the State-of those, that is, still able to pay taxes and live.
The lesson of such a situation should be too clear to need exposition.
Yet there are men amongst us foolish enough to raise the cry that a tax on bread is the remedy for trade depression here also.
According to them, dearer bread would mean a greater ability on the part of the consumers to face the ups and downs of industrial progress.
More childish nonsense it would be impossible to imagine; and we do not suppose that there is the least danger of many giving heed to it.
Some of the farmers, indeed, appear to be inclined to do so, because the idea of State assistance for their benefit seems to be more to their taste than recommendations to energetic efforts to raise themselves.
In considering the case of France, however, we must remember that when things have gone so far as they seem to have done in Paris, it is very hard to apply any remedy which shall satisfy all the laws of political economy. Generally speaking, the most obvious remedy lies in a still further departure from the right path.
In our own country we are probably destined to solve this question by co-operation, but in France they have neither the time nor the patience for our slower methods. The two thousand people who met yesterday at the Salle Levis to proclaim death to bourgeoisie and to declare that they would not starve in the presence of full granaries, nor sleep in streets while houses were empty, nor shiver in rags while shops were full of warm clothing, were a mob of the miserable creatures always at the call of the agitator; but although we also have amongst us those to whom the prospect of plunder would be sweet enough, we have also in a modified form the commune which they claim, and can put down with a clear conscience those who might turn away from the food and shelter which the law offers them to sack a baker's shop.
Still, after making all allowance for different circumstances, there is a lesson in the French situation for some of us here.
We can at least see how vain is the recourse to Protection to save a nation.
Of all industries on the face of the earth none are more miser, able, helpless, and paralysed than those which have the support of Protection.
It must ever be so, because the constant effect of Protection is to drive away all that is solid and enduring in any great industry to countries where labour is unshackled.
Because that is always the case England is a steady gainer by Protectionism abroad, and the more its false and delusive stimuli is applied by Foreign Statesmen to their tottering, weak-kneed industries, the more surely does the best part of the trade gravitate to the countries where it is most untrammelled.
We shall, perhaps, have a difficult Winter to face in England this year, because of the reaction after a time of over-speculation-there is distress in many places now—but we may be confidents this, that the worst which befalls us will come far short of those nations are destined to suffer whose Rulers think that the only certain guarantee of prosperity is to put fetters on the hands and feet of their workmen, and make them the slaves of the State.
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Protectionists and Fair Traders want to impose a tax on the importation of wheat.
They pretend that this would be for the interests of Agriculture, while the rest of the Community would not be injured.
There is only one class which would be benefited, and that is the Landlords, who would be able to exact higher rents.
Every other class would be robbed.
Farmers would not gain; their rents would be raised.
Labourers would not gain; they would have to pay more for their loaf and for everything else they use, and their wages would be lowered.
Trade would languish and the whole Community would suffer.
The nation has had a bitter experience of all this.
In
Foreign wheat was not to be imported free until the price was 80s. a quarter, which meant is. for the four-pound loaf.
This and other laws were enacted by force, and were afterwards maintained by force.
They lasted till
For thirty years, therefore, the nation groaned under the infamous system.
During these thirty years the Landlords thrived. They took sixpence out of every shilling the workman earned.
Town and country labourers earning five to seven shillings a week had to pay from tenpence to eighteenpence for a four-pound loaf.
The people starved; they went mad with misery.
There were riots and rick burnings.
Some rioters in the Eastern Counties went about with a flag with the words "Bread or Blood" upon it. Eight of them were hanged, and nineteen sentenced to transportation or long terms of imprisonment.
During these thirty years the state of the country was simply awful.
At one time, one out of every eleven of the population was a pauper.
Some idea of the state of things may be gained from the few Facts which follow:—
In
In
In
During the time these laws were in force there were no fewer than five Parliamentary Committees to inquire into the cause of the distress.
Farmers were ruined by thousands.?
One newspaper in Norwich advertised 120 sales of stock in one day.
In
Sheffield had 20,000, and Leeds had 30,000 people dependent on the rates.
Whole families were reduced to live on bran.
In Huddersfield 13,000 people were reduced to semi-starvation.
In
At Leeds the pauper stone heap amounted to 150,000 tons.
In Dorsetshire a man and his wife had for wages 2s. 6d. a week and their house; and the ablest labourers had but 6s. or 7s.
In
As to meat in those times, it was scarcely ever touched.
In
In
In one district in Manchester there were 2,000 families without a bed.
In Glasgow 12,000 people were on the relief funds.
In Accrington, out of a population of 9,000, only 100 were fully employed.
The reports of the factory inspectors showed that 10 per cent, of the cotton mills, and 12 per cent, of the woollen mills of Lancashire and Yorkshire, were standing idle; and that of the rest only one-fourth were working full time. As Cobden showed, in answer to Sir Robert Peel, the stocking frames of Nottingham were as idle as the looms of Stockport; the glass-cutters of Stourbridge, and the glovers of Yeovil, were undergoing the same privations as the potters of Stoke and the miners of Staffordshire, where 25,000 men were destitute of employment. He knew of a place where one hundred wedding-rings were pawned in a single week to provide bread, and of another place where men and women subsisted on boiled nettles, and dug up the decayed carcass of a
Such was the state of things which existed under a system which was called Protection.
In those days the population of Great Britain was about 15 millions; it is now over 30 millions.
In
Labourers get higher wages than they did under these laws, and with the same money they command more of the necessaries and conveniences of life than they could then.
With these Facts before them they will not listen to those who, under pretence of protecting their interests, would induce them to vote for putting a duty on foreign wheat, that is, levying a Bread Tax.
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Farmers are suffering from bad times. Among the proposals for their relief the following are the most important:—
Re-adjustment of Local Taxation.
With regard to No. I the relief to be gained would amount to, at most, one shilling an acre; and this would not benefit the Farmer in the long-run. It would find its way eventually into the Landlord's pocket. The same thing would happen with regard to No. 2. Tithes as well as Rates are reckoned as an outgoing in the same way as rent is, and any relief in them would also eventually find its way into the Landlord's pocket. As regards No. 3, no doubt much is to be done in the way of securing the tenant for outlay of capital, and in allowing him more freedom in cultivation. As to No. 4, the proposal to put duties on Foreign Corn, this country has had experience of the thing for thirty years-from
The only class which benefited were the Landlords, who by means of the Corn Laws were able to exact high rents. Farmers were not benefited; they had to pay these high rents.
In Farmers were ruined by thousands. One newspaper in Norwich advertised 120 sales of stock in one day.
During the thirty years the Corn Laws existed no less than five
Protection did not save the Farmers.
Agricultural labourers starved, so did the artisans in the towns. The 4-lb. loaf cost from 10d. to is. 6d. Out of the whole population one out of every eleven was a pauper.
The only class which gained was the Landlords. All other classes were plundered by them.
Protection is Robbery.
There is no chance whatever of its being re-imposed; but if by some possibility it were, it would not benefit the Farmer.
We now come to No. 5, Reduction of Rents.
Here we have the great remedy.
It is thence that the great relief is to come. Rents must be Reduced.
Let Farmers mark what follows:
During the great wars against Napoleon, for twenty years whilst the people were pouring out their blood and treasure, the Landlords were quietly doubling their rents.
In
When the war was about to cease the people naturally expected relief from the high war prices.
The Landlords, however, were filled with alarm lest their inflated rents should diminish, and controlling Parliament as they did in those unreformed days, they passed a Corn Law, by which it was enacted that Foreign wheat should not be admitted till the price rose to 80s., which meant that the 4-lb. loaf should rise to more than a shilling before relief was to be afforded to a starving people.
That is the way the Landlords kept up their rents in those days
In
Then came Free Trade.
Owing to its benefits, and to those conferred by steam communication and the gold discoveries, Rents still rose.
In
Farmers cannot afford the Rents formerly demanded and obtained.
Farm Bents must come down.
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Some of the Tory party seem to have found a remedy for all the ills that afflict us as a nation.
That marvellous panacea is "Protection."
"Let us tax," they say, "the production of the foreigner when he sends it over to this country."
Well, now, we will begin with bread. Suppose, by taxing our bread-stuff, the price of the quartern loaf were 7d. Let us take a family who consume fourteen loaves every week; that would cost 8s. 2d. per week for bread alone. At present we have a good quartern loaf for 5d. Take the same number of loaves, and the bread bill of the family is 5s. 10d.
"But," the Protectionist says, "wages would be higher."
Suppose a man is earning 12s. a week, and his
There are many other necessaries of life that are cheap, because the tax has been taken off.
I can remember
There need not be a single hand out of work to-day in rural England if the land were properly tilled.
Shall we, as working men, go back to the time when many of us had barley bread to eat? I think every o sensible working man will say, No.
Then let us, at the next General Election, fight this bugbear of Fair Trade at the ballot-box; insist upon the land being properly cultivated; and withdraw from our over-populous towns the thousands of men who have been driven there by our inhuman land system.
Till the Land, give the tiller security for his Capital, and we should soon see at least some of these dark clouds of depression disappear.
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"The Pitt and Fox Clubs have disappeared mainly because they were simply dining institutions. But the Cobden Club exists to keep the memory of the great Free Trader green by propagating his opinions. When there was a chance of a revival of a Protectionist policy under the Government of the late Earl of Derby, the Anti-Corn Law League was resuscitated. To-day, the talk about Fair Trade, which simply means a resurrection of the Bread Tax, has aroused the vigilance of the Cobden Club, and called forth all the latent energy of its hon. secretary, the member for Rochdale. Under his inspiration 'leaflets' have been prepared on the subject, which are virtually a species of hand grenades for the explosion of the fallacies of Protection. In these leaflets, fable and dialogue, narrative and exposition, are all in turn pressed into the service of an unfettered commerce. Already some fifteen of these tractates have appeared, and to those who may not have the leisure to master the more elaborate works which have emanated from the same source, they may be
ecommended as presenting the salient facts and arguments for Free Trade in a form at once attractive and convincing. There is, indeed, no royal road to knowledge; but the path should not be made unnecessarily obscure. There are no more useful men than the expositors of recondite science. Our French neighbours pronounce political economy 'tiresome,' and a great English writer has styled it 'dismal.' But these are gross misrepresentations of a subject which, in the hands of any competent master, can be made quite as entertaining as general literature. Alive to this fact, the Cobden Club is now raising a special fund for the purpose of scattering the truth which the club exists to make plain, over the length and breadth of the country. The generation is rapidly passing away that was educated under the great Free Trade leaders, and the necessity for a fresh instruction is made obvious by the dogmatism with which Fair Traders, ignorant of Adam Smith, and unfamiliar with the struggle for the repeal of the Bread Tax, repeat the fallacies so often refuted in that controversy as if they were substantial arguments. A lack of the knowledge of the primary principles of economic science ruined the trade of Spain, and is at this moment crippling the industry of France, Germany, and America."
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The following Verses appeared in a Country Newspaper the week after Mr. Cobden's Death:—
Pure-hearted Heroof a bloodless fight!Clean-handed Captain in a painless war! Soar, spirit, to the realms of Truth and Light, Where the Just are! If one poor cup of water given shall have Due recognition in the Day of Dread, Angels may welcome this one, for he gave A nation bread! His bays are sullied by no crimson stain; His battles cost no life, no land distress'd; The victory that closed the long campaign, The vanquish'd bless'd! No narrow patriot bounded by the strand' Of his own Isle-he led a new advance, And opened, with the olive-branch in hand, The ports of France, Charming base hate of centuries to cease, And laying upon humble piles of Trade, Foundation for that teeming reign of Peace, For which he prayed. This the sole blot on which detraction darts, Willing to make his rounded fame decrease: That in his inmost soul, and heart of hearts, He worshipp'd Peace. But One bless'd Peacemakers long years ago; And since, in common clay, or stately vault, Seldom has Hero rested, stained by so Superb a fault.
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"I can't make chairs and get a living out of them under 30s. a dozen, but they are imported, I believe from Austria, for 20s. a dozen. What am I to do?"The latest device for obscuring the fact that Protection is the robbery of a thousand Peters to pay one Paul, is to put forward an East London Chair-maker to state the workman's case. It is right to hear him. This is what he says:—
The inference intended is that a duty of 10s. a dozen should be put on Austrian chairs, to prevent them being brought into this country. This means that all the poor families of England must pay 10s. more for a dozen chairs than they need pay. This is robbing more than a thousand Peters to pay one Paul.
If this be done, the Pauls who will get all the half-sovereigns which the poor families pay will not be the chair-makers. In America and Canada, where Austrian chairs and all other things are kept out of those countries by Protective Duties, I found that articles of convenience and household comfort which cost £1 here, the workmen there had to pay £3 for, because Protection keeps lower-priced commodities from coming into their markets. As the working men had to pay prices 200 per cent, higher than in England, I asked them if their wages were 200 per cent, higher? when they owned that their wages were only 10 per cent, in most cases, and seldom more than 20 per cent, higher than in England. So that the "blessings" of Protection actually robbed them of 180 per cent in their household and personal expenditure for comfort and convenience. Here was a pretty extensive robbing of the millions of unfortunate Peters to pay
If Austrian chairs are taxed, another thing happens—the Austrian chair-sellers, shut out from our market, cannot exchange their good for other English goods they would buy. No business is done, and other trades lose customers. Then work is scarcer among other workmen wages become lower, while the price of chairs rises, and so of all other articles all round; for no sooner shall the chair-maker get foreign chairs taxed to increase the cost of chairs in East London, than all other workmen will ask, and have an equal right to ask, that whatever trade they follow shall be equally protected, and nothing shall be imported untaxed which they make. All commodities would then rise, all trades would be protected and all the people impoverished. The Peters would be robbed all round and Paul would not be paid at all.
If Austrian chairs are once taxed, why not American wheat and all foreign corn? If the chair-maker is to be protected, why not the farms Then rents would rise, to the great delight of landlords, and bread would rise, until poor workmen were famished, as they were famished before when everybody was protected and custom duties were paid upon: thousand commodities. The poor Peters of Protection had a bad tic of it in those days.
Protection has been played too far, if not played out, in Amelia Mr. Blaine, the late candidate for the Presidency, made Protection the "chief plank in his platform," as they say out there. This was the answer working men and others made:—
"Has Protection been a benefit?" "Trade is stagnant The commerce of the country has
Thus it is that Protection robs many million Peters to pay a few
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We are told that England is suffering from too much Free Trade, and some of our Squires and Landlords want to tax the Corn and Sugar and Bacon coming from abroad—the cheap food of our Working Classes.
Let us see whether that is the right way of going about the improvement of our Trade and our Manufacturing Industries.
In increased a full fourth in Annual Value!
In multiplied by more than one-half!
In our Trade about doubled!
Thus we see prosperity follows the Extension of Free Trade, and Not the Diminution of Free Trade! What is Wanted, Therefore, in
Let us, therefore, see where it may be applied, before resorting to the desperate expedient of taxing the food of the Poor.
First, then: We want Free Trade in Land. The, fetters that bind up millions of acres by settlements (so that their very owners are powerless to sell or
And next: We want a Free Breakfast Table, that is to say, untaxed Tea and. Coffee and Cocoa for the people. Such a reform would cheapen housekeeping (and that would be equivalent to a rise in both wages and profits), whilst it would add many millions to the total of our annual trade, improving freights, stimulating manufactures, and benefiting not only this country, but India and every British Possession.
Last, but not Least: We want to cut down the Excise restrictions upon industry, to liberate the commerce of our merchants from all Customs interference, and to raise taxes by some method more reasonable and just, less wasteful and wicked, than by multiplying the cost of what our working people eat and drink and smoke.
Yes, we want More Free Trade, and we must have it! The Barriers that still limit and stint our intercourse with other nations must be broken down, and fresh guarantees thus acquired for Peace and Prosperity. Increase of International Commerce is better a thousand times than the increase of Armies and Navies, and neither men nor nations will quarrel long or seriously with those who are their best Customers.
Which, then, will you have?
Chaplin's Plan, or Cobden's?
A Tax upon your Food, or
Perfect and Entire Free Trade?
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In Leaflet No. XVI. some of the most important proposals made for the relief of Farmers were discussed, viz.:—
Re-adjustment of Local Taxation.
It was pointed out that as regards Nos. I and 2, any relief would eventually benefit not the Farmers but the Landlords.
As regards No. 4, it was shown that Protection is simply an artifice for raising rents, and thereby plundering the community for the benefit of the Landlords.
It was in Nos. 3 and 5, the latter mainly, that the remedy was thought to be found.
There are other directions, however, in which relief may be looked for, viz.:—
Variety of Cultivation.
There are thus five ways in which the Farmers' condition may be improved. Let us consider them.
First, What is Rent?
Rent is that portion of the produce of the lane which remains over after rewarding the Labourer for his toil, and the Farmer for his outlay and his work.
It is just what remains over that the Farmer cat afford to pay as Rent. If nothing remains over, land can bear no rent.
The Labourer and the Farmer should be considered first; the Landlord last.
In practice this rule has been reversed. Rent has been made the first consideration. Agriculture has become a game of chance, and Farmers the sport of Fortune.
It is heads the Landlords win, and tail: the Farmers lose.
The consequence is that Farmers have wasted the: capital, and Labourers have been forced to migrate.
What Farmers want from Landlords is: Security their Capital; Compensation for their Improvements, and no Raising of Rents thereon; more Liberty in Cultivation Stability of Tenure; and Reduced Rents, calculated more equitable basis than exists at present.
Farmers should go in for Variety of Cultivation. They should remember that we twenty-three million pounds' worth of butter, eggs, cheese, poultry, game, fruit, and vegetable.
Farmers should agitate for Fair Rates of Carriage. American meat and cheese are carried at 25s. a ton from Liverpool to London, while English meat is charged 50s., and cheese from Cheshire, 42s. 6d.
Potatoes from France are brought to London for 30s. a ton; from Penzance they are charged 45s. From Victoria Docks, London, to Peterborough foreign corn pays 6s. 8d. a ton, including barging, &c., while the ordinary charge for English corn for the same distance is 14s. 5d.
Fruit from Holland to London pays 25s. a ton. This fruit passes through Sittingbourne in Kent, from which station the charge on English fruit is also 25s.
The difference in the railway rates between foreign wheat and barley and English wheat and barley amounts to a rent of 5s. per acre.
As to Middlemen's Profits, the margin between what the Farmers get and what Consumers pay should be narrowed to the benefit of both parties.
The sheep which the Farmer sells for £3 costs the Consumer £4. 10s.
Milk which the Farmer sells for 1d. or 1½d., the Consumer pays 4d. or 5d. for, besides sometimes getting an adulterated article.
The annual value of milk sold amounts to Thirty Millions Sterling, far more than that of the wheat crop of the United Kingdom.
Last year 230,000 tons of meat were sold in Smithfield Market.
One halfpenny per pound on this, which is more than One Million Sterling, might probably by union and combination be put into Farmers' pockets from this one market.
These are the directions in which Farmers should look for relief; not to that Will o' the Wisp—a duty on foreign corn, which, as bitter experience has shown, benefits not the cultivator but the owner of the soil.
One thing is certain:—This nation will never again consent to raise artificially, by protective duties, the
From all time the Agriculturist has been too apathetic.
It is of the Countryman that the fable written 2,400 years ago speaks of as praying to Hercules to drag his cart out of the rut.
The story goes that Hercules refused his aid, and told him to put his shoulder to the wheel. This is what the Farmer must do if he would succeed nowadays in his noble calling.
He must put his Shoulder to the Wheel.
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"Fair Trade," as defined by Fair Traders, means that England "should place a heavy tax on foreign goods sent into the country, in order to retaliate on the foreigner, and to force him to adopt "Free Trade," or at least largely to diminish the duties which he now levies on British goods.
It would not be difficult to show that this plan would disastrously affect our trade and commerce, and injure us very much more than it would injure the foreigner. But it will be sufficient, if it can be shown that it is net in our power effectually to retaliate on foreign countries, and force them, against their will, to receive our goods duty free.
Protective duties abroad are chiefly aimed at English goods, and while some persons here cry out because of the import into England of a small amount of foreign manufactured goods, foreign manufacturers complain still more bitterly of the competition from which they suffer, even in their own protected markets, from British manufactures.
Unless, therefore, it could be clearly shown that the foreigner would have more to gain than to lose from accepting our terms, it is evident that he would persist in his present course of action; and, not only so, but to parry our attack, he would still further raise his protective duties, and thus still further exclude our goods from his markets. Let us look, then, into the question of the possibility of forcing foreign nations to accept our terms.
The goods which we received last year (1884) from abroad were valued at £390,000,000, the goods we sent abroad at £295,000,000. As, then, our imports so largely exceed our exports, it seems easy, by imposing a duty on the imports, to compel the foreigner to take his duty off our exports.
But before we can talk of compulsion, we must examine the question a
The imports may be divided as follows:—
Now which of these items can really be taxed?
The Articles of Food (duty free) are agricultural produce, chiefly corn, with butter, cheese, hams, eggs, &c., articles of everyday food. It is almost universally acknowledged, even by Fair Traders themselves, that the "Food of the People" cannot be taxed; the dap of the dear and taxed loaf have fortunately gone by. This amount-133,800,000-must therefore be deducted.
The Lord Salisbury, expressing an almost universal opinion, has said that "the food of the people, and the raw materials of our industries, must be held sacred" from a duty.Raw Materials for Manufactures, consisting of wool, cotton, hemp, raw silk, copper, tin, iron ore, &c., are necessary to our manufactures, and to tax them would be a serious injury, for it would raise the cost of production, and paralyse our powers of competition in the markets of the world. This raw material—£:119,200,000—must therefore also be deducted,
The Dutiable Articles of Food and Drink, which include wine, spirits, tobacco, snuff, tea, cocoa, coffee, currants, dried fruit, &c., and which may be called "
The Miscellaneous Articles include live animals, oil cake for feeding cattle, and seeds (not corn) of different sorts, &c., all articles which could not be taxed. These then—£14,200,000—must be also deducted.
Thus, before we come to articles on which we can impose retaliatory duties, we have to deduct from the total imports of £390,000,000— food, £133,800,000,
But the Semi-manufactures, consisting as they do of such articles as wood (sawn and hewn), hides, rags, tallow, &c., are really of the nature of "raw materials," being all used in our manufactures, and they—-£41,000,000—-must also be deducted.
Thus, of our grand total of £390,000,000 of imports, we have left but £53,300,000 on which retaliatory duties could be placed, or which in any way compete with articles of Home manufacture—not a very large amount out of a total foreign trade of £685,000,000.
But even this total is not fully available for taxation. Some five millions of these Manufactures simply pass through the country, and are re-exported elsewhere, and a tax on them would prevent them coming here at all, and we should lose the profits on transit. Again, of this total, some eighteen or nineteen millions consist of innumerable small articles, chiefly "fancy goods," taxes on which would be vexatious and unremunerative.
Thus, a further sum of £23,000,000 or £24,000,000 must be deducted from the £53,300,000, leaving a total of but £30,000,000 of Manufactures (cotton, silk, woollen, leather, iron, &c.); and this practically represents our maximum powers of attack on the foreigner.
But now we must look at the other side, and see how our trade could be attacked if we determined to enter on a "war of tariffs."
Our Exports may be divided as follows:—
How much of this could the foreigner attack?
We will deduct the Articles of Food and the
A large portion of the Raw Materials—consisting as they do of coal, copper, cotton, hemp, silk, wool, tallow, wood, &c.—is open to attack, and would certainly be attacked by the foreigner determined to maintain his protective duties at any cost; while the taxes already levied in protective countries on our
We may safely assert, therefore, that our exports are vulnerable to the extent of £240,000,000, while, as already shown, the vulnerability of the foreign imports is measured by £30,000,000—the power of foreign retaliation being thus eight times as great as our power of attack
Of course we do not send all our exports to protective countries, nor do we receive all our imports from them; much comes and goes between us and the neutral, non-protective, markets of the world. But, practically, the more protective the country, the less are our powers of attack; from the most protective countries we receive the smallest amount of manufactured goods—for the very good reason, that, in consequence of their Protective duties, they cannot produce so cheaply as we can, and cannot therefore compete with us.
But without going into details as to our trade with the various countries, it is clear that however much we might desire to injure the foreigner, in order to induce him to remove his protective tariff, on powers are so very limited as to make any attempt of the sort useless.
No doubt, if we chose, we could exclude foreign manufactures from our markets; but we must not forget that the results springing from an; system of Protection—as this would be—could not be confined to the thirty millions of foreign imports, but would injuriously affect our whole foreign trade of six to seven hundred millions.
Free Trade enables us to produce goods more cheaply than any other nation in the world. Any tampering with its principle would necessarily increase the cost of production all round; and would thus not only seriously diminish our powers of competing with other nations in their own protected markets, but would imperil our supremacy in the neutral markets of the world, on which our commercial future so largely depends.
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Terms, like coins, wear out by use and misuse.
Protection is one of these terms. It was a bright, well-gilt piece of currency, bearing the lineaments of an unduly fat farmer on one side and a plethoric landlord on the other, and was largely circulated at Election and Agricultural Dinners. But during the Anti-Corn Law Agitation the gilt was rubbed off, when there were discovered on one side groups of hungry families and on the other a workhouse. The coin became defaced, broken and battered, and it had to be returned to the mint of worn-out words.
A few years ago it re-appeared stamped with the plausible name of "Fair Trade." Though very well coined, it was mere bronze metal; it never got well taken up. Lately it has been "called back," and another piece, supposed to have a better ring about it, entitled "Reciprocity," is now offered for circulation.
As Reciprocity is an old acquaintance under a new face, the present generation of readers hardly know it again. Their fathers knew it well. As everybody is destined to hear a good deal of it, it will be useful to many to explain it.
The Governments of some Foreign Countries, finding traders complaining of lack of customers and workmen complaining of low wages, say—
"We know an excellent way of relieving you. All articles which you need, and which English merchants sell in your markets at forty shillings, we will make dearer by putting a duty of ten shillings upon each. The merchants will then charge you fifty shillings for each article. He will pay us ten shillings for permission to sell to you, and you will pay him ten shillings extra for each thing you buy. We shall be all those ten shillings richer, and you will be all those ten shillings poorer."
The Conservative party and others in England, learn-
"We will soon put that distress all right. In America, Canada, and other countries, they levy a heavy duty upon all our goods exported to them, which makes them dearer to the buyers. This is considered a great boon to poor people, and a form of relief in their distress, since it obliges them to pay a much higher price than they need do for what they want. We will therefore put an import duty on all articles, wheat or goods, which other countries send into our markets, so that every article they now sell the English people at forty shillings shall pay a duty of ten shillings, which wall raise the price to fifty shillings here. We shall have ten shillings collected at the Custom House upon each article, and the half-employed, half-starved people will have to pay it."
"This," they say, "will soon relieve the distress. All that is wanted is that the people should ask for this themselves. If they do they shall surely have it."
Protection means the Government plundering the people. Reciprocity means the people plundering themselves.
Those who propose it do not speak in this plain manner, but this is what they would say if they did speak plainly.
There are several kinds of Reciprocity—good, bad, and foolish.
When we say one good turn deserves another, that is good Reciprocity.
When men propose to meet one evil turn by another of the same kind, that is bad Reciprocity.
But when another nation taxes our commodities brought into its markets, and makes them dearer to all inhabitants who buy them there, and we propose to tax their commodities sent to our markets, making them dearer to all our own people who purchase them here, that is mad Reciprocity.
If it were not advocated as a political remedy by respectable politicians, the proposal would be brought under the notice of the Lunacy Commissioners.
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After a twelve years' battle with that huge stumblingblock in the pathway of the people, Toryism, we have secured a triumphant victory. The Franchise Bill is passed, and on the
As one who has been in the forefront of the Franchise battle
It was the public policy and the class-made laws of the Tory landowners that brought our fathers down to poverty and misery Their landlord-made land laws, their laws to restrict the amount paid as wages to working men, their detestable Corn Laws, were all directed towards making themselves richer and us poorer—towards pushing themselves up and the labouring classes down.
To the Tory landowners we owe many, if not all, of the most pernicious of our laws; to Liberal Reformers we owe every agitation for the repeal of tyrannical laws and burdensome taxes.
Our fathers, both in town and country, were absolutely unenfranchised. Many of them were shot down by the soldiery before the first great Reform Bill of
The Tory landlords taxed the people's bread, and refused to allow any foreign corn to come into the country until wheat was 80s. per quarter and bread 1s. per loaf. It was due to Liberal Reformers that the Corn Laws were abolished and bread made cheap.
A heavy tax was placed on paper, and cheap books and newspapers were impossible, so that poor people could not buy them, and were kept in ignorance. Liberal Reformers again came to the front and carried the Repeal of the Paper Duties.
Liberal working men raised the great agitation of
The Education Acts were carried by Liberals against the bitterest opposition of the Tories, who always have endeavoured to prevent the freer and better education of the people. And now, the latest opposition of the Tory party is seen in the insults and defiance hurled at the people before they passed the present Franchise Bill.
The Tory landlord party is the hereditary enemy of the progress of the people.
At the present moment farmers and labourers are suffering from what is called agricultural depression, and some of the landlords are raising the unworthy cry that it is due to Free Trade They are seeking to persuade us that as corn is cheap, the farmers cannot make a profit; and hence they are clamouring for a tat upon foreign corn, so that the price of both home and foreign come may be raised. Now, before I deal with this ridiculous notion, let us see what the landowners have themselves done to help the farmer and the labourer. Since the beginning of this century the rents of the farms have been nearly doubled. During the short period from the people, who eat the bread, are to pay the bread-tax. The landlords' rent-roll is to be kept up at the cost of the poor man's loaf. This sort of nonsense may be good enough for English farmers, but it may be taken for granted that the agricultural labourers will not be deceived by such a barefaced proposition. Then "Fair Trade" and "Reciprocity" step in. They say, Is it fair that we should admit corn duty-free from other countries, while those countries tax our manufactured goods? So, because other countries cut their own people's throats, we are to be stupid enough to do the same! We manufacture an article that we can sell to another country for £5; but before the other country admits that article into their ports they place a £ 1 tax upon it, and thus raise its price to their own people to £6. They go in for making articles dearer for their own people; we go in for making them cheap, so that our people may get as much as possible for their money. We make our people's bread as low-priced as we can; the landed proprietors take advantage of it to reduce labourers' wages and increase farmers' rentals, and then when complaint is made, and we ask for better consideration, Tory landlords turn upon us with the audacious proposal to tax our children's bread in order that they may continue to extort their increased rents.
Then, too, the people of the towns have no inconsiderable interest in this matter. Are the working men of our great cities and towns prepared to tax their bread so as to bolster up the farmers; and because the farmers do not choose to exert themselves, but continue to pay the high rents and submit to conditions of cultivation such as are imposed on no other farmers in the universe? Are the people of the towns ready to tax their bread for the benefit of the Tory landed proprietors and their rent-rolls! I am well aware that there are a few better-hearted large landowners who scorn the idea, but, unfortunately, those who are advocating this cruel taxation of the people's bread are very numerous and very wealthy. Those of them who condemn the proposal should speak out, and in unmeasured terms expose the fallacious and outrageous arguments of the Protectionists, lest their silence implies consent.
If the farmers are foolishly led adrift by their Tory landlords—as so many have been in the past—the labourers must show their good sense by having nothing to do with either of them. It is due, in a large measure, to the apathetic indifference of the farmers that agricultural matters are in the plight in which we find them to-day. If in the future, farmers or labourers allow themselves to be cajoled, intimidated, or hoodwinked by Conservative landlords, they will be traitors to their children and to their country. They have the Ballot to protect them; and although the new voters art being assured by interested parties that the Ballot is not secret, I will ask the labourers to accept the truth from me that the voting by Ballot is absolutely secret. No one can know how the voter has voted unless the voter opens his own mouth.
In concluding these Words of Warning, I will strongly impress upon agricultural labourers the necessity there is at this time to be firm and determined in their adherence to the cause of labour and progress—for this is a crisis in our history as the labouring class—and we must at all hazards be true and stedfast to ourselves and those dependent upon us. We must put away from us, as we would the plague, not alone this cry for Protection, but also the people who raise it. We must go in for better Land Laws, better Education and Cheap Food; and as Liberal and Radical Reformers are the men who have helped us thus far, and as Tory landlords and their friends are the men who have always stood in our pathway, it is our one paramount duty to assist and vote for the Party of Reform—the Liberal-Radical party-for in doing that we shall be steadily pursuing our great battle against ignorance and poverty—the hi evils from which our fathers and ourselves have suffered so severely in the past.
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For the present farmers of Great Britain the question is—What are they to do? This cry is going up from all parts; of Britain. The question is frequently asked, but never satisfactorily answered. Let us see if an answer can be given from Canada, and from an emigrant of fifty years' experience. The writer is an Englishman. He was bred on a farm in England, and learned every branch of English farming. He was bred up in comfort and luxury; then turned to industry, with the idea of emigrating; and finally came to Canada, when the greater part of it was unbroken forest. He, therefore, knows both England! and Canada.
His idea is—"Let the British farmer do willingly in Britain what he will be forced to do if he emigrates, and he will find that his success in Britain will equal, if not surpass, any success which he can expect or hope to attain in any colony, and at a far less expense of comfort and labour than he would suffer if he
The British farmer of the present day is not fit for the struggles and trials of a new land. He is too far advanced in life; his habits and ideas are fixed and established; and to expect such a man to succeed in a new land is hopeless. Canada is a great country, and has been made such by emigration; but by what class of emigrants? By the hard-handed, industrious, and temperate British labourer, who has taken the axe in his hands, has felled the forests, and raised grain amongst the stumps and roots of the trees, which he has cut down and burned, and finally made a cleared and cultivated farm where there was an interminable
There is no chance for the present British farmer to do this His life is too far spent; his habits and experience, and those of his wife, are not equal to it. His sons may, if they will, come out here and begin at the bottom round of the ladder; but if the; have money and do not begin at the bottom, failure and ruin will be the consequence. If he cannot or will not begin low enough he will never obtain the goal of his ambition. The present British farmer (if he emigrates) begins where the colonial farmer leave off. He has capital, or no one in Britain would rent him a farm He has a thorough knowledge of scientific agriculture, or he could never meet his first year's rent from the produce of his land, in a colony his capital would be sunk in struggles to do as he has been used to do; his knowledge would be wasted on imperfectly, cleared land, where everything is exactly opposite to what he has been accustomed to.
What is required in an emigrant is "muscle," not "mind." He must have youth and an indomitable will, or he could not set his muscles in profitable motion. "Mind" he must, of course; have, even although his mind may be forming whilst his muscles are winning the battle, or he could not make use of the victory which those muscles have won. It is useless to expect all this from a man of middle age and of what, in a colony, would considered luxurious habits. The emigrant must be the man of the axe, the hoe, and the spade—the man who can take hold of the lever and pile up the log heaps before he burns them. When he has burned them up, he can scratch the ground among the stumps and roots with the roughest possible implements, and then sow his grain where the log heaps stood.
I have known a man who had no means, and no help but his wife, who had no plough or harrow, who, with his wife, cut down the trees, built the log heaps, and who, when he had burned them and sowed his wheat, covered it by dragging a great thorn bush, hauled by himself, his wife, and possibly by a borrowed ox or horse. And yet that man bought and finally paid for his land, and eventually won the battle of labour, and finally became i prosperous agriculturist. He was a German.
Could the present British farmer do this? If he could not (and he could not), he is unfit for a new country.
But what is the present British farmer to do? Let him realise what he has, move to another part of the country where his "come down" will not be observed, take a new farm amongst new neighbours, give up his hunters, his dogs, and guns, go to work himself when required, take hold of his own plough, be his own shepherd or byreman, and generally take a lower stand—"the stand of industry and hard work." He cannot, of course, stint his farm, but he must stint himself and his family—banish wine and spirits, and if he cannot, or will not, do without beer (as he easily could and ought), let him brew it himself, or get it brewed by some experienced woman in the village. Stop hunting, shooting, coursing, and all such sports, which are only a waste of time. In all matters of expense which the land does not absolutely require, let him hold on to every sixpence until, as the Yankees say, "he has left the mark of his thumb-nail in it."
Let him do all this, and he will not incur one quarter of the deprivations which he would incur by emigrating.
No man could expect him to "come down" in his present place, and amongst his present friends—it would be too hard; but let him move away—he won't move so far as if he was emigrating.
But it will naturally be said, How does the writer know all this?—what experience has he had that he can lay down the law for others? In reply, he says:—I was bred on a farm in England, and naturally, therefore, know all about it. As to Canada, since I have been here I have sold and helped to sell nearly 2,000,000 of acres of bush land—mostly in 100, 200, and 50-acre lots. It was all sold on credit, small sums only being paid down. I have had to watch the proceedings of the people, and have seen their progress and marked their successes and failures, and finally received from them (by myself and others) the price they were to pay for their farms; I, in fact, looked over the game, and naturally saw more than those engaged in it. Experience could no farther go. These struggles I have seen go on for half a century, and am therefore well posted in the facts about which I write.
It is impossible to give the particulars of these struggles, but I will mention two of them.
It left the poor fellow very bare, but he bought others
Of course, in the end, although it may be some time first,
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Free Trade is the right which a man has to lay out his wages or income at the best advantage to himself, to buy at the shop which gives him best quality at the easiest rate.
It would seem that so natural a right could hardly be disputed. But it took years of labour to secure the right, and to defeat the claims of those who insisted that the English people should be forced to deal at those shops only which Protectionists chose to name—i.e., their own shops—and who had turned these claims into law.
The expression "one-sided Free Trade" has no meaning. If every Englishman has, as he has at present, the right to buy from whom he pleases, there cannot be any one-sidedness in the situation. If his freedom is to be shortened, Free Trade is at an end.
Fair Trade, as far as it is explained, is an attempt to force a man to deal with that person only who has dealings with some other person. John Brown sells bread, and William Smith sells shoes. Fair Trade tells me that I must not buy bread of John Brown, because he does not buy his shoes of William Smith, and that I must not buy shoes of William Smith, because he does not buy bread of John Brown. I am, forsooth, to be made worse
The best illustration of such a Fair Trade is the old tally shop. The employer used to say, "I find you wages, therefore you must lay out your money at my shop, where I will let you have what sort of goods I like, of the quality which I find suits me, and at such prices as I please to fix." The Parliament saw that this process meant cheating and plunder, and put it down with a heavy hand But, according to the Fair Traders, the system must have been just and wise. It was thorough Reciprocity. But for all it was one-sided.
Fair Traders want to make everything dearer—i.e., to prevent every man's money going so far as it does now. If everything is dearer, there must be stint. If every one is stinted, he has less to spend. If he has less to spend, he can buy less. If he buys less, he causes less employment to be given, and, if times are bad, the supposed remedy makes them worse.
When we say that times are bad, we mean that there are three men seeking for two men's work, and of course there are less wages earned. Does any person out of Bedlam believe, if the Fair Traders got their way, and thereupon three men are seeking for one man's work, that wages would be better. Does a master pay higher wages because he gets more profit? Not a bit of it. He pays higher wages when hands are scarce, lower wages when hands are numerous and are seeking work. Working men who listen to the Fair Traders, and are taken in by them, are deliberately lessening, or trying to lessen, their own wages.
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The highest value ever exported was in
Of the Importations of Textile Fabrics, Silk, formerly the most protected of British Industries, accounts for.£10,976,830; Cotton, the frees: from Protection, for only £2,235,800. Of the whole £389,774,000 of Imports, £318,594,000 consisted of Food, Drink, Tobacco, and
It was prophesied that the repeal of the Navigation Laws would British Shipping, but it still maintains its supremacy.
To proceed to the consideration of the price of the staff of life— Bread.—Under Protection, the best wheaten
What would have been the Price of Bread and the state of the Nation during the recent deficient harvests if the Corn Laws had not been Repealed?
The present high price of butchers' meat, which seems to be an exception to the favourable results of Free Trade, really proves—first, that the consumption and the ability to purchase are both greater than under Protection; and, secondly, that were it not for the free import of foreign provisions and cattle we should at this moment be labouring under a dearth of animal food. Up to the year
The number of paupers relieved in England and Wales on the
The amount expended in poor relief per head of the population was the same in
The Total Capital of the Savings' Banks was £24,474.000 in
The Total Traffic Receipts of Railways were £4,535,000 in
The Total Assessment of Income Tax in Great Britain in
It is said we are draining ourselves of gold to pay for the excess of Imports. What are the facts?
The account of Imports and Exports on the first page shows and excess of the former over the latter of £94,403,259, but the Exports of Bullion and Specie only show an excess over Imports of £1,677,369,01 seventeen farthings in the pound. It may be said that a single year is no test, but the case of the Fair Traders is not strengthened by taking a series of years. The following are the figures for the previous ten years:—
From which it would appear, according to the Protectionist theory that the foreigner had paid us £14,000,000 in Bullion and Specie to take £1,115,000,000 worth of goods off his hands.
The apparent mystery is very easily solved. Free Trade has gives England the lion's share of the carrying trade of the world, G. W. Medley, which contains the fallowing estimate of these payments:—
Resolve, then, to
Reject the Fallacies of "Protection,
"Reciprocity," or "Fair TradeM,"
Or by whatever other Name the Delusion may be called
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Before answering this question I will ask another.
If a duty on Corn would not have this effect who would have asked for it? The answer is—No once. The demand for it, although adopted by many Conservative candidates, comes from the Agriculturists, because a duty would raise the value of the corn which they grow; and from Landowners because it would increase their rents. But some of these candidates, who are coming forward for towns where com is consumed but not grown, deny that it will have this effect. Let us examine into this.
The price of wheat, as of everything else, depends upon the supply keeping pace with the demand. If the supply is shortened, the price must rise. And the supply would be diminished by any increase in the cost of sending corn to England, because it would just make the difference to a large number of growers,
The supply here would then fall short of the demand, and the price would rise, to the grievous injury of the English consumer.
One of our ablest economists, Sir James Caird, has recently calculated that every shilling of duty on corn would cost the consumers in this country about four millions of pounds. Judge, then, what a burden would have to borne if a duty of five times this amount, or twenty millions of pounds, were imposed; and some have proposed even a heavier duty than this!
Moreover, this tax would fall most heavily on those who spend the largest proportion of their incomes on bread—namely, the working man.
We are bound, therefore, to resist to the uttermost this demand for a duty on the first necessary of life.
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All over the world trade for some time past has been, and is now, very unremunerative and depressed. In this country landlords and tenants are suffering from bad seasons and low prices, manufacturers and merchants from over-production and a lessened demand.
The consequence is a thoughtless cry on the part of certain people who seem to think that legislation can cure all the ills which flesh is heir to, for some kind of protection to native industry. They forget that, notwithstanding the losses of the upper and middle classes, the great body of the operatives have scarcely felt the pressure at all; tithe statistics of pauperism, the deposits in the savings banks, and other facts as remarkable as they are notorious, show that the cheap food, and the cheap clothing of Free Trade, and its attracting to Britain the commerce of the world, have warded off from the poor those dire calamities which used to overtake them before the days of Mr. Cobden and Sir Robert Peel.
But what is the condition of things in the United States, where, for a hundred years, public men have been endeavouring to create and bolster up native industries, and where duties are now levied varying from twenty to one hundred per cent.?
The answer is—a stagnation, glut, and want of markets, such as, perhaps, was never witnessed anywhere before. The tariff, taxing as it does raw materials as well as everything else, has made American goods so dear that British manufactures are driving them out of nearly all the markets of the world, and Congress is at its wits' end where to find a remedy. Throughout the whole of the Eastern States
"Some manufacturing companies have been forced into bankruptcy; others have closed their mills to escape it; few mills are running on full time, and, as a consequence, a very large number of operatives are either deprived of employment or are working for wages hardly sufficient to enable them to live comfortably or even decently."
The position of the American shipping interest is still more deplorable. In
Thirty years ago seventy per cent, of the ships engaged in the foreign trade of America bore the national flag, only twenty-three per cent, do so now. Let me quote Mr. McCulloch again:—
"The humiliating fact stares us in the face that while the United States not many years ago led all nations in shipbuilding, and was second only to Great Britain in ocean tonnage, it has almost ceased to be recognised as a maritime Power; that nearly all our agricultural productions and manufactured goods which find a market in Europe or South America and the articles received in exchange for them are carried in foreign ships; that the many thousands of Americans who annually visit Europe on business, or for pleasure, go and come in European steamers; that large foreign steamship lines are, in fact, supported by the people of the United States."
Fair Trade is, of course, merely Protection disguised; it means everywhere, certainly it has meant in the United States, the making of great fortunes on the part of the few at the expense of the many, and the building up of a fabric which, although attractive-looking for a time, being built on false foundations, must speedily fall to pieces, and involve widespread and general disaster.
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"The Liberal Party gave to all voters the protection of the Ballot, which the Tory-Party strongly opposed.
"Every voter is now able to vote as he wishes.
"No landlord, or farmer, or employer of any kind can know how any vote is given; and the poorest man is as safe in giving his vote as the richest.
"This is a great safeguard for the voter.
"Political freedom, therefore, and a real representation of the people, rich and poor, the country owes to the Liberal Party."
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Well, Jack! what's this I hear about the gentlemen coming round to fix which of us is to have votes and which not?
Why, they tell me there is to be a General Election of Members to Parliament after harvest; so, what they call Registration will have to be done earlier than usual.
But if we're put on the list, arc we all obliged to vote?
No, of course not, unless we like. But why shouldn't we vote?
Well, you know, I was having a talk with my master the other day, and he tells me that he hears that all the voting-papers arc sent up to London; and that somehow or other they find out there how everybody has voted.
Your master may know something about mangolds and turnips, and perhaps a little even about buying stock, though he generally pays a dealer to do that, whereby he loses at least five per cent, of the profit when there is any; but as to public matters and politics, why, bless you! he is as innocent as a baby.
That may be; but I saw him coming out of Lawyer Wilkinson's office last market-day, and I think he has been consulting with him, and what you call sucking the lawyer's brains.
Well, Tom, I'll tell you what; I've been asking some questions of a friend too, and I'll tell you what he said to me about it.
All right, Jack! move on.
Well, my friend said the best way to judge whether
we tell them ourselves.
That seems very reasonable, so go on.
First of all, if you and I want to vote, we have to find out our number on the Register. This there's no trouble about for the candidates' agents arc sure to do it for us, and it tells nothing except that we are thinking of voting; so far, then, we are safe.
So I think; but what's next?
Next we have to go to the gentleman who sits at the place where they take the votes, tell him our number, and take a voting-paper. These voting-papers are bound up in books like ratebooks or cheque-books, each paper having a counterfoil, which is left in the book when the voting-paper is torn off. Printed on the paper is (1) a number—1, 2, 3, &c.—corresponding with the number on the counterfoil; (2) the names of the candidates; (3) an official stamp, which is the same on all the voting-papers and is put on to prevent them from being used at any other election.
Are there any marks on what you call the counterfoil?
Yes; some number—1, 2, 3, &c.—corresponding with the number on the voting-paper, is printed on the counterfoil; but when the presiding officer gives us our voting-papers he writes our Register number on the counterfoil also.
Well, then, if anybody wants to know how I vote be has only to get my number on the Register—which is very easy to do—look through the counterfoils till he finds the one on which it is written, see what number is stamped upon it, and rummage among the voting-papers after the election till he finds my which will have the same number stamped upon it as is stamped upon the counterfoil.
Certainly, Tom. But I'll show you presently that is just what nobody can do.
Very well, then; we'll leave that. But now I've got my voting-paper, what am I to do with it?
Go into a kind of stall which is shut off from view, and with
No more can I; but can you satisfy me about the second step?
Well, I'll try and do that, but first I must remind you that you have one more step to take; that is, to fold up your votings-paper, and put it into a closed box with a slit in the lid, called the ballot-box. That's all you have to do, and, so far as you are concerned, the election is over. But now I'll tell you what happens too the counterfoils and to the voting-papers. The counterfoils, together with the registers which have been used at the polling, are sealed up in a parcel and sent to a public officer in London, called the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery. This is done at the close of the poll. The voting-papers from all the polling places are sent too the presiding officer, whoever he may be, sheriff or mayor or their deputies. They are then tumbled out into one great heap, and counted in his presence, and in presence of the election agents of both candidates. The poll is then declared, and the voting-papers are sealed in another parcel, and sent to the same officer as the counterfoils. At the end of a twelvemonth the parcel-Is of voting-papers, registers, and counterfoils are all burnt unopened.
Why arn't they done away with directly in place of being kept for a twelvemonth?
I'll tell you; though I agree with you that it is hardly worth while keeping the papers so long. I daresay you've heard talk of an election petition?
Well, I can't say I haven't; but I don't rightly know what it is.
It's this: that after an election the losing party some-times thinks he ought to have won, or that the other party, at all events, ought not to have won; so he presents a petition to Parliament, and asks to be allowed to prove his case. Now comes in the reason why the voting-papers, counterfoils, &c., are not burnt directly.
How's that?
Why, if the gentleman who petitions succeeds in proving to the satisfaction of the judge before whom the case is tried that enough bad votes were polled to turn the election supposing they had been all given to the candidate who had won, the judge will give an order to the Clerk of the Crown to open the sealed parcels of counterfoils and voting-papers, and trace, by means of the register number written and of the stamped number printed on the counterfoil, how the corresponding voting-papers were filled up. But even in this case it is only the bad votes which are traced, and this by an officer who is sworn to secrecy.
Very good; I understand that. But what are bad votes, as you call them?
If a man is found to have been bribed, his vote is bad.
Well, that won't touch me, as I don't mean to take a bribe. But what else?
Peers of the realm, policemen, Government servants—at least some of them—felons, foreigners or aliens, women-for the present, at least—anybody under 21, an idiot or a lunatic, can't vote; or if they do vote, their votes are bad.
Well, that list don't apply to me, so I think I'm pretty safe.
I think so too, and that you and I may be pretty well satisfied that
The Ballot is Secret.
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The Fair Traders say, "Give us protective duties, and work and wages will be plentiful." The direct contrary is the fact; and, if it were not so, how is it that wagess are at least fifty per cent. higher than they were forty years ago? It is perfectly true that wages in protectionist America are higher than they are here; but then it is also true that wages in protectionists France are lower than they are here: and it is a curious fact, that while our opponents sometimes appeal to America as showing what protection does for wages, they not less frequently appeal to the low wages in France, and call out for protection against the competition which is caused by the low wages and long hours of labour in that country. They cannot use both arguments: one must be wrongs The fact is that the rate of wages is chiefly governed by supply and demand, and in a new country, where labour is scarce and commerce active, whether it is Free Trade or Protectionist, wages will rule high. At the same time, other things being equal, wages will rule higher in a Free Trade country than in a protected one; because Free Trade promotes commerce, and commerce creates a demand for labour, which raises the price.
But then, our opponents say, Protection fosters fresh industries which would not otherwise have existed, and, therefore, improves trade. It may foster fresh industries, but if it does, it is at the expense of other industries which need no fostering. What it does is not to create additional work, but to divert capital from work that is naturally profitable to work that is not profitable, and which can only be made so by artificial means. What we should aim
The depression of Trade has been grievously prolonged, but it is worse in Protected countries than in Free Trade England. It is not due to Free Trade. On the contrary, Free Trade has enabled working men to pass through it with less suffering, owing to the cheapness of food, and other articles. Even during the depressed period pauperism has steadily diminished, emigration has steadily diminished, crime has steadily diminished, and the Excise returns have steadily increased. The fact is, the well-being of the people depends, not only on the absolute amount of wages they earn, but also on the purchasing power of those wages. Almost every important article used by working men is cheaper than it used to be; and more of it is consequently used by them. Thus, the consumption of sugar is one-half as much again per head as it was twelve years ago; and if you go farther back, the difference is still more marked, being now four times as great as it was in
With Free Trade, nearly everything that we consume is cheaper than it used to be under Protection, and we are able to undersell even protected countries in their own markets. Protective duties, on the other hand, enhance the price of the commodities we consume; and living being thus made dearer, it is impossible to produce so cheaply what other countries buy of us.
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The new School of Protectionists say that "one-sided Free Trade is bad for this country." A more straightforward way of putting the complaint would be, "'No bread' is better than 'half a loaf.'" It is founded on the fallacy that we buy what we want as a favour too other countries; whereas the truth is, we buy these things s because we want them.
But what is the remedy which is proposed by the Fair Traders for the state of things of which they complain? They suggest Reciprocity, or rather Retaliation, on the foreigner. We are to put duties on the goods we import from them, in the hope that they will take off the duties they impose on ours; that is to say, we are to injure our-selves at the same time that we injure them, in the hope that they will abandon their policy, which injures both them and us. We are to become Protectionists in thee hope of persuading them to become Free Traders. We might just as well say to the Conservatives, "Unless you become Liberals we will adopt your principles and become Tories." Would not foreigners at once say, "You seem n to have very little faith in your own principles. Either
Foreigners could retaliate with far more effect against us than we can against them, because our imports of their manufactures are far less than their imports of ours. I will go into that matter presently; but first I want to ask whether we are to levy these duties against all other countries alike, or are we to single out particular countries, and tax their commodities only? If we are going to treat all alike, that will be making no distinction between those who treat us well, and those who treat us badly; so that is out of the question. If, on the other hand, you are going to pick out the countries that tax our goods, there is this practical difficulty. What security have you that the country against which you raise the barrier would not evade it by sending their goods through another country against which it does not exist? For instance, if we put a duty on French silks, what is to prevent their being sent here through Belgium?
Then, again, these measures of Retaliation—are they to be permanent or temporary? If they do not have the desired effect of coercing other countries—which they certainly would not—are we to advance further on the downward path, or to recede? If we were to enter on that path, we should probably be unable to help going further, because those who did not happen to be interested in the particular articles protected would soon get tired of paying higher for them, and would call out for protection for the articles they themselves produce. But supposing, as the more reasonable Fair Traders would no doubt say, it is
But now comes the question, Upon what imports do you propose to put a duty? Is it to be upon raw materials, or manufactured articles, or food? We may leave raw materials out of the question. No one seriously proposes it. The Fair Trade agitation proceeds chiefly from a few manufacturers, and they know too much to propose that the raw material which they purchase should be raised in price. There remain, then, duties on manufactures and on food. Which is it to be? Judging by recent experience in bye-elections, it is to be one thing in one place, and another thing in another. The Conservative candidate who stands for a county goes in boldly for a duty on corn, to please the agriculturists; but this would never do in the towns, where the people eat bread, but do not grow it; so another Conservative candidate in that case tries to please the manufacturers. But the Fair Trade League consists of both these classes, and it has therefore to adopt a policy combining both programmes. No doubt what the manufacturers would like best would be duties on manufactured goods; but they see the hopelessness of proposing this without allies, so they hold out a tempting bait to the agriculturists to join them, and go in with a light heart for a duty on corn as well. Let me tell you what they recommend.
"A very moderate duty to be levied on all articles of food from foreign countries, the same being admitted free from all parts of our own empire prepared to take our manufactures in reasonably free exchange;" and then, again, "adequate import duties on foreign manufactures."
I have dealt with a duty on corn in another leaflet Here let us examine into the effect of a duty on manufac-
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The "Death Duties" are the probate, account, legacy, and succession duties.
The first two apply only to personal estate, such as goods, money, and leasehold property. Legacy duty applies mainly to personal estate, but it is also chargeable on money arising from the sale of real estate, and on legacies payable out of: real estate. Succession duty applies mainly to real estate, or what is called realty, i.e., houses (including leaseholds) and lands. Leaseholds, being personal estate, were always liable to legacy duty until in 1853 they were thrown into the Succession Duty Act, and made liable to succession duty, still remaining charged with probate duty as well.
Probate duty is paid upon the net amount off personalty left. Legacy and succession duty upon the separate amounts inherited.
The amount of probate duty depends upon the value of the personalty left by the deceased. If this does not exceed £500, it is charged at the rate of 2 per cent.; if over £500, and not above £1,000, 2½ per cent.; if over £1,000, 3 per cent. No probate duty at all is charged upon realty.
The rate of legacy and succession duty is fixed by the degree of the blood relationship of the legatee or successor to the dead man. Thus:—
[The legacy duty, at the rate of 1 per cent., is not payable where probate duty has been paid, excepting in some cases, such as foreign property.]
So if a man leave his wife.£50,000 in personalty (that being his whole estate), she has to pay.£1,500 probate duty; if it is left in houses or land (realty) she would pay nothing.
But so far only a small portion of the tenderness exhibited towards realty, compared with the treatment given to personally, is shown. Probate and legacy duties are charged upon the full value. But in the case of succession duty, the annual income from the houses or lands is treated as an annuity to that amount, and the tax is
calculated upon the value of an annuity to that amount t for the number of years the owner may be supposed to live. Now rich people are generally long livers, and the 2 average rate of the succession duty—the sole duty on i real estate—is 2 per cent. only.
Again, the successor to personalty must pay the full 1 duty at once, but the landowner is allowed four and a half f years in which to pay his reduced duty by eight half-yearly instalments.
Business Man has to pay at once the whole amount.
Landowner is allowed four and a half years in which to pay by eight half-yearly instalments.
Credit ought to be given for the sacrifice which Liberal statesmen make in the great cause of Liberal progress. To the estates of several members of Mr. Gladstone's late Cabinet the increase in the death duties, proposed by Mr. Childers and rejected by the combined forces of the Opposition, would have involved enormous cost. As an illustration it may be mentioned that the Marquis of Hartington, who is heir-apparent to the Duke of Devonshire, estimated that the death duties of the Budget, of which he was a supporter, would have cost his family £160,000 every time that the estates of the Duke of Devonshire passed from father to son.
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In my Annual Report i alluded to an invitation, conveyed "in some 2,000 circular letters to our manufacturers and merchants," re questing "their united co-operation in the improvement of our fiscal policy," and I added that "the replies received will hereafter be submitted to the consideration of Congress." I have asked permission of those whose communications seem to throw light on the subject, in a legislative sense, and I transmit, herewith, the opinions of the manufacturers and merchants who have given to me authority to do so, together with other matter pertinent to the subject.
My opinion in regard to our existing Tariff law is clear and positive, and is confirmed more and more by every day's widening experience in the administration of this Department. Soon after I entered thereon, less than a year ago, I became convinced that the investigations into the conduct of the customs service which had already been begun by my predecessor, Mr. McCulloch, were of pressing importance, and I continued them with energy. The result, up to the meeting of Congress, is contained in my Annual Report. Since that date, the need of additional legislation has, in my appreciation, become more imperative.
Two courses are, as I endeavored to intimate in my Annual Report, open to Congress. One is an enlargement of the free list, a reduction of the number of dutiable articles, a prudent substitution of specific for ad valorem rates, and a thorough revision and change of the existing rates and system. The other is partially indicated by a recent Senate Bill (No. 1153) which is now before me, and is in the direction of deterrent legislation which shall, by more stringent rules, and new contrivances in the form of fines and punishments, so operate on the fears of importers as to induce them to present truthful invoices, and make on entry a correct declaration of the foreign value.
These two courses are not necessarily alternative. Both may be pursued together. But, in my opinion, it is expedient that an attempted reduction and simplification of rates shall precede a revival of "Coercion Laws" on the subject.
It would be inconvenient, if not impossible, for me to fully set forth all the considerations which constrain me to this opinion. In the daily
The opinions expressed by my predecessor, Mr. Bibb, in a Circular Letter, dated "By communications to this Department, it appears that the import duties, as charged and collected on articles of like kind at the several custom-houses, are not uniform throughout the United States, whereby like articles of commerce imported into some of the States, whereon the duties are paid at the lower rates there charged by the officers of the customs, can be, and are transported to other States, and sold for less than like articles can be afforded, when imported and entered at the ports of other States, where a higher rate of duty is charged. The Constitution of the United States ordains, that 'all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States'—'No preference shall be given by any regulation of commerce or revenue to the ports of one State over those of another.' The act of the Congress of the United States to provide revenue from imports, intends that the duties shall be uniform throughout the United States. But practically, and in fact, different duties on like articles are charged and collected at different custom-houses. By such want of uniformity the Constitution is offended, the act of the Congress is offended, the prudent schemes of merchants, and the due profits of commercial enterprises are disconcerted, the interests and conveniences of customers are injuriously affected. Justice due to the officers of the customs at the several ports of the States requires me to say, that in seeking to perform their duties faithfully, the want of perspicuity and exact definiteness in the enactments of the law has given rise to their differences of construction. The varieties of duties levied, in fact, at different ports by the respective officers of the customs, so tending to incommode and baffle the important operations of commerce, and to give a preference to the ports of one State over those of another, are subjects demanding the exercise of the superintending authority of the Secretary of the De-
I hope I may be permitted, by way of preface and explanation of my views in respect to tariff revision, to set forth, as briefly and clearly as I can, what, in my appreciation, is the real condition of the existing tariff system, and the causes, or circumstances, which have brought it to that condition. If there is an evil therein to be remedied, a logical method of procedure will be to ascertain definitely what the evil is, and how it has come into existence. My own estimate of the evil, and its causes, may be at fault, and if so, that fault will naturally infect my suggestions of a remedy, and my criticism of a remedy proposed by others.
The levy and collection of duties on imports has come to be extremely artificial and technical. It was not so in the beginning. By all the earlier Collection Laws, and down to "Without any view to an increase of revenue, but in order to guard as far as possible against the value of goods being underrated in the invoices, it would be eligible to lay specific duties on all such articles, now paying duties ad valorem, as may be susceptible of that alteration."
From this date of
The results of the war, the condition of the country, and the reception of large quantities of the accumulated products of British manufacture sold at auction prices in our cities, called into being the decidedly protective tariffs of
From
There were, during the same period, eleven or more enactments regulating the collection of duties, some of them punishing frauds, approved, respectively,
On "The practice of shipping merchandise from Europe to the United States on account of the foreign shipper has greatly increased since the late peace. The immediate cause of this increase may be probably found in the general distress which at, and since that epoch, pervaded universally the manufacturing establishments, from whence our supply
"But, independent of this evasion of the revenue laws, which, by those who practice it, may be deemed consistent with the principles of morality, a practice of a less equivocal character is known to exist in importations, made by foreign merchants upon consignment. There is abundant reason to believe, that it is now customary in importations of this nature, to send with the merchandise, an invoice considerably below the actual cost, by which the entry is made and the duties secured. Another invoice at, or above, the actual cost, is forwarded to a different person, with instructions to take and sell the goods by such invoice. In this manner the person who enters the goods remains ignorant of the fraud to which he has been innocently made a party, and the fraudulent importer escapes with impunity. The facility with which frauds may be practiced by permitting entries to be made by persons who know nothing of the correctness of the invoices by which the duties are to be ascertained, so strongly invites to the substitution of false, for true invoices, that the practice must necessarily become universal, if suitable checks are not devised against it. "It is also ascertained that resident merchants have in some instances connected themselves with foreign mercantile houses, which are in the habit of purchasing cloths of every description in their rudest state of manufacture, which are in their hands brought to the highest state of perfection by dyeing, dressing, or bleaching, according to the kind of cloth purchased. Such articles are invoiced at the price given for them in their unfinished state of manufacture, and upon those invoices the duties are estimated. Connections of this kind will necessarily increase, and eventually embrace the whole catalogue of articles paying ad valorem duties, unless checks calculated to repress the evil, are promptly devised and applied. "The practice of entering goods without invoice is another mode now frequently resorted to, for the purpose of evading the payment of the duties which are legally demandable upon them. In these cases, and indeed in all cases, where the collector shall suspect that the invoices are fraudulent, the resort to appraisement authorized by law "There is some reason to believe that evasions are sometimes practised under the color of discounts allowed on the prices charged in the invoices. Under the Treasury regulations no conditional discounts are allowed; but it is extremely difficult to ascertain whether they are absolute or unconditional. "In order to provide an adequate remedy against the frauds and evasions which already exist, and to prevent their further increase, it is respectfully submitted that provisions to the following effect be adopted."is generally found to be in favor of the importer, and against the Government. This may, in some measure, be attributable to the defect of the existing provisions upon that subject, but the universal experience of every department of the Government proves the danger there is of submitting any question to the decision of persons acting as arbitrators between the United
Whereupon Mr. Crawford submitted to Congress twenty-four amendments to the law then existing and regulating the collection of duties, nearly all of which were embodied in the act of "9. In all cases where there shall be just grounds to suspect that goods paying ad valorem duties, have been invoiced below their actual costs, the collector shall order them to be appraised in the manner already described; if the appraisement shall exceed by—-per cent, the invoice prices, then, in addition to the—per cent, laid upon correct and regular invoices by the existing laws, there shall be added—per cent, upon the appraised value, upon which aggregate amount the duties shall be estimated. "10. One-half the duties accruing upon such additional ten per cent, shall be distributed according to law between the custom-house officers of the port."
In addition to these twenty-four suggestions, a great part of which now, together with the law of "Whatever may be the reliance which ought to be placed in the efficacy of the foregoing provisions, it is certainly prudent to diminish, as far as practicable, the list of articles paying ad valorem duties. The best examination which circumstances have permitted, has resulted in the conviction that the following list of articles now paying ad valorem duties may be subjected to specific duties."
Mr. Crawford specifies over one hundred articles, the list of which is printed in his report, whereon he advised that the rates be changed from ad valorem to specific.
As to the invoice: The law of place from which brought hither. Nothing was said of date. If the owner was the manufacturer, he must swear that the invoice price is "the current value at the place of manufacture," (no allusion to date,) "and such as he would have received if the same had been there sold in the usual course of trade."
As to appraisement: Two official appraisers were authorized at each of six ports, who, with a resident merchant chosen by the importer, should appraise all ad valorem merchandise suspected by the collector to be under-invoiced, and, if the appraised value exceeded by twenty-five per cent, the invoiced value, then fifty per cent, should be added to the appraised value, and one-half of the duty caused by the increase should be divided among the three chief officers of the port. But if the appraisal should be less than the invoice value, the rates should, nevertheless, be levied on the invoice value.
In this enactment is to be seen the germ of many of the existing intricate and complicated contrivances to baffle frauds. It required one package of every invoice to be opened, (which was a new requirement,) and also one of every fifty, and if found not to correspond with, or to be falsely charged in the invoice, then a full inspection of every package, and if in any package should be found an article not described in the invoice then that package should be confiscated. No new penalties were inflicted in
time, and place, of procurement; declared that the first appraisal shall be by official appraisers, and a reappraisement, if called for, shall be by them, associated with two merchants employed by the importer, with right of an appeal to the Secretary of the Treasury if desired, but added that the duty shall, in no case, be levied on less than the invoice value. The 13th Section substantially repeated the requirement, which had been previously enacted in
economical administration,'" and (3) that "all rates shall be ad valorem, but levied on the value 'at the port where the goods shall be entered.' "On permanent, compromise made in 3833. A system of levying ad valorem rates on "home values" was thus in force from June 30,
The tariff law of
I am instructed by the Committee of Ways and Means to request you to communicate to them any plan which you may have for raising the necessary amount of revenue for defraying the expenses of Government, by an increase of duties on importations, or by auction duties on goods imported, or otherwise; also any plan, or view, which you may have on the subject of home valuation, cash duties, a warehousing system, or any other matters incidentally connected with these subjects, and, especially, any information which can be afforded by your Department as to the particular article imported which will best bear an increase of duty, and the amount of such increase.
"As the Committee are now ready to take this subject under consideration, they would be happy to receive your views at as early a day as possible."
A month later the House of Representatives by resolution required the Secretary of the Treasury to communicate to the House "the plans, views and information and matters called for," in the foregoing letter. On
He declined to express an opinion on the proposition to tax "sales at auction of goods imported," with a view to increase the revenue. That form of tax was evidently aimed at foreign manufacturers, and intended to impede consignment of their products to this country. He insisted
"With a view to guard the revenue against fraudulent undervaluations which cannot be entirely prevented by the existing scheme of ad valorem duties, specific duties are proposed in nearly all cases when practicable. The operation of the system of specific duties may not be perfectly equal in all cases, in respect to the value of the articles included under it. But this inconvenience is more than compensated by the security of the revenue against evasions, and by the tendency of specific duties to exclude worthless and inferior articles, by which purchasers and consumers are often imposed on. "In assessing ad valorem duties the foreign value of goods imported has been assumed as a basis of the duty. In ascertaining this value by appraisement, it is attempted to place some new guards on the revenue. But it may be worthy of consideration, whether it would not be advisable to adopt a regulation by which the option should be given to the Collector in cases where supposed undervaluation in the invoices exists, to take the goods for the use of the Government on paying the importer for the same at the value mentioned in the invoice, together with an advance of ten per cent, thereon, and the average of costs and charges on the importation of similar goods. "A material, and indeed a fundamental consideration, which reconciled a large portion of the country to the compromise act, was the home valuation which it promised. This consideration having failed, all parties are at liberty to project such new scheme for the adjustment of duties on imports as the common interest may demand. But in attempting such adjustment, the spirit of concession and forbearance, which should characterize every measure bearing extensively upon various and sometimes conflicting interests, or speaking perhaps with more propriety, in this instance, of conflicting opinions, ought to be observed. In this respect, and this only, can the great principles which entered into the compromise act be substantially carried out. "The system of cash duties, although a material condition in the arrangement of the compromise act, must now stand upon its own intrinsic merits. In this view alone it is recommended to Congress. The abolition of custom-house credits is a measure sustained by reasons which appear to the Department to be conclusive. In order to appreciate the advantages of a cash system, it may be well to premise that more than one-half of all the imports from Europe, and a considerable
"It may be true that men of small capital, or without any capital at all, would be benefited by obtaining credit from the Government; but it is not less true that the claim to this extraordinary indulgence, if it exist at all, attaches solely to the American merchant, and belongs in on way to foreigners. It is, moreover, worthy of remark, that in a sound condition of the trade when foreign supplies are really called for by the wants of the country, the means of paying the duties are insured by the prospect of a ready market, or may be obtained upon the credit and responsibility of the importer, in the community where he resides. If he does not possess this credit or responsibility among his neighbors, there appears no very good reason why he should be trusted by the Government. The security which he offers in the one case would be equally attainable in the other. "The system of credits, established in the infancy of our commerce, when there was but little capital in the country, and the import business was on a footing entirely different from what it now is, might have been productive of real advantage. But the state of things which attended its establishment no longer continues. Capital is sufficiently abundant for supplying the country with foreign products, and much of the trade itself has been shifted from American to foreign hands. "Among the direct advantages expected to-arise from the cash system is its tendency to check overtrading, and to restrain importations within limits indicated by the wants of the country and the probable amount of its exchangable surplus. It needs 110 labored argument or research to prove that the present embarrassment in all our departments of labor and enterprise have arisen very much from overtrading, nor does it require much discussion to show that the spirit of overtrading and reckless adventure has been favored by the system of custom-house credits."
purchased, in the principal markets of the country whence the same shall have been imported into the United States, instead of the actual value at the place of exportation, as in
less than the invoice value, any law of Congress to the contrary notwithstanding."
Under this law a question arose, which was decided by the Supreme Court in "Indeed, it would seem reasonable, independent of the express language of the acts of Congress, that if uncertainty remained about the true construction of the fifth section of the act of Greely vs. Thompson (10 How., 225) to the effect that by the laws of procurement, and not as of the time of its exportation. The opinion of the Court was delivered at the December Term, purchased goods, and did not apply to goods consigned by a manufacturer, and therefore a penalty could not be levied on this importation. In giving these reasons for the decision that the date of procurement, and not the date of exportation, was the time when the appraisers must fix dutiable value, the Court said:
he has expended. And what he has expended cannot be more than he has thus paid: and the invoice itself, often prepared in the interior, days and weeks before the vessel sails, states the price, or value, asthen made up, and not at the time of the bill of lading, when the market value may be higher or lower. We do not find that the value at the time of exportation of goods of the growth or manufacture of the country whence exported, has ever been selected by any act of Congress for purposes of assessing the duty. * * * The value on which to tax the importer is the capital, or price, he has invested in the goods, and which is prima facie the amount paid if purchased, or the amount for which they were procured if not purchased."
That would seem to imply that a manufacturer could invoice at cost price.
exportation to the United States, in the principal markets of the country from which the same shall have been imported," to be appraised. The same law-created four General Appraisers, to be employed in visiting the several ports under the direction of the Head of this Department, and said that, whenever practicable, reappraisals shall be determined by one of these General Appraisers associated with a merchant selected by the Collector; and, if the two disagree, the Collector shall decide between them. By this enactment, the power of appeal to the Head of this Department in reappraisals, and his power to finally fix dutiable value, were taken away.
"As the law now stands, therefore, upon the construction which the Courts appear to be trying to give to it, the foreign manufacturer, or producer, is not subject to an additional duty for undervaluation. The importer who purchases in the foreign market and imports into the United States is. The foreign manufacturer, or producer, in any experiments he may choose to try upon the public revenue by undervalued invoices, runs no risk of additional duty, to which his competitor, the American merchant, who purchased the imports abroad, is exposed. This discrimination against the domestic importer in favor of the foreign is as impolitic as it is unjust. Foreign manufacturers, or producers, by establishing partners or agents in this country, importing and entering imports on their own account, and then making sales in pursuance of orders previous or subsequent to the entry, can thus supply our markets with their own products without being subjected to any adequate check against undervaluation. For, while they are not subject to the additional duty in such cases, to which the domestic importer is liable, nor, indeed, to any additional duty, upon the construction of the law which seems to be favored by the Courts, they could be reached only by forfeiture of their goods in cases in which the badge of fraud was so clear that the United States would have no difficulty in showing that fact."
Thus foreign manufacturers excited solicitude and anxiety in invoice value, but the enactment of entered, value, any law of Congress to the contrary notwithstanding."
The tariff law of
After knowingly make or attempt to make, an entry by means of a false invoice, or a false certificate of a consular officer, or by means of any false document or paper, or by any false or fraudulent practice or appliance whatsoever, said merchandise, or its value, shall be forfeited. There was allowed to the District Attorneys two per cent, upon all moneys realized by any forfeiture suit conducted by them. Judges of the Federal District Courts were authorized to issue warrants directed to the Collector of the port empowering him, or his agents, to seize the merchant's books or papers relating to revenue frauds, and carry them away to be inspected, to which last legislation, and its amendments in one-fourth of the net proceeds of the forfeiture, to give the Government information of contemplated, or perpetrated, frauds upon the customs revenue, and that each of the three chief officers of the customs at each port was encouraged to make seizures by a share of the result, if the prosecution resulted favorably to the United States. Although the legislation of Habeas Corpus in certain places, and other restrictions upon the individual liberty of the citizen, or of an alien sojourning in the country, were defended.
all the merchandise on an invoice if any item thereof was made with a deliberate intent to defraud the revenue, but the legislation of such merchandise shall he forfeited."
Such is the law to-day. Certainly the language used in the act of compelling the attempted imprisonment of the offenders, and confiscation of the offending property.
I was perplexed by inquiries of this character while engaged in the preparation of my Annual Report, and I am still perplexed by them. Out of an effort to come to a satisfactory conclusion therein in my own mind, came the series of inquiries which I addressed to customs officers in the several collection districts, and to law officers in the several judicial districts, the replies to which I transmitted to Congress. In that document I omitted nothing contained in the records of this Department which I thought would aid Congress in coming to a safe conclusion. To that end I included in the document what seemed to me the conflicting views of the several agents of this Department, on the one hand, and of the local officers in the several collection districts on the other hand. The opinions of these two classes of officers, it will be observed, came from those who had been for a long time in the service of the Government and had been responsible for the execution of the customs laws before I became the Head of this Department. I presented facts and statistics tending to show that prosecutions and indictments for customs frauds, which had been many and continuous from "I have no evidence, neither have I been able to procure any, that the duties have not within the last few years, been levied and collected as the law prescribes. I have no evideuce, neither have I been able to procure any, that the full amount of duty prescribed by Congress has not been collected."
The Naval Officer and the Surveyor at the port of Boston appear to have substantially concurred in this opinion. And yet Mr. Bingham, who had been Special Agent in that Collection District from "There is abundant evidence in the records of the Department and the several custom-houses that various kinds of imported merchandise have, within the last few years, been entered and passed at lower rates than those prescribed by law."
My attention having been called to the divergence, if not positive conflict of opinion, between the Special Agent and the Collector at the port of Boston, I addressed to Special Agent Bingham, under date of
A similar divergence or conflict of opinion may be said, I think, to exist generally throughout the country between the Special Agents and the chief officers at the several ports. The replies of the appraising officers, including the examiners at the port of New York, which are published in the volumes referred to, are especially noteworthy in this connection as tending to deny or ignore the existence of undervaluations or frauds at that port, such as exist in the opinions of the special agents, and of so many manufacturers and importers.
Great stress has been laid upon the sixteenth section of the act of known to be chargeable thereon, and to defraud the revenue of the United States. If such facts actually exist, they must be within the knowledge of persons in this country who can produce, or enable the Government to produce, the proof thereof, and if produced and presented to a Court and jury in New York, or in any other judicial district, I am unwilling to believe, and do not believe, that there would be a failure of justice by a refusal of juries to return a verdict which would enable the Court to pronounce a condemnation.
I do not wish to be understood as expressing the opinion that such frauds have not been perpetrated within the last few years in great abundance, or that they are not now perpetrated. But why have not more prosecutions been attempted? One reason may be that under the existing law there is no one with sufficient motive, or inducement, I will not say sufficient fidelity to the Government, to make the preliminary seizure which must be made before the property can be taken possession of by a Marshal on a warrant issued by the Court. It is not possible for the Head of this Department to make such seizures in any or all of the one hundred and sixteen collection districts of the country, nor is it practicable for the Head of this Department to direct that such seizures be made. The law contemplates that one whose property is seized shall have a remedy for an unlawful and an unjustifiable seizure, by a suit against the one who makes it. The law prudently requires that there shall be an actual seizure before a libel of prosecution is filed, inasmuch as if a seizure by order of the Court is the first seizure made, the person injured cannot bring a suit for damage against the Court. If the Head of this Department should direct a seizure to be made by a customs officer, it would be unjust to hold that officer responsible in damages for an unjustifiable seizure which was made by command of his superior officer. I am not aware of any statute which authorizes a warrant to be drawn to pay a judgment recovered against a person making a customs seizure, if that seizure shall have been pronounced by the judgment unjustifiable. Under the moiety law, as it existed from in Court, tended to uncover and display to the Government information in regard to attempted or perpetrated customs frauds, the obtaining of which is now practically impossible.
It is, I repeat, impracticable for the Head of this Department to make seizures, or order them to be made, or make affidavits charging criminal offences, but I am authored to say that if any responsible citizen,—manufacturer or importer,—will present charges and specifications showing probable cause to believe that a fraud on the customs revenue has been knowingly perpetrated, the whole power of the Executive will be immediately brought to bear, and vigorously applied, on the criminal and civil side of the Court, in order to bring the accused to condign punishment.
It will be observed from the historical review which has been attempted of the tariff legislation of the country from the organization of the Government down to the present day, that increasing severity of legislation to prevent customs frauds has come down to us side by side with a raising of the rates of duty, and with an enlargement of the application of ad valorem rates. The true inference to be drawn from that fact cannot, I think, fail to appear.
There will be persons who do not, or will pretend they do not, understand a law which works to their disadvantage, no matter how clear it may be, but I think there are those who are really and honestly confused by the technical and artificial character of a part of our present customs legislation. I am continually impressed by the fact that so many apparently well-meaning persons, in letters to this Department, write as if they really believed that all invoices, whether of purchased or of consigned goods, must contain the actual cost, which is true of purchased goods, but is not true of consigned goods. A few manufacturers appear to believe that as a purchaser must invoice at actual cost, so must a manufacturer whose goods are sent here on consignment. There is much also in what is said and done by our consular officers abroad, which leads one to fear that too many of them do not understand, or even try to understand, the legal distinction between the two classes of invoices.
Our laws require a manufacturer to declare in his invoice the fair market value at the time when, and the place where the goods were manufactured. It is quite possible that the time of manufacture may antedate by many months, or even by years, the date of the starting of the merchandise on its way to this country. Up to exportation to the United States.
It may well enough happen that goods, whose value is influenced by the fashion of the day, were manufactured in shipment, or even less than that value, instead of the value at the date of manufacture, although our law requires that the value shall be on the day when the manufacture of the merchandise was completed. The inconvenience, and perhaps the injustice, of our existing law, are seen in this: A manufacturer cannot on entry reduce the in-
entered value. One can readily see how useful to the Appraisers it would be to have before them a declaration by the manufacturer of the market value of merchandise on the day its manufacture was completed, but in order to make that information valuable the invoice should specify the date of the manufacture, which no invoice, as I am informed, ever does.
I respectfully suggest the inquiry whether the law, requiring a manufacturer sending merchandise hither on consignment to declare in his invoice the value at the time of manufacture, cannot safely be changed so as to require him to state the value at the time of shipment, in order that the valuation by the Appraisers and the valuation in the invoice may refer to the same period.
The belief is quite general that our law constrains the appraising officers to be controlled by the invoice, whereas the invoice is only insisted upon by the law "I cannot comprehend how it is appraisers can undertake to say that they will disbelieve the importer's own declaration of value, when he produced his invoice, and when he adds to his invoice value; and that he, the appraiser, knows better than the importer, and therefore disbelieves him, and finds the value less than he has declared it to be. Persistence in such a course by the appraisers would prove The duty cannot be assessed upon less than the increased declared value, no matter what may be the appraised value returned by the appraisers, and you should report all cases where the appraisers undertake thus to set aside the evidence of the importer's declaration of value."as a piece of evidence to inform the judgment of the appraising officers, and enable them to come to a correct conclusion as to the value of the merchandise 011 the day which the law requires the appraising officers to regard. The opinion that the invoice value is conclusive, or should be conclusive, upon the appraising officers, may have been inspired, or confirmed, by the provision of the law which forbids the collector to levy duty on less than the invoice or entered value, as well as by a disregard of the other requirement of the law that the appraisers are, by all reasonable ways and means, to ascertain the market value in the foreign country at the date of exportation, any invoice, or affidavit to the contrary notwithstanding. In an obliquity of judgment that it is impossible to comprehend or provide against.
As a result of that letter from this Department, the practice began, as I am informed, which has since continued, under which the appraising officers, unless satisfied that the entered value is too low, report to the Collector, on the invoice, "Value Correct." It is a natural inference that if the importer's declaration of value is to be so controlling in one condition of facts, it ought to be so controlling in another condition of facts wherein the appraising officers are in doubt whether the invoice valuation is sufficiently high. It may not be safe to modify the existing provision of the law that the Collector shall never take duty on less than the entered value; and yet, in the practical working of that law it may happen, under our ad valorem system, that one who buys in Paris a camel's-hair shawl, for example, and pays therefor five thousand francs, and enters it for that sum, as the purchaser would be required to do, may be compelled to pay duty on the equivalent in our money of five thousand francs, but that a dealer, buying on the same day, in Paris, and from the same seller another shawl precisely similar, but purchased for four thousand francs, entered and appraised at that sum as the real market value of the shawl, may only be compelled to pay duty thereon, or on a valuation one thousand francs less than the former valuation.
These obvious inequalities and hardships are, I think, inherent in any ad valorem system. The experience of the Government in
It is said that the present tendency of the practical working of the application of an ad valorem system in the raising of revenue on imports is toward a yearly diminution of dutiable or taxable values, and that such yearly diminution, without justifying change in the law, is not an injury to the community, but on the contrary is a benefit to all concerned, and especially to consumers. I cannot take that view. Those who make the assertion to which I refer, appeal to what is obviously going on in the assessment of taxes under State laws where the valuation is notoriously far below the real valuation. The law of the State of New York (I refer to it because I am more familiar with it than with the laws of other States) declares that "all lands, and all personal estate, within the State, whether owned by individuals or by corporations, shall be liable to taxation," subject to certain exemptions, and also that "all real and personal estate, liable to taxation, shall be estimated and assessed by the assessors at its full and true value, as they would appraise the same in payment of a just debt due from a solvent debtor." It is undoubtedly true that in the State of New York that law is not fully and completely executed. Personal property escapes taxation in part, and real estate is undervalued for taxes; but there is a difference between the customs laws of the United States and the tax laws of the State of New York in the fact that, whereas, in the former the person owning the property and presenting it for entry is required, and undertakes, to declare, and to declare under the solemnity of an oath, the real foreign value of his property, yet in the State of New York no such declaration, or declaration of value of any kind, is required from the owner of property. But the most material difference and distinction are in this: By undertaking to levy uniform rates and amounts of duty, at each and all of the ports of the United States, upon all similar merchandise arriving therein, the Government injuriously interferes with private business if it permits two articles, precisely similar in quality, and arriving by the same vessel, to be appraised for duty at different values at different ports.
An alternative plan of not attempting to reduce the number of dutiable articles, or prudently substitute specific for ad valorem rates, or eliminate wherever possible the confusion of compound rates, or make more logical and clear requirements on invoices, or strengthen the appraising force, or simplify the things to be done by importers and customs officers, but of endeavoring, on the contrary, to enforce the col-
The Bill which is now before the Finance Committee of the Senate, is in these words:
provided that probable cause is shown for such prosecution to be judged of by the courts.
First section.—I respectfully invite a consideration of the question whether confusion and difficulty may not arise in the execution of the first part of this section if it shall become a law. Under our existing system there is the certified invoice value, which is the minimum value for imposing ad valorem duties. There is the entered value, which, when greater than the invoice value, defines a line of value below which the Collector cannot levy ad valorem rates. There is the market value to be ascertained and reported by the appraising officers. And finally, there is the dutiable value, the decision of which by the Collector under general instructions by the Head of this Department is by law made final and conclusive unless certain steps be taken by the importer. Section seven of the Tariff act of dutiable value unlike the market value in the principal markets of the country of exportation, which is to be ascertained by the appraisers, and to which last value I assume the first section refers when it uses the phrase "Foreign market value." Sec-
appraised (not dutiable) value shall exceed by ten per centum or more the entered value. But the section of the proposed bill now under consideration makes a change by levying the penal duty whenever the "appraising officers" shall find that the dutiable value shall exceed the entered value.
The language used in describing, and defining, the rate or amount of additional duty would be more satisfactory if it indicated to importers, and to the country, more clearly what the ratio of that additional duty will be. The "total appraised value," referred to in the first section, may not be the same as dutiable value, but is the entered value to be compared, in the infliction of a penalty, with the appraised value, as found by the appraisers, or with the dutiable value, as finally decided by the Collector, and against which a protest, appeal and suit can be applied?
The last clause of the first section covers a large range of inquiry, not only into the existing law but into the existing machinery for its enforcement. The legal effect, in practical administration, of the last clause of the first section of the proposed bill, if it shall become a law, will be, to require the Collector to seize all merchandise embraced in an entry whenever the appraising officer shall report to him an appraised value which shall exceed the entered value by more than fifteen per cent., and to report the seizure to the District Attorney for prosecution. The section does not declare distinctly whether the Collector shall seize upon a report by the local appraiser, or whether he shall await a reappraisal, or whether if the two reappraisers disagree he shall await his own decision between them. If the law commands the Collector to seize merchandise on a report to him by an appraising officer of a specific fact, to wit, a difference of fifteen per centum between the entered and the appraised value of merchandise, then the Collector should not be held responsible in damages for the consequences of the seizure.
The fifth section of the proposed law provides for burden of proof in case probable cause is shown for the prosecution. But if the law peremptorily commands the Collector to seize, it is to be inferred that no Court will say that a probable cause did not exist for a seizure specifically commanded by the law. What will be the effect of the proposed first section, on a trial for forfeiture under a seizure made in obedience to the section? The third section punishes by forfeiture an entry "knowingly made or attempted to be made by a false invoice." Is not
shall be deemed fraudulent" if the appraised value shall exceed the entered value by more than fifteen per cent., what discretion will be left to the jury if the evidence shall be that the appraised value did thus exceed the entered value? I shall return to this branch of the subject again when I come to consider the second section. Is it probable that appraising officers will advance values above fifteen per cent, if they realize that such important consequences as forfeiture of the merchandise will follow? It will be observed that the first section does not require appraising officers to inquire into the intent with which the invoice was made and the entry was presented, but the proposed law infers a fraudulent intent from the finding by appraising officers of value greater by fifteen per cent, than the entered value. If this section shall become a law, may not merchandise be forfeited without anybody, or any tribunal, considering, or deciding, the question of guilty knowledge and criminal intention?
It will not escape the attention of Congress that (he first section of the proposed bill requires the Collector to levy and enforce the payment of the regular duty, and the penal or additional duty prescribed therein. The third section enforces a forfeiture under the conditions herein prescribed, and requires a suit to be begun against the person having made the entry to recover the value of the merchandise if the same cannot be proceeded against "in rem," but does the bill contemplate that the forfeiture shall be in addition to the regular duty and penal duty which may already have been paid? If the merchandise shall have passed out of the possession of the Government, and is seized, or, if the merchandise cannot be found and a suit be brought to forfeit the value, then of course both the regular and penal duty will have been paid thereon. If it be the intention of the law that, in case of forfeiture, the penal duty, and the regular duty, shall be returned to the person making the entry, there should be a provision in the law authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to draw his warrant for the duties to be returned?
In the volume of documents transmitted to Congress with my Annual Report on "The Collection of Duties," will be found (pp. 65, 591, 675) a reference to the manner in which Sections 9, 10, and 11 of the "Anti-Moiety Law" of pro forma invoices." From the enactment of that law up to pro forma invoice was treated, as to its liability to penal duty, as an entry made on the original invoice under Section 2900 of the Revised Statutes. During the last named year, an importation of diamonds having been made in the port of New York unaccompanied by a certified invoice, the importer was permitted by the Collector, under the law of pro forma invoices presented at the port of New York, during the year entered." That declaration seems to me to be an independent requirement, not depending upon the previous provisions of the section. Originally the law declared, as has been shown, that the duty shall not be assessed upon the amount less than the "invoice" value, but later on the law said that the duty shall not be assessed upon less than the "entered" value. The words "invoice" and "entered," are not in that connection, as it seems to me, used as synonymous words. If they who prepared the Revised Statutes had taken Section 2900 literally from the Statute of any Act of Congress to the contrary notwithstanding."
For all these reasons it has happened that the Government has neither collected twenty per cent, penal duty, nor prosecuted the importers or merchandise for fraudulent undervaluation. The evil can, however, be easily remedied by repealing the obnoxious sections in the law of
Second Section.—This section implies that dutiable value is to be ascertained by the appraising officer's and not by the Collector. It does not apply to merchandise that has been purchased "in the ordinary course of business." It applies to merchandise obtained by gift, or finding, as well as by manufacture. It applies to diamonds, and precious stones, if not obtained by purchase. The inquiries and decision are novel, which the appraising officers will, under it, be required to make in order to determine the value on which the rates of duty shall he levied by the Collector. It requires the appraising officers to ascertain and determine not only the cost of production of each article, not obtained "by actual purchase in the ordinary course of business, but the home value" in the principal markets of our own country. It makes either the former or the latter a minimum value.
I deem it my duty most urgently to suggest the inquiry whether or not the appraising department of the Government at New York, or
The second branch of the proposed new system, which requires the appraising officers to ascertain "the home value of imported merchandise in the principal markets of the United States," will be, as it seems to me, quite as difficult. Which will be the "principal markets of the United States" for merchandise imported into Alaska? Will not the market-places vary with the character of the merchandise? The Constitution ordains that "all duties, imposts and excises, shall be uniform throughout the United States." But how can that constitutional requirement be obeyed if duties are to be levied on the "home value" as defined by the second section of the proposed law? Will it be possible that duties on similar merchandise entered at Eastport in Maine, at New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Portland in Oregon, and Alaska, can be uniform. If the duty is finally determined by the Collector, how can the appraising officers in advance of his deter-
dutiable value, ought not the importer to be permitted to declare his appreciation of one or the other in his invoice or entry? Will not home value in the end be largely determined by foreign value? Shall silk goods, imported at St. Louis, pay fifty per centum upon their value at Boston, or at New York? In a word, does not the second requirement in the second section bring to the front the constitutional and other objections which apply to any and every ad valorem system based on home valuations?
The present magnitude of appraising work at the port of New York is not. I fear, correctly and sufficiently appreciated, either by legislators, or by the public at large. It certainly was not appreciated by me until I came to be responsible, in some measure, for its proper performance.
The tariff law of
The sum total of the schedules shows that merchandise of the value of $382. 653,016 was received, examined, and delivered at the port of New York during the last fiscal year, and that §122,635,797 were actually levied and collected thereon. It is believed that no other government, no other port or metropolis, can exhibit, during that year, such an enormous volume of government business of a similar character as was transacted at the port of New York.
It may be useful to add that, throughout the whole country and in all the collection districts, the relation of ad valorem to specific rates, in the full amount of duty collected during the fiscal year ended
Or 38.9 per cent.
Or 61.1 per cent.
If any importing house, or if any number of importing houses, had received, handled and sold such an enormous quantity of most valuable merchandise, of every variety of fabric and form, I think it can be safely said that the conveniences, facilities and machinery for the transaction of such business would not have been like those which this Government has used, and is using, at the port of Now York, as regards the building, or buildings, in which this vast quantity of merchandise has been examined and appraised, the conveniences of space, air, light and other arrangements tending to promote accuracy and prevent confusion, to say nothing of the number, qualification, character and compensation of the agents employed.
The business of receiving, carting, examining, appraising, warehousing and delivering imported merchandise at the port of New York, is fairly divisible into three subdivisions. There are the buildings in which are the offices of the Collector, Naval Officer and Surveyor, wherein clerical work, and work of general administration, are con-ducted. There are the warehouses in which the merchandise is received and stored, with its complement of storekeepers, including the business of cartage. There is such work as is done out of doors, on the wharves, in weighing, gauging, measuring—which is under the supervision of the Surveyor. And finally there is, at the port of New York, in buildings separate and apart from the premises just described—the appraisers' stores, where all the vast and intricate work of ascertaining foreign values is carried on. These appraisers' stores are not owned by the Government, but a rental is paid therefor. The whole cost of the appraising force at New York, including appraisers, examiners, openers, packers, clerks, messengers, laborers and cartage, during the
I have in my Annual Report already alluded to this subject, and to the inadequate character of the force employed. The present Appraiser at New York, who is at the head of this enormous appraising establishment, or rather at the head of the force appraising such an enormous quantity of merchandise, is, I believe, a competent, upright and courageous officer. He has experience, zeal and fidelity. His salary is four thousand dollars a year, and, small as it is, it is the largest paid to any of the appraising officers at that port. The work of administration, supervision, examination and actual appraisement, placed upon him by the statute, would be altogether beyond the power of any one man even if the working hours of a day were an hundred instead of eight or ten, and if he had the physical endurance therefor. He is responsible, in theory, for the examination and appraisement of each and every article under all the fourteen schedules. But good administration of such an ad valorem system as ours requires that there be over each of the schedules as competent an appraising officer, whose salary, if the work be courageously and conscientiously performed, cannot, I had almost said, be too large. And as no one man can, in person, examine and appraise each and all of the articles in each schedule, there is needed over each one of the schedules subordinate appraisers, and examiners, whose aptitude and discrimination in the comparison of one fabric with another in order to ascertain foreign value, should command a much larger salary than is now paid to any member of our appraising force.
It must be borne in mind that what an appraiser, under our system, is required to ascertain, is all the facts in regard to values, and to ascertain them as they exist not in one's own city or locality, but in places removed by many thousand miles. The conclusions must necessarily be inferences from relevant facts. To perform that kind of work successfully, one may require facilities different from those required for successful buying and selling.
If our present ad valorem system is to be continued, if there is not to be a large substitution of specific for ad valorem rates, our existing appraising system should be reformed and enlarged. Still more necessary will such reformation and enlargement be if the requirements of the second section of the proposed bill are to be successfully enforced.
I fear that even so large reduction as by one-half of the existing ad valorem rates would not do away with the necessity for such reformation and enlargement. I have shown what happened in
But the difficulties do not end with what is called, in revenue law, the local appraisement, or the first appraisement. The importer can ask a reappraisement and one of those reappraisers must be a merchant familiar with the character, quantity and foreign value of the merchandise to be appraised. What my predecessor, Mr. Crawford, said in really competent for such work and such responsibility. Indeed the salary may almost be said to imply unfitness. There have been during many years, and are now, as I am informed, criticism and complaint of the manner in which reappraisements have been made and are conducted at New York. Here again such criticism and complaint are inseparable from the system. The reappraising board consists of only two members,—one of whom, the merchant appraiser, is selected by the Collector. His service is made compulsory by punitive provisions of law. His compensation for the service is trifling. The range and number of persons, even at the great port of New York, who come within the definition and qualifications of the statute, are not large, because the merchant appraiser must be an expert in the particular article under appraisal. The service is of course not desired, and for the reason given by Mr. Crawford not far from three-quarters of a century ago, which was that the service brings the merchant into disagreeable relations with his associates, or rivals, who import, and deal in, a similar article. As the board of reappraisers consists of only two, there is often an inability to come to a decision, and then the whole question of foreign value goes to the
There is another consideration connected with the organization and conduct of a reappraising board which will I am sure commend itself to the consideration of Congress. If the forms of law are pursued by appraising officers, and if there is no fraud on the part either of the importer or of the appraising officers, then there is no officer, or tribunal, executive or judicial, to revise the decision as to value. The decision of the Collector, as to classification, or rate, or amount of duty can be revised, and set aside, by the Secretary of the Treasury, or the Judicial Department of the Government. While the law has not made appraising officers to be judicial officers in a constitutional sense, it has required of them the exercise of very large and high faculties of discretion and judgment. The Supreme Court of the United States has, for that reason, on several occasions heretofore spoken of a reappraising officer as a "quasi judge," and "a legislative referee." Many of these phrases, which imply that a reappraisement is a judicial proceeding, had their origin when the appraising law, differed widely and essentially from the present law, and when an appraisement partook more than now of the character of an arbitration. These, and similar expressions used by the Federal Judges, from time to time, constituted almost the only basis of the contention that was addressed to me, during the last summer, to the effect that an importer had a right to be present at a reappraisement, to confront opposing witnesses by testimony in his own behalf, to sift, test and reduce by cross-examination testimony offered in opposition to the correctness of his invoice, and to have the aid of counsel. As I have explained in my Annual Report; I felt constrained to resist this contention, and chiefly because it is impracticable for reappraisements to be carried on in the forms and manner of a lawsuit. But, having decided that an importer is not entitled of right to be represented on a reappraisement by a lawyer, I stopped the practice which, to some extent, had prevailed by which Special Agents of this Department appeared before the reappraising board in opposition to importers, and thus brought on a contentious litigation. The integrity of the appraising system, and justice to importers as well as the Government, demand that the reappraising board shall be exempt from all undue outside influence, whether exerted by importers or manufacturers, or this Department, when the question of foreign value is alone to be determined.
One who is at the head of this Department cannot shut his eyes to the fact that a great deal of the contention over local appraisements, or reappraisements, grows out not merely of strife between rival importer but between our own manufacturers, or their representatives, and foreign manufacturers, or their representatives, who consign goods hither for sale on their account. A question has recently been presented to me by protest and appeal, whether or not a manufacturer in this country, not being an importer, is competent, within the law, to sit as a member of a reappraising board, the inference being that, because a manufacturer of a similar article, he naturally had a selfish personal interest in the levy of the highest possible rate upon an imported article similar to his own. Considerations like these tend to illustrate the difficulties, that may exist in the enforcement of the second section of the proposed bill.
The tendency of my thoughts in respect to reappraisements at the port of New York is to advise appropriate and particular legislation for that port. The appraising system is not now, and never ha" been, the same in all the collection districts. In those wherein entries are few, and little duty is collected, the Collector, or Naval Officer, as the case may be, is an appraising officer. Even in the larger ports, like Boston, or Philadelphia, or Baltimore, where the business is very much less than at New York, the arrangements of the appraising force are different from those existing at the last-named port. It will be well, I think, to create a reappraising board at the port of New York to consist of three General Appraisers, competent for the important work, and with sufficient salaries. The board should consist of three instead of two, so as to prevent probability of disagreement as when the board consists of only two. The decision of this board should be final, so as to relieve the Collector of the reappraising work which is now thrown upon him. I do not think that abandonment of the present plan of selecting a merchant to be a member of the reappraising board will work any injustice to importers or consumers, or to the Government. It will be within the discretion of Congress to make the tenure of office of the members of this board such as may be thought best. They can be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, as are Justices of the Supreme Court, and Judges of all the other Federal Courts. Federal Judges sitting in Admiralty decide mixed questions of law and fact without the intervention of a jury, and I see no reason why executive officers may not, as reappraisers, be intrusted with functions not-more delicate, or important.
Third Section.—This section is a modification of Section 2864 of the Revised Statutes, and of a provision in the law of exportation to the United States in the principal markets of the country from whence the same has been exported." The present law declares that an invoice of merchandise sent hither by the manufacturer must contain "the actual market value thereof at the time, and place, when and where the same was procured or manufactured" The change, it will be seen, is both as to the time and as to the place. I have already intimated the advantage in my opinion of changing the time required in such invoices.
Fourth Section.—It is with some diffidence that I interpose any objection to the fourth section, which proposes that one-half of the proceeds of fines, penalties or forfeitures shall be deposited in the Treasury subject to the joint order of the Secretary of the Treasury and the Secretary of State, who are authorized to distribute this fund in their dis-cretion "to meritorious officers of the customs or consular service who shall have been instrumental in the detection or punishment of frauds upon the revenue." If this section should become a law there will I fear be a practical difficulty in a practical execution thereof at the distant ports by a tribunal sitting in Washington. No work could be more vexing for an executive officer than the distribution of such a fund. Any such law, if deemed necessary and enacted by Congress, should, as did the law of
Fifth Section.—This fifth section in prescribing the rules for the burden of proof only refers to a suit, or information, "in rem,"o when a seizure is made. It makes no provision for a suit to recover the value of the merchandise when the property cannot be seized.
Sixth Section.—There should be an exhaustive review of existing legislation, and a defining, describing, and identifying of the former laws
It will be apparent, I hope, from what has been said above, and in my Annual Report, that I fully appreciate whatever superiorities, in an ideal system of custom-house taxation, low ad valorem rates may have over specific rates. So long as the disposition of Congress shall be to continue to levy high war duties upon some thousands of imported articles, rather than low duties upon a few, a general application of specific rates would be impossible without inflicting still further hardship and injustice upon the wage-receiving classes in the community, and those who are constrained to live on small incomes. Specific rates levied upon all imported articles, and especially on all articles of clothing, would for them be highly oppressive, unequal and unjust. A system of specific rates must be adjusted, and arranged, with regard to the values, and, therefore, when prices of imported articles are, as now, tending downward, specific rates are obviously increasing without a textual change in the law. I have it also clearly in mind how vexing and unjust is a compound system, made up of ad valorem and specific rates on the same article, and how still more vexing and unjust is a specific rate on a specified article, varying with foreign value, as is the present scale of rates on steel and wool. But we are confronted with the fact that the Treasury must annually obtain a sum hardly less than one hundred and fifty millions of dollars from imported merchandise, which is a sum less by some twenty millions than was received last year. It will be well-nigh impossible, in my opinion, for human wit to levy that amount of tax without inflicting hardship and injustice upon somebody, either importer or consumer, or on some vested interest, whether agricultural or manufacturing. Especially is that true of taxes levied on our coasts, or on our frontier, upon arriving merchandise. The Government is now beset, on one side, with the comparative injustice and hardship upon individuals, and vested interests, inflicted by specific rates if levied on all articles, and, on the other side, by the impossibility of enforcing and collecting high ad valorem rates levied on foreign values without the use of coercive and penal laws quite unsuitable for a free government to put in operation, and which when put in operation are quite likely to demoralize alarmingly not only the officers who are called upon to execute the law, but the importers who are compelled to do business under it. One advantage, and perhaps the chief advantage, of a specific over an ad valorem system, is in the fact that, under the former, duties are levied by a positive test, which can be applied by
One hears it often said that if our ad valorem rates did not exceed twenty-five or thirty per cent, undervaluation and temptation to undervaluation would disappear, but the records of this Department for the years
The sending to New York of merchandise by foreign manufacturers and presenting it there for sale, or the taking in this country of orders, on samples, of merchandise to be delivered in New York at duty-paid prices arranged in our currency, is a growing fact which this Government must face in selecting and prescribing rates of duty. Just as manufacturers in other States of our own Union send their merchandise on consignment to their own agents to sell in New York, so do, and so will, European manufacturers. The ledgers of commerce and trade will, more and more, be written and kept, in that city, and laws of taxation, state or national, immediately probable, are not likely to greatly impede or change the current. As buyers in New York do not go to New England to buy her staple manufactures, but find all the elements of buying in New York, so it will naturally be with European productions. If that is to be the case, I do not think our existing ad valorem rates can in the future be honestly, or satisfactorily, worked, under the existing conditions of our invoice law, our appraising law, and the force of consular and appraising officers that we now have. I fear that to begin reform with the enactment of new "Coercive Laws" will be to begin at the wrong end.
The Department has been informed through consular officers that manufacturers of merchandise abroad which is intended for importation into the United States, to be consigned to their agents in this country, may probably claim the right to enter such merchandise at cost price instead of its market value under Section 9 of the Tariff Act of "If upon the appraisal of imported goods, wares, and merchandise, it shall appear that the true and actual market value and wholesale price thereof, as provided by law, cannot be ascertained to the satisfaction of the appraiser, whether because such goods, wares, and merchandise be consigned for sale by the manufacturer abroad to his agent in the United States, or for any other reason, it shall then be lawful to appraise the same by ascertaining the cost or value of the materials composing such merchandise, at the time and place of manufacture, together with the expense of manufacturing, preparing, and putting up such merchandise for shipment, and in no case shall the value of such goods, wares, and merchandise be appraised at less than the total cost or value thus ascertained."
Section 2854, Revised Statutes, requires that all invoices of imported merchandise—
"shall, at or before the shipment of the merchandise, be produced to the consul, vice-consul, or commercial agent of the United States nearest the place of shipment, for the use of the United States, and shall have indorsed thereon, when so produced, a declaration signed by the purchaser, manufacturer, owner, or agent, setting forth that the invoice is in all respects true: that it contains, if the merchandise mentioned therein is subject to ad valorem duty, and was obtained by purchase, a true and full statement of the time when and the place where the Same was purchased, and the actual cost thereof, and of all charges thereon; and that no discounts, bounties, or drawbacks are contained in the invoice but such as have actually been allowed thereon; and when obtained in any other manner than by purchase, the actual market value thereof at the time and place when and where the same was procured or manufactured."
Section 2845, Revised Statutes, provides that—
"no merchandise subject to ad valorem duty belonging to a person not residing at the time in the United States, who has not acquired the same in the ordinary mode of bargain and sale, or belonging to the manufacturer, in whole or in part, of the same, shall be admitted to entry, unless the invoice thereof is verified by the oath of the owner, or of one of the owners, administered and authenticated in the mode prescribed in the two preceding sections, and certifying that the invoice contains a true and faithful account of the merchandise, at its fair market value, at the time and place when and where the same was procured or manufactured."
Section 2902, Revised Statutes, is as follows:
"It shall be the duty of the appraisers of the United States, and every of them, and every person who shall act as such appraiser, or of the collector and naval officer, as the case may be, by all reasonable ways and means in his or their power, to ascertain, estimate, and appraise the true and actual market value and wholesale price, any invoice or affidavit thereto to the contrary notwithstanding, of the merchandise, at the time of exportation, and in the principal markets of the country whence the same has been imported into the United States, and the number of such yards, parcels, or quantities, and such actual market value or wholesale price of every of them, as the ease may require."
Neither of these provisions is repealed, but they all remain in full force.
The Department regards Section 9 of the Act of
The oath for the cases under consideration prescribed in the Tariff Act of "I,____ ____, do solemnly and truly swear (or affirm) that the entry now delivered by me to the collector of ____ contains a just and true account of goods, wares, and merchandise imported by or eon-me signed to me in the____, whereof ____is master, from____; that the said goods, wares, and merchandise were not actually bought by me, or by my agent, in the ordinary mode of bargain and sale, but that, nevertheless, the invoice which 1 now produce contains a just and faithful valuation of the same, at their fair market value, at the time or times and place or places when and where procured for my account (or for account of myself or partners); that the said invoice contains also a just and faithful account of all the cost for finishing said goods, wares, and merchandise to their present condition, and no other discount, drawback or bounty but such as has been actually allowed on the said goods, wares, and merchandise; that the said invoice and the declaration thereon are in all respects true, and were made by the person by whom the same purports to have been made; that I do not know nor believe in the existence of any invoice or bill of lading other than those now produced by me, and that they are in the state in which I actually received them. And I do further solemnly and truly swear
By reference to decisions of the courts it appears that the provisions of section 1) of the act of
In the case of Cliquot's Champagne, (3 Wallace, U. S. Rep., 125,) the court charged the jury as follows:
"The market value of goods is the price at which the owner of the goods or the producer holds them for sale; the price at which they are freely offered in the market to all the world; such prices as dealers in the goods are willing to receive, and purchasers are made to pay when the goods are bought and sold in the ordinary course of trade. You will perceive, therefore, that the actual cost of the goods is not the standard. On the contrary, that having been the standard, the law has been changed, and for the standard of the cost has been substituted another standard, to wit, the actual market value."
In "Six Cases of Silk Ribbons," (3 Benedict, C. C. Reports, 536,) which was a prosecution for the forfeiture of the goods for false valuation, the court charged the jury as follows:
"The law presumes that there was, at the time and place of the manufacture of the goods seized, an actual market value thereof; and no evidence can be received or considered, under the law and under the Oaths to the invoices, to show there was not, in fact, such actual market value thereof. The cost of the goods will come under consideration, if at all, not as a substitute for market value, but merely as an item of evidence on the question as to what was the actual market value. Therefore, you must assume in this case that there was an actual market value for these goods at the time and place of their manufacture, the only question being to ascertain what such actual market value was. The claimants had no right to adopt any other standard of value than such actual market value, nor do I understand them as claiming that they had such right. They have sworn in the oath on each invoice that such invoice contains the actual market value; and their claim is, not that they had a right to set forth anything except the actual market value, but that the actual market value was the cost, with the manu-facturer's profit added, at the percentage named in the testimony, and that such actual market value was no greater according to their idea of actual market value. So, also, the claimants were required to state in their invoices the actual market value of their goods at the time and place of their manufacture, not only without regard to the cost thereof, but without regard to the profit or loss which might result from their consignment thereof, or any loss which maybe shown in the end to have resulted therefrom. If they chose to take the cost and add a profit, and make up the actual market value in that way, and it turns out in the end that that is the actual market value, very well; but if it turns out in the end that that is leas than the actual market value, the claim-
The Secretary of the Treasury discusses the method of ascertaining the market value as follows, (Synopsis, 3222:)
"Where no sales are made in the country of production, either for consumption or export, the market value 6f similar goods of other man-ufacturers actually sold should be ascertained and betaken into account. In cases where the manufacturer ships all his goods to the United States on consignment for sale, and the market value cannot be ascertained by the methods before indicated, it should be fixed by reference to the market value of the component materials of the goods at the time and place of manufacture, with the expense of manufacture and a fair manufacturer's profit added; and the appraised value in such cases cannot be less than the cost and profit so ascertained. "It is to be understood that evidence of the cost of production of imported goods is in all cases to be regarded as a proper subject for consideration in determining dutiable values, and appraisers are allowed, under the law, the greatest latitude in procuring information as to what is the true market value of imported merchandise; but it will be borne in mind that duties can in no case be assessed upon an amount less than the invoice or entered value, nor can the appraisement be made at less than that value."
The Department holds that all the old methods of ascertaining the actual market value are still open to the appraiser, and that it is still his duty, by every means in his power, to "ascertain, estimate, and appraise the true and actual market value and wholesale price" of merchandise, "any invoice or affidavit thereto to the contrary notwithstanding," and that the provisions of Section 9 only authorize him, when such value cannot be ascertained to his satisfaction otherwise, to appraise the same by ascertaining the cost or value of the materials as prescribed in that section.
The language of the provision is not imperative, it is merely permissive—"it shall then be lawful to appraise the same by ascertaining the cost or value of the materials," &c. No manufacturer, shipper, owner, or other party has the right to invoice goods procured otherwise than by purchase at any other than the true market value, and in no case is the appraiser required to adopt any but the ordinary method of ascertaining market value.
When he does adopt this method of appraisal, the law expressly requires that "in no case shall the value of such goods, wares, and merchandise be appraised at less than the total cost or value thus ascertained."
Although by section 7 of the tariff act of
It may further be observed that the method of appraisal contained in Section 9 might, if adopted in some cases, inflict great hardship upon exporters of merchandise. It has sometimes happened that the market value of merchandise, notably silks, by reason of an over-supply, has been less than the actual cost of production. To appraise such merchandise at the cost or value of the material composing it at the time and place of manufacture, with the expense of manufacturing, preparing, and putting up such merchandise for shipment, might fix its value far above the actual market value and wholesale price at the date of exportation, while in another condition of the market the actual market value and wholesale price might be greater than the cost of production with the expense of preparing and putting up the merchandise for shipment.
Appraising officers and parties interested in the importation of merchandise will therefore bear in mind that not only does the law require the true and actual market value of the merchandise to be certified upon the invoice and stated in the entry, but that this is a far more just and equitable method of appraisal than that described in Section 9. and that the method adopted in Section 9 should not be resorted to except in cases where the true and actual market value and wholesale price cannot otherwise be ascertained to the satisfaction of the appraiser. a condition which can but rarely occur.
When the appraiser is compelled to resort to this mode of appraisal, there is nothing in the statute to prevent his adding to the items therein enumerated whatever he deems proper to make the true and actual market value, the only restriction upon his action being that "in no ease shall the value of such goods, wares, and merchandise be appraised at less than the total cost or value thus ascertained."
Statement of the number and designation of officers and employes shown on the records of the Department as being now employed in the appraiser's office at the port of New York, together with the aggregate annual cost of paying their present salaries.
Disbursements by the collector and disbursing agent at New York, N. Y., under head of "appraisements" or appraiser's department, during the fiscal year ended June 30, 1885.
Premises rented in New York City for appraisement and storage of goods in connection with the customs service.
Persons wishing to join the League, are requested to send their subscription (voluntary from one shilling upwards) and address to Messrs. Herries, Farquhar & Co., Bankers, 16, St. James's Street, S. W. Further particulars can be had from the Secretary, W. C. Crofts, No. 4, Westminster Chambers, Victoria Street, London, S. W.
Out of over a hundred Public Bills before Parliament, no fewer Public Billsversus State interference. To such an extent has the pernicious system of overlegislation developed of late years, that it is hardly possible to take up any Bill, 110 matter by whom or by which party brought in, without finding somewhere within it, provisions for the substitution of State coercion for voluntary self-help. Even Mr. Serjeant Simon's Partnerships Bill is not quite free from the taint. While at the other end of the scale we have some fifteen or more Bills which cannot be said to consist of anything else.
The Employees' Liability Act Amendment Bill Employers' Liability Act ( 1880) Amendment Bill
Steam Boilers (Persons in Charge) Bill.Steam Boilers (Persons in Charge) Bill. Every boiler is to be looked after by a person who is provided with a proper certificate of qualification issued by the Board of Trade, and specifying among other things the color of the grantee's hair and eyes, the state of his complexion, and any other little personal peculiarities which the examiner may consider sufficiently interesting. The Board is to appoint proper examiners for these purposes, of course with suitable salaries; but, lest these gentlemen should give certificates for a consideration, such transactions are in
Factory and Workshops Act ( 1878) Amendment Bill
An important question to be dealt with by the legislature
Patents for Inventions. Patents for Inventions BillPatents for Inventions (No. 3) Bill.
The Corn Sales Bill makes it illegal to sell corn by Corn Sales Bill.
Strange to say there is no Bill before Parliament this Session Threatened Shipping Legislation.Ship-owners; and the conclusion drawn from this fact by that much State-regulated class was till very lately the natural one that everything which it was possible to do in that direction, had already been done. They have, however, been roused from this state of false security by the assurance of the President of the Board of Trade that if his predecessors have beaten them with rods he is prepared to beat them with scorpions. Neither members of the shipping interest nor other members of this League would raise a hand to resist this threatened legislation, if they believed that it was likely to result in a saving of life and property. It is because such acts of Government interference are not calculated to succeed that they should be resisted. Mr. Chamberlain has himself admitted that the result of past similar legislation has been not only a failure, but actually harmful. He says, "I am sorry to say I must also tell you that interference has not produced the result it was intended to produce in the security of the lives for which we are in some degree responsible." And he proceeds to quote figures which fully bear out this damaging admission. "I have had the loss of life at sea taken out for the last six years, and I
increasing quantity. The average from more measures of the same kind, and based on the same faulty principle.
There are about seventeen Bills interfering more or less with Payment of Wages in Public-House Prohibition Bill.Payment of Wages in Public-Houses Prohibition Bill is a measure the aim of which is to keep work-people out of sight of beer for the one hour or so during which they are receiving their wages, lest the odour of alcohol should overcome their self-control and their common-sense. It is useless to point out that certain classes of persons will be seriously inconvenienced by the Act, such as railway contractors and laborers engaged in loading and unloading ships, and moving trades generally. It is useless to point out that the law has already been in force in the mining districts for a dozen years without any perceptible result beyond inconveniencing all parties; nor is it of any more avail to argue that men who are fit for the franchise may surely be trusted with the custody of their own pounds, shillings and pence for the space of a few minutes. The Bill combines all the weakest features of this kind of measure; for it is not even proof against the simplest evasion. What is to prevent an employer from paying his work-people in the street in front of the public-house if he chooses?
The House of Commons is in possession of what some might Liquor Traffic (Scotland) Bill.
The Parliamentary Elections (Closing of Public-Parliamentary Elections (Closing Public-House)Houses) Bill, is another of those useless and irritating measures, which, without effecting their object, cause untold inconvenience. In this case the annoyance to persons coming up from a distance to vote, will probably result in their not voting at all.
Licensed Victuallers will do well to read Clauses 43 and Parliamentary Elections (Corrupt and Illegal Practices) Bill.Parliamentary Elections (Corrupt and Illegal Parliamentary Bill together, or they will run a good chance of being deceived by the wording of the same. According to the latter Clause, any person who is obliged to come forward as a witness before an election-court, shall be entitled to receive a certificate of indemnity, which shall serve as a guarantee that no legal proceedings shall be instituted against him for any offence under the Acts in connection with the said election, whereby he might otherwise have suffered in respect of his liberty or property; the certificate of indemnity is not to relieve him,
capitis diminutio. This may be expedient, but it is not honest; and, perhaps, it is even yet a question whether a publican ought not to be treated with the same justice as is meted out to his fellows. By Clause 15 of the same Bill, it is provided that licensed premises shall not be used as committee-rooms, and however expedient such provisions may be, it is clear that besides being generally inconvenient, it is hard on those whose business partly consists in the letting of such rooms.
Sale of Intoxicating Liquors (Ireland) Bill.Sale of Intoxicating Liquors on Sunday. One of these is to amend and make perpetual an Act to that effect passed in Sale of Intoxicating Liquors on Sunday Bill.Sale of Intoxicating Liquors on Sunday (No. 2) Bill.Ditto CornwallDitto DurhamDitto Isle-of-WightDitto NorthumberlandDitto MonmouthDitto Yorkshire
Infectious Diseases Notification Bill.Infectious Diseases Notification Bill. With the final aim of this Bill all must sympathise. Its object is to secure that due notice be given to the sanitary authorities of the existence and whereabouts of infectious disease; the onus of notifying to the medical officer of health the existence of any infectious disorder in the house, is to rest both on the inmates of the house and also on the medical man in attendance. The former are not to have any other inducement to conform to the requirements of the Act beyond fear of the consequences of offending against the law; but the latter is to receive half-a-crown as informer. Medical men are very naturally strongly opposed to such an arrangement, and prefer to exercise their own discretion as to the expediency at any time of reporting serious cases of infection to the authorities when assistance is necessary in the interest not only of the patient, but of the neighbours and the community at large. The present practice is
nidus from which numerous others, more severe ones, spring." Again, unless the notification is to lead to action of some kind it can be of no use to anyone, beyond putting the ratepayers' money into the pockets of medical officers; but it is an open secret that the Bill is intended to pave the way to a more drastic and despotic measure to follow, viz., a com
Vivisection Abolition Bill.Vivisection Abolition Bill is the product of an inconsiderate and over-strained benevolence, and one would have thought that, especially in this age of anaesthetics, the important discoveries of Ferrier, Pasteur and Koch, would have convinced even the most sensitive that it may be right to inflict pain with due precautions, and without unnecessary cruelty for the sake of inestimable results to humanity and the whole sentient world. It would be interesting to learn in what mind Clause 7 had its origin: "This Act shall not apply to invertebrate animals." Why the proud possession of a back-bone should be a condition precedent to kind treatment the Bill sayeth not.
Free Libraries Bill.Free Libraries Bill, which provides for the purchase of books by persons who do not want them, for the benefit of those who do. It is based throughout on the good old Communistic lines, for which only the angels and the promoters of these Bills are yet ripe: it is more blessed to give than to receive, and most blessed of all to give
The Bankruptcy Bill is one which requires to be watched Bankruptcy Bill.
The Imprisonment for Debt Bill is good for the same Imprisonment for Debt Blll.
Bills of Sale (Ireland) Act ( 1879) Amendment Bill.
Banking Laws (Scotland) Bill.Banking Laws (Scotland) Bill. Its object is to provide for the issue by local banks of notes guaranteed by the State. For this purpose "the bank to which privilege of issue has been so granted shall deposit with the Treasurer (a paid officer of State, to be called Treasurer to the Scotch Banks of Issue)
It is a pity Mr. Serjeant Simon cannot see his way to extending Partnerships Bill.Partnerships Bill so as to embrace the whole field of partnerships and joint-stock com-panies, for nothing could exceed the importance of such a reform in the law which now works with such deadening effect on the legitimate speculation of the country. Millions of pounds are diverted from productive channels into the three per cents, by the terrors of the law of liability.
The Theatres Regulation Bill calls attention in its Theatres Regulation Bill.
Land Law (Ireland) Amendment Bill.Land Law (Ireland) Act (Amendment Bill.Irish Land Law Bills; one brought in by Mr. Parnell, which is too well known to require special exposition, the other by Mr. Givan, which proposes to enact, amongst other things, that any improve-
Then comes Dr. Cameron's Seed Advances (Scotland) Seed Advances (Scotland Bill).Bill; by which occupiers of land are to be empowered to borrow money wherewith to purchase seed, the advantage of which is that the deficit on the principal is to be paid by the thrifty ratepayers, and the interest on the whole by the taxpayers of the United Kingdom. Clause 11 makes the provision to which we are now getting accustomed, that persons in receipt of pauper relief are not to be regarded as paupers. Further comment on this Bill is fortunately needless.
The Notices of Removal (Scotland) Bill is only of Notices of Removal (Scotland) Bill.
The Distress Law Amendment Bill, if it becomes law, Distress Law Amendment Bill.bona fide property of third persons is made no longer liable to distress for rent in arrear. Male stock belonging to other persons being on the premises solely for the purposes of breeding, machinery belonging to others, and bona fide lent on hire, are to be totally exempted from such liability; and live stock of all kinds belonging to others, and being on the land for agistment or feeding for full payment, are liable only to the extent of the amount of such payment, and no further. Now, reasonable as this at first sight appears to be, the matter might have been greatly simplified without leaving the door open, as is done by the Bill, to petty frauds on the landlord. A written notice served on the landlord by the third party, to the effect that such and such stock or machinery was about to be placed on the tenant's land for the purposes therein described, and that such stock or machinery would remain his, the third party's property, would surely suffice. And in this way the landlord would not be deceived as to the general assets of his tenant, upon which, if desirable, to allow him time.
Tithe Rent-charge (Extraordinary) Bill.
The Tithe Rent-charge (Extraordinary) Bill is almost as extraordinary as its name implies. Farmers in the hop and fruit districts have never ceased to complain that the incidence of this burden falls almost exclusively upon the tenant; but now that it is to cease, the tithe owner is to be compensated at the expense of the landlord. Clause 8 contains the following provision of modern brand:—" Subject to as aforesaid a rent-charge under this Act shall, as between landlord and tenant, be payable by the landlord, any agreement to the contrary notwithstanding."
Floods Prevention.—One would have thought that River Conservancy and Floods Prevention Bill.make a new one. It need hardly be said, that the Board has power to borrow on the security of the rates.
Agricultural Tenants' Compensation Bill.Landed Interest more or less, viz., those brought in by Agricultural Holdings Bill.Ditto, No. 2 Bill.
Ground Game Act (Amendment Bill.
This Report would not be complete without some reference the Ground Game Act (Amendment Bill. At the time of the granting of the Great Charter who would have believed that six centuries later one of the statutes of the realm would consist of a definition of the word "rabbit-hole?" Yet so it is in this year of grace
Private Bills.Private Bills, whose utilitarian and business-like, titles are apt to lull suspicion. Out of 234 Private Bills now before Parliament, there are a number of measures promoted by local bodies for the improvement of their several towns or districts. This class of Improvement Bills furnishes repeated instances of the increasing tendency of local governments, in imitation of the example set in higher quarters, to exceed their normal functions by taking upon themselves the business of traders or regulators of trade within their respective districts. The manufacture of gas, and the storage and supply of that and water, are fast coming to be classed among the first duties of local bodies; and electric lighting seems doomed before long to fall
see note). The replacement of individual enterprise in these matters by corporate monopolies may possibly at the outset be attended by some superficial and immediate advantages. On the other hand it is very certain that the suppression of open competition will tend to weaken the strongest and surest stimulus to progress and invention in these as in all other industries. The fate of telegraphy in England as a monopoly in the hands of the State for the last fifteen years does not lead us to expect very rapid growth under this closed system of conducting trade. On this point it is instructive to note that all the greatest developments in this and in allied branches of applied electricity have in recent years proceeded from the United States, where telegraphy is still left to private enterprise.
There is also a growing inclination on the part of local authorities to seek in this class of Bills for powers of "local option," enabling them to supersede the general law of the land in reference to the rights of person and property by special enactments applicable only to their own areas. The Liverpool Improvement Bill is an instance of the latter class. In the midst of 34 sections, dealing mainly with the construction and management of streets, is one making that city an exception under certain sections of the
Since these words wont to press, we find the following strong confirmation of the soundness of this view. A deputation, introduced by Mr. E. Pleydell-Bouverie, and representing Electric Lighting Companies, waited upon the President of the Board of Trade on the 21st inst. (April), to point out the hardships inflicted upon them by certain of the regulations issued "by the Board, with respect to provisional orders for electric lighting. The spokesman contended that the rules thrust obstacles in the way of the successful working of the system, and, moreover, that they were contrary to sound policy, for, if insisted upon, people would not entrust their money to such undertakings. To this remonstrance Mr. Chamberlain, with questionable courtesy, replied that "Mr. Bouverie had spoken with a high sense of conscious virtue, and criticised matters beside the actual circumstances of the case." Now, attention should be called to the fact that the provisions of the Electric Lighting Bill, passed last year at the instance of the Board of Trade, are open to such abuses as may operate in restraint of electric enterprise by admitting, when in mischievous hands, of undue State interference with the property and profits of shareholders.
Lands' Clauses Consolidation Acts. The first class of cases is typically illustrated by the Burnley Borough Improvement Bill. Embedded in this Bill, amidst a mass of extraneous matter, there is, or rather was, one section which sought to put into the hands of the Corporation of that town unlimited powers for the regulation of unlicensed clubs within their jurisdiction. The full force of these extraordinary powers, which would have been doubtless used as precedents for other places, was destined in the first instance to fall upon the working-classes. In the interest of the liberty not of one class only, but of all, the Parliamentary Committee of the League have the satisfaction of knowing that the petition they presented to the House of Commons, the representations they made there, and the rest of their action in conjunction with the Working Men's Club and Institute Union were instrumental in procuring the withdrawal of this objectionable section.
In conclusion, the Parliamentary Committee of the League express a hope that this short survey of Bills now before Parliament by which liberty is threatened and the rights of property ignored or over-ridden, may induce Members of Parliament to look at the grave matters thus brought before them with a view to arresting the present tendency to substitute State-help for Self-help in the business and other transactions of national life; bearing in mind that although for children and lunatics paternal solicitude is required, the similar treatment of sane grown persons only tends to deteriorate the race in the long run by diminishing self-reliance on the one hand and self-control on the other.
This Report appears somewhat late in the Session, owing to the impossibility of procuring sooner printed copies of all those Bills before Parliament which it was necessary to examine. Some of the Bills here considered appeared in print for the first time within a few hours of sending this Report to press.
Harmsworth & Co., Printers, Tavistock Street, Covent Garden.
For resisting Overlegislation, for maintaining Freedom of Contract, and for advocating Individualism as opposed to Socialism, entirely irrespective of Party Politics.
Parliamentary Committee:—
The Right Hon. Lord Bramwell.
Wordsworth Donisthorpe, Esq.
The Right Hon. the Earl of Pembroke.
H. C. Stephens, Esq.
The Right Hon. the Earl of Wemyss.
Members of the League are to be congratulated on the fact Representation of the People.
The object of this Bill is to repeal that part of Section 4 of Municipal Corporation (Borough Funds).pro tanto increases the risk of overlegislation and confiscation. These remarks similarly apply to the Government Bill for London Municipal Reform. Though strictly a question of structure, it is impossible to overlook the patent fact that such a local government as that sketched out in the Bill may be easily made an engine of socialism such as the
London Government.
Merchant Shipping.Merchant Shipping Bill may be regarded as a scheme of State-regulation of marine insurance. No doubt it deals with a variety of other matters of greater or less importance, but all are made subordinate to the main object of prohibiting over-insurance for the sake of gain. Although the wager-policy is illegal, still the owner can, it is alleged, insure his vessel for more than it is worth. Now, surely no one can be foolish enough to suppose that over-insurance can, in itself, be profitable. Insurance means, in the long run, a small payment out of the pocket of the owner for the purpose of supporting a system which shall spread losses over an extended surface. To charge ship-owners with over-insurance, to mean anything, must convey
first over-insures, and then humanly neglects to take quite the same care and precaution is quite inconsequential, for no owner is stupid enough, blind enough to his own interest, intentionally to over-insure unless he possesses knowledge and means whereby he hopes to profit by the transaction. If it is said that he over-insures unintentionally, owing to a sanguine overvaluation of his own property (which is quite possible), then before any loss or even risk can be traced to such over-insurance it must be shown, firstly, that the owner discovers his mistake, and secondly that he decides to profit by it at the cost of the life and property of others. There is no use in trying to evade this dilemma. Either the Bill is superfluous and mischievous, or the charge brought against shipowners of sacrificing life and property for gain must be substantiated. The very raison d'etre of the Bill requires the proof that this allegation is true as a rule or, at least, as a very considerable exception. If it is contended that the exceptions are rare, and extremely rare, but that it is necessary to provide against those exceptions, then the further question arises whether it is expedient to harass and cripple an important national branch of trade in which Englishmen have embarked at least two hundred millions of money—a branch of trade upon which hundreds of thousands of working men are entirely dependent, upon which the whole nation depends for necessaries of life to the extent, among other things, of seven million tons of bread-stuffs in a single year—a branch of trade so delicately co-ordinated that the slightest hitch in any part of its complicated and widely-ramified machinery might at any moment bring about an irreparable dissolution or even collapse;—is it wise to run the risk of driving the carrying trade of the world into the hands of foreigners for the sake of out
modus operandi of this Act for the prevention of ship-sinking for the sake of gain, we find that the end is to be gained chiefly by substituting a system of open policies for the more convenient system of valued policies. Such a retrograde step (for the tendency is in an opposite direction) is calculated to promote litigation, which valued policies are designed to avoid. What is still more remarkable is that this Bill which proposes to supplant the valued policy (denounced as to some extent a wager-policy) by what is described as a contract of indemnity, defeats its own proposed aim. It renders it impossible for a shipowner to indemnify himself for loss. Partial indemnity is all that can under the most favourable circumstances be obtained under the Bill. But a measure so subversive of all English notions of sound statesmanship, so senilely paternal in its method, could not be thoroughly exposed as to all its teeming fallacies and blunders in anything short of a treatise on the economy of insurance. Suffice it to add that indefinite policies are of little use as collateral securities. Bankers who advance money on the security of policies have no time to go into probable values; they must be fixed. The Bill abolishes compulsory pilotage; and doubtless this should be done by a separate Bill, but not without compensation to an excellent body of men whose vested interests should be as sacred as those of commissioned officers in the army. If it is urged in general support of the Bill, as a whole, that nothing is so sacred as
The Marine Insurance Bill, backed by Mr. Norwood and Marine Insurance.unreasonably high, to refer the matter to referees to ascertain what would have been the value of the interest of the insured had the policy been an open one. Here the danger lies in the word "unreasonably." How can that be unreasonable which both parties have agreed to? What might appear an excessive valuation of the thing itself may fall far short of what is required to replace such thing in time to take up the threads of commercial relations and to cover loss by inconvenience, &c. A valued policy to a
Metropolis Water
A separate paper on this subject will be published by the League.Metropolitan Board of Works (Fire Brigade Expenses).Fire Brigade Bill is a confiscatory measure of the worst order, the object of which is to compel the prudent to pay for the protection of the imprudent from loss by fire. The whole history of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade is one of the best illustrations of the rapid advance and mischievous effects of state-socialism. Fifty years ago, the old parochial fire-engine was practically of no use at all. In
The future of landowners is a gloomy one, so far as their proprietory Land:—Access to Mountains (Scotland).
Leaseholders(Facilities of Purchase of Fee Simple.)Leaseholders' Enfranchisement,modus operandi of the rival measures, as neither one nor the other is likely to see the light this Session; though it would be dangerous to prophecy as to the next. Such is the rapid spread of the new evangel of right by might.
Public Health Acts Amendment Bill.
Mortmain Law Amendment.
When we come to Ireland the position is serious. It is Land Law (Ireland) Act ( 1881)Amendment.
Ireland
All the Bills emanating from the Irish quarter evince radical Irish Land Court Officers (Exclusion From Parliament).Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (Disabilities)
Fisheries (Ireland).
Sale of Intoxicating Liquors on Sunday (Ireland)
School, &c., Buildings (Ireland).
Trees Planting (Ireland).Waste Land Afforestation (Ireland).Tramways (Ireland) Acts Amendment.
Dwelling-houses InspectionDwelling-houses Inspection Bill is very objectionable. Houses Clause 10, providing for the annual inspection "at least once in every year" of all buildings existing in every district under a local authority, is monstrous. Besides the most obvious objections, it could be easily shown that-(i) The cost of inspection of all buildings once at least in every year would be enormous. (2) Any such annual inspection would only be very superficial, and would afford no real security; still, the fact of such inspection being annually made, would create an ignorant feeling of safety. Persons appointed as local sanitary inspectors are frequently without any qualification for their duties, and the very wide powers conferred upon them by this Bill would lead to great waste, and perhaps also to extortion and malicious and tyrannical proceedings of various kinds. The Bill is most clumsily drawn, and it is difficult to make out what is intended. Thus, Clause 12 charges owners of property with the "expenses of inspection "-railway fares and refreshments, probably, perhaps more than these-The Bill is hardly likely to become law, but the mania for anything supposed to promote sanitation makes watchfulness necessary. Again, as to cost, 6,000,000 houses will have to be inspected yearly; let ten be inspected daily by each inspector; that is 3,000 each year by each inspector; and even then, what would such limited inspection be worth? And we shall require 2,000 inspectors at say £200 each. This hardly bodes well for a policy of retrenchment!
It has been urged that by its Articles of Association this Contagious Diseases (Animals).
Hackney Carriage Laws (Metropolis).
It is surely a monstrous thing that the time of Imperial Parliament Freshwater Fisheries Act Amendment.
Salmon (Weekly Close Time). (Ireland).Irish Salmon Fishing Bill draws attention in its preamble to the fact that under the existing law fishermen are not allowed to fish for salmon and trout in any other way than by single rod and line from six o'clock on Saturday morning till six o'clock on the following Monday morning. Now this, again, is a matter of detail with which the local authorities are, or should be, quite competent to deal, without relying on the special providence of the imperial legislature. If, like a close season and other restrictions believed to be beneficial to the fisheries, this particular restriction is good, then it is clearly unwise to put it in the power of a majority of persons who cannot possibly know much of the question to pander to the impatience and prejudice of the ignorant and shortsighted, who are at all times ready to kill the goose that lays the golden egg; on the other hand, if the restriction is mischievous, it is unjust to allow that same majority to place obstacles in the way of the poorest class of British subjects in their efforts to earn daily bread.
Registration of Firms.
Repressive Legislation.
It would also be well to consider another remarkable phenomenon Fortunately talked out on second reading, April 2nd.Self-Help.
The Sale of Spirits Bill is one of that incessant series Sale of Spirits (Mixed Traders).
Re-Appearances.
Employers' Liability Act ( 1880) Amendment.
Canal Boats Act ( 1870) Amendment.
The Bill to provide literature for the studious at other peoples'Free Libraries.Vivisection Prohibition.Theatres, &c., Regulations.
If we are called upon to explain the position of the League Ground Game Act( 1880) Amendment.
Steam Engines and Boileesi.e., no one in particular, is another Bill of the most mischievous type. The fallacy of State-interference with steam boilers has been so thoroughly exposed by Sir Frederic Bramwell, that we can only suppose the promoters of this Bill must be unacquainted with his evidence and arguments, or incapable of appreciating either.
Our wonder and admiration would be great if we were told Municipal Duties.
Improvement Bills.
Amidst the diversity of ends sought after by these various bodies Compulsory Notification of DiseaseForcible Removal to Hospital.at the instigation of any private medical practitioner, having obtained a magistrate's order, may forcibly remove the sick patient from his own house to the general hospital, or to one specially provided by the municipality for infectious diseases, at his own cost or that of his relatives. If the latter in any way impede this order being carried out they will have to pay £10 for their audacity. The authorities at Brighton or Chester, or anywhere else where parental instincts have not been scared by "State
Closure of Private Houses.Forcible Burial.of any private practitioner may authorise the municipal authorities to forcibly remove the body for immediate burial, and to charge the expenses to the relatives; and then, without their permission, to
Of course, all these elaborate devices for summarily dragooning infection out of existence are prompted by the best intentions. But, like a great deal of the soft-hearted legislation of the present day, it could hardly be better devised for defeating its own end. The malignity and areas of all these infectious diseases are steadily being lessened in each succeeding generation by causes more radical than any spasmodic and superficial legislation can bring to bear upon them. All life tables and bills of mortality show this. Insight into the origin of disease is yearly on the increase, and with it the art of meeting it successfully in the course of ordinary medical practice. The spontaneous adoption by the mass of the population of conditions more in conformity with the laws of health, though far from universal, is slowly and inevitably becoming more general. All attempts to artificially quicken this progress towards a better state of general health are just as mistaken and mischievous as those which aim at forcing on a better state of morals by Act of Parliament. It is obvious that the first effect of this raid upon infectious diseases, as noted by this Committee when reporting upon the Infectious Diseases Notification Bill of last Session, will be "to divert a considerable amount of medical practice from qualified medical practitioners into the hands of quacks, who will have little to lose and something to gain by keeping the true nature of the malady secret." It is not likely that the petty shopkeeper or dairyman will deliberately assist in the destruction of his own business connection by playing into the hands of that branch of the profession who will consider it a matter of duty and etiquette to label his house as an "infected place." Supposing it may be that some good would be done, is it worth the price—the constant and intolerable interference it involves?
Artisans' Dwellings
Judging from the charge of "over-pressure" brought against Casual Employment of Children.Newspaper Boys.Newspaper Licenses.
Marine Store Alers.at all times plainly and distinctly visible and legible." It is hard to see how the latter condition can be completely fulfilled unless luminous paint be used. By Section 61 of the Jarrow Bill, those who "only occasionally deal in second-hand marine stores," are to be exempt from all the above regulations; and it is just, of course, to these "occasional dealers," that the burglar, cracksman, and pickpocket
Licenses.Market-women.Cattle Drovers.Bowling-greens.private pleasure boat on the Dee, at Chester, will have to obtain a license from the city authorities, who will impose conditions as to the speed he may travel and the mode of Bathing-women.Plumbers.
Building Regulations:—Wooden Buildings.Materials and Workmanship.Materials and Stables.
In spite of the rigid limits within which cabmen and omnibus Omnibus Drivers.Coal Dealers.Advertisements.Carriage of Dead Animals.
Specialities.Unwholesome FoodProcessions.Use of Drags.Sunday Hawking.
Perhaps the Belfast Improvement Bill is the best instance of Belfast Improvement Bill.
Public Amusements and Conveniences.panem et circenses. At Jarrow, Chester, Dewsbury and Brighton, baths, wash-houses and lavatories are to be maintained out of the public rates, while Jarrow and Brighton, in addition, undertake respectively to supply Turkish baths and drinking fountains. Ventnor and Brighton are prepared to provide bands of music and "exhibitions performances and amusements for the recreation of the inhabitants." Glasgow is to make, maintain and work tramways. Brighton is to acquire and keep up all cemeteries, and (dismal conception!) to lay them out as "pleasure grounds." The Llanfrechfa Upper Local Board and the Dewsbury Corporation are to supply water pipes, valves, cocks and cisterns. Jarrow is to erect warehouses, sheds, cranes and other machinery. Belfast will contribute to the support of the hospital, and Cardiff to that of the local university out of the public funds. The former will establish works for making and supplying gas stoves, meters, pipes and gas engines, as will also Dewsbury. Leicester will provide out of the rates a free library, museum and art gallery; and Brighton will build and maintain arcades, bazaars, conservatories, recreation grounds, reading rooms, lifts and elevators for the use and amusement of its inhabitants, and will purchase and manage the race-course.
Water and Gas.
Local Government.
The unsoundness of the prevailing notions as to the limits of State duties, and the evil effects of political action based upon them, have been continuously insisted upon during the past two years by the Liberty and Property Defence League. The foregoing examination of a certain class of Private Bills makes it clear that the imperial government has in the various local centres an increasing number of faithful imitators. The absurdities of overlegislation, and the first essays in Socialism as perpetrated at Westminster, are copied and multiplied in miniature in every guildhall and council chamber throughout the country. The reaction going on between the central and the local governments only seems to exaggerate the tendency everywhere to indiscriminate official supervision and interference. To a considerable extent already municipal centres have become the nurseries for parliament; and, in the future, we may expect this to be still more the case. In face of this it is of the highest importance that the limits of local autonomy should be approximately defined. Decentralisation, as at present practised, is little else than the reversal of the process of integration which has given us our comprehensive national life. The breaking up of uniformity in the administration of the laws of the land and the concession of "local option" in reference to questions in which all parts of the community are identically interested cannot continue indefinitely. If national unity is to be maintained a line must be drawn somewhere in this process of what physiologists term "retrograde metamorphosis." Unless we look forward to the time when decentralisation shall have
Definitions.
Central Offices:—4, Westminster Chambers, Victoria Street, London, S.W.
The League opposes all attempts to introduce the State as competitor or regulator into the various departments of social activity and industry, which would otherwise be spontaneously and adequately conducted by private enterprise.
Questions of the structure or constitution of the State and those of foreign policy do not come within the scope of the League. It is exclusively concerned with the internal functions or duties of the State.
During the last 15 years all interests in the country have successively suffered at the hands of the State an increasing loss of their self-government. These apparently disconnected invasions of individual freedom of action by the central authority are in reality so many instances of a general movement towards State-Socialism, the deadening effect of which on all branches of industry and originality the working classes will be the first to feel.
Each interest conducting its self-defence without any reference to the others has, on every occasion, hitherto failed to oppose successfully the full force of this movement concentrated in turn against itself by the permanent officials and the government in power for the time being.
The League resists every particular case of this common evil by securing the co-operation of all persons individually opposed to the principle of State-Socialism in all or any one of its instances, and by focussing into a system of mutual defence the forces of the "Defence Associations or Societies" of the various interests of the country.
As regards such defence societies, companies, and corporate bodies, this co-operation is effected without any interference with the independent action of each body on matters specially affecting its own interest.
Each society passes a resolution formally placing itself in correspondence with the League. The League in return supplies every such society with information concerning each fresh symptom of State interference; it places the various societies and interests in communication with one another with a view to their mutual assistance inside and outside parliament; and, at the same time, it combines for the common end the forces of the several societies and interests with those of the League itself and its members in both Houses of Parliament.
The chairman (or his nominee) of every society, company or corporate body thus in correspondence with the League is an ex-officio member of the Council of the League, and receives notice to attend all its meetings. The corporate action of the League in every case of overlegislation where any interest is affected is regulated by the decision of the ordinary members of Council, acting in conjunction with its ex-officio members.
Persons wishing to join the League are requested to send their subscription (voluntary from five shillings upwards) and address to Messrs. Herries, Farquhar Co., Bankers, 16, St. James's Street, S.W. Particulars and Publications of the League, can be had from the Secretary, W. C. Crofts, at the Central Offices.
The following recent Publications of the League can be had, on application, from the Central Offices; and from all booksellers:—
Nationalisation of Land. By Lord Bramwell. Third Edition; price 2d. A Review of Mr. Henry George's Progress and Poverty.
"Has not received the attention its acuteness and brilliancy merit."—Times.
Rate-and-Tax-Aided Education. By Earl Fortescue. Third Edition; price 2d. An indictment of State education.
"A manly and vigorous protest against the centralisation which is perverting our elementary schools."—Western Times.
The Province of Government. By the Right Hon. E. Pleydell Bouverie. Price 3d.
Overlegislation in Also—
Overlegislation in
"Has a tale to tell of its own which is worth listening to."—Times.
Liberty or Law? By Wordsworth Donisthorpe, Barrister-at-Law. Fifth thousand; price 6d. A plea for Let-be.
"A vigorous essay."—Edinburgh Courant. "Forcible and clearly put."—Irish Times.
Socialism at St. Stephen's in
Will help even the most casual reader to understand the broad principles upon which the League is based."—Morning Advertiser.
The State and the Slums. By Edward Stanley Robertson. Price 2d.
"The difficulties of the theory that the State should provide houses for the working-classes are lucidly stated."—Edinburgh Courant.
Communism. By the same Author. Price 2d.
Private Liberty. By J. R. Pretyman. Price 2d.
At the same offices can be obtained:—
Principles of Plutology. By Wordsworth Donisthorpe. Price 7s. An Inquiry into the True Method of the Science of Wealth.
"His criticism is conceived in a genuinely scientific spirit."—Saturday Review.
"Is worth reading as a critical investigation."—Westminster Review.
"Treating an essentially dry and technical subject with a pleasant freshness and aptness of illustration."—Standard.
"We have met with no work on political economy more suggestive than the present."—Edinburgh Daily Review.
Serfdom, Wagedom and Freedom. By the same Author. Price is. A solution of the Labour Question.
Printed by G.Harmsworth & Co., 42, Hart Street, Covbnt Garden, London, W.C.
"The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head."
"The rent of land, therefor, considered as the price paid for the use of land is naturally a monopoly price." * * * * * * *
"As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlord's love to reap where they have not sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce."
"The rise of our rents is squeezed out of the very blood, and vitals and dwellings of the tenants."
'There should be but one tax, and that upon land-"
"If the bulk of the human race are always to remain as at present, slaves to toil in which they have no interest, and therefore feel no interest-drudging from early morning till late at night for bare necessities and with all the intellectual and moral deficiencies which that implies-without resources either in mind or feeling-untaught, for they cannot be better taught than fed; selfish, for all their thoughts are required for themselves; without interests or sentiments as citizens and members of society, and with a sense of injustice rankling in their minds, equally for what they have not and what others have; I know not what there is which should make a person of any capacity of reason concern himself about the destinies of the human race."
" It is my firm conviction that, at the present moment, the best and most needed service that can be done to the human race, is the promulgation of sound doctrines in regard to the land, with the view to its eventual, and I hope, speedy resumption by the people, whose inalienable and indispensable heritage it is.
The orator was introduced to the audience by Brother James Love, one of the committee, in the following words:
Ladies and Gentlemen:—I appear in this introductory place to-night as a workingman, the representative and spokesman of a large body of workingmen, very greatly dissatisfied with their social condition.
In looking broadly over our own land and Europe we observe a still greater dissatisfaction. We see that in spite of steam and the mighty powers born of this century, that labor is prostrate. That labor saving machines do not lessen our cares. That the difficulties of life seem ever to increase. That failure is the rule and success the exception. That great combinations of capital and great workshops are reducing the independent worker to an unhappy servitude. That factories are filled with children. That woman struggle for the barest subsistence. That strikes and outbreaks are of daily occurrence. That tramps become more numerous, and that insanity increases.
We have overthrown despotisms, but the man with the ballot is no better off than before.
"Man is born free," exclaims Rosseau, "but he is everywhere in chains."
Believing these results to come from excessive population has beclouded the philosophers. The endeavor to reconcile them to the tenderness of Jesus has degraded Christianity.
But there is dawning upon us a notion that these social wrongs are based upon the denial of a great truth: the truth that the earth belongs to the whole human race and not to a part of it. That the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof, in which all of his children, every living soul, has an equality of right.
The thought of more than a hundred years has been moving towards this, till it culminates, in our own day and in our own land, in a man with the reasoning genius of Newton, Shakespearian command of language, and the broad human sympathy of St. Francis, who bears the completed message of peace to an anxions and overwrought world.
This man who has transformed a "political economy that is dark and despairing, to a new science radiant with hope," I now have the great honor to present to you—our loved fellow-countryman Henry George.
Ladies and Gentlemen:—I propose to talk to you to-night of the Crime of Poverty. I cannot, in a short time, hope to convince you of much; but the thing of things I should like to show you is that poverty is a crime. I do not mean that it is a crime to be poor. Murder is a crime; but it is not a crime to be murdered; and a man who is in poverty. I look upon, not as a criminal in himself, so much as the victim of a crime for which others, as well perhaps as himself, are responsible. (Applause.) That poverty is a curse, the bitterest of curses, we all know. Carlyle was right when he said that the hell of which Englishmen are most afraid is the hell of poverty; and this is true, not of Englishmen alone, but of people all over the civilized world, no matter what their nationality. It is to escape this hell that we strive and strain and struggle; and work on often times in blind habit long after the necessity for work is gone. The curse born of pov
Two or three weeks ago, I went one Sunday evening to the church of a famous Brooklyn preacher. Mr. Sankey was singing and something like a revival was going on there. The clergyman told some anecdotes connected with the revival, and recounted some of the reasons why men failed to become christians. One case he mentioned struck me. He said that he had noticed on the outskirts of the congregation, night after night, a man who listened intently and who gradually moved forward. One night, the clergyman said, he went to him and said, "My brother, are you not ready to become a christian?" The man said, no, he was not. He said it, not in a defiant tone, but in a sorrowful tone; the clergyman asked him why, whether he did not believe in the truths he had been hearing? Yes, he believed them all. Why, then, wouldn't he become a christian-? "Well," he said, "I can't join the church without giving up my business; and it is necessary for the support of my wife and children. If I give that up, I don't know how in the world I can get along. I had a hard time before I found my present business, and I cannot afford to give it up. Yet I can't become a christian without giving it up." The clergyman asked, "are you a rum-seller?" No, he was not a rum-seller. Well, the clergyman said, he didn't know what in the world the man could be; it seemed to him that a rum-seller was the only man who does a business that would prevent his becoming a christian; and he finally said: "What is your business?" The man said, 411 sell soap," "Soap!" exclaimed the clergyman, "you sell soap? How in the world does that pre-vent your becoming a christian?" "Well,' the man said, "it is this way; the soap I sell is one of these patent soaps that are extensively advertised as enabling you to clean clothes very quickly, as containing no deleterious compound whatever. Every cake of the soap that I sell is wrapped in a paper on which is printed a statement that it contains no injurious chemicals, whereas the truth of the matter is that it does, and that though it will take the dirt out of clothes pretty quickly, it will, in a little while, rot them completely out. I have to make my living in this way; and I cannot feel that I can become a christian if I sell that soap." The minister went on, describing how he labored unsuccessfully with that man, and finally wound up by saying: "he stuck to his soap and lost his soul." (Laughter.) But, if that man lost his soul was it his fault alone? Whose fault is it that social conditions are such that men have to make that terrible choice between what conscience tells them is right, and the necessity of earning a living? I hold that it is the fault of society; that it is the fault of us all. Pestilence is a curse. The man who would bring cholera to this country, or the man who, having the power to prevent its coming here, would make no effort to do so, would be guilty of a crime. Poverty is worse than cholera; poverty kills more people than pestilence, even in the best of times. Look at the death statistics of our cities; sec where the deaths come quickest; see where it is that the little children die like flies—it is in the poorer quarters. And the man who looks with careless eyes upon the ravages of this pestilence, the man who does not set himself to stay and eradicate it, he, I say, is guilty of a crime. (Applause.) If poverty is appointed by the power which is above us all, then it is no crime; but if poverty is unnecessary, then it is a crime for which society is responsible and for which society must suffer. I hold, and I think no one who looks at the facts can fail to see, that
If the animals can reason what must they think of us? Look at one of those great ocean steamers plowing her way across the Atlantic, against wind, against wave, absolutely setting at defiance the utmost power of the elements. If the gulls that hover over her were thinking beings could they imagine that the animal that could create such a structure as that could actually want for enough to eat? Yet, so it is. How many even of those of us who find life easiest are there who really live a rational life? Think of it, you who believe that there is only one life for man—what a fool at the very best is a man to pass his life in this struggle to merely live? And you who believe, as I believe, that this is not the last of man, that this is a life that opens but another life, think how nine-tenths, aye, I do not know but ninety-nine-hundredths of all our vital powers are spent in a mere effort to get a living; or to heap together that which we cannot by any possibility)! take away. Take the life of the average workingman. Is that the life for which the human brain was intended and the human heart was made? Look at the factories scattered through our country. They are little better than penitentiaries. I read in the New York papers a while ago that the girls at the Yonkers factories had struck. The papers said that the girls did not seem to know why they had struck, and intimated that it must be just for the fun of striking. Then came cut the girl's side of the story and it appeared that they had struck against the rules in force. They were fined if they spoke to one another, and they were fined still more heavily if they laughed There was a heavy fine for being a minute late, I visited a lady in Philadelphia who had been a forewoman in various factories, and I asked her, "Is it possible that such rules are enforced?" She said
I say that all this poverty and the ignorance that flows from it is unnecessary; I say that there is no natural reason why we should not all be rich, in the sense, not of having more than each other, but in the sense of all having enough to completely satisfy all physical wants; of all having enough to get such an easy living that we could develop the better part of humanity. (Applause.) There is no reason why wealth should not be so abundant, that no one should think of such a thing as little children at work, or a woman compelled to a toil that nature never intended her to perform; wealth so abundant that there would be no cause for that harrassing fear that sometimes paralyzes even those who are not considered "the poor," the fear that every man of us has probably felt, that if sickness should smite him, or if he should be taken away, those whom he loves better than his life would become charges upon charity. (Applause.) "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin." I believe that in a really christian community, in a society that honored not with the lips but with, the act, the doctrines of Jesus, no one would have occasion to worry about physical needs any more than do the lilies of the field. There is enough and to spare. The trouble is that, in this mad struggle, we trample in the mire what has been provided in sufficiency for us all; trample it in the mire while we tear and rend each other.
There is a cause for this poverty; and, if you trace it down, you will find its root in a primary injustice. Look over the world to day—poverty everywhere. The cause must be a common one. You cannot attribute it to the tariff, or to the form of government, or to this thing or to that in which nations differ; because, as deep poverty is common to them all the cause that produces it must be a common cause. What is that common cause? There is one sufficient cause that is common to all nations; and that is the appropriation as the property of some of that natural element on which and from which all must live. (Applause.) Take that fact I have spoken of, that appalling fact that, even now, it is harder to live than it was in the ages dark and rude five centuries ago—how do you explain it? There is no difficulty in finding the cause. Whoever reads the history of England, or the history of any other civilized nation (but I speak of the history of England because that is the history with which we are best acquainted) will see the reason. For century after century a parliament composed of aristocrats and employers passed laws endeavoring to reduce wages, but in vain. Men could not be crowded down to wages that gave a mere living because the bounty of nature was not wholly shut up from them, because some remains of the recognition of the truth that all men have equal rights on the earth still existed; because the land of that country, that which was held in private possession, was only held on a tenure derived from the nation, and for a rent payable, back to the nation. The church lands supported the expenses of public worship, of the maintenance of seminaries and the care of the poor; the crown lands defrayed the expenses of the civil list; and from a third portion of the lands, those held under the military tenures, the army was provided for. There was no national debt in England at that time. They carried on wars for hundreds of years, but at the charge of the land-owners. And more important still, there remained every where, and you can see in every old English town their traces to this day the common lands to which any of the neighborhood was free. It was as those lands were enclosed; it was as the commons were gradually monopolized, as the church lands were made the prey of greedy courtiers, as the crown lands were given away as absolute property to the favorites of the king, as the military tenants shirked their rents and laid the expenses they had agreed to defray, upon the nation, in taxation that bore upon industry and upon thrift—it was then that poverty began to deepen, and the tramp appeared in England; just as to-day he is appearing in our new states.
Now, think of it—is not land monopolization a sufficient reason for poverty? What is man? In the first place, he is an animal, a land animal who cannot live without land. All that man produces comes from land: all productive labor, in the final analysis, consists in working up land; or materials are drawn from land, into such forms as fit them for the satisfaction of human wants and desires. Why, man's very body is drawn from the land. Children of the soil, we come from the land, and to the land we must return.. Take away from man all that belongs to the land, and what have you but a disembodied spirit? Therefore he who holds the land on which and from which another man must live, is that man's master; and the man is his slave. (Applause.) The man who holds the land on which I must live can command me to life or to death just as absolutely as though I were his chattel. Talk about abolishing slavery—we have not abolished
Robinson Crusoe, as you know, when he rescued Friday from the cannibals, made him his slave. Friday had to serve Crusoe. But, supposing Crusoe had said. "Oh, man and brother, I am very glad to see you, and I welcome you to this island, and you shall be a free and independent citizen, with just as much to say as I have—except that this island is mine, (applause) and of course, as I can do as I please with my own property, you must not use it save upon my terms." Friday would have been just as much Crusoe's slave as though he had called him one. Friday was not a fish, he could not swim off through the sea; he was not a bird, and could not fly off through the air; if he lived at all, he had to live on that island. And if that island was Crusoe's, Crusoe was his master to life or death. A friend of mine, who believes as I do upon this question, was talking a while ago with another friend of mine who is a greenbacker, but who had not paid much attention to the land question. Our greenback friend said," Yes, yes, the land question is an important question; oh, I admit the land question is a very important question; but then there are other important questions. There is this question and that question, and the other question; and there is the money question. The money question is a very important question; it is a more important question than the land question. You give me all the money, and you can take all the laud." My friend said," Well, suppose you had all the money in the world and I had all the land in the world. What would you do if I were to give you notice to quit?" (Laughter and applause.) Do you know that T do not think that the average man realizes what land is? I know a little girl who has been going to school for some time, studying geography, and all that sort of thing; and one day she said to me: "Here is something about the surface of the earth. I wonder what the surface of the earth looks like? "Well," I said, "look out into the yard there. That is the surface of the earth." She said, "That the surface] of the earth? Our yard the surface of the earth? Why, I never thought of it! "That is very much not he case not only with grown men, but with such wise beings as newspaper editors. (Applause.) They seem to think, when you talk of land, that you always refer to farms; to think that the land question is a question that relates entirely to farmers, as though land had no other use than growing crops. Now, I should like to know how a man could even edit a newspaper without having the use of some land. He might swing himself by straps and go up in a balloon, but he could not even then get along without land. What supports the balloon in the air? Land; the surface? of the earth. Let the earth drop, and what would become of the balloon? The air that supports the balloon is supported in turn by land. So it is with everything else men can do. Whether a man is working away three thousand feet under the surface of the earth, or whether he is working up in the top of one of those immense buildings that they have in New York, whether he is plowing the soil or sailing across the ocean, he is still using land. Land! Why, in owning a piece of ground, what do you own? The lawyers will tell you that you own from the center of the earth right up to heaven: and, so far as all human purposes go, you do. In New York they are building houses 18 and 14 stories high. What are men, living in those upper stories, paying for? There is a friend of mine who has an office in one of them, and he estimates that he pays by the cubic foot for air. (Laughter.) Well, the man who owns the surface of the land has the renting of the air up there, and would have if the buildings were carried up for miles.
This land question is the bottom question. Man is a land animal. Suppose you want to build a house; can you build it without a place to put it? What is it built of? Stone, or mortar, or wood, or iron—they all come from the earth. Think of any article of wealth you choose, any of those things which men struggle for, where do they come from? From the land. It is the bottom question. The land question is simply the labor question; and when some men own that element from which all wealth must be drawn, and upon which all must live; then they have the power of living without work, and, therefore, those who do work get less of the products of work. Did you ever think of the utter absurdity and strangeness of the fact, that all over the civilized world, the working classes are the poor classes? Go into any city in the world, and get into a cab and ask the man to drive you where the working people live;
We talk about overproduction. How can there be such a thing as overproduction while people want? All these things that are said to be over produced are desired by many people. Why do they not get them? They do not get them because they have not the means to buy them; not that they do not want them. Why have not they the means to buy them? They earn too little. When the great masses of men have to work for an average of $1.40 a day, it is no wonder that great quantities of goods cannot be sold. Now why is it that men have to work for such low wages? Because if they were to demand higher wages there are plenty of unemployed men ready to step into their places. It is this mass of unemployed men who compel that fierce competition that drives wages down to the point of bare subsistence. Why is it that there are men who cannot get employment? Did you ever think what a strange thing it is that men cannot find employment? Adam had no difficulty in finding employment; neither had Robinson Crusoe; the finding of employment was the last thing that troubled them. If men cannot find an employer why cannot they employ themselves? Simply be cause they are shut out from the element on which human labor can alone be exerted; men are com pelled to compete with each other for the wages of an employer, because they have been robbed of the natural opportunities of employing them-selves; because they cannot find a piece of God's world on which to work without paying some other human creature for the privilege. I do not mean to say that even after you had set right this fundamental injustice, there would not be many things to do; but this I do mean to say, that our treatment of land lies at the bottom of all social questions. This I do mean to say, that, do what you please, reform as you may, you never can gel rid of wide spread poverty so long as the elemen1 on which and from which all men must live is made the private property of some men. (Applause.) It is utterly impossible. Reform government-get taxes down to the minimum-build railroads; institute co-operative stores; divide profits, if you choose, between employers and employed—and what will be the result? The result will be that the land will increase in value—that will be the result-that and nothing else. Experience shows this. Do not all improvements simply increase the value of land—the price that some must pay others for the privilege of living? Consider the matter. I say it with all reverence, and merely say it because I wish to impress a truth upon your minds—it is utterly impossible, so long as His laws are what they are, that God himself could relieve poverty-utterly impossible. Think of it and you will see. Men pray to the Almighty
You may see the same thing all over this country. See how injuriously in the agricultural districts this thing of private property in land affects the roads and the distances between the people. A man does not take what land he wants, what he can use, but he takes all he can get, and the consequences is that his next neighbor has to go further along, people are separated from each other further than they ought to be, to the increased difficulty of production, to the loss of neighborhood and companionship. They have more roads to mainiain than they can decently maintain; they must do more work to get the same re suit, and life is in every way harder and drearier.
When you come to the cities it is just the other way. In the country the people are too much
It is so all over the United States—the men who improve, the men who turn the prairie into farms and the desert into gardens, the men who beautify your cities, are taxed and fined for having done these things. Now, nothing is clearer than that the people of New York want more houses; and I think that even here in Burlington you could get along with more houses. Why, then, should you fine a man who builds one? Look all over this country—the bulk of the taxation rests upon the improver; the man who puts up a building, or establishes a factory, or cultivates a farm, he is taxed for it; and not merely taxed for it, but I think in nine cases out of ten the land which he uses, the bare land, is taxed more than the adjoining lot or the adjoining 160 acres that some speculator is holding as a mere dog in the manger, not using it himself and not allowing any body else to use it. (Applause.)
I am talking too long; but let me in a few words point out the way of getting rid of land monopoly, securing the right of all to the elements which are necessary for life. We could not divide the land. In a rude state of society, as among the ancient Hebrews, giving each family its lot and making it inalienable we might secure something like equality. But in a complex civilization that will not suffice. It is not, however, necessary to divide up the land. All that is necessary is to divide up the income that comes from the land. In that way we can secure absolute equality; nor could the adoption of this principle involve any rude shock or violent change. It can be brought about gradually and easily by abolishing taxes that now rests upon capital, labor and improvements and raising all our public revenues by the taxation of land values; and the longer you think of it the clearer you will see that in every possible way will it be a benefit. Now, supposing we should abolish all other taxes direct and indirect, substituting for them a tax upon land values, what would be the effect? In the first place it would be to kill speculative values. It would be to remove from the newer parts of the country the bulk of the taxation and put it on the richer parts. It would be to exempt the pioneer from taxation and make the larger cities pay more of it. It would be to relieve energy and enterprise, capital and labor, from all those burdens that now bear upon them. What a start, that would give to production! In the second place we could, from the value of the land, not merely pay all the present expenses of the government but we could do infinitely more. In the city of San Francisco James Lick left a few blocks of ground to be used for public purposes there, and the rent amounts to so much, that out of it will be built the largest telescope in the world, large public baths and other public buildings; and various costly works. If, instead of these few blocks, the whole value of the land upon which the city is built had accrued to San Francisco what could she not do? So in this little town, where land values are very low as compared with such cities as Chicago and San Francisco, you could do many things for mutual benefit and public improvement did you appropriate to public purposes the land values that now go to individuals. You could have a great free library; you could have an art gallery; you could get yourselves a public park, a magnificent public park too. You have here one of the finest natural sites for a beautiful town I know of, and I have traveled much. You might make on this site a city that it would be a pleasure to live in. You will not as you go now—oh, no! Why, the very fact that you have a magnificeut view here will cause somebody to hold on all the more tightly to the land that commands this view and charge higher prices for it. The state of New York wants to buy a strip of land so as to enable the people to see Niagara, but what a price she must pay for it. Look at all the great cities, in Philadelphia for instance, in order
But I have not time to enter into further details. I can only ask you to think upon this thing, and the more you will see its desirability. As an English friend of mine puts it: "no taxes and a pension for everybody;" and why should it not be? To take land values for public purposes is not really to impose a tax, but to take for public purposes a value created by the community. And out of the fund which would thus accrue from the common property, we might without degradation to anybody, provide enough to actually secure from want all who were deprived of their natural protectors or met with accident, or any man who should grow so old that he could not work. All prating that is heard from some quarters about its hurting the common people to give them what they do not work for is humbug. The truth is, that anything that injures self respect, degrades, does harm; but if you give it as a right, as something to which every citizen is entitled to, it does not degrade. Charity schools do degrade children that are sent them, but public schools do not.
But all such benefits as these while great, would be incidental. The great thing would be that the reform I propose would tend to open opportunities to labor and enable men to provide employment for themselves. That is the great advantage. We should gain the enormous productive power that is going to waste all over the country, the power of idle hands who would gladly be at work. And that removed then you would see wages begin to mount. It is not that every one would turn farmer, or everyone would build himself a house if he had an opportunity for doing so, but so many could and would, as to relieve the pressure on the labor market and provide employment for all others. And as wages mounted to the higher levels then you would see the productive power increased. The country where wages are high is the country of greatest productive powers. Where wages are highest, there will invention be most active; there will labor be most intelligent; there will be the greatest yield for the expenditure of exertion. (Applause.) The more you think of it the more clearly you will see what I say is true. I cannot hope to convince you in talking for an hour or two, but I shall be content if I shall put you upon inquiry. Think for yourselves; ask yourselves whether this wide spread fact of poverty is not a crime, and a crime for which every one of us, man and woman, who does not do what he or she can do to call attention to it and do away with it is responsible.
For information about the Knights of Labor, and how to organize an Assembly, address Frederick Turner, Gen'l Secretary, lock box 834, Philadelphia, Penn.; or F. W. Rockwell, organizer, Burlington, Iowa.
The defrauded millions demand that the great weight of taxation shall be removed from the products of labor; they demand free access to the bounties of Nature, with the battle-cry: "All Tax Upon Land."
Glory be to God in the Highest and on Earth Peace!
Nature gives us our own bodies and the surface of the earth. One is as necessary to existance as the other. Chattel slavery denies freedom of the body. Individual ownership of the land denies the freedom of the earth. The last is finally more destructive of human happiness than the first. All the infinite variety of things that men produce for themselves, whether potatoes or watch springs are, in the last analysis, the result, not of labor alone, but of the two factors labor and land; Laborexerted upon Land. (Capital is really labor, the stored tip results of labor.) Laborers and land owners must, therefore, divide all production between them; land owners taking one portion and laborers the remainder. When you observe that everywhere land values or rents are steadily rising, while wages and interest remain about the same, do you not see the meaning? The increased productive power of workingmen, that comes from increased population, division of labor steam power and the mighty inventions of this century, mostly increases rent, adds to the selling price of ground, while it adds little to the incomes of the workers. That is, land owners are taking an enormously increasing share. Land values in England during the past 400 years have increased very greatly. Agricultural lands perhaps fifty times, mineral lands much more, and mercantile lands, the lands of cities,
When it was known that the sandy lands of Florida would produce enormous crops of oranges, wages did not rise, but the bare unimproved land was soon selling at $20 to $40 or even $60 an acre. The vast oil wealth of western Pennsylvania that supplies the world, has not increased wages there or bettered the condition of the workmen, but that sterile mountain land in some places is sold at $3,000 or $4,000 an acre. Steam has added to the powers of workingmen everywhere enormously, yet, as in Florida and Pennsylvania, it increases mainly the share of the land owner. But when gold was discovered in California in the land there was not yet monopolized and wages rose to $20 a day for the lowest kind of labor. Land being a monopoly in the hands of private owners will for ever prevent the advancement of labor.
The land of the United States belongs to the whole people of the United States, and the rental value of it should be a common fund for the benefit of all. Rent when taken by individuals is in effect simply robbery. By properly taxing land, abolishing the heavy burden of all other taxes we get this great revenue, at the same time destroying speculative rent or land prices, thus opening up all unused lands, both in city and country, to the free access of all. Workingmen may thus employ themselves without being robbed by blackmailing landlords; and this ability to employ themselves will make wages always tend upward as they naturally should.
This philosophy comes in contact with fixed habits of thought; but oh! let us urge you brethren, to study the land question. Read George's Social Problems and Progress and Poverty, but commence by reading chapter 7 of "The Land Question." It is the great and coming question, and when The Knights of Labor unite upon this, the day of their deliverance is at hand, the jubilee trumpet shortly shall sound.
The Great Social Problem.—the Kent Justices.—the Royal Commission on Reformatories and Industrial Schools.—Friendless and Pauper Children—Prison Officers.—Prison Reports.—Convict Classification—Mr. Francis Peek in the Contemporary Review."—Prison Architecture; Wormwood Scrubbs.— Prisoners' Appeals.—Irish Prisons Commission.— Penalty of Death and Murders—Foreign Efforts—Support of the Association—&c.
Executive Committee.
N.B.—Members of the Association are not necessarily understood to be committed
The special degree of attention which, in so many quarters, has been directed, during the past year, to the great social problem of the best methods of ameliorating the condition of the overcrowded masses of the population, renders it appropriate for the Committee of the Howard Association to make some reference to their own long and steadily continued action in this direction. They have always urged that in regard to questions of crime and pauperism, the best mode of procedure is to endeavour to prevent them. With this conviction, they have systematically directed a considerable portion of their efforts to the collection of facts, and the persevering diffusion (through the public press and otherwise) of information and suggestions, illustrative of the best practical modes of promoting those social conditions which tend to diminish crime and increase order and morality. In particular they have repeatedly sought to increase the attention of thoughtful persons to those first principles in relation to these subjects which are so apt to be often overlooked, and especially during times of more than usually sensational interest is such questions.
Thus, in This, with other papers and reports, issued from time to time by the Howard Association, is out of prints, but may be referred to in various libraries, as for example those of the British Museum, the statistical society, &c.Overcrowding and Crime," effectual powers to prevent the erection of dwellings unfit for human habitation, and to make fit those now unfit, at the expense of the owners. "In their annual Report for the same year, the Committee further dwelt upon the absurdity and injustice of encouraging the owners of squalid human styes in their criminal neglect by actual compensation, as was largely done by recent legislation, and especially by "Cross's Act."As well might a butcher be compensated for being forbidden to sell rotten meat, or a careless chemist for no longer dispensing arsenic promiscuously. The owners of all houses should simply be required to maintain them in necessary sanitary condition, or to shut them up until so fitted for habitation. Inasmuch as the members
Local Government Board, and not, as hitherto, to the Vestries merely.
But this was a chief practical conclusion subsequently arrived at by the best writers and speakers during the general discussion of the same question in
One of the ablest of these writers and speakers, Mr. Samuel Smith, M.P. (a valued member of the Howard Association) has during
The lately appointed English Royal Commission on the Dwellings of the Poor may be expected to collect and publish many interesting details of information. But it is not likely to issue any final general recommendation more practical than one for the enforcement of landlords' responsibilities and of the abundant sanitary provisions of existing laws, by means of independent inspectors and local officers, responsible mainly to the Central Government.
It is a first principle of Social Science that the sources of overcrowded squalor and vice are to be found mainly in such causes as Irreligion, Intemperance, and Improvidence. To some extent the nature of the dwelling moulds the nature of the people. But, in far greater and more general degree, the habits of the latter affect the state of the former. Some years ago, many of the best houses in Boston (U.S.A.), the former residences of rich merchants who have betaken themselves to the suburbs, came into the possession of persons who let them out, in rooms and tenements, to a poor and squalid class of the population. The result was a speedy dilapidation of these fine old houses, which became as filthy and shabby as other slums. A similar effect has been produced, in many neat new cottages at Walthamstow, Tottenham and other suburbs of London, through their treatment by a morally low class of tenants. If millions of money were expended on new dwellings for such people it would be a huge waste. The first thing to be done is to promote, by individual and church effort, the extension of Education, Temperance, and Religion.
In Modes of diminishing Intemperance," and received the special commendation of the late Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Tait), the present Bishop of London, and the late Dean of Westminster (Dr. Stanley). Amongst the needed reforms therein advocated were a more effectual restriction of those chief causes of drunkenness and poverty, the excessively superabundant licensed houses for the sale of alcoholic drinks. The Committee then remarked:—"Without even changing the existing body of Licensing Magistrates, it would be very advantageous to select from their present lists, small committees of not more than three Justices for each Division of every County, to whom should be absolutely committed the granting and control of all Licenses in the district, without any appeal to the Quarter Sessions, and without any collateral grants of Licenses by the Excise. Members of Quarter Sessions are apt to have no knowledge of local wants, and a mere Excise body may have no conscience. Hence, Local Option, in some form, is essential."
The Committee, on the same occasion, drew attention to the great success, over a limited area, which had already attended the efforts of the local Magistracy and Police (but stimulated mainly by several energetic teetotalers) at Luton, in Bedfordshire, to resolutely enforce the provisions of the existing "Prevention of Crime Act,"so far as applicable to low public-houses harbouring disorderly characters.
The Committee added the following remark, which is as much applicable now as in "Yet, in various large places, the Liquor Traffic influence can so far control both the Magistracy and the Police as to secure a general laxity of supervision. Hence the appointment of As to Independent Inspectors, by the Government, or by Local Option Committees, or local Municipal Bodies, to act as general supervisors (similar to the Inspectors of Factories, &c.), and to have power to summon defaulters before the Courts, would be a further check on existing evils."Sunday Drinking, it was added that if the total closing of public-houses on that day could not be secured, at any rate there should be a considerable extra charge for licenses to sell liquor on Sundays, and permitted on only a very limited scale.
Both in the paper quoted and in the Annual Report of the Howard Association for since, been extensively and prominently taken up in other quarters, namely, the desirability of establishing a National Club, or at least some further provision for the promotion of Thrift by Government aid.
The Committee then urged that, in view of the bitter disappointment and misery occasioned to thousands of helpless and ignorant victims of insolvent or fraudulent "Friendly Societies "and private Clubs, there should be established a Government Club universally accessible to all contributors, and securing regular assistance in the time of sickness and old age. Of course there would be practical difficulties, and imposture would have to be carefully guarded against. But the Committee thought that most of these difficulties would be obviated by the adoption of three general principles.
Firstly, tliat the provision obtainable through such a Club should be limited to amounts sufficient to obviate destitution. Secondly, that the bonâ fide nature of sickness, or inellpacity, in reaard to claims on the Club, should be established not only by the non receipt of, any pay for work, hut by the certificate of some impartial local authority. Arld, thirdly, that the remunelation of the loeal doctors employed in connection with such a
Other modes and aspects of Thrift, Temperance, &c., were also dwelt upon by the Committee at that time, as also subsequently.
The Committee have reason to believe that their persevering action in these and similar directions has usefully contributed to increase the public interest and practical efforts in reference to such questions.
It is interesting to observe that the Great Social Problem is not only being studied, as to its yet unsolved difficulties, but it is also being practically solved to no inconsiderable extent, and in many directions, by the respective action of both organized and individual efforts, each of which is essential in its place. But there has been, there is, and there will be, little if any real progress, apart from a religious basis. Hence the special success which has attended the labours of the London City Mission, the Salvation Army, and numerous Churches and Chapels whose ministers and members have for years past pursued a persevering course of local elevation of the poor. Many of these have been very effective, though comparatively little known, as compared with other similar movements.
Mr. William Cuff, an active pastor of a large East End chapel, recently summed up the practical aspects of the subject thus:—"I have no new method to argue into existence as a means of reaching the people and changing their condition. I have but little confidence in anything the Law can do for the people except it is to put bit and bridle on the burning mouth of the drink traffic and sweep away half the public-houses. You may pull down the shanties and build model houses with next to no rent; but if you do not, and cannot, change the people themselves, the 'Bitter Cry' will mock your effort, and this social and moral corruption will rot and fester still. Education will do something; but I do not rest in the dream of Mr. G. R. Sims that it will change the condition. Emigration does not touch the real sore place in the body politic; and I have no hope that it will. If I am so negative in all this, what is the positive position I would take and would urge on others 1 My reply is explicit and emphatic—Just what we have taken; and as much more, on the same lines, as is possible. I plead that no spasm of excitement be allowed to turn us away from old and well-tried methods to new and uncertain ones. Let every Church foster her best life and use her best gifts and graces for purely home mission work and the change in the condition of the people will be marked and marvellous. We need not despair, with the Gospel in our hands and God at our back, pledged, by every sacred word of promise and love, to help us. Let us do our proper work and carry the Gospel to every house, and every man, woman and child. If we search for their souls, as for a treasure, we shall find them in gutter, alley and slum-poor, hard and prejudiced; but responsive to the touch of a noble sympathy and capable of being won back to God."
Another practical solver of the Great Social Problem, and on a large scale, Mr. C. H. Spurgeon, lately gave almost an identical experience with the above. He said, "i have no new specific for the betterment of the world, no new specific, only to keep on as we are going; only more so. Especially more City Missionaries, more house-to-house and room-to-room Visitation."
Amongst the gratifying indications that the labours of the Howard Association, in various directions, are exercising a beneficial influence and meeting? with acceptance by practical men, the Committee may mention that in a pamphlet issued last year by order of the "Your Committee would recommend the perusal, by individual members of the Court, of the Report of the Howard Association before referred to; the object of that Report being the education of the public mind in reference to
Annual General Sessions of Kent, and signed by a Committee of eight local magistrates, namely, Earl Sydney, Earl Stanhope, Viscount Hardinge, Mr. John G. Talbot, M.P., Mr. Walter H. James, M.P., Hon. J. S. Gathorne-Hardy, Mr. J. E. Lennard, and Mr. A. Beattie, there is given more than two pages of quotation from a pamphlet on Vagrancy prepared by the Howard Association in the preceding year; and the Justices add:—
A second pamphlet, signed by the same eight noblemen and gentlemen, was issued by order of the "Your Committee are very desirous that the attention of Court of Sessions for Kent, at Maidstone, six months later, in which the Justices remark:—
Boards of Guardians should be directed to the extracts from a Report recently issued by the Howard Association, which are quoted in the last Report of the Committee of Justices, upon Vagrancy, in the County of Kent, with regard to the evils of Indiscriminate Almsgiving; and they would urge them to adopt every means in their power to induce the public to discontinue the practice."
During the past year there has been issued a comprehensive Report from the Royal Commission on Reformatories and Industrial Schools, containing much valuable evidence and many practical suggestions. Considering the special importance of all which relates to the prevention of crime, or its arrest in its earliest stages, the Committee of the Howard Association have devoted their endeavours to promote and extend the circulation and knowledge of that Report in other countries, and especially in the British Colonies and the United States. Grateful acknowledgments have been received from State officers and private philanthropists in these countries.
At home, also, the Committee have sought to utilise this Report in various ways. There is one point upon which more emphatic and decided recommendations would have been desirable, although the Commissioners have not been wholly silent upon it, namely, the importance of better classification in the establishments reported on, and in particular an entire separation between the younger children and the elder youth.
By means of letters in the newspapers and to influential persons, the Committee have urged the necessity for public attention to this point. Their views have received repeated confirmation and approval from some of the ablest and most experienced managers of Reformatories and Industrial Schools.
The Chaplain of one of the largest Reformatories writes to the Committee:—
"The evils resulting from a promiscuous intercourse of the elder and younger boys in Reformatories can hardly be described in words. The corruption to which I allude is the root of almost every outbreak of insubordination, incendiarism and so forth, of which we so frequently hear, in connection with Reformatories. You will be doing good service to the State by continuing to draw the attention of the public to this most important subject."
Amongst the letters received in relation to this subject is one from Captain Brooks, the efficient Superintendent of the large Industrial School for boys, for Middlesex, at Feltham. His position and experience give special value to his opinions. The Committee, however, are not prepared to endorse them in their entirety, though heartily uniting with much that he expresses. As to the mischief wrought by the drunken and vicious parents who have insisted upon resuming their control over their children, on leaving Feltham, this has resulted in their ruin so often as to impress Captain Brooks strongly on the question. Even on the occasion of their visits to the children on Bank Holidays, so many of the parents and "friends"used to arrive drunk that it was found necessary to forbid their visits on such days. Captain Brook's letter is as follows:—
(feltham experience.)
"I regret that several pressing matters have delayed my reply to yours of the 15th instant.
"The longer I live, the more I am convinced that the first and primary point to attain, in order to render the Reformatory and Industrial School System in any way a satisfactory success, is to abolish the power of control of the parents of the children detained in them, absolutely and entirely, and to substitute that of the Managers, in their place, subject to such qualifying conditions as may seem desirable.
"When you have cleared the ground by this Act—and an Act with one clause would accomplish it—a system of classification could be easily proceeded with.
"Schools might be arranged as follows:—(1) Reformatories, for children over 14 and under 16 years of age; for vicious children between 12 and 14:—these last however to be sent to certain special Reformatories. (2) Industrial Schools, for children under 14 found wandering, vagrant, &c., to be sent to one set of schools, and those charged with theft to another set, so as to keep the two types of children separate and distinct.
"As to internal arrangement I always think that system is best which is best managed. I know of large schools excellently managed, and of schools on the so-called family system in an infamous state, and vice versa.
"But what I hasten to arrive at is the result to be attained by the abolition of paternal control, and it is the one on which the whole system hangs, viz.:—the ultimate disposal of the children.
"My panacea is a well-established system of Emigration, and a large development, in the Colonies, of the Boarding-out System, to be extended to all Industrial Schools, retaining no child in England, except under very special circumstances, after 15, but at that age sending them to small home-like Dep—oring;ts in the Colonies, where they could be easily placed out in suitable situations;—the demand for children of that age, previously trained to habits of industry, is simply without limit.
"The disposal of Boys from Reformatories requires much more discrimination: some, no doubt, should be emigrated, but some would, if sent, bring discredit on the system, and the best provision for these, if they could be got to stick to it, would be the sea; in any case no child should be detained in a reformatory over 18 years of age; many are now so detained until 21! and I consider this to be productive of the greatest evils.
"But abolish parental control and twenty times as much good will be effected than is the case at present-socially, financially and morally.
"I hope you will some day find time to run down and pay us another visit; about June the place looks very pretty.
In further promotion of the interests of neglected children, the Committee have recently prepared and widely circulated, a paper entitled "The Supervision of Pauper and Friendless Children,"treating of the greater economy and efficiency of the individualising principle of management, with systematic supervision by a combination of voluntary with official action, as compared with the costly pauperising tendencies of barrack-like institutions for such children and of excessive expenditure upon their support.
This paper has been very favourably received by the press and by persons practically interested in the subject.
In connection with this question, it may be here mentioned that in their last year's Report, the Committee, always anxious to make just acknowledgment of well-meant efforts, took occasion to observe that "it is due to the District Schools, for Pauper Children, to state that they give a much better industrial training and settlement to Boys than is usually obtainable by Boarding-out. But in regard to Girls the case is different."Hereupon Miss Joanna M. Hill, an active member of a Committee of Supervision of children boarded out at King's Norton Union, near Birmingham, has written to inform the Committee that
The Education of Pauper Children, Industrially and otherwise,"by Rev. J. O. Bevan, Chaplain to the Aston Union Workhouse, near Birmingham, to be hail of the Author, price 6d.)
The latest annual report of the King's Norton Union Committee states that "The Hoarding-out System prepares the boys, almost without exception, to be fit to earn their own living without any expensive training in special trades, at 13 years of age, instead of retaining them until 14 or 15, which seems to be necessary under other systems. Not one of the 31 boys who have been boarded-out under our charge, and, having ceased to be paupers on attaining 13 years of age, has since become chargeable to the rates for any cause whatsoever."
But not merely in the general oversight but also in the original selection of children for Boarding-out, is great care essential. An esteemed member of the Howard Association, residing in Westmorland, writes to the Committee:—"The unhealthiness of the children sent down here (from the cities) goes far to defeat the labour and expense which is undergone for them. This refers to the Girls. Few are fit to go into service on a par with other girls. My impression is that the most indifferent in health and constitution are sent down here."-Very favourable reports, however, are the general result of the system.
In dealing with neglected children, grave difficulties present themselves on every hand, and it is especially needful to endeavour so to act as to avoid an increase of pauperisation by the very means designed to relieve destitution.
The aged, the infirm, the blind, the orphan, these and such as these are objects for charity. Yet even in these cases some care is requisite that the gifts bestowed do not obviate any measure of self-help still possible. But where free education, free board and lodging and clothing, all at the expense of the hard-working and honest tax-payer are offered by wholesale to the families of the improvident, the intemperate and the indolent, they will be sure to accept such offers greedily and spend the money, thus saved to themselves, in further vice and drunkenness.
Both in Great Britain and the United States, there is a large and dangerous amount of practical Communism extending into the management of Pauper Schools, Reformatories, Industrial Schools, and last, but not least, even into the Board Schools. The honest and hard-working classes of tax-payers need more jealously to watch their own interests in these matters. Scores of thousands of wilfully neglected children will be increasingly supplied by willingly improvident parents to the perniciously too hospitable doors of such institutions.
It is in view of the increasing dangers of this wholesale public pauperisation, under the guise of a false benevolence, that the Committee of the Howard Association continue to advocate more discrimination, and more economy in these directions. Hence they have promoted the Boarding-out of Pauper Children, which costs about £12 per annum, or even less, rather than the £25 or £30 each, which is now annually expended upon upwards of ten thousand children in the Metropolitan district alone. The boarded-out children are found to be free from the ophthalmia, itch, and other diseases which infest the best Pauper District Schools, whilst they (especially the girls) also become more self-helpful in after-life than the inmates of the latter.
An active member of the Committee of a large Industrial School, near Manchester, lately wrote to the Howard Association deprecating some of their criticisms upon the costliness of many such establishments. He stated that 80 per cent, or more of the children ultimately turn out well. This is so far
There are two other modes of aid to destitute children which may be cordially recommended.
The first of these is the opening of suitable reading and recreation rooms, supplied with light and warmth, for use in wet and inclement weather. A Wesleyan Minister recently made the experiment of hiring a large room for the winter, with fire, gas, and a few books and periodicals. He allowed a certain number of poor boys and girls the free use of this room, on condition of quietness and good behaviour. These conditions were well observed and at the end of the season the poor children most gratefully thanked their benefactor for the welcome and truly useful boon he had bestowed upon them.
The municipal authorities of Birmingham have on various occasions utilized some of the Board School Booms and Bingley Hall for somewhat similar objects. Doubtless in many cases the recipients of such accommodation would willingly pay a small amount towards the expenses. But a more general provision of accommodation and recreation in this direction is as yet one of the chief desiderata of modern philanthropy. It is to be hoped that the coming few years may largely solve the problem.
Another way of helping this class of children is to be found in the praiseworthy action already begun by several Municipal bodies, as at Bradford, Nottingham, Birmingham, Leicester, &c., in promoting local bye-laws against the employment of very young children in selling papers, &c., in the streets at night. The Birmingham bye-law forbids any parent to send a child, under twelve years of age, for street traffic, after nine o'clock. In one or two cases such occupation of any children, under eight or ten years, is forbidden at any hour.
But, finally, every form of juvenile destitution and neglect is mainly the result of parental Intemperance. Hence the most effective of all counteractives consists in the best means for promoting Temperance, with its attendant train of industrious, thrifty, and moral habits.
The Prison System of Great Britain, notwithstanding various important improvements which have been made during the past half-century, still requires a constant vigilance on the part of the public. It is one of the objects of the Howard Association to promote and maintain this, especially as to certain points of the administration.
One of these is the position and treatment of the Warders, to which during the past year the Committee have continued to direct attention. For notwithstanding the efforts already put forth for improvements in this direction, as to the insufficient numbers, and the too-prolonged hours of duty of these officers, their condition still needs further amelioration at the hands of the chief authorities. However, it is gratifying to notice some progress during the past year.
The Under Secretary of State for the Home Department, Mr. John T. Hibbert, M.P., in a courteous letter to the Secretary of the Howard Association, dated
About the same time the Lord Mayor of London, Mr. Robert N. Fowler, at the request of this Association, drew the further attention of the Home Office to the matter, in the House of Commons, and was informed that besides the increase of night warders, the higher ranks of subordinate warders have had some additional leave of absence. It was added that the Treasury officers of the Government are of opinion that if it be desirable to alter the general terms of retirement for the convict service, it should be done by special legislation. This the Secretary of State is not prepared at present to undertake.
It is to be hoped that from time to time further improvements may be secured in reference to the selection and condition of these officers.
A still larger proportion of Warders to prisoners is one of the pressing needs of some of the prisons, especially those for convicts.
The Committee's attention has also been drawn to the need for more respectful attention on the part of the Commissioners of Local Gaols to the reports and recommendations of the Visiting Justices of those establishments.
It is essential for the better administration of prisons that all the Reports of the Local Visiting Committees of Magistrates to the Home Office should be made public. At present the whole system, both as to the Commissioners' procedure and the observations and recommendations of the Justices, are too much covered by a dense cloud of mystery and concealment. Grave abuses may take place inside prisons, against which the existing system of nominal oversight is no effectual preventive or check.
The reports or letters forwarded to the Secretary of State from the unpaid, but officially appointed, Visitors of Convict Prisons, should also be printed with the Directors' annual Blue Book.
Further, the sub-reports sent to the Home Office from the Governors, Chaplains and Medical officers of prisons, should be printed with the annual Reports, and in full. Until this is done, the Reports on Prisons, as now issued yearly by the British Government, will continue to possess very limited authority, and to deserve only a qualified reliance.
As to the Official Statistics of Prisons, in particular, these are of such a character, that the Committee have, during the past year, felt it their duty to draw public attention, in various journals, to some of the figures published in the Report of the Commissioners of Local Gaols for
For instance, in that Report, there are enormous sums credited to the "profit"of the prison labour in the respective gaols, from the simple process of pumping the daily supplies of water either by the treadwheel or by hand labour. Stafford Gaol, with a daily average of 559 prisoners throughout the past year, is credited with the extreme estimate of £897 for "pumping water,"and an additional £503 for the ordinary work of "cleaning "(sweeping, brushing, scouring, &c.). At Salford Gaol, Manchester, with 963 prisoners, only £31 is credited for "pumping,"but the "cleaning "amounts to £620. Liverpool (Walton) Gaol credits £301 for "pumping,"and £321 for "nursing,"whilst its "cleaning "is £881. At Devizes (eighty-five inmates), under the euphemistic expression of "grinding corn,"the treadwheel is credited with
It is obvious that, by such a mode of managing figures and manufacturing "values,"there need be scarcely any limit to the "satisfactory "returns of prisons—upon paper.
Whereas in reality, the industrial earnings and profits of English prisons have materially diminished under the Commissioners. Such prisons as those of Hull, Salford, Bedford, and Durham, and various others, which were once hives of useful industry, have experienced a very great falling off in this respect during the past five years, so far as bonâ fide, results are the test.
The Committee desire to refer, with grateful satisfaction, to a valuable paper upon the general subject of English Prison administration, by their esteemed colleague, Mr. Francis Peek, which appeared in the Contemporary Review for Official Optimism.—Prison Reports. "It has been favourably noticed by influential journals, and merits attentive perusal. With a fair and courteous disposition to the authorities, but in plain-spoken terms, it points out the unreliability of the British Official Reports on Prisons, as hitherto prepared and published, also the chief defects of the existing system of Prison Administration.
The Secretary of this Association has during recent visits to prisons, repeatedly had brought under his notice the grave inconveniences resulting from the considerable number of insane or weak-minded persons who are received into the local gaols. This involves, in many cases, the placing of prisoners in association, three or more in a cell, by night as well as by day—a most objectionable, but now very common, practice in English gaols.
More power ought to be given to the local officers promptly to send such prisoners to Asylums, or some other place more suitable than a prison.
This class appears to be on the increase. The problem of their best disposal must claim serious attention from the Medical Officers of prisons.
If prisoners, whether in the convict establishments or in the local gaols, require special medical attention, on the grounds of insanity, or doubtful sanity, they should be also removed to some place suitable to the circumstances of such persons. This has, to a considerable extent, been done, with regard to convicts. But better arrangements are urgently needed in the Local Gaols in this direction.
More uniformity also in the exercise of Medical functions, in general, is requisite. Serious injury to the discipline is experienced in some prisons for want of the individual peculiarities of the local Surgeon being guided, or even controlled, if necessary, by the advice of a, superior Medical authority.
The Prison Hospitals, also, may well claim some effort to brighten them a little and to diminish the excessive dulness and gloom which are apt to characterize them.
English Prison Architecture has hitherto been, on the whole, the best of its class in the world. And one of the very best instances is to be found in the new prison for convicts at Wormwood Scrubbs, near London—a prison of which also it may be remarked that it is under the management of a Governor, Captain W. Talbot Harvey, so efficient and firmly humane, that if all prison officers were like him there would be little need for either Home Office interference or Howard Association criticism. Yet the congregate system of that, as of other prisons, is open to serious objection. But Captain Harvey is one of those men, too rarely found, who can administer any system with success. Wormwood Scrubbs has been almost entirely constructed by convict labour. Its lofty gateway is ornamented with large medallions of John Howard and Elizabeth Fry—figures at least not inappropriate in connection with the present administration of this establishment.
But a retrogression appears to have recently commenced in some other places. For example, the new wing at York Castle prison is, especially in respect of light and ventilation, a very inferior construction. Even the generally well-built new prison at Barlinnie, near Glasgow, is defective as to insufficient light in the cells. The sanitary influence of sunshine and light is very important, both in prisons and everywhere else. Some prisons, however, are excellently lighted, but many English prison cells are so dark that their inmates can hardly see to read. Even criminals may justly claim a sufficiency of light and air. At Wormwood Scrubbs, Sir E. Du Cane has introduced a praiseworthy improvement by substituting transparent glass in the upper portions of the windows, instead of the very opaque glass too common in other prisons.
The Committee have reason to know that their Reports and their communications to the newspapers, during the past two years in particular, have received respectful attention from influential authorities. Amongst the points to which they have directed special attention, is the necessity for a further classification of convicts; and in this some progress is now being made by the Directors of the Prisons.
Whilst the recommendation of this Committee that convicts not previously convicted should be placed in prisons wholly devoted to that class has not yet been fully acted upon, yet it is being approximated to by the formation of a "star "class in certain prisons, for those convicts only who are undergoing their first committal. A further step in the right direction is also being taken by removing many of these to one particular prison, at Chattenden, near Chatham, which has thus practically become an establishment for a distinct category of prisoners.
The Committee are reliably informed that this experiment has so far worked well. They therefore now recommend that the process be carried still further, and that the next class of convicts, those with only two committals, or at least those of decidedly less criminality than the worst and habitual offenders, should also be separated from the latter.
But whilst the Committee thus gratefully acknowledge the action of the authorities in this direction, they remain of opinion that a still better mode
each other, but accompanied by the essential concomitant of a great increase of useful intercourse both with the official custodians and suitable volunteer visitors.
Of course this would necessarily involve a revolution also in the length of sentences. Two or three years' separate (but not solitary) confinement would be incomparably more deterrent, more reformatory and more economical, than five, seven, ten, or more years in the existing gangs.
The frequency of burglaries and murderous attacks upon the Police by discharged convicts during the past year, points to the absolute necessity for further attention both to classification in the prisons, and to oversight after discharge.
The strong representations made by the Howard Association, as to the need for some effectual provision for securing attention to the appeals of prisoners, especially convicts, appear to have received serious notice from the Home Office. Sir William Harcourt, at any rate, has given personal attention to such appeals, to an extent unknown to his predecessors. Indeed the Committee have of late received complaints, from trustworthy sources, that the freedom of appeal has been carried too far in some instances, and that both superior and subordinate officers have had false charges brought against them, with impunity, by prisoners, to their serious detriment and annoyance. Such charges also, when in various instances proved to have been false, have not brought upon their authors the restrictions or the punishments which were deserved. This appears to call for practical attention by the Home Secretary. It is obvious that if reckless and revengeful convicts are allowed, with impunity, to send to the Secretary of State, not merely frivolous but wholly false complaints, they will both injure the character of meritorious officers and also inflict serious wrong upon those of their fellow-prisoners who may occasionally have real causes for complaint. For the permission of impunity to a number of false representations tends to bring into discredit and neglect the statements of others absolutely deserving attention by their truthfulness.
It is impossible that any Secretary of State, or indeed any body of Commissioners resident in London, can give adequate and discriminating attention to the details of many hundred prison appeals. Hence further provision should be made for their examination and disposal by impartial local visitors, or referees, willing to give due time and effort to such duties.
The recent appointment of two or three official visitors to each Convict Prison was a step in the right direction, but for certain obvious reasons it has only been partially successful, as yet.
It may be noted that in Scotland there is some considerable degree of local selection and responsibility as to Prison Visitors. And in Scotch prisons consequently, there have been fewer inconveniences resulting. But the attention of the Government is requisite to the circumstance that two of the chief Scotch prisons, those of Perth (General Prison) and Barlinnie (Glasgow) have no "visitors."This should be promptly remedied.
The Committee have recently learnt, with much regret, that in various cases where Warders or other Officers have, on quitting the prison service, applied for employment elsewhere, they have been rejected, from a mistaken
And on the other hand, the attention of the Warders themselves may also be usefully directed to the importance, even in their own interests, of cultivating such a conscientious and considerate mode of discharging their duties as may raise their reputation as a class, both within the prison walls and amongst the public in general.
The Chaplains in particular can render important services to the Warders, and through them to the prisoners, by devoting more sympathetic attention to the former than has hitherto been generally the case. The duties of the Chaplains are often perhaps even more influential through the Warders and other Officers than as directly influencing the prisoners.
It is however to be noted that at present the unintermitting pressure of the Warders' duties does not afford time for such attention on the part of the Chaplains. It is well deserving the consideration of the Home Office authorities whether they cannot devise arrangements whereby the moral and intellectual improvement of the Warders may not receive more definite and more leisurely attention than hitherto. (A little progress is being made, in the direction of Officers' reading-rooms.)
Lectures to the subordinate officers by some experienced Governor, or other authority, are also very desirable. On one occasion something of this nature was tried and with decidedly good effect. Amongst the wise counsels then given, by a veteran officer, was the supremely practical one of a daily regard to their own individual responsibility to God, with the suggestion that it would tend to afford them peace, on laying their heads on their pillows at night, to reflect that during the past day they had each done some service for God by a conscientious endeavour to cherish a merciful consideration towards those, who, however erring, are still His creatures, objects of His Divine compassion.
Sir William Harcourt has shown considerable ability as Home Secretary, but has manifested a persistent sensitiveness as to public criticisms on his prison administration, which has led him into observations, especially on newspaper comments, singularly inappropriate. One of his favourite allusions is to irresponsible critics in the press. So far as the criticisms of the Howard Association are concerned, they have been decisively vindicated by its Chairman, Mr. Francis Peek, in the columns of the Contemporary Review for
But Sir William's high ground of official prison optimism is also cut from beneath his feet by the admissions made in the Report of the Royal Commission on Irish Prisons, issued in regime, the Commissioners state—
entire suspension of communication, except in writing, between the Chairman of the Board and the Inspector of the District!"(parag. 29). The Commissioners however comment on this strange state of things, and similar matters, in a tone of extremely mild expostulation. They further remark (parag. 56),"We have observed, with regret, that there is considerable friction in the relation of some Medical Officers with the Board."large number of prisoners certified to be insane in the Irish Convict Prisons!"(parag. 124).such wretched creatures in an "excessive "proportion?]past action to involve entire impunity?]
Various other serious revelations are also made. But the above are sufficient to prove the great deterioration in the administration of Irish Prisons since Sir Walter Crokton's rule, which elicited praise from all parts of the civilised world.
It is to be hoped that the Home Secretary, after such damaging revelations by a Royal Commission, not irresponsible persons, will in future manifest more accuracy and less apathy and incredulity as to public remonstrances about prisons, and as to the too often fictitious visitation and inspection of those establishments by nominees of the authorities, whether Visiting Justices or others.
The Royal Commissioners should certainly have more boldly suggested the needful reforms, and not have devolved the responsibility of both suggestion and action so exclusively upon the hitherto existing administration of the Prisons. They have been exceedingly gentle in their criticisms and in
It may be remarked that many of the officers of Irish Prisons are men and women of much intelligence and good feeling.
But one of the chief causes of the very objectionable condition into which these prisons have been brought, consists in the peculiarly Irish misfortune of petty rivalries or jealousies connected with religion, or rather about mere religion-ism. It may surely be commended to the more serious consideration of the administrators of Irish Prisons and of their spiritual advisers, both Protestant and Catholic, that the grand fundamentals of the Christian faith upon which their Churches are agreed, are of incomparably more importance than any 011 which they differ; and also that their common homage to the supreme sovereignty and love of their one Divine Lord and Saviour should involve a more friendly mutual recognition as members of His human family.
If the Government wished to bring their Soldiers and Sailors into public disrepute, they could hardly devise more effectual measures than some of the present modes of dealing with military and naval offenders. For instance, as to young Sailors in the Navy, many of them, for mere disciplinary offences, are subjected to penal servitude, with its degrading criminal associations and excessive penalties. And as to Soldiers, the number of cases of Drunkenness, Insubordination, and Desertion, of late years, together with the numerous committals to the severe regime of the Military Prisons, should awaken the authorities to vigorous preventive measures.
Early in the year, the Right Hon. John Bright, M.P., wrote to the Secretary of the Howard Association, suggesting the collection, by him, of a fresh series of the statistical and other experiences of various Foreign Countries as to the punishment of Murder, whether by the Capital Penalty, or by other means.
A systematic application was accordingly made to the chief authorities of the principal nations and to the Foreign Correspondents of the Association for the needed particulars. Many comprehensive replies were kindly sent, and a large amount of statistical and other information was thus collected. Portions of this have already been published, at intervals, in various news-papers, by the Association. Other portions are available for further use and reference.
The hearty thanks of the Committee are due to many persons of eminent position who have aided this work of collection, and especially to the following:—Their Excellencies the British Ambassadors at St. Petersburg (Sir Edward Thornton), at Madrid (Sir R. B. D. Morier), at Lisbon (Sir C. L. Wyke) and at Bucharest (William A. White, Esq.); to William Donaldson, Esq., H.M. Prison Secretary for Scotland; Thomas W. Grimshaw, Esq., H.M. Registrar-General for Ireland; M. Yvernes, of the Ministry of Justice, Paris; Dr. Wahlberg, State Councillor, of Vienna; M. de Olivekrona, Judge at Stockhulm; M. Luigi Lucchini, of Bologna; M. Berden, Ministry
Brussels; M. P. B. Eeichenweld, Ministry of Justice, Christiania; M. Heinrich Fohring, Judge, Hamburg; M. George Belinfante, the Hague; M. P. Stuckenberg, of Copenhagen; M. Ringier, Chancellor of the State, at Berne; Mr. C. D. Randall, Michigan, U.S.A.; Hon. A. O. Bourne, Governor of Rhod Island; Mr. Charles F. Coffin, Indiana; Mr. C. Loring Brace, New York; Mr. Alfred H. Love and Mr.. Tosiah W. Leeds, Pennsylvania; Professor Wayland, Connecticut; Mr. E. B. Pond, Michigan; with others.
The general lesson to be derived from these statistics is that there is more difficulty in bringing home conviction and punishment to murderers than to any other class of criminals; that this difficulty exists in almost every country; but that it is best obviated by the greater certainty of conviction which is found to accompany a severe secondary punishment (imprisonment), as distinguished from the capital penalty, which involves the danger of occasionally sacrificing innocent persons to judicial mistakes.
During the year this Association has prepared and widely circulated a paper containing a collection of some of the most recent instances of mistaken conviction, as tending to illustrate the real danger and therefore the obstructive difficulty attendant 011 the fatal penalty in particular. The immediate occasion of this paper was the sentence to death of a man in Durham, who was, through prompt and vigorous local exertions, soon proved to have been innocent and who received his release and pardon in consequence.
Mr. Bright also recently suggested to this Association the circulation of an interesting little pamphlet by Mr. Henry Dunckley ("Verax"), of Manchester, on Capital Punishment. This hint has been complied with.
Many other papers and pamphlets on this and other topics have been circulated by the Association. (It is however to be noted that the members of this Association are not unanimous in their views upon this particular subject, which is regarded by some of them as an open question.)
The statistics received show also that the mere abolition of the capital penalty may be very mischievous unless accompanied by an effectual substitute of prolonged imprisonment. Thus in Roumania a great increase of murders appears to have followed the disuse of the extreme penalty with the neglect of other penalties also. But successful results have ensued in Holland, Portugal, Belgium, Wisconsin, Michigan, &c., where more uniformity and certainty of repression have been adopted. Switzerland has not adopted any uniform system either of executions or of their substitute. She permits a vast amount of national drunkenness and vice which naturally result in many murders and other crimes. Effectual laws to suppress the excessive intemperance in that country would be the best means of diminishing its murders.
Far more effectual than any form of penalty is the prevention of the causes and temptations to crime. An interesting example occurs in the statistics lately received from the French Government, by this Association. The district of Corsica has long been noted for its bitter and fatal feuds and revengeful murders. About the period Corsica, out of a population of only a quarter of a million, 431 murders and assassinations. This terrible state of violence led to the enactment of a temporary law prohibiting the carrying of weapons for five years. In the following quinquennial period the number of murders and assassinations fell to 146; which was at least a very great improvement upon the previous condition. Meanwhile the penalty of death for murder had remained unaltered throughout.
Similarly, in the Southern portion of the United States, although capital punishment is often enforced, the number of murders is appalling. Why? Because of the general carrying of pistols, and the consequent temptation to use them. One of the most useful works which American philanthropists can do (whatever may be their opinions as to capital punishment), would be the "home mission work "of promoting laws in the Southern States against the carrying of pistols. This would prevent thousands of murders.
The Committee are taking measures to draw the attention of their American friends to this subject.
The brief limits of this Report and the pressure of home matters, almost preclude reference to the extensive foreign labours and correspondence of the Association. But these have been actively maintained throughout the year. Many thousands of papers and packets containing information on the objects promoted by this Association have been systematically posted to the chief centres of influence and of philanthropic effort on the Continent, in the United States, India, and the British Colonies. Many applications for such assistance have been received and cheerfully responded to. Official acknowledgments are made that this work of the Association is very useful and welcome.
The Committee greatly value the communications from their Foreign friends, and especially those from the active Secretaries of the Prison Associations of France (M. F. Desportes), and New York (Mr. W. M. F. Round), from Italy (M. Beltrani-Scalia), Michigan (Hon. C. Randall), also from Spain (Don E. Castellote), Denmark (Mr. F. Stuckenberg), Holland (M. Belinfante), Switzerland (Dr. Guillaume), Germany (Mm. Fohring and Krohne), Canada (Mr. Moylan), Pennsylvania (Mr. J. W. Leeds), and from M. de Olivekrona (of Sweden), M. Berden (of Belgium), and many others.
The Committee have to regret the loss of several valued friends and supporters of the Association during the past year, including Mr. Joseph Marriage, of London, a member of the Executive Committee, Mr. Thomas Pease, Mr. James Gingell, of Barking, and Mr. Daniel Doncaster, of Sheffield, Mr. William Norton, Mr. S. A. Maw, Mrs. Eliza Barclay, Mrs. M. Marriott, Mr. Charles Beavington, and others.
The income of the Association is rather less than that of last year and only about three-fourths of what it was several years ago. Its operations have been, in consequence, somewhat restricted, and this year ends with a debit balance. The Committee have, however, to thank those kind friends who have encouraged their exertions. A letter from one of these, in particular, may be here quoted. He writes that "the Howard Association has done more for the benefit of society than perhaps any other in the land, in proportion to the money at its command," and he encloses £5 as an annual subscription.
The few hundred pounds which constitute the annual income of the Association have however again enabled the Committee to carry on an extensive cosmopolitan, as well as home advocacy, of their several objects.
"I give to the Treasurer for the time being, or to the person for the time being acting as such, of the Howard Association, established in London in
A List of Contributions is Sent to Each Subscriber.
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The liberty of each, limited alone by the like liberty of all."
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Over himself, over his own body and mind the individual is sovereign."
Political Principles.—1. That every man and woman are the only true owners and directors of their own Selves and their own faculties.
2. That, as no person can be free to exercise his faculties, unless he be also free to enjoy such advantage as he can secure for himself from their exercise, therefore the complete rights of acquiring, possessing, exchanging, and bequeathing property (without power on the part of the dead man to impose conditions on the living man) should be guaranteed to all under the protection of the law.
3. That as no man or body of men can possibly be possessed of any moral right to use physical force, except for the one purpose of repelling physical force, there is therefore no rightful title in any King, Parliament, or Majority to use the machinery of law-making for enforcing their own ideas, for taking possession of the bodies or minds of others, or for any purpose whatsoever, excepting the one purpose of restraining aggressions upon those rights of free action, that are common to all men.
Social Aims As Regards the Individual.—To lead men to possess a far higher respect for the Self that is in them and in all others; to respect, above all possessions and interests, their own free intelligence, their own free choice, and free action, and the free intelligence, the free choice, and free action of others; to find for themselves, and to help others to find, their own true development in their own fashion; to learn to individualise their own opinions; to favour differences of life and thought; to favour the tolerance that springs from strength of conviction, and rejoices to see the same strength of conviction in others; to favour fearlessness in withstanding for conscience-sake all forms of public opinion; to dread possession of all forms of power over each other; to distrust their own fitness for it; to cherish and strengthen and extend faith in the influence of the moral forces—the forces of knowledge, of discussion, of sympathy, of example,-as the only forces that can act, or are worthy to act, upon the free Self, and steadily to oppose, wherever and whenever the separate and independent convictions of men are disregarded, all great and dominating systems, all universal fashions, all party discipline and organisation, all claims of authority and all attempts to compel some men to accept either goodness or happiness in obedience to the ideas of others.
Social Aims as Regards the Group.—The great developments of voluntary association during the last half-century (principally owing, as we may believe, to the preparation through which a large part of the people in this country and in the States of America had already passed by having to organise their own systems of religion) the Joint Stock Companies, the Cooperative undertakings, the Trades Unions and Benefit Societies, are sufficient to shew us what services voluntary association will be able to perform for the good and happiness of men, as the practical intelligence of the people increases under the stimulus of their wants, and they become better fitted in character
1. That we can persuade the people to cast utterly from their minds the idea of compulsory, or State, association, as the instrument of progress. So long as men look to compulsory association directed by the State for help out of their troubles, so long voluntary association must remain an imperfect and undeveloped art. It is against our knowledge of human nature to believe that men will rouse themselves to make the voluntary effort that is necessary, so long as they imagine that simply by the easy process of casting their votes the work which has to be done will to-morrow or the day after to-morrow be taken out of their hands and straightway performed under the fiat of a beneficent power outside them. The very shadow of State interference destroys the possible development of voluntary association.
2. That the freest competition be allowed between all voluntary systems of doing work, whether it be done individually or by association. In some cases the individual capitalist may be the best instrument for satisfying the wants of society; in some the joint-stock company; in some the co-operative association. We must have perfect freedom, in order firstly that each system may act as a stimulus to other systems, and secondly that the better forms as they disclose themselves may replace the less efficient forms.
3. That for all the higher purposes of association, in which men take their place according to their aims and sympathies, the groups represent more faithfully the individual Selves of which they are composed. So long as a man's Self, his convictions and his aims, mean but little to him, so long as he forms one in some group,—be it a religious, political, or social association,—in which his Self is half cancelled by the Self of others, his convictions set aside, his energies repressed, there cannot be the full measure of force either in the individual or in the group. We need truer grouping of men in the groups to which they belong. We need that the group should be as the enlarged Self of the man who is contained in it; and this can only become possible as the individual gains greater devotion to his own convictions, leans less upon others, and refuses to be employed, as a half-conscious being, by the great systems that exist round him. Truth to Self means harmony in the group, and harmony in the group means the development of an immeasurable force for conquering the evils and difficulties of the world.
Political Measures for Securing the Greatest Amount of Individual Liberty.—The Central Government to undertake no services but those of restraining injuries to person and property; of defending the country and its dependencies; of carrying on diplomatic intercourse with other nations.
Class A.—Removal of Burdens of Taxation.—Examples: Complete Free Trade in all things. Repeal of all import and excise duties and assessed taxes. All Government revenues (whether Central or Local) to be derived from voluntary not compulsory payments. Payment as early as possible of national debt by sale of all such ecclesiastical property as may be adjudged to belong equitably to the nation, by sale of other national property, and by special fund raised by voluntary contributions; with mortgage of all remaining national property to holders of debt, until payment is completed. Abolition and reduction of State departments and officials. Abolition of State pensions after life of present holders.
Class B.—Abolition of Monopolies and Restraints Which prevent the people from gaining the full benefits of free Trade.—Examples.—Abolition of all legislation creating a monopoly in the liquor traffic; of State-regulation of the professions of Law and Medicine, with its resulting monopoly in each case; of legal impediments restraining the free sale of land; of the State Post Office and Telegraph services. Such changes in the law of libel as would allow the freest discussion to accompany all the developments of free trade, whilst leaving men responsible for the truth of their statements. Free trade must remain incomplete and imperfect as a system, unless, in addition to free buying and selling, men can discuss freely all that is done in trade. The freer that is the habit of discussion, the greater will be the protection to the consumer, and the advantage to the honest and enterprising trader.
Class C.—Abolition of Services Done by the State which if performed by those immediately concerned would result in:—I. greater independence of character and greater sense of justice, as regards placing burdens upon the shoulders of others; 2. greater intelligence and enterprise and greater fitness for voluntary association—Examples.—Abolition of all State Education, of Established Church, of Poor Laws, of State inspection or regulation of factories, mines, railways, ships, &c. [It should be observed that when taxes were converted into voluntary contributions, the great objection that applies to some of these undertakings, the injustice of compelling some to pay for others-would be removed; and when once this was the case, a State Education or Poor Law system might be continued for a time until the people of each district bad organised their own systems for dealing with these great matters. But apart from the objection to compulsory taxation, we have to perceive that no universal system directed by an external [and often remote] authority can continue healthy or capable of sustained and continuous improvement. There is therefore a great need that any uniform and universal direction (even as regards local areas) should gradually give place to the voluntary association of men working in their own self-chosen groups.]
Class D.—Abolition of Restraints Which Give A Character of Infallibility to the State, Prevent the people from Using Individually Their Own free judgment as regards their own conduct and duties, and by the sterilising effect of physical and external force prevent the development of self-protecting qualities and the influences of moral force.—Examples.—Repeal of laws enforcing vaccination; directing the compulsory removal of the sick; imposing regulations as regards the labour or education of children on the whole class of parents; (any person, whether parent or not, physically injuring a child either by overwork, or in any other manner, should be punishable in ordinary legal course); exacting political or religious oaths from members of Parliament; persecuting and impeding those who believe in or would examine the facts of spiritualism: attempting to prevent vicious habits; forbidding gambling; suppressing brothels; giving the Police power to arrest women on the charge of
[It should be observed that the thing in question may be in the judgment of many of us a wrong thing, and vet at the same time one which cannot rightly be forbidden by an arbitrary decree of the State. Personally I object strongly to such vivisection, as involves serious pain to animals, but my dislike to it gives me no moral authority to forbid it. Moreover to suppress forcibly an evil is not to conquer it. That can only be done by possessing sufficient energy and faith in one's own views to influence the minds of men. It should be added that some of the interferences with liberty mentioned in this Class [D] are matters rather of Local than Central Government.]
Class E.—Abolition of Restraints Placed Upon Some for the Benefit Of Others.—Examples.—Abolition of all special contracts forced upon either Employers or Employed, or Landlord and Tenant, in the interest of either party.
Class F.—Constitutional and Administrative Changes.—Examples.—Abolition of privileges depending on birth. Abolition of House of Lords; conversion of Monarchy after present reign and in due course of time into a Republic of the simplest type. [This great political change should be carried out patiently and forbearingly, and not be forced on a large and unwilling minority. The appointment of the then reigning Sovereign as President for life, with no rights of succession, would probably soften and disarm much of the opposition.]
Manhood and womanhood suffrage. Ballot permissive individually. Proportional representation. Reference of measures passed by Parliament to the people, according to the Swiss plan.
Every effort to render the system of Law simple, speedy, and equitable' Separation of Indian and Home armies. Abolition of military life in barracks by placing soldiers on same footing as police. Commissions to be gained by service in the ranks, by service as volunteers, and by passing special (qualifying not competitive) examinations. Development of Volunteer system.
Class G.—I—reland.—Ireland to choose its own Government. The N.E. part to stay with England if it wishes to do so. Loan to be raised by Irish Government to buy out at fair price such landowners as desire to leave the country.
Class H.—Colonies, India, Egypt,—Foreign Countries.—Closer drawing together of Mother Country and Colonies for purposes of foreign policy and defence. In all cases either a loyal and vigorous discharge of obligations resting upon us, or a frank renunciation of such obligations. India to be ruled with a view to its own approaching self-government, without any attempt at developing its civilisation according to British ideas and through taxation imposed by British force. No State expenditure except that which is necessary for preserving peace and order. Egypt to choose her own form of Government under our protection for the time. Arabi and the exiles to be immediately released. Abroad a strictly non-aggressive policy. Our own assumed interests not to be placed before the rights of any people. Support of principle of international agreement in distinct and defined cases; but no wholesale placing of our national judgment and action into the hands of unknown keepers. Influence of the nation to be steadily but peacefully thrown on the side of those struggling for independence; and against annexations made in disregard of the will of the people.
Local or Municipal Government.—The Local Governments to exercise such power of defending person and property and of preventing the molestation of one individual by another as may be given to them by general Acts of Parliament. To have no power of compulsorily taking property, of levying a compulsory rate, or of compelling any person to take water, gas, etc., whether provided by the Municipality or by a Company. To have power to regulate property of which they arc the owners; provision being made (on the ad refer endium principle) for submitting any regulation to those possessing the local franchise. [If municipalities are to be owners of property (for example, of the streets) the impartiality and tolerance of such regulations, as they make, must in a great measure depend upon the constant vigilance and love of liberty of the citizens; and it would probably be better for the Central Government to impose no hard and fast rules upon Local Governments, as regards the management of property that is in their hands, but leave to the people of each district the duty of watching over their own liberties in these matters. Great battles for individual liberty have to be fought at present in the municipalities. All attempts to restrict rights of meeting and rights of procession, whether of the Salvation army or of any others; to enlarge the powers of the police; to harass the people in their homes; to make sanitary matters an excuse for arbitrary regulation must be steadily and unflinchingly resisted. The ad referendum principle should be at once demanded by those locally governed as regards all regulations made by the local authority.]
Results—The Cheapest Markets in the World, with all articles of consumption at the lowest possible price, and no great burdens of taxation.
The Most Active and Enterprising People in Industrial Matters, with no official routine, restraints, inspections, and interferences to impede trade; and with the full natural rewards of skill, enterprise, and discovery guaranteed to all.
The Most Contented and Independent People, because the least accustomed to look for State direction, and the most accustomed to provide for their wants through their own voluntary associations.
The Most Prosperous People, because not wasting time, energy, and good feeling in fighting over political redistributions of land and other property, but doing out of hand for themselves what their own comfort and well-being demand.
The Most Clear-Sighted and Most Intelligent People, because not living at the mercy of the great rhetoricians, nor believing in any Government-conjuring systems, or in any party Popery, or in any infallible rulers, whether Tory, Whig, Radical, or Socialist.
The Most Progressive People, because not hindered and repressed by great uniform systems, but giving the freest play to new thought and new experiment.
The Most Just Minded People, because not seeking to have services done for them for which others are compulsorily taxed.
The Most Provident People, because living face to face daily with the consequences of their own actions.
The Most Friendly People Among Themselves, because no longer organised in two great parties, each seeking to obtain power, by any and every means, over the other, and to compel the acceptance of its own views.
The Most Generous People, because not interpreting their duties to each other according to the narrow letter of official regulations or State-prescribed charities,
I have only to add that I have tried to avoid in this short sketch all that is of a fanciful or arbitrary character. Given as a moral principle, the widest possible liberty of the individual, these or very similar political applications must, as I believe, result. The defence of person and property can only be placed in the hands of Government on one plea, namely, that of self-preservation. On that plea an individual man may rightly defend himself against those who attack his person or property, and on that plea a Government [which is merely the individual in mass, and can therefore possess no larger rights than the individual] may also defend all persons and properties against attack. But on that plea neither may the individual nor the Government interfere with the rights of free action. The plea allows us to repel a wrong; it cannot allow us to inflict a wrong.
All persons interested in the matter are requested to write to me, marking the outside of their letters I. L. (in case of my absence from home) at
and for the present, until other arrangements are made, I shall be glad myself to supply the following Leaflets and Papers, as soon as ready, at the pi ices named below.
Anti-Force Leaflets. (Separate Series), No. I.—"Some Sayings about Liberty "published by Women's Printing Society, Great College Street, Westminster.
Anti-Force Leaflets, (Summaries), No. I.—"The Free Mind in the Free Body,"published by Women's Printing Society.
Anti-Force Papers, No. I.—"The Free Mind in the Free Body"published by Women's Printing Society.
Short statement of principles of The Party of Individual Liberty and Measures to give efl'ect to them. This paper is summarised in Leaflet, No. I. (Summaries.)
Anti-Force Papers No. II.—"The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State "published by Williams and Norgate.
Other Papers and Leaflets will be ready presently.
I would also ask all such persons to read the following books of Mr. Herbert Spencer (to whom we owe the greatest of all possible debts in this matter.) "The Man v. The State"1/- "Data of Ethics"8/-, Education 2/6, "Social Statics"106, published by Williams and Norgate, London. "Study of Sociology 5/- published by Kegan Paul, London. Mill "On Liberty"¼ and'"Representative Government"published by Longmans, London, and the last chapter of"A Politician in trouble about his Soul"by Auberon Herbert, published by Chapman and Hall, London.