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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 82

A Question of Ethics

A Question of Ethics.

But the question we have to answer is—Is private property in land right—that is, righteous? Says Carlyle—"The notion of selling for certain bits of metal the Iliad of Homer, how much more the land of the World Creator, is a ridiculous impossibility." I venture to assert, in the language of Mr. Webster's lay sermon, "that there is flourishing in every Christian country an institution which is as essentially unjust and as iniquitous, and which, perhaps, exercises even a still more widespread, disastrous, and evil influence on the souls and bodies of men than slavery ever did." That institution is private property in land; and all of you who have any knowledge of what is possible, and what has been done, when a landed proprietor chooses to exercise his legal rights will, I am sure, agree that Mr. Webster's statement is not an exaggeration. Slavery Hill exists, It is the form only that is changed. It is for you to say whether it shall be replaced in this young colony by Liberty, by Justice. In other lands vast difficulties surround this question, and the equitable solution of them will tax the wisdom and the virtue of the world's best and bravest. Nevertheless, the solution must be found and the remedy speedily applied. For unless this is done, and the rights of humanity meet with just acknowledgement, the institutions of today will be swept away in the blind fury of a bloody revolution, "But, O, most fearful is such an ending. Let those to whom God, in his great mercy, has granted time and space prepare another and a milder one," But here our course is comparatively simple and easy, No injustice or even hardship need be inflicted on any, while the benefits that will result to all are incalculable. Our immediate work is in great part educational, and there is much to be done. There will be opposition—honest opposition, interested opposition, the opposition of ignorance, and the passive resistance of apathy and indifference, All these we must fight and overcomeas we best may. Ultimate victory is certain. Not much longer will men consent to be disinherited of their birthright. Throughout the civilized world the forces are at work that must end in a more just distribution of wealth and leisure. "Who can picture the moral effects of such a change, "A great future, a mighty inheritance, is opening up to the honest toilers of every land." And, to my thinking, the change will be brought about, as was the abolition of slavery, from a consideration of the moral and religious aspects of the question, more than from the purely economic, Matthew Arnold, speaking of the force that the idea of the common good is acquiring amongst us at the present day says: "An acceleration of progress in the spread of ideas of this kind, a decline of vitality in institutions where opposite ideas were paramount, marks the close of a period. . . . Sometimes we may almost be inclined to augur that from some such 'end of the age' we ourselves are not far now," We, at least, after our survey of what is being done elsewhere, and seeing the progress made, may well take heart, for we can see, now before us, we can see the first faint flush of a roseate dawn, to be followed shortly by a happier day.

The reading of this report was received with a good deal of enthusiasm, and as the President resumed his seat he was warmly cheered.