Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 82

[preamble to the constitution of the Free Soil Society, established in the United States]

page 26

The following is the preamble to the constitution of the "Free Soil Society, established in the United States—

"Conscious of the persistence of poverty amid advancing wealth, and convinced that this tendency is promotive of demoralization and tyranny, misery, and crime, and with the growth of social inequality must ultimately destroy Republican institutions; observing that the increase of population and the march of invention constantly tend to enhance the proportion of the aggregate produce of industry taken by landowners in ground rent, and to diminish that going to the producer, and attributing to this cause the growth of poverty with the growth of wealth, so destructive to the industrial freedom and political liberty; believing that property in the products of labour has a natural basis and sanction, while property in land has none; and that the recognition of exclusive property in land is necessarily a denial of the right of property in the products of labour; and confident that to remedy existing industrial abuses and prevent social and political decay society must in some form recognize the common right to land, we who have hereto subscribed our names do hereby agree, on oar honour, as follows :—First, our opinions are in accord with the sentiments hereinabove expressed. Second, to the best of our abilities and the extent of our opportunities we will individually and collectively endeavour, by peaceable methods, to secure in our own and every other country the recognition by law in the form best suited to time, place, and circumstances, of the common right of the people to the soil upon which they must live and out of which the Creator' designed, that by their labour they should obtain their subsistence. Third, we hereby associate ourselves for the purpose of propagating our common views and designing and executing plana for the promotion of our common object."

"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."—William Webster.

"Latifundia perdidere Italiam." "Our big estates have ruined Italy."—Pliny.

"In societies, associations, joint stock companies, we have new agencies occupying fields filled in less advanced times and countries by the State. With us the legislature is dwarfed by newer and greater powers—is no longer master but slave. Pressure from without has come to be acknowledged as ultimate ruler."—Herbert Spencer.

"Every step that we take on our road is a step that brings us nearer to the goal; and every obstacle, even although it seem for the moment to be insurmountable, can only for a little while retard, and never can defeat, the final triumph."—W. E. Gladstone.

page 27

"In my opinion, if it is known to be for the welfare of the community at large, the legislature is perfectly entitled to buy out landed proprietors."—W. E. Gladstone.

"Men of Rome" said Tiberius Gracchus, "men of Rome, you are called the lords of the world, yet have no right to a square foot of its soil ! The wild beasts have their dens, but the soldiers of Italy have only water and air !"

"Happily for him, Lothario treated the affair with magnanimity, and Werner with an air of ease. The latter, in his violent desire of gain, experienced a lively pleasure in contemplating the fine estate which was to be his friend's. Lothario, for his part, seemed to be revolving very different thoughts.

'I cannot take such pleasure in the acquirement of property,' said he, 'as in the justness of it.'

'And in the name of Heaven,' cried Werner, 'is not this of ours acquired justly? '

'Not altogether,' said Lothario.

'Are we not giving hard cash for it? '

'Doubtless,' replied Lothario; 'and most probably you will consider what I am now hinting at as nothing but a whim. No property appears to me quite just, quite free of flaw, except it contribute to the State its due proportion.'

'How !' said Werner, 'you would rather that our lands, which we have purchased free from burden, had been taxable? '

'Yes,' replied Lothario, 'in a suitable degree.'"—Wilhelm Meister, by Goethe. Translated by Carlyle.

"There should be but one tax, and that upon land."—Von Humboldt.

"For long years and generations it lasted; but the time came. Feather brain, whom no reasoning and no pleading could touch, the glare of the fire-brand had to illuminate; there remained but the method. Consider it, look at it! The widow is gathering nettles for her children's dinner; a perfumed seigneur, delicately lounging in the? ??Eil-de-Beuf, has an alchemy whereby he will extract from her the third nettle and call it rent and law; —such an arrangement must end. Ought it not? 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."—Carlyle.

"No quantity of movable goods which a person can acquire by his labour prevents others from acquiring the like by the same means; but from the nature of the case, whoever owns land keeps others out of the enjoyment of it. The privilege or monopoly is only defensible as a necessary evil; it becomes an injustice when carried to any point to which the compensating good does not follow it."—J. S. Mill.

"The claim of the landowners to the land is altogether subordinate to the general policy of the State. The principle of property gives them no right to the land, but only a right to compensation for whatever portion of their interest in the land it may be the policy of the State to deprive them of. To that their claim is indefeasible."—The Same.

"In other, if not plainer, language I hold and maintain that the entire soil of a country belongs of right to the entire people of that country, and is the rightful property, not of one class, but of the nation at large, in full and page 28 effective possession, to let to whom they will, on whatever tenures, terms, rent services, and conditions they will, one condition being, however, unavoidable and essential—the condition that the tenant shall bear full, true, and undivided fealty and allegiance to the nation and the laws of the nation whose land he holds."—James Fenton Lalor.

"The question of the land affects so vitally the welfare of human beings that it cannot be left to 'freedom of contract,' but requires State interference to preserve the natural rights of the people.

"In England, according to Lord Derby's return—in which the number of landowners is grossly exaggerated—66,000,000 out of a total of 72,000,000 acres in the three Kingdoms are owned by about 61,000 persons. More than one-fourth of all England and Wales belongs to fewer than 1,000 persons, while in Scotland less than a score of persons possesses one-fourth of the land."—Jesse Collings, M. P.

"Where natural opportunities are all monopolized, wages may be forced by competition among labourers to the minimum at which labourers will consent to reproduce."—Henry George.