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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 77
Land Tenures
Land Tenures.
To begin with the first: As formulated, the plank looks like an unqualified endorsement of all that appears in the "No. 1 Report on Tenuies," signed by Messrs McKerrow, Hall, McCardle, McCutchan, and Matheson It might seem as if I saw no force whatever in the reasoning by which "No. 2 Report" has been so ably buttressed. Such is not the case. As a matter of theory, indeed, I have more affinity with the ideals of No. 2 and in large urban centres believe that much might be done to practicalise its conclusions. But, in country districts, like the constituency in which we stand, we are confronted, not by a theory, but by a condition. The interests of immediate settlement are paramount, and we must trust to taxation for the adjustment of ideal equities later.
"Denmark affords an excellent object lesson on the advantages of the freehold tenure and its benefit to the State, and the results attained there should be studied by the theorists who are advocating the State serfdom of land users. Towards the close of the last century the peasantry of Denmark were described as a class physically and mentally degraded, living in serfdom, oppressed by the nobles and Crown Lands regulations. It was Frederick VI. of Denmark who was wise enough to see the causes of the degeneracy of the people. He initiated a better state of affairs when Crown prince, and carried it further when he became King. He removed restrictions from Crown lands which kept back the peasants, and gave them every facility for acquiring freehold farms, with the result that in less than one hundred years, out of 280,000 families in the country districts of the Kingdom, 170,000 were owners of land, and the spread of the freehold still continues. Pauperism has practically vanished, schools have flourished, and the people are educated, industrious, honest, and capable. The freehold tenure is, indeed, the main requirement to create national prosperity and ensure the freedom of the people."
At the same time, while thus an advocate of the freehold in country districts in deference to the exigencies of the Colony's present stage of prowess, I am earnestly in favour of such restrictions in area as will forever prevent the growth in this country of a landed aristocracy like those which have been the curse of many an older nation.