than now. If the Confederacy is able at any time to maintain its Government, independently of the force brought against it by the Federal Government, then the British Government will be bound to receive it into the committee of nations. I come now to my first proposition, the remedy for the poverty and distress which afflict society. And that is, the land for the people. We are paying upwards of £2,000,000 a year for imported agricultural produce, and also a large outlay for guano and other foreign manures, while we have upwards of 15,000,000 acres of cultivable waste land in the kingdom of Great Britain. In the Channel Islands there are 166,000 acres of waste land capable of cultivation; in Yorkshire, 200,000; in Lancashire, 200,000; in Lanarkshire, 195,000; in Surrey, 59,000; in Dublin, 40,000; in Edinburgh, 20,000; in Middlesex, 17,000. I might go on through every district in the country. But here is a sufficient amount of figures to show to some extent where this waste land lays. Our expenditure for the war establishment is £27,644,746, or something near that amount (I have understated it); it cost the country £2,000,000 in preparation for war in the restoring of Mason and Slidell from the Federal Government of America. Suppose we, the English people, commence cultivating the waste lands, 15,000,000 acres, that would give immediate reproductive employment to all male persons now seeking it, and in vain. But I may be told that the waste lands will not pay for cultivation. Does our vast war expenditure pay £27,644,746, drawn from the earnings of the wealth-producing classes of this country? and what advantage has the people derived by the Government spending £2,000,000 over the late Trent affair? It would be much better to expend some portion of the £27,646,746 now spent on war establishments, say £10,000,000 taken from the army and navy estimates, that would leave nearly £18,000,000 for the defences of the country, for, let us remember, that from two to three thousand men are kept in a perfect state of uselessness for all productive purposes, besides a vast amount of labour for the manufacture of implements of destruction and gunpowder to be burnt away in reviews, &c. Cultivate the land, and you will give employment, create wealth, make homes happy, eradicate the distress we now so justly complain of, and prevent all appealing for workhouse relief. It is the duty of every honest man, every generous and philanthropic man, to enforce upon the Government the necessity of finding employment for the people in the cultivation of the waste lands of this country. If that is done, we need not care whether we get cotton from America or not. India will supply our wants in cotton, while the land will yield food for the people. Islington. W. P. WALLARGE. WHAT IS PROPERTY? (To the Editor of the "Working Man.") SIR,-In the last number of the Working Man Mr. Hovenden has written a letter which, I presume, is intended as a reply to my article "What is Property?" Mr. Hovenden thinks that the sentiments put forward by me have a tendency to mislead, and therefore he writes in opposition to them. Now, in the first place, I have put forward no sentiments. The working classes have been too long deluded by those who put forward "sentiments." I stated simply the case as between the working man and the man of property; and I think I showed that the former was robbed, and that somebody was the robber. I adduced authority, Divine and human, in support of my position, because I was well aware that authority is the chief reliance of those who wish to keep things as they are. It is possible that others of the working class may require to be as much enlightened on this, the most important question that ever was raised, as Mr. Hovenden, and therefore I reply to what I suppose Mr. Hovenden considers to be objections. 1. Mr. Hovenden says, that "property is labour or its results, its representative." Passing by the obscurity of this phraseology, I beg Mr. Hovenden to note that property is no such thing as he defines it to be. The results of labour are not property till they are appropriated. The question is, who has a right to the results. I say, the man who produces them; Mr. Hovenden would seem to argue, the man who does not produce them. I say the former ought to be the man of property, and is not; I say, the latter is the man of property, and ought not to be. This is not an argument; it is a fact. 2. Mr. Hovenden supposes 66 one thousand acres of land to be given to or taken by me," and says that" without other men's labour I would only be just as rich for practical purposes as before.' Not so. I should be a great deal richer than before. If I had the thousand acres as property, I should get for it, probably, £1, an acre every year, or £1,000 a year, and that without producing anything myself. I should have my £1,000 a year for ever, for permitting others to use the land which I never created. In thirty years I should have £30,000—and the land, two properties, which would bring me in at least £2,000 a year. My unfortunate tenants or labourers would give me the property of the produce of their labour for the use of that which I never created--the land. "Oh! but," says Mr. Hovenden, "that is a bargain between craft' and 'folly.'' No; it is not a bargain: it is the forced contribution of labour to property. To be the proprietor of the soil means to be the proprietor of the rain that falls, the warmth that ripensof all that constitutes growth ;-and the man who owns this has as absolute a power over labour generally as the South American planter has over his individual slaves. No man can live except out of the land, and every one who is not a proprietor must pay tribute to the owners of the soil. It is a case of necessity, not a case of bargain. 3. In No. 2 Mr. Hovenden argued that with the ownership of 1,000 acres I should not be richer than before without other men's labour. In No. 3 he supposes a man and his family in possession of a "desert place," which they cultivate, and which they build upon. Therefore a man and his family may be the richer by the possession of 1,000 acres without the labour of others. But passing by the inconsistency between paragraphs 2 and 3, what does Mr. Hovenden conclude from his supposed case? This "That the spot that he occupies, and he and the family choose to cultivate, belongs as much to them as if they had Acts of Parliament to appeal to." Not so, Mr. Hovenden. They have no claim to "the spot," for they never made it or produced it. All that is theirs is the labour or the value of the labour which they put into "the spot." That is theirs by the most sacred of all titles the outlay of so much of their lives in the cultivation of "the spot." But out of the desert place-in a civilized island, for example-it is not theirs, but somebody else's, who may never have seen the land or given one minute of his life to its cultivation. I know not what Mr. Hovenden means by asking "What gives value to the sea but the labour that is used upon it? I am not aware that the sea has any value. I never heard of 10 acres of the sea being sold for £10,000. What is meant probably is, that the labour of the fisherman possesses value when successful. To be sure it does; but who ever heard a fisherman, because he caught fish in the sea, setting up an exclusive right to the sea itself. Any such claim on his part would be preposterous. And yet this is what the proprietor of land does with the sanction of society, and, it must be added, in justice to the good sense of society, with the aid of the policeman and the soldier. Nay, the proprietor of the land goes beyond what would be ridiculous in the case of the fisherman, for he claims a property in land which he has not cultivated himself, but which others cultivate for him. "The waters of rivers are in many cases taken by water companies, and made property of, and no one objects to their being so appropriated," as far as Mr. Hovenden has heard. Mr. Hovenden has not read the "History of Water Companies. But, at all events, the fact is, they have appropriated rivers, and with most mis chievous results to the public. It is quite true that a valuable service was performed by the water companies in bringing water from a distance into the houses of London, and that service ought to be paid for to the utmost farthing. But that service was not illimitable in its value, and therefore there was a point of time at which, the service having been compensated, the property should become the property of the public, and not continue that of a private corporation. The river was the river of the public, the service performed by the companies ought to be paid for; that done, the water ought to revert to the public. So with regard to gas companies, railway companies, &c. Mr. Hovenden has never heard of any objection to the appropriation of water, gas, railway, and other companies. He shall no longer remain in his present state of ignorance. "Gas and water companies, amongst which, though perfect freedom is allowed to competition, none really takes place, are practically found to be more irresponsible and unapproachable by individual complaints than the Government. In the case of roads, canals, and railways, these are always practical monopolies, and a Government which concedes such monopolies to a private company does much the same thing as if it allowed an individual or an association to levy any tax they choose for their own benefit on all the malt produced in the country. To make the concession fair a limit is generally justifiable, and the State should either reserve to itself a reversionary property in such public works, or retain and freely exercise the right of fixing a maximum of fares and charges."-J. S. MILLS, Pol. Econ., vol. ii. p. 551-2. Think on this, Mr. Hovenden. 4. In this section Mr. Hovenden treats of property in money and the right to interest, which, as it must fall or stand on the same arguments as rent of land, I shall not discuss further here. I shall only point out the conclusion which Mr. Hovenden draws: "Working men," he says, "suffer very little, if at all, by the recognised distribution of property." What, then, does injuriously affect them? "The withdrawal," says Mr. Hovenden, "of enormous sums from our pockets, under specious pretences, but for mischievous and demoralizing purposes, by means of which many idly, extravagantly, and demoralizingly live on the labour of others." I hope the working classes have many better logicians among them than Mr. Hovenden. I should much prefer directing the attention of working men to Mr. J. S. Mill, who says:-"The ordinary progress of a society which increases in wealth is at all times tending to augment the incomes of landlords to give them both a greater amount and a greater proportion of the wealth of the community, independently of any trouble or outlay incurred by themselves. They grow richer, as it were, in their sleep, without working, risking, or economising. What claim have they, on the general principles of social justice, to this accumulation of riches."Vol. II., p. 381. I ask Mr. Hovenden, I ask the working classes, to give the proper name to those who grow richer and richer in their sleep, without working, RISKING, or ECONOMISING. Are they not-men of property? W. D. THE AMERICAN LABOUR QUESTION. (Continued from our last.) Then the great American romancer, who, in fiction, is said to have best portrayed human motives-Nathaniel Hawthorne, gives his testimony, a voluntary witness. The best book (the "Marble Fawn "), by the best author, is before us. In the reviews of it, it has been characterized as something that has almost the flame of Shakespeare. Unfortunately, for America, its inspiration is drawn from Italy, it was written there. Mr. Hawthorne seems to acknowledge that some excuse needs be given for transferring the scene of his tale to a foreign country; for he gives as reason for this, that "no man, without a trial, can conceive the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque or gloomy wrong." Of course not; there is no picturesque or gloomy wrong, when that wrong is the suffering of a people who are detested. To perceive a picturesque or gloomy. wrong, requires a lovely sympathy for those who bear it; but Mr. Hawthorne could not have written a book with an African hero without remaining obscure, the book would lose its hero because he was "only a nigger," and the work would fail in interest, because it had lost its hero. The "Atlantic Monthly," the best, the most independent, and the most liberal of the American magazines, speaks of "the skillful anatomist of the human heart.” This is the man: he has dissected the feelings and longings of a whole race, and has not found, we will not say a "picturesque," but not even a "gloomy wrong. So much for. the literature of the country; these are not the only examples, they are only a few of many. Take one case in politics. Take the republican party, with William H. Seward its mouthpiece. Now, a party is a complex machine, in which many conflicting interests have to be harmonized. It must address itself to the average intelligence and conscience of the people who compose its strength, and it must not be much above that average. The republican party was divided into two great parts, the Radical and the Conservative wing. The abolitionists joined it in their earnestness against slavery, as the only organization which promised to check the expansion of the southern heresy. They were the Radicals. The Conservatives chiefly supported it, because the territory of the United States was intended for white men. There was no desire on their part to assert the Declaration of Independence, their impulse was solely to assert their own superior claims to the continent. They were by far the most numerous. In 1856 the republican party showed that it was strong. It was then that Mr. Seward made his Rochester speech, in which he took a review of American politics drawn from her history, illustrating that there was an irrepressible conflict of ideas between freedom and slavery. In this speech he was only carrying out the spirit of a whole declaration which he had made in Ohio, in 1848, that "slavery is a sin, an evil, and must be abolished; and you and I must abolish it." He was speaking the words which were to gather round him the scattered public sentiment of the country, and give the party its living faith, its breath; for he knew but too well that a party cannot be lasting, nor can it be strong, without it has a principle for its foundation, with the capability of enlarging that foundation as needs arise, with the awakening of its constituents to better views of right. Only four years later, Seward returned from Egypt. In his absence John Brown had fired his gun at the very heart of Virginia, in doing which Mr. Ganison said, "he had told us what time of day it was. It was high noon, thank God." It was well known that prominent republicans had helped in the Kansas war against pro-slavery, that they had opposed unwaveringly the encroachments of the pro-slavery party, and that many of their number had come in from the ranks of the abolitionists. Many of the members of Congress had also endorsed the Helper book, which advocated the abolition of slavery, by showing statistically its wastefulness and its degradation. These, and other minor circumstances, combined with the popular prejudice against the negro, were made the grounds of party appeal against the republicans -embittering the strife between the factions, and an effort was made to hold the republican party responsible for John Brown's raid. Congress bad been convened, but could not organize. Sherman, republican, had been nominated for Chairman of the House of Reprentatives, but was bitterly opposed by the democrats. because he had endorsed the Helper book. For weeks and weeks the contest for speaker continued, the democrats pouring in speech upon speech, of invective against the republicans, while the latter (a majority of the house) listened in utter silence, waiting for the time to act their meaning, preferring not to speak it. At last Pennington, a Conservative republican, was elected. It was with these surroundings that W. H. Seward came back and took his seat in the Senate. The country was speculating on what he would say; the republican party was trembling lest it should loose its power; it was at its flood, and must now go forward or be swept back for ever; and by the words of that one man the party lived or died, for by those words the Conservatives stayed or left. So he made his speech and hid his faith. He reiterated nothing, he affirmed nothing, he left out the irrepressible conflict, and he made labour states and capital states out of what was once free states and slave states, the capital being £400,000,000 invested in blackamores. Mr. Seward could not afford to speak plain words, so he compromised. In 1848 he spoke his heart, in 1856 he spoke his conviction, in 1860 he spoke his apprehension, and saved his party. If John Brown had struck to exterminate the blacks, instead of striking for the liberty of slaves, perhaps Mr. Seward would have been saved his speech. (To be concluded in our next.) THE POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTION Continues to draw good numbers, and to deserve encouragement; during the Easter holidays our young friends will do well to go there, and they will be instructed and amused to their heart's content. THE ROYAL COLOSSEUM.-We are sorry to say does not succeed in drawing so well as the Polytechnic, although there are objects there worth seeing, and entertainments worth going for. Mr. Taylor's exposition of "The Secrets of Spirit Rapping and Spirit Mediums, &c." is very ingenious, and will, perhaps, elicit some explanation from the spiritual world. If spirits do rap, Mr. Taylor had better look out. THE GOOD GREAT MAN. How seldom, friend, a good, great man inherits Or any merits that which he obtains. For shame, my friend, renounce this canting strain: Or heaps of corses which his sword hath slain? The good, great man? Three treasures-iove, and light, REVIEWS OF BOOKS. OUR space being so very limited, we cannot devote much of it to noticing books or pamphlets sent to us in any other but a very cursory manner. The North of England Magazine is a new, well got up magazine, professing to advocate progress based on common sense; but, from perusal, we think that it seems, on the whole, very well pleased with things as they are. What if we have to pay seventy millions per annum to get nothing for the working classes! "Yet there is not much to grumble at, for what comes out of one pocket, is put into the other." So might the pickpocket say, "What do you grumble at?-what comes out of one pocket is put into the other." The Labour Question.-1. A Letter from a French Working Man on the present Strike. 2. A Report on the Labour Question, presented to the Positivist Society.-George Manwaring, London.-The suggestion of the positivists is good if any Government, not being that of the people, could be brought to care for the working classes in any other way but to repress their aspirations, and to keep them to the level of misery, which keeps the labour market down, and makes them compete one against the other. Our friends ought to read this; it will very likely suggest other ideas in their minds, |