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hatred made itself felt through their whole household. A state of demoralisation ensued when looking through keyholes became elevated to the rank of a domestic virtue. The household lived on the brink of a volcano, and the wonder is that the explosion was so long delayed.

Thank Heaven the whole unclean case is now out of the way. Our sympathy remains with Lord and Lady Colin Campbell. She is still his wife, and so we pity him; he is still her husband, and so we pity

her.

Woe unto New Nineveh when the household of one of her nobles presents such a picture.

We are not yet near the end of the Divorce Court revelations. Already the air is thick with rumours of men and women who are about to drag

each other to the bar of law. We do not doubt it.

One-half of the husbands in Vanity Fair are only prevented from seeking divorces from their wives because their wives can produce such evidence against their husbands that they dare not face the Divorce Court. Woe unto New Nineveh!

We turn from the rccord of these horrors with doubt and with alarm. Was Nineveh as bad as London? It is our smug custom to pity men of all climes and times who are not born Britons and who do not call themselves Christians, God pity those who in this fashion deceive themselves and would deceive us. Rome at its worst had not poverty so deep, so wide, so continual as London, and it is doubtful if Rome was more terribly depraved.

It is

East London, only a symptom and a sign.
Nature crying to us in the only language she can
use, " Ye have broken my laws, ye have allowed the
rich to grow over-rich, the poor to grow over-poor.
Behold my punishment-vice and the misery of
abject poverty."

Our aristocracy is well called a landed aristocracy. From what it never puts into the land, it takes out of the land the materials to build an

aristocratic system, the foulness of which cries to

Heaven. The rich man uses the value which the poor man puts into the land to corrupt the poor man's daughter. The poor man toils from January to December in order that the rich man may upon the corrupt stage of London play a part that covers the whole land with shame and disgrace.

As surely as we pay clergymen to teach us righteousness, so surely have we endowed an aristocracy to teach our young men and maidens the way to Hell. Like Christ, we have very little to say against the vices of the poor. Their poverty is the cause of their vice, just as wealth is the cause of vice in the rich. Whenever the poor become a little less poor they become patterns of virtue. To make them less poor we must strike at the vast and overgrown fortunes that swallow up their humble fortunes. If we do not, if we let the poor sink deeper and the rich rise higher until we have on one side more horrid heights of wealthy men, and on the other more dangerous depths of miserable poverty, then woe unto New Nineveh !

Ir must be very difficult for the Irish peasant, under present circumstances, to treat his landlord with even common civility. Upon my word, I doubt very much whether, if I found a burglar entering my house, I should remember to say please" when I asked him to go out.-Truth.

Now, is it not strange that we find poverty and vice always together like awful Siamese twins? They seem to come together by some inevitable and irresistible law of Nature. It is as in the human body; if we over-nourish, over-exercise, and overdevelop one part, the other parts fall into lean feebleness, and the whole man grows miserable. In our social body we have allowed the aristocratic part to grow to fearful proportions, and so the WHAT the Irish landlords are trying to do-by other parts fall into maciating decay. A rich every species of ruthless cruelty and oppressionman's dinner costs as much as would provide fifty is simply this: to cheat the tenant into making a

wholesome and abundant dinners for the poor man, who is fed so ill that when work does come to him he is too feeble to lift pickaxe or shovel. We have utterly transgressed the law of Nature, and lo ! Nature makes herself felt. An over-fed man breaks out into blotches and ulcers; an over-fed portion of society breaks out into the awful blotch of vice. This frightful out-growth of Divorce Court vice is, together with the poverty of

very bad bargain, i.e., to purchase the land on terms which if carried out must be ruinous to the purchaser.—Truth.

The Ecclesiastical Commissioners received during last year £111,083 for royalty on coal and other minerals in Durham. It is an additional aggravation to the miseries of miners to know that not only are they deprived of proper wages on account of the demand for royalties, but that these royalties go to support a Church in opposition to the religious teaching which the miners provide for themselves.

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THERE'S an island that's set in a northern sea,
Its inhabitants call it the land of the free,

By a very "free translation;"

And by their own doings they set such store,
That they think there never was seen before
So great and so good a nation.

Yes! Liberty is to each bosom most dear,
For they're free to worship the Prelate and Peer,
Those gods of their adoration.

While they ever are ready with ringing cheer
To urge the warrior's red career

With wildest adulation.

And the gaols are well filled in that happy land Where crime and want go hand in hand,

As anyone plain can see;

And madness abounds and foul disease
And they're free to get drunk whenever they please,
So they call it "the land of the free."

And the toilers toil both night and day,
Wearing their lives and their souls away,
As the days pass wearily by ;
But still it's a matter of choice we see,
To toil, or to cease, they are perfectly free,
For are they not free to die?

But the Peer and the Publican hold their own,
Those props of the altar, the cottage, and throne,
The pride of a grateful people;

Who know that the real great end of man
Is to keep up, by every means that they can,
The coronet, signboard, and steeple.

I et the lower classes "go to pot,"
Let prisoners and paupers by myriads rot
Amid scenes of vile pollution.

If they only will drink by night and by day
That's the only sure and the certain way
To preserve our old constitution.

For of real prosperity that's the test,
It is the drink which fills the Chancellor's chest
And provides for the Army and Navy,
And who but a fool would be found to care
That the people with houses empty and bare
Are left to "stew in their gravy."

And what of the man who supplies the beer,
Why, our Premiers hasten to make him a peer!
To attend to our legislation.

And the nation of freemen bow the knee,
And all who have sense to perceive, agree

That beer is the king of the nation.
And so both the Upper and Lower House,
Both filled with men of virtue and "nous,"
Make everything pleasant and cheery,
And there's not a man in the "Commons
"Peers 19
Who is troubled with any forebodings and fears
So long as the nation's "beery."
And we send our troops to distand lands,
And Bibles are borne there by earnest hands
To bring to the heathen good cheer,

or

CIVILISATION.

And the ministers preach, and the soldiers shoot,
And return to their country with honour and loot,
And all on the strength of beer!

What blessings are shed on the world around
Whorever our gallant troops are found
And our glorious flag displayed.
Boers, Zulus, and Afghans, one and all
Sighing for civilisation's call

From Britain's Beery Brigade.

And the priest in his robe of spotless white
Blesses the men who go forth to fight

In the cause of civilisation.

And the "Gatlings" shriek and the "Armstrongs"

roar

When the soldier lands on the distant shore
To do the work of our nation.

And the earth is strewed with the fallen foe,
And streams of blood o'er the desert flow

From the wounded, who yet are living. Then the Bishops who've heard the joyful sound Summon their flocks from all around

To offer a great thanksgiving.

For "
we are not as other men," say they;
"We do things in quite a superior way,
With much more excellent views;
Whenever we fight we are always right,
And our doings are pleasing in Heaven's sight-
Not even as these Zulus."

What a tight little island it is, oh dear!
Strange if it weren't when it floats in beer!
And how noble its every plan!

And this is the way we shall still go on-
In the glorious way we have always gone―
So dear to an Englishman.

For he worships a lord with all his soul,
And a brewer he puts at the head of the poll,
And a priest he follows with zest.
And when all has been said, and all has been told,
We yield to the power of sacred gold

And the Party which pays the best.

His pride is great and his notions crude-
"Buncombe" and "bosh" are his daily food
Which he swallows whenever he can.
And the "Primrose League" is pleased to view-
It's constructed a patriot, staunch and true,-
"A Conservative working man"!

What fear for the vessel of State is now?
Safe through the water she'll grandly plough,
Despising fortune's cuffs.
For her sails are set to the Tory gale,
So long as that blessed wind prevail,
And she's manned by
roughs."

66

Salisbury's

Then it's hey! for our country's lasting fame,
And long may she well deserve the name,
The name of a Christian nation.
That glorious name she will never yield,
For beyond all doubt she holds the field,
For "freedom and civilisation."

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Germany had to approach Land Nationalisation from a different point of view from that of England.

In England the land is in the possession of a few thousand families, who rent it out at their own terms to the inhabitants of the soil, or keep it to themselves as pleasure or hunting grounds. Millions of people who would desire nothing better than to cultivate the soil, to live on its fruits, and to create a living for other millions anxious to exchange with them the products of industry and commerce, are thus kept idle. It does not require a very deep insight into such a state of things to explain why trade is dull, and industry crippled. Land nationalisation presents itself so clearly as the remedy that only those who are wilfully blind can fail to grasp its truth.

Matters are different in Germany and France, where land is divided among a much greater number of holders, and where "free trade in land makes it easy of access to all who have money to buy it with. Yet the depression of trade is felt here as well as in Great Britain.

Flürscheim's explanation is as follows: (1) The purchasing power of the people is continually decreasing when considered in connection with the increase of production. Even if Giffen and others are right, and wages have be of any benefit unless wages have increased in increased as well as consumption, this would not proportion to the increased productive power of labour. Supposing, for instance, 100 years ago a worker earned 23. a day where he now earns 43., his wages would have doubled, but if 100 years ago he produced in the day 4s. worth of goods, and now produces 20s., his share in the value of half to one fifth. This corresponds with statistics, his production would have decreased from one which show a continual decrease of the relative share of production which labour is getting. In 1867 wages in Great Britain were 40 per cent. of the national income; now they are only 20 per cent. Thus in twenty years the share of labour in the wealth it creates has decreased one half. Whether money wages have increased or decreased during that period matters not. (2) This remarkable phenomenon would only tend to increase the gap between rich and poor in respect of their powers of procuring the necesBut it would not saries and the luxuries of life. suffice to create an industrial and commercial crisis, if the rich consumed their incomes.

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The German Land League, in ascribing this evil to private ownership of land, found it more difficult than the English League does to offer a clear and simple explanation. It could not say land is not accessible in a country where land is divided between a multitude of owners. It could not explain the (3) The crisis originates in the fact that commercial crisis by saying that land had become the income of the rich is increasing so fast too dear to enable labour and capital to get hold that their power of consumption does not of it, for all the direct connection that industrial keep pace with it. They cannot consume their labour and capital have with land consists in get-increasing proportion which is put out at interest income; they yearly lay aside a continually ting from it their raw materials, and it seemed impossible to say that these are not accessible at a time of their unprecedented cheapness.

The problem as it presents itself in Germany can be best studied in the works of Michael Flürscheim, a manufacturer in the Grand Duchy of Baden, the intellectual father of the movement. Upon his reasonings, which it is the object of this article to summarise, the principles of the new League are based.

He begins by showing that the present crisis affects all countries independently of their political institutions, commercial policy, climate, population, resources, &c. The social question is now entirely different from what it was in the past. When poverty was due to the want of means to produce goods; when with the utmost exertions a man could not produce more than he needed; the misery of the multitude was the necessary corollary from the wants of the powerful minority, which by force took possession of a great part of the produce of labour. But when misery results from a surplus of goods; when men are starving, naked, and houseless because there is too much food and too many clothes and houses; when "over-production" deprives men of the means of subsistence, the meaning of the words "social question" becomes entirely changed.

or rent!

Let us, says Flürscheim, take an example. The Rothschilds all over Europe are calculated to Suppose they spend only one million, laying aside possess a yearly income of at least six millions. five, what does this really mean? It means that they demand from the producers a tribute of six millions a year, not in goods, but in money; to raise this tribute-money, the producers have to sell six million pounds' worth of their productions in a market in which the Rothschilds purchase only one million's worth, having no requirements for more goods, their spending capacity, viz., their demand for necessities and luxuries, not having increased so fast as their income. The producers-the people at large cannot fill the gap by purchasing these remaining five million pounds' worth of goods, much as they need them, because they have to pay the proceeds of their labour as a tribute to the Rothschilds to the tune of £6,000,000 a year.

Here, then, is the solution of the great problem, why goods are not saleable, why labour can find no employment, though the greatest need for goods exists.

The amount levied yearly as a tribute from the producers, and not consumed, but put out at interest is calculated to exceed £500,000,000 a year in the whole world (the national fortune of

Great Britain alone increases at the rate of £200,000,000 a year); and this enormous amount increases every year, for the interest of one year swells the figures of the next. It is true that the increased expenses of the owners of these incomes deduct something from these figures, but comparatively very, very little. We can now easily understand why the periods of commercial depression follow each other more and more quickly, lasting for a longer period each time. In fact, we might say they would not cease at all, and only get worse from year to year, if the great waste of products by war and standing armies did not serve as leeches drawing off some of the superfluous blood. And in the end these increase the evil by means of the State debts, which help to swell the incomes of the great capitalists; but this evil effect is only felt gradually, as the interest of the debts accumulates. At the time of issue these loans act as temporary relief, giving opportunity for work by consuming goods.

Thus far Flürscheim has travelled a road quite different from that of Henry George and other land nationalisers; but at this point the lines of argument begin to converge. For in asking the question how this state of things originated, in investigating the foundation of these fatal accumulations of capital, he comes to the conclusion that they originate in private ownership of land, and in the abolition of private ownership he sees the only remedy. Land, he says, is the only safe investment, for mortgages are also indirect forms of land possession ("Hypothek ist Grundbesitz), and State-debts are the offspring of landlordism, for they would not exist if the State collected the rent. And Rent is the parent of Interest. It is only through the possibility of changing capital into landownership, and thus getting rent, that capital, accepting other modes of investment, requires interest as a compensation for the rent which it might have obtained if invested in real property. The rate of interest asked for in trade is always higher than the rate of rent, viz., the rate at which rent is capitalised, because the investment is less secure; and for this reason a premium is added which Flürscheim calls the premium of risk, or risk-premium.

This

If there were no investment in land and its equivalents (mortgages and state-loans) there would exist no interest, but only the premium of risk; for capital, increasing faster and faster with the productive power of labour, would be looking eagerly for investments, and no longer finding them in real estate or in state-loans, would accept any chance of reasonable investment, and by competition would gradually reduce the rate of interest, until it reached the level of the risk-premium. would have two results: (1) Capitalists would not be able to increase their fortunes without working themselves, by levying a tribute of interest or rent from the workers, but would have to live by consuming their capital like the ant, the bee, and the squirrel. The moment their work ceased, their capital would decrease, and the largest fortunes would be spent in a few generations if their owners became idle. Their power of preventing production by not themselves consuming, and at

the same time preventing the consumption of others, would be annihilated for ever. (2) Capital would be accessible to labour at a low rate of interest, viz., at the risk-premium.

Flürscheim here criticises Henry George's contention that the interests of capital and labour are the same, a low rate of interest always corresponding with a low rate of wages. But which interest is low? Not the interest for capital used by labour, but interest paid for good securities; interest which is only another form of rent. Interest for capital used for labour is enormously high just now, is always high whenever wages are low. It is true that we cannot rightly call it interest, but a premium of risk. But is not the effect on labour the same by whatever name we call the tribute it has to pay for the use of capital?

When labour can get cheap capital it will be its own employer, either by setting up on its own account or by uniting in co-operative societies, unless employers give as high wages as can be made in these ways. Wages would thus tend to reach the full employer's work, of his risk, and of rent paid to the value of production, only deducting the value of the State. This latter item could not be called a deduction, as the equivalent given in return by the State would balance each other; commercial and agr.would balance it. Production and consumption cultural depression would be things of the past.

These, in rough outline, are the reasonings of Flürscheim adopted by the German Land-Liga. He comes to the same conclusion as the English Land Nationalisers, but the way by which he reaches it allows, according to his opinion, anı easier answer to a great many objections, which are urged against Henry George's argu

ments.

The further advantage is claimed for this method that it permits the conversion of socialists, who do not accept Mr. George's renttheory, and who cannot see how the nationalisation of rent will help them so long as they are robbed in the shape of interest of the products of their labour. Flürscheim shows them a way leaving to the employer only what they would of getting the full value of their production, have to pay him even if they employed him of salary if employed by the State producing on as manager, or what he would get in the shape its own account. They would indeed be foolish if they did not prefer private production, giving everyone the full advantage of his own exertions, giving much better results to everybody by means of emulation and competition, if they did not with pleasure renounce their ideal of a 66 universal workhouse if they saw a better way of attaining vastly better results.*

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GERMANICUS.

*Exigencies of space have compelled us slightly to abridge our German correspondent's interesting communication. For further particulars the reader may consult Flurscheim's two work: Das Staatsmonopol des Grundpfandrechts (Minden i. Westf., Bruns' Verlag, 1885; 44 Seiten), and Auf friedlichem Wege (Baden, Oscar Sommermeyer, 1884; 491 Seiten.)

:0:

SELFISHNESS DEFINED. The blasting upas, which when planted in the garden of life destroys the flowers that would otherwise grow there.

COBDEN ON LAND AND TAXATION.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE DEMOCRAT.

SIR,-Mr. George seems to share the prevalent opinion that the ideas and motives which actuated Richard Cobden in the movement for the abolition of the Corn Laws were identical with those entertained by Mr. Bright and the majority of his fellow-workers and followers. In my opinion this is a mistake. Cobden did not, like Mr. Bright and other Free Traders, regard the substitution of a revenue for a protective tariff as the final application of the Free Trade principle. I think I can prove from a great speech which Richard Cobden delivered in the House of Commons on the 14th of March, 1842, and which, strangely enough, is not to be found in any of the collections of his speeches, and is not referred to in his biography by Mr. John Morley, M.P., that he took a broader and profounder view of the problem, of which the abolition of the Corn Laws was only a partial solution, than most of his disciples have done. Indeed, I think it is only a just and necessary inference from this speech that the great Free Trader regarded the abolition of the Corn Laws as the practical commencement of the struggle for the recovery of the land by the people which has since set in, and is now rapidly approaching its consummation. Cobden, in my opinion, was in England the immediate precurseur, or fore-runner, of those Radical reformers of the land laws who to-day are striving to establish true Free Trade and Free Labour on the only substantial and solid basis on which they can rest,-namely, the right of all to free access to the land-which is the passive factor of production,—or the treatment of the land as the common property in usufruct of the whole people, whose inalienable and indispensable heritage it is. For my part, I have not the slightest doubt that if Richard Cobden's life had been spared for another twenty years he would have been the great English champion of land resumption, and that Mr. John Bright would have followed his lead and inspiration in the greater matter of radical land reform, as he did in regard to the Corn Laws.

What I specially want to direct attention to in this almost forgotten speech of Cobden is the survey it comprises of land taxation in England from the time of the Norman Conquest down to the date of its delivery, which would form a fitting introduction to the history of the land laws in this country. I pass over the opening portions of this speech, which had for their object to show that "the landowners sustained no special burdens which entitled them to tax the rest of the community, but that, on the contrary, it was notorious throughout the world that they had been employing themselves as legislators in placing the burdens on others for the purpose of exempting themselves"; and come at once to those passages which deal directly with the land tax.

"The only peculiar State burden borne by the land," he declared, "is the land-tax; and I will undertake to show that the mode of levying that tax is frau lulent and evasive-an example, in fact, of legis'ative partiality and injustice second only

to the Corn Law itself. An hon. gentleman below me (Mr. Childers) has alluded to the fact that, under despotic governments, taxation falls chiefly upon the land. Our own country has illustrated this, as a brief review of the proportion of the land tax to the whole revenue will show. For a period of 150 years after the Conquest, the whole of the revenue of this country was derived from the land. For the next century, down to the reign of Richard III, it was nine-tenths. During the next seventy years, to the time of Mary, it fell to three-fourths. From this time to the end of the Commonwealth, land appears to have yielded onehalf of the revenue. Down to the reign of Anne it was one-fourth. In the reign of George I. it was one-fifth. In George the Second's reign the land yielded one-seventh of the revenue. From 1793 to 1815 (during the period of the propertytax) land contributed one-ninth; from which time to the present one-twenty-fifth only of the revenue has been derived directly from the land. Thus the land, which anciently paid the whole of the taxation, pays now only a fraction of one-twenty-fifth, notwithstanding the immense increase which has taken place in the value of the rental. The people had fared better under the despotic monarchs than when the powers of the State had fallen into the hands of a landed oligarchy, who first exempted themselves from taxation, and next claimed compensation by a corn-tax for their heavy and peculiar burdens (!). The land-tax was in reality a substitute for the ancient feudal services. The land was formerly held by right of feudal service."

I need not reproduce the sentences Cobden quoted from Blackstone, relating to the commutation of feudal services into a land-tax, culminating in the imposition of a tax of 4s. in the pound of real rental, by which the landholders in 1692 relieved themselves of their then remaining obligations, and transformed themselves into landlords or landowners. The readers of THE DEMOCRAT will know that the last-mentioned tax is the existing land-tax. Referring to it, Cobden proceeded:

"Now, could anyone suppose that land would always remain at the valuation of 1692 ? And yet it was upon that valuation that the land-tax was charged. The land-tax was now levied upon a rental of £9,000,000 a year, the valuation of 1692, whereas the right hon. gentleman (Sir R. Peel), in bringing forward his budget, had estimated the value of real property in Great Britain at £72,000,000 a year. Why, then, should not the four shillings in the pound be levied on this amount, instead of on the rental of 1692 ?"

It is not necessary for me to remind any readers that there has been no valuation of the land for land taxation purposes since Cobden spoke, and that the land-tax is still levied on the nine millions at which the actual rental of the land was valued in 1692, notwithstanding the enormous increase in the revenue from the land that has again taken

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