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dance of food. The additional twelve hundred thousand would thus become customers of the working people engaged in manufactures instead of being competitors with them for the work to be done. This would make all the difference in the rate of wages.

If our agricultural and building industries were freed from present restrictions, who could place a limit to the amount of employment which would be open to all? At present an idle landlord can say to an industrious builder, you shall not put bricks or planks together until you have agreed to pay me so much a year and bound yourself to hand over the whole proceeds of your industry to my successors a few years hence. As if this audacious injustice were not sufficiently repressive of industry, the Legislature not only enables the landlord to make this atrocious exaction but it says to the landlord, if you succeed in extracting from builders a share of the proceeds of their industry, which is worth, say, a thousand pounds, you shall pay no rates on that value, and the taxes thereon shall be limited to the income-tax, so that your total taxation on a thousand pounds of your stolen property shall be under twenty shillings per annum, whereas upon the industrious builder who obtains no value except by the exercise of industry, he shall pay in rates and taxes at least twenty pounds per annum for every thousand pounds of value which he creates. Unjust legislative restrictions upon agriculture and building are alone. sufficient to account for bad trade, want of employment, low wages, and the consequent destitution of the industrious classes.

Let us now attempt to form an estimate of the amount of which the working classes are robbed by unjust legislation. The principle upon which we propose to form this estimate is one which we think must commend itself to every thoughtful and fair-minded person. Industry is the sole source of wealth. If a man under any circumstances (except as a gift) gets the value of a sovereign for nothing, it is clear that some worker or workers must be defrauded or unpaid. We have said "except as a gift.' The man who creates a value has a right to give or to bequeath it to others. But governments are dealing with the money of the people. They are trustees and they

have no right to give. Their powers are limited to making just and equitable regulations which bear equally upon all classes of the community.

It is solely by the authority of governments that landlords stand on land and say that no one shall cultivate or build unless they are paying them so much. Landlords thus get something for nothing, and the public is defrauded. We say the public is defrauded because the value of land is created by the community, and belongs to the people. Governments have no more right to give to individuals the rent of land than to hand over to private persons the proceeds of the income-tax.

It is not the man who pays rent that is defrauded, but the community to whom that rent or value belongs. Wherever men congregate, there value is imparted to land, the occupation of land at or near that spot becomes a valuable privilege. It is a privilege which only governments can grant, and governments are bound to grant it only on terms which are equitable to the community who have created the value. To allow any individual to usurp the powers of government and to grant the use of land for payment made to himself is to commit a fraud.

No action of former governments can justify existing governments in permitting the continuance of land frauds. The value of land to-day is the result of the industry of to-day. Let industry cease, and the land becomes valueless. The fact that landlords robbed our fathers hundreds of years ago, or that they helped themselves. yesterday to the produce of our industry, is no reason whatever why they should be allowed to partake of the results of our industry to-day or to-morrow. Every farthing demanded by a landlord for the of land, whether for agriculture, building, or money, is a fraud.

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Landlordism is a fraud, only a fraud, and that continually.

We may now form some opinion as to the amount to which the industrious classes are legally robbed by landlordism. The agricultural rent of this country is about £60,000,000 per annum. No statistics show the value of ground rents, or rents for building land, but the amount cannot be less than another £60,000,000.

Then we have mineral royalties, fines for renewal of leases, the increasing value of building land which landlords usually

realise without even paying income-tax, and these items at a moderate estimate are equal to £30,000,000 per annum, thus making the total legal robbery of the industrious classes for the benefit of landlords £150,000,000 per annum.

It would be difficult to ascertain the value of the privilege conferred on capitalists by handing over to them the control of our currency. It probably enables them to rob the public for their own benefit to the extent of a hundred millions annually, as it places the control of the money market and the consequent command of speculation in the hands of large capitalists, who thus take the cream from industry with very little effort on their own part. This subject must form the topic of a separate article. We are dealing now solely with the amount which unjust legislation confers directly upon the privileged classes at the expense of the community.

The Government ought to provide a national currency, which would be required to the extent of at least two hundred millions, and the profit on which would not be less than five millions annually. Of this sum the public are now defrauded.

Our national expenditure for imperial and local purposes may be taken at £125,000,000 per annum, and this is per head for the population about two and a half times as much as is spent in Republican countries where the interests of the community are regarded. large proportion of this expenditure goes directly into the pockets of the privileged classes in the shape of excessive salaries, sinecures, or pensions.

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For more than double the expenditure we do not obtain anything like such an efficient government as that of other countries. In the United States and in Switzerland the work done for the community by the governments is far greater than in Britain. The difference arises from the fact that while in these countries

the government is really by the people and for the people, in this country the government is by the privileged classes and for the privileged classes.

While it would be impossible to make a detailed estimate of the amount of which the public is defrauded, for the benefit of the privileged classes in connection with Government expenditure, it is clear that the sum must be very

large. In connection with all Government work, local or imperial, we give enormous salaries to the privileged classes and cut down working class salaries to the lowest point. We pay no less than seven millions annually in pensions under systems which have been framed especially for the benefit of the privileged classes.

While, therefore, we cannot make a detailed statement of the amount, we think that if we estimate 20 per cent. of our Government expenditure as taken from industry for the benefit of the privileged classes, we shall be a long way within the actual fact.

There is no statement of the value of charities and endowments which have been diverted from the poor to the rich, and great pains will be taken to make it impossible to prepare such a statement, which would be a crushing condemnation of our system of government. In the list of robberies, we cannot, however, omit the diverted charities, and if we take the amount at five millions annually, no reasonable person will think that we have made an exaggerated estimate.

To recapitulate the list of legal robbery, the total is as follows:

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This sum of £185,000,000 per annum is directly taken from industry for the benefit of idleness, and, enormous as it is, the amount does not nearly represent the whole of the loss which industry sustains as the result of unjust legislation. It will be easily understood that those who obtain these revenues without labour, are in a position to control our political and social arrangements, and it is natural that they should do so with a special regard to their own interest.

We have seen how the control of land enables them to keep down wages by forbidding working men access to the soil. Legislation has been unblushingly directed to the same end, but not so easily of late years as formerly. A national church has been supported for the express purpose of teaching people to be content with.

injustice, and national schools have been maintained in order to teach the poor humility and submission. A very small portion of the £185,000,000, devoted to political purposes, secures the supremacy of the privileged classes in the legisla

ture.

The hereditary privileged classes have taken care to unite themselves with capitalists and men of high education and ability, so as to ensure their support. That support is naturally given to those who can pay for it. Barristers and press writers must be paid for their work, and the rich only can pay them. Thus the press and the law courts are devoted to the service of the rich. With the control of the land, of the legislature, of the law courts, and of the press in the hands of the privileged classes, what chance have working men? What wonder is it that

the privileged classes fasten themselves upon the public revenues, and so manipulate matters that in taxation they pay twenty shillings where the industrious classes pay twenty pounds, and in the matter of salaries they get twenty pounds where the real workers are paid twenty shillings.

Under these circumstances the robbery of the poor by the rich is not limited to the £185,000,000 per annum, which are actually taken out of the pockets of the poor; at least an equal amount to that which is taken out of their pockets is intercepted before it comes to them. But for unjust legislation, the working classes would not only retain the £185,000,000, which is now taken from them, but they would receive in wages at least £185,000,000 more than they are now paid.

THE TITHE WAR.

THE Welsh have always enjoyed the reputation of being a law-abiding people, hence it is not difficult to convince the majority of Englishmen that there is real cause for the recent outbreaks that have taken place in the Principality.

And cause there is indeed. The State Church in Wales is a crying scandal, a burden on the Welsh people too grievous to be borne. Wales has declared by an overwhelming majority against an institution alien to the political and to the religious sentiments of her people, but the House of Commons has refused to listen to the voice of her representatives, and the inevitable result has ensued. One of the most demoralising lessons aristocratic government has taught the people of the United Kingdom is that Parliament, while refusing to give ear to reason, is ever ready to yield to force.

It is scarcely possible for any except those who have visited the scenes of the recent tithe disputes to realise the feeling that has been aroused. It is not a few recalcitrants that have to be reckoned with, it is a people animated by a sense of burning wrong and a passionate hatred of tyranny and oppression. In the districts where the tithe owners have seized the cattle of farmers, the whole country-side has been ablaze. In the neighbourhoods where sales are being

expected, every preparation is made to repel the invader. On the tops of the hills flagstaffs are erected, while watchers are ready to hoist the signal which will bring hundreds of men together should their presence be required. Before being driven to the farms under distraint, strangers have had to give an assurance that they have no part or parcel with the enemy.

In one district of Denbigh the farmers whose cattle have been seized are all Dissenters, and yet, in spite of the terrible trials which Welsh agriculturists have had to go through, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to whom they were paying tithe refused a reduction of 10 per cent. The farmers then declined to pay anything, and meant to fight to the bitter end. After the scenes that had taken place in a neighbouring district, the Denbighshire police had declined to attend tithe sales unless accompanied by a military force, and here were honest industrious citizens, awaiting the arrival of men armed with bayonets to seize their property in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ! Small wonder then that they speak with bitter scorn of the right reverend father in God, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the bishops of the English Church, who form the majority of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. On the day on which the tithe

falls due, the representatives of this rich. alien corporation swoop down like wolves on the farmers of Wales, and then retire to their lair until the tithe once more is due. Throughout the country a Welsh leaflet is being circulated giving the salaries of the archbishops and bishops, with appropriate quotations from the utterances of the Founder of the Christian religion. These Scriptural allusions the people can appreciate. There is much of the old Puritan spirit in Wales, and unless the wrongs of the Welsh people are speedily attended to, the Government of the day will find themselves face to face with a force akin to that which drove a Stuart king from the throne, and established a Republic in England.

The military have been called in to aid in injustice in Wales as they have aided in injustice to Ireland. Such a spectacle is new to the Welsh people, but it will only tend to bind them closer together, and fire them with fresh determination.

Inseparably bound up with the Church question in Wales is the question of the land. Here again, unlike the majority of the English farmers, the Welsh agriculturists take up a Radical position. The Welsh farmers have again and again. demanded drastic legislation, but their cry has been unheeded. The secretary of the Anti-Tithe League states that the Welsh farmers are in a deplorable condition. Rent and tithe have been paid out of capital, and ruin is staring many in the face. And so the delay in dealing with Church and land is developing a feeling among many of the leaders of Welsh public opinion in favour of far stronger remedies than they would have dared to think of a few years back. The landlords have recognised this, and many of them are straining every nerve to bring the tithe disputes to a conclusion. Some have paid their tenants' tithes, intending to collect the money at the next rent day, others have adopted the plan of coercing the farmers who have taken part in the antitithe agitation. Notices to quit have been served on some, while whole districts have been threatened with like consequences unless they quietly submit to the fleecing to which Mother Church subjects the flock committed to her charge.

Among the many cases there is one of particular hardship. A well-known

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farmer, who is much respected by all his neighbours and who has given the greater part of his life's industry to the improvement of his farm, took an active part in the anti-tithe movement at its commencement. His landlord gave him notice to quit, although a better tenant existed. This action has caused the widest indignation, and the eviction, for eviction it is to be, will not be effected without a struggle. The scenes that have taken place at Bodyke are likely to be reenacted in Wales, and the Welsh are far more stubborn and determined when their blood is up than their Irish brethren. The Duke of Westminster is a familiar character as one who has amassed great wealth at the expense of the industry of London. In Wales he has appeared in a new light. His tenants have received intimation that at the next rent collection they must produce their tithe receipts. If this is not done the result may be easily guessed. Despotism of this kind will inevitably tend to swell the growing indignation that exists in Wales against an alien Church and an alien aristocracy. It will be strange indeed if the descendants of the men who again and again hurled back the foreign invader will tamely brook insults such as this.

It may be said that there is more room for feeling against the landlords of Wales than against the Welsh clergy. The parson does something for his money, the landlord nothing.

In Wales, however, it must be remembered the clergy conduct the services of a Church which the mass of the people hate. There is, and it is to be deeply regretted, the greatest antagonism in Wales between Churchmen and Dissenters, and for this the supporters of the tyranny of the State Church are responsible.

Lord Salisbury's Tithe Bill, if it becomes law, will transfer all the feeling which exists against the Church to the landlords and will tend to hasten the agrarian struggle which sooner or later must come.

The resistance at tithe sales in Wales is a sign of the times. The neglect of Welsh interests which has developed resistance to unjust laws will lead to an unmistakable demand that Welshmen shall manage their own affairs in the land which gave them birth.

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NOTES ON NEW ZEALAND.

"My young men travelled for hundreds of miles, but like Noah's dove could find no rest for the soles of their feet. Land speculators have covered the face of the earth, like the waters of the flood, with their claims, and thus prevented settlement. They hold every available acre in expectation of getting higher prices in future. It is strange that with only halfa-million of people in a country large enough to support thirty millions, land should be unattainable. Not only farmers but tradesman are driven away.

"We wanted a baker in our village, and a young man was willing and anxious to come, but no one would sell him halfan-acre of land for less than £150. This he said, was more than he could afford. He offered £100, but no one would sell half-an-acre for that sum, and therefore we are still without a baker. These greedy dogs in the manger who keep land from other people do not seem to do themselves much good. Many of them have been ruined, and those who succeed in making money by their blackmailing system are not looked upon with the same respect as is felt towards men who have made money in some useful busi

ness.

"In the meantime the colony is paralysed, and industry is at a standstill for want of land to work upon. Although not a tenth part of our cultivateable land is cultivated, yet men wanting homesteads find it impossible to get them."

This is the description of New Zealand given by one of the earliest settlers. It seems that capitalists now take the place of conquerors, and that mankind are as much under thraldom to those who have bought land, and thus secured the power to control their fellow men, as they ever were to those who obtained control by means of conquest. Both in old countries and in new the people are deprived of their rights and liberties by men who claim the resources of nature and exact tribute from the industry of hard-working people.

Recognising these evils and the necessity for opening up the land, the Stout Vogel ministry have introduced Land Bill to enable the Government to repurchase the land which they have

sold. The land is to be bought by valuation, and the land thus purchased is to be let in perpetuity in 100 acre lots to settlers, at a rental of 5 per cent. on the purchase money. In order to avail themselves of the Act, settlers must form themselves into associations, with rules to be approved by the governor. No owner of land who has less than 1,000 acres is to be called upon to sell. The amount to be advanced for the land purchase is not to exceed £50,000 per annum.

If this Act should become law, the Government will have to repurchase land at enormous advances on its original price. The present price of land in New Zealand is purely fictitious, and it is not probable that, in the ordinary course of events, it can be maintained; but, by the operation of this Act, speculators will be able to keep up the price.

It is a monstrous injustice, which will not be much longer continued, to allow capitalists to appropriate the resources of nature and thus obtain undue control over their fellow men, but this injustice is doubled when governments take money from the people and in buying land hand. over the people's money to reward these land sharks for their action in the past, and provide them with means for similar action in the future.

By the proposed methods, all the risk of loss would be thrown on the Government, and all the opportunities of profit go to the purchaser. In cases where the present high price is not in future maintained, the land will be thrown back on the Government; in those cases where the value increases, all the profit will go. to the private owners. It seems clear that the proposal is made solely in the interests of land owners, and not for the benefit of the people.

If the object of the Government had been to make land more available for settlers, this purpose could be obtained. by the just and righteous process of taxing land values. If a tax of so much per cent. were placed on the increased value of land beyond the price at which it was sold by the Government, the present owners would soon have to sell, settlers would find abundant opportunities for investment, and the public revenue would

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