be paid by those who had benefited by the development of the colony without having contributed by their intelligence or industry to that development.

Of course, in estimating land values for taxation, all improvements actually on the land would be exempted.

The object of taxation should be to obtain for the Government that increase of value which is the result of Government expenditure and the development of the community. The founding of townships, the making of roads, the erection of public offices, and the general industry of the community, all impart a value to land quite independent of the action of the owner. It is this value which should

be the subject of taxation.

As far as possible the results of personal industry should remain with those who exercise it. As matters stand, exactly the reverse is the case. If a settler who has saved money arrives in New Zealand he is first robbed by a private owner of land, who demands, perhaps, five times as much as the Government received for the land which the settler requires, and the settler is then subjected to taxes on all the articles he consumes, and the building which he erects.

Instead of making it easy to do right and difficult to do wrong, we oppose obstacles to the legitimate efforts of industrious settlers, upon whom the advancement and prosperity of the colony depends, and afford every opportunity to land sharks and speculators to levy blackmail from the industry of the community. Upon this industry they lay burdens grievous to be borne, which they themselves touch not even with one of their fingers.

The appropriation of public money to the purchase of land will enable these men to maintain their exorbitant demands by means of the people's capital provided by the Government. The reverse of this process should be adopted, and no one be allowed to hold land unless he occupies it, and pays to the Government the annual value of the privilege which, as occupier, he enjoys.

I ADMIT frankly that when we entered Parlia ment we knew less about the Irish question than we ought to have known, and that even after knowledge had been forced upon us, we were more deferential to our leaders than was good either for us or for them."-"How We Became Home Rulers," by James Bryce, M.P.

ANTI-RENTERS.

MR. GIDEON J. TUCKER gives an interesting account in the New York Standard of the "Anti-Renters" in the State of New York. These Anti-Renters maintained a vigorous opposition to the few landlords who survived the revolution of 1776-83. The Tory landlords who had supported royalty were deprived of their estates, and thus the greater part of the land was freed from these vermin, landlords, who are a greater curse to any community than locusts. But two large properties were allowed to remain under the blighting influence of landlordism, because their owners had been faithful to the cause of the successful rebellion. The event showed that landlordism is the same evil to the community whether land owners are republicans or royalists, but it is more repugnant to republícan institutions, and therefore not so likely to survive.

Mr. Tucker very justly says that "the revolution had put new ideas into the heads of the tenantry. The bold phrases and eloquent arraignments of Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence had been read, in farmhouse and cottage, throughout the land, and social discontent felt itself invited to appear."

The first demand of the tenants was that the landowners should sell the interest which they claimed in the land, but this the landlords were not disposed to do.

The laws were of course with the landlords, and under the provisions of the United States Constitution, each State is prohibited from framing laws impairing the obligation of contracts; therefore, although the State returned anti-rent assemblymen they were powerless to protect the tenants.

The people contended that manorial leases were against public policy, and inconsistent with popular government. But a "crowd of eminent and talented lawyers" argued as usual on the side of property, and the lawyers prevailed.

The only method of deliverance was found to be in "Plans of Campaign." When the tenants discovered that all the power of law and government were engaged in fixing upon their necks an unjust burden, which no people have ever been able to bear, "the manorial counties burst into a blaze, and a deputy sheriff engaged in distraint was shot dead in

Columbia county by a tenant of the Livingston manor. The tenant was placed on his trial and the jury disagreed, on a second trial he was convicted, but sent to the state prison instead of being hung. Another deputy sheriff was killed and two men were convicted of murder, but their death sentences were commuted, and they were sent to the state prison."

Various legislative efforts were made, on the one hand to repress disorder and on the other to modify the arrangements between landlords and tenants. Governor Wright, who favoured landlordism, was not re-elected, but the merchants and bankers of New York, who, like our own merchants and bankers, always sympathise with property and rarely regard justice, subscribed 20,000 dollars for a magnificent service of plate, as a token of sympathy with his efforts "against agrarianism and anarchy," but the exgovernor died of an apoplectic attack before the plate could be presented. The new governor pardoned the men who had shot the sheriff, and this "in a great degree subdued the public excitement." But a fierce contest continued with varying results. Then we are told, "Many tenants went to the West. Others remained on the old farms, but by no means did they implicitly pay rent. The landlords found themselves more and more seriously crippled year after year, and were finally compelled to come to terms with the lessees. The only way was to sell to them, and they bought their farms very cheaply, for nobody bid against them."

May this history be repeated in many future Anti-Rent agitations.

A WRITER in the Halfpenny Weekly has an exceedingly eloquent and able article on partisanship in politics. He affirms that prejudiced men or partisans have done good work and "the independent politicians have made shipwreck of their public lives." He cites as evidences to his theory, Cobden and Shaftesbury. No finer men ever stood out so strong and long against party in defence of their own ideas. They did not go with party, they made party yield to them. The partisans who shouted in support of all the errors of the Government of Ireland Bill as introduced last year, destroyed their party by the partisanship. They might have saved themselves and their friends by a little honest and independent criticism.

POLITICIANS AND CANDIDATES. THE president of the Detroit Lime Kiln Club, in his opening address to the members, remarked :

an

Up my way lives a man whom I have known for a dozen years as honest, upright, hard-working citizen, kind to his wife and children; there has been no time in the last six or seven years that I wouldn't have been glad to lend him anything or do him a favour. The other day he was put up as a candidate. Had he been on my "ticket" it would have been all right. But he But he was on the opposition. As a consequence I have been going around amongst my friends warning them against him and telling them that I wouldn't lend him my axe or shovel to save his neck, and that I am suspicious that he beats his wife and starves his

children. In this I am like the general run of politicians. Candidates on my ticket are all right, those on the opposition are all wrong. Seriously speaking, what

fools we make of ourselves in politics. We work alongside of a man for years, neighbour with his family, admit his worth, stand ready to fight for him if necessary; but all of a sudden it comes out that he is put up as a candidate. Put up, probably, for the very merits we have discovered and praised. But differing slightly on some party political point settles us.

We are ready to abuse him high and low to defeat him. A man may differ with us on poetry, religion, and all else but politics. The very minute he can't go our "party ticket his goose is cooked. We say, when the campaign opens, let both parties bring out their best men. What is wanted is honesty and respectability. Good men are hunted out and prevailed upon to come to the point, and then one party squares off to throw mud and the other party squares off to beslime. In this party strife men stand ready to punch the heads of their best friends in case they can't agree with them on some party point."

The president concluded by saying to the members of the club that the bigotry of party politics is a cesspool and is the disgrace of the present generation, and that a man must be little less than a fool who reasons that his way of thinking must guide all his friends.

THE FACTORY ACT IN SCOTLAND.

SO

THE Factory Act appears to be very largely a dead letter in Scotland, so far as the employment of women and children is concerned. A batch of cases in which employers were charged with the violation of the Act, was recently brought before Sheriff Balfour in Glasgow, whose decisions are well calculated to strengthen the belief that the protection from cupidity, avarice, and oppression given to the workers by these Acts is purely illusory, so long as they are administered in the spirit which now prevails. In every one of the cases tried by Sheriff Balfour, the penalty imposed was small, and so out of proportion to the offence, that it is evident that the violation of the Act must have resulted in pecuniary benefit to the law-breakers. Hugh M Millan, draper, Trongate, admitted having deprived five women of their weekly half-holiday and having kept two others at work till eleven o'clock at night, thus rendering himself liable to a fine of £25. The penalty imposed was one of £2 5s., including costs. Stewart M'Kee and Co., lithographers, Mitchell-street, kept two girls under age in their works from December to June, one of the children having only passed the third standard. The risk run by employing child labour to tend lithographic machines is enormous, and it is hardly a matter of surprise that the foot of one of these mites was caught in the pulley of the machine under her care and torn off at the ankle. This accident was not reported to Her Majesty's Inspector of Factories, as it ought to have been, and by their double disregard of the statutes, Messrs. M'Kee and Co. rendered themselves liable to a fine of £11, with costs in both cases. The full penalty would certainly have been a light sentence for two such offences, yet the law-breakers escaped with a fine of £2 145., including costs. What proportion did this bear to the "surplus value" which these two children had created for their employers during the six months in which they violated the law with impunity? Miss Margaret Dobson, milliner, 23 Bridge-street, pleaded guilty not only to depriving three of her "hands" of their weekly half-holiday, but to keeping them at work till half-past ten on a Saturday night. The penalty to which she was

liable was £15, but the sheriff thought a fine of 1 5s. 1od., including costs, sufficient to mark his displeasure at her conduct. Jacob Samuels, a Jew tailor, admitted keeping eight women at work from six in the morning til halfpast nine at night, a crime against the common laws of health and humanity so flagrant as to merit the full penalty of £40, yet he was allowed to escape with a fine of 1 18s. 1od., including costs. Such decisions, while within the letter of the law, are a distinct violation of its spirit, which evidently intended the maximum penalty to be imposed in such flagrant cases, and justice is thus degraded, labour wronged, and heartless and cruel slave drivers are encouraged to proceed in their evil courses.

SAFETY VALVES.

Two years ago a really venerable Irish bishop lamented to me the great danger to religion that he saw in the immediate future. The tendencies of the times, he said, were irresistibly democratic, and the masses everywhere were becoming bitterly discontented with a system which made them mere rack-rented tenants and wage slaves upon an earth to which both right reason and revealed religion taught that they were born to equally use and enjoy. The greatest of all revolutions was already in its initiatory stages, and laws and customs and standing armies could not long keep it down. But he saw that the authorities of the church at Rome were determined to exert all their power to put it down. What he feared was that what had already happened in Italy and France, where patriotic and freedom loving men have been driven out of the church, would happen among Catholics of the Irish blood, and that in gaining liberty they would lose their religion.

If

It is just such men as Dr. McGlynn who are going to avert this danger. The standard which they are lifting is the standard of the hope and faith in which Christianity conquered the world. forty thousand dollar archbishops and mancarried popes array themselves against it, so much the quicker will the soul of the Catholic church cast off the incubus of the aristocratic and corrupt machine.-Henry George.

THE JUBILEE RECORD IN IRELAND. MR. MULHALL has written a book for the Jubilee on "Fifty Years of National Progress," which is often quoted to show how splendidly we are getting on. Under

the heading of Ireland, the author says :

"The present reign has been the most disastrous since that of Elizabeth, as the following statistics show:-died of famine, 1,225,000; persons evicted, 3,668,000; number of emigrants, 4,186,000. Evictions were more numerous immediately after the famine, the landlords availing themselves of the period of greatest calamity to enforce their ' rights.' Official returns give the number of families, and these averaging seven persons, we ascertain the actual number of persons evicted :

Years. 1849-51 1852-60 1861-70 1871-86

Families.

263,000 110,000 47,000 104,000

Total.... 524,000

....

Persons. 1,841,000

770,000 329,000 728,000

3,668,000

The number of persons evicted is equal to 75 per cent. of the actual population. No country, either in Europe or elsewhere, has suffered such wholesale extermination."

PRACTICAL RADICALISM.

THE Hull Radical Club have made a strong protest against the expenditure by the Corporation of thirty pounds for the purchase of a casket in which to present an address to the Queen.

In moving a resolution on the subject, Mr. Billary made some pertinent observations. He said :

"The progress of the nation had been owing to the indefatigable, hard-headiness, skill, and industry of the people, to the extension of the franchise, and to the spread of education. It would not be honest to their manhood if they stood tamely by and saw funds wasted in trumpery, twaddley show, whilst they had thousands in Hull who scarcely earned sufficient to get food to keep body and soul together. It was intended to spend £30 in purchasing a casket to contain an address to be presented to Her Majesty. He moved, That this meeting emphatically protests against Corporate funds being wasted to the tune of £30 in the purchase of a casket in which to present the Corporate address to Her Majesty, and also against the Corporation bearing the costs of those deputed to present the address, and who, in our name, are committing the people of Hull to a profession of such fulsome flattery and adulation to a mere woman, and we consider that the gentlemen who aspire to the honour should pay their own expenses, and if they do not deem it worth the money, let them decline the honour.' (Applause)." The resolution was unanimously carried.

A GERMAN guest, who was called upon to address an audience, did not sufficiently distinguish between the accepted uses of the words 'bare" and "barren," and said "It gives me great pleasure to address these venerable and barren heads."

THE PEOPLE'S JUBILEE.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE LAND RESTORATION LEAGUE TO THE JUBILee Celebration. A STRANGE Hebrew word has been for many months past on the lips of the English people. We have all been talking of the JUBILEE. What is a "Jubilee?" The Hebrew books which we call the Old Testament will tell us. The Bible Jubilee was not a QUEEN'S JUBILEE, for the Hebrews were warned by their great religious and political teachers against the evils of monarchy. (1 Sam. viii. 10.) It was not celebrated by the erection of an Imperial Institute, or of a Church House, or by the passing of a Coercion Bill. But it was the PEOPLE'S JUBILEE; and it was kept by a great act of Land Restoration.

The teaching of the Bible about the Land condemns Landlordism. There is only one land-lord-the GOD who created the land, and for any one of God's creatures to call himself a landlord is an act of blasphemy against God, and of robbery against man. "In the beginning, GOD created the heaven and the earth." "The earth is the LORD'S" and not the "landlords'." "The earth hath He given to the children of men" not to a few individuals, or a few thousand privileged families, but to the whole human race. "The land shall not be sold for ever (i.e., in perpetuity' or 'in freehold'), for the land is Mine," saith the LORD, "for ye are strangers and sojourners with Me." (Levit. xxv. 23.)

Such were the principles upon which the Mosaic Land Laws, inspired by GOD himself were based. The land itself cannot be the absolute property of any individual; it belongs to GOD alone. The use of the and belongs in equal right to all GOD'S children--to the whole

human race, and to every generation of it. "So that no number of individuals can justly grant away the equal rights of other individuals to land, and no generation can grant away the rights of future generations."

The Hebrews in Canaan carried out these principles in their own national life. As they all had equal rights to the land, they made an equal division of the common heritage. (Numb. xxvi. 52.) In fact, they NATIONALISED THE LAND; that is, they gave effect in their law to the principle that the land was the COMMON POSSESSION OF THE WHOLE BODY OF THE PEOPLE. And as they were a nation of farmers and shepherds, all wanting to work directly on the land, the best way of nationalising the land was to divide it equally among the people; though this would be by no means the best way, or a good way at all, in a commercial and manufacturing country like ours. They classed the man who tried to rob another of his equal right to the land among the vilest of criminals. (Deut. xxvii. 14-26.) "Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour's landmark. And all the people shall say Amen."

Thus, when the Hebrews began their national life in Canaan, they all "started fair." Every man had direct and free access to the soil upon which and from which he must live, and no landlord could compel him to pay rent for the right to live and work. How different would life be in England, which calls itself Christian, if every one of us had a "fair chance" of getting an honest living by his own industry!

or

But this same "fair chance" was equally the right of each new generation. And so every fifty years came the YEAR OF JUBILEE, to preserve and restore this just system of land nationalisation. If a man had lost his share in the national heritage-by carelessness, drunkenness, or idleness, or misfortune-the law did not allow that his children should be condemned to live all their lives as outcasts and paupers. At the next year of Jubilee they were restored to their rights, "all contracts of sale to the contrary notwithstanding." (Levit. xxv.)

When a man lost his hold upon the land, he sank into the condition of a WAGE-SLAVE; that is, he was obliged to go and work as a "hired servant" upon land belonging to someone else. (Levit. xxv. 39-41.) But the year of Jubilee set the wage-slave free, by restoring to him his equal right to the use of the land. So, too, if we wish to set free the wage-slaves of our great cities from their grinding toil, we must work for the RESTORATION OF THE LAND TO THE PEOPLE.

This is why the year of Jubilee was called a year of liberty. "Ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof; it shall be a Jubilee unto you." True liberty does not exist where the land is the monopoly of the few; the man who owns the land, practically owns the men who live upon the land. The wage-slaves in our English

towns are often worse fed, worse clothed, worse housed, and harder worked than were the chattel-slaves in the cotton fields of the Southern States. Landlordism is disguised slavery, and is the more dangerous because of its disguise. Perhaps this is why Moses, the Hebrew legislator, permitted slavery under certain severe restrictions, but WOULD NOT PERMIT LANDLORDISM UNDER ANY CONDI

TIONS WHATEVER.

Let those, therefore, who wish to bring about a real Jubilee-a Jubilee of the People— join the English Land Restoration League, which is working for the ABOLITION OF LANDLORDISM.

Let us say through our Members in Parliament what the Hebrew statesman Nehemiah said to the landlords of his day :-

"RESTORE, I pray you, to them, EVEN THIS DAY, their lands, their vineyards, their olive-yards, and their houses, also the hundredth part of the money, and of the corn, the wine, and the oil, that ye exact of them."

Will English landlords answer as honestly as did the Hebrew landlords before them?

"Then said they, we will RESTORE them, and WILL REQUIRE NOTHING OF THEM; So will we do as thou sayest." (Neh. v. 11-12.)

This is exactly the programme of the English
Land Restoration League.
LAND RESTORATION!

NO COMPENSATION!
F. VERINDER.

[This manifesto can be obtained at 6d. per 100 from the Secretary of the English Land Restoration League, 8 Duke-street, Adelphi, W.C.]

If the tenant built the house, inclosed, drained the land, and made all the improvements which converted the five or six acre patch of bog or moorland, not originally worth sixpence an acre, into something worth £3 or 4 a year, the landlord's contribution to the value of the holding is sixpence, that of the tenant £2 19s. 6d., is it so clear that the landlord has a right to say, "If you don't pay £3 a year you shall be turned out on the roadside in a winter day with your wife and children, and a crowbar brigade shall pull down the walls of the cottage you built and set fire to the thatch." The law says "Yes," conscience and common sense say No." Which shall prevail? That is the dilemma of the Irish land question? Until quite recently English law emphatically affirmed that it was right. But English law, which for centuries has been made by Parliaments of landlords and lawyers in league with them, has pronounced many things to be right which the more sensitive conscience and improved intelligence of modern times has pronounced to be wrong, for instance property in negro slaves, and the confiscation of tenants' improvements has come to be considered morally wrong, and its injustice has been recognised by the general current of modern legislation, especially by the Irish Land Act."The Plan of Campaign," by S. Laing.