lights and policemen; and through there being so many persons in London you can get many a thing brought to you for sixpence which it would cost hundreds of pounds to have brought to you in the middle of Africa or Arabia. The shops get better custom and customers more convenient shopping. Now, what happens in consequence? Why, men who own the land upon which London houses are built demand increased rents for the land, and get them, and thus they get the good of these improvements for which other men have toiled. They come again and again for increased tribute, and so far as our being made poorer is concerned we might as well be paying tribute to a brigand or a foreign ruler.

Now, this system of things must put our workers back a long way. It deprives them of money, of strength, of health, of encouragement. It leaves a man less money to employ other men with, and obliges him to work harder to get what he needs; and thus we find some are overworked and some are unemployed and starving.

Now I don't mean to say that rents should not be paid, but I do think that they should go to the benefit of those who make the value. How this could be done I will write about byand-bye. Perhaps you will think of some way yourselves.

Your affectionate

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DEMOCRAT.

THE ANTI-TITHE AGITATION.-At a largelyattended meeting of tenant farmers at Llantrissant it was decided to ask the tithe-owners for an abatement of 20 per cent in the tithe for the current year. An appeal has been made to the Rector of Biddenden to remit 25 per cent. of the whole tithes for the past year on account of agricultural depression. At Chelmsford the Essex Chamber of Agriculture discussed the tithe question. Mr. C. W. Gray, M.P., occupied the chair. The discussion was opened by Mr. J. S. Gardiner, who moved a resolution in favour of a re-adjustment of tithes and providing for their gradual abolition. During a warm debate two speakers strongly advised the Essex farmers to pull together and bring about a settlement of the question by refusing to pay tithes, as the Welsh farmers were doing. The discussion was adjourned.

CIRCUS PROPRIETOR.-I understand you wish to make your debut as clown in my circus. You know, of course that for such a position an immense amount of pliability is necessary. What has been your rôle hitherto?

Debutant.-Well, sir, several. I have been purveyor of telegraphic news to the Press-sub-editor of a well-known Conservative journal, a———— Circus Proprietor.-That is sufficient. You are engaged.

LIGHT AND SHADE.

We find in Scripture that the heaviest denunciations are against those sins which are most injurious We are fully inand destructive to mankind. formed, for instance, of the Lord's abhorrence of "the deceitful man -a sin above all others destructive to corporate interests. Where there is no integrity there can be no confidence, and where there is no confidence there can be no unanimity, and the oppressor prevails.

It is well to remind every new generation of the old motto, "In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity." -St. Augustine.

Poverty perpetuates itself. makes many martyrs.

The cheap mart

spite of the social and legal status which the Chief's wives possess their fate is to be pitied. Occasionally one of these women may be given as a present to some favourite, but this is a piece of good fortune which falls to the lot of few. As a rule they hang about their native towns leading a weary, listless life, until death or some accident removes them from the scene.-"Two Years in Fiji," by LITTON FORBES, M.D. Despots in civilised and savage countries appear to be very much alike. They will continue to act in defiance of justice until the "source of all power is really with the people." Savages have the advantage in limiting their despotism to one chief; here we extend it to ten thousand landlords, each of whom acts in his own locality more or less after the manner of the savage chief.

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IRISH RENTS.

The visit of Mr. Stead to Ireland has resulted in a series of articles on the question "Can Irish Rents be Paid?" After an exhaustive review of the whole subject, Mr. Stead comes to the conclusion that the tenants in Ireland have good ground for demanding an abatement of 20 per cent. on the judicial rents.

The necessity for reduction is so clear that there is not a man in the service of the Government who will not be "heartily glad if the tenants, by steady, fearless, passive resistance, can compel the bad landlords to do what the good landlords have done already." How "bad" landlords can be will be seen from the following paragraph:

"The Dillon tenants are among the best rentpaying tenants in Ireland, and even paid up all the arrears that accrued during the famine years of 1846-7. There are several thousand tenants in the distressed districts of Westport, Achill, and Belmullet who owe it to Mr. Tuke and his seed potatoes that they are alive at this moment. The money of the British taxpayer and of the British philanthropist kept these miserable wretches from perishing from sheer starvation, and now it is said the Irish landlord demands relentlessly his stipulated rent. Surely this is too much. If we have to keep his tenants alive in order that they may go on producing rent with their customary punctuality in the future, he might at least forbear exacting his rent-charge for the months during which but for our money the rent-paying automatons would have fallen to rise no more. This is a subject on which Mr. John Dillon and the National League entertain strong opinions, which may yet become operative."

Mr. Stead's articles are a complete justification of the action taken by Mr. Parnell and the Irish

members.

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THE Kent farmers are joining in the agitation against the payment of the ordinary tithe. At a meeting in the Weald of Kent, attended by about fifty tenant farmers, it was unanimously resolved to demand a remission of 25 per cent. of the whole of the tithes for this year, on account of the present unprecedented depression and the low prices of agricultural produce.

CORRESPONDENCE.

RESUMPTION AND LANDLORDISM.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE DEMOCRAT.

SIR,-In passing the well-known Statute of Limitations the landlord Parliament exercised its right of resumption by ousting the legitimate heir for negligence and confirming the estate to the stranger in possession. Take note that Parliament would not act so by personalities.

Again, the expedient resorted to of reducing Irish rents is, practically, partial resumption, making total resumption only a question of degree.

Resumption is constitutional, but popular ignorance of the law is landlordism's stronghold.

In my peregrinations I meet many who require homely instruction in regard to landlordism; for the benefit of such I will repeat some notions familiar to your older readers.

Our undoubted right to exist confers a clear right to the soil, therefore to pay rent for the soil to a fellow mortal is like compounding a felony. It is paying him rent for our lives, and submitting to be his abject slaves.

Paying land rent to the State is paying for protection of our lives, property, and good order. Since we must pay taxes for these benefits, paying rent to a private individual means paying taxes twice over."

No generation has the right to barter away the soil on which generations unborn must exist. Every infant makes out his title to the soil with the first breath he draws, notwithstanding that fraud or force may have dispossessed him. It is optional with the living generation to confirm the acts of the past.

As man and land are inseparable, private property in one is private property in both. If property in man is immoral, so is private property patible with the laws of England. The people own in land, and, according to the jurists, it is incomthe soil, landlordism has it only in tenure; in other words, landholders are the people's tenants removeable by the popular will.

According to another legal dictum landlordism has only an estate in the soil. But so has every citizen. The ultimate object of the former estate is rent; of the latter, the preservation of life. The objects are antagonistic. One is artificial and mutable; the other, natural and immutable. What is called "dual ownership" in Ireland is simply dual tenure.

Since landlordism increases the cost of living, it creates poverty. It increases the cost of production, and cripples the consumer, consequently it depresses trade, and, to avert general ruin, ought

to be abolished.

The dead weight of landlordism reduces wages manifestly.

It increased the first cost of our railways by extorting £50,000,000, for which the public suffers. It exacts royalties for the minerals which the Creator has stored up for us, and by increasing expenses it enables the foreigner to drive our manufactures out of the market.

Let religionists reflect that "the earth is the Lord's," given by Him to all alike, with a promise of longevity to those who exercise filial piety. If "cursed be he that removeth his neighbour's landmark," then landlordism is accursed.

Our highways are beset with highwaymen who daily demand our money or our lives, for in this climate a roof is essential to our existence, but we cannot construct a dwelling unless we consent to pay the highwayman annually more than the ground is worth, and, after a fixed interval, surrender our dwelling to him and depart. When shall we be wise enough to gibbet the highwayman?

But we are informed that we have freedom of contract. So had the little fish when asked if he would be boiled or baked. "Thanks," said the fish, "I should prefer neither." "Oh, that's not the question," said the cook. True, if you do not like this side of the street, you may build and be fleeced on the other.

But some say we might go more a-field. Quite so; there was another alternative for the little fish; he could be smoked or dried, but he could not escape cooking.

Temperate language takes no hold on ordinary minds which require to be roused by something terse and epigrammatic. Well, the whole of leasehold building is robbery, and Mr. Gladstone said that "eviction is sentence of death." Therefore, in short, Landlordism legalises robbery and murder, a sentence expressive enough for plain people to ponder over till they grasp its truth.

Your columns published the story of a barton worth £80 a-year at first, and returning £90,000 ayear by means of the houses built on it by two or three generations of workmen. Would it be wrong to say that, as each house fell to the ground lord, a legal robbery was perpetrated, and that the many who were ruined by the system, and died brokenhearted, were legally murdered?

An old political writer, more than a century ago, said: ""Tis unreasonable that vast sums of money should be intercepted from the public, and that we should waste our blood and treasure only to enrich a few private persons."

I knew a Volunteer who saw through the hospitality when his corps was invited to a grand entertainment in a private park. "Why,' he asked himself," should he risk his life to defend others' acres, when he had not a foot of land of his own?" He solved the question by quitting the corps. JOHN WHEELWRIGHT.

On pp. 94-5 Mr. Froude says: "A landed gentry is springing up in Victoria, with all its established characteristics. Sir, a baronet with £160,000 a year and an estate as large as Dorsetshire, called afterwards at Government House-a distinguished, high-bred-looking man, who invited us to a cruise in his yacht, and kindly pressed me to pay him a visit at his country house, see his picture gallery, &c. There is room in Australia for all orders and degrees of men. I travelled afterwards through Sir 's property. His tenants' spoke favourably of him, and had no wish to change their occupancy into ownership. Mr. George and socialistic despotism will find no audience in these colonies. Perhaps before long they will lose their audience at home." By the time the reader gets to pp. 227-8, Mr. Froude has turned his attention from Australia to New Zealand, and he describes a state of matters such as land reformers are fighting against here at home. He says. "I could not but think what a country New Zealand might become, what a population it might bear, what a splendid race of Southern Englishmen might be reared in this still desert treasure-house of agricultural wealth, if it were wisely ruled." Then comes a description of defective government, and Mr. Froude proceeds: "The result [of the government], so far as a stranger can see, is the soil left waste and waiting for the ploughman's hand, an enormous debt still fast accumulating, and rich and poor-gentlemen, peasants, mechanics-gathering, like flocks of gulls above the carrion, in the big towns." To put an end to this situation, Mr. Froude, if he were a New Zealander, "should desire an elective president like the President of the United States, uncontrolled, except in taxation, by a popular chamber. He would put an end, for one thing, to the borrowing process, and the land would be within the reach of poor men who have no capital except their labour. It was disgusting to see, on one side, a beautiful country opening its arms to occupation, holding out in its lap every blessing which country life can offer; and, on the other, cities like Auckland, crammed like an overflowing bee-hive, the bees neglecting the natural flowers, and feeding on borrowed sugar." What does Mr. Froude mean by saying that "Mr. George and socialistic despotism will find no audience in these colonies," and then, as a cure for their diseased economic condition, recommend the very prescription of "Mr. George and socialistic despotism?' I am, &c., A. CROSSWATER.

Dundee, 8th November, 1886.

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HOW THE WOMEN STOPPED THE TITHE ON OYSTERS NEAR SWANSEA TO THE EDITOR OF THE DEMOCRAT. SIR,-About the year 1850 a Mr. Baraton took up his residence at Clyn Park, near Swansea, and purchased the tithe rents of Oystermouth parish.

He at once set up a claim to tithe the oysters caught by the fishermen. After ten years of bickering with the stubborn parishioners he hit upon the following expedient to tithe their oysters. One day, when the men were all away dredging in