GRADUAL RESUMPTION OF PUBLIC LANDS BY THE STATE.
Necessity of Agrarian Reform--Crown Lands, Church Lands, and
Corporation Lands to be immediately resumed, and their Rent
applied to the relief of Taxation--The Rich have no right to
meddle with them--Needed, by the exploited Millions, as a Fulcrum
to raise them from the Earth.
The first three resolutions of the National Reform League affirm
(as already observed) only provisional or temporary measures to
redress temporary grievances. They apply to pauperism, public and
private indebtedness, and to onerous and unequal taxation, which,
though great and oppressive evils, are nevertheless but natural and
inevitable consequences of the gigantic social wrongs they emanate
from, and which are grappled with in the four last resolutions. But
for radically bad agrarian and commercial laws, there would be no
pauperism, no overwhelming public and private debt, no oppressive
and unequal taxation. It is these laws that are at the bottom of all
the mischief; it is these laws that have produced the pauperism, the
indebtedness, the taxation, and that would produce them again were
they extinguished this hour. Therefore, to have a permanent cure of
our social evils we must radically reform our agrarian and commercial
systems. Resolutions 4, 5, 6, and 7 show how this may be done. But,
meanwhile, the evil consequences of our agrarian and commercial systems
cannot brook delay: they must be dealt with provisionally and summarily
before the permanent remedy can be applied. Paupers cannot be left to
starve, debtors to be overwhelmed with usury and law expenses, and
struggling millions to be ground down with oppressive rates and taxes,
while our agrarian and commercial systems are being reformed by the
slow operation of the measures suggested in Resolutions 4, 5, 6, and
7. These several classes must have speedy relief; else relief will
come too late. The effect of Peel’s monetary and free-trade measures
in aggravating the burdens of debts and taxes while it diminishes the
means of meeting them, and in multiplying paupers while it impoverishes
ratepayers, renders it absolutely necessary to deal speedily and
summarily with the evils of pauperism, indebtedness, and taxation.
Hence the three first resolutions of the League. By perusing them
attentively, the reader will find that they, at one and the same time,
go to mitigate the evils of pauperism, indebtedness, and taxation by
just and efficient provisional measures, and to prepare the way for
those larger and permanent measures by which Resolutions 4, 5, 6, and 7
seek to extirpate social evil altogether.
In the preceding chapter we have shown cause for Resolution No. 1; we
now proceed to show cause for Resolution No. 2, which is as follows:--
“In order to lighten the pressure of rates, and, at the same time,
gradually to diminish, and finally to absorb, the growing mass of
pauperism and surplus population, it is the duty of the Government to
appropriate its present surplus revenue, and the proceeds of national
or public property, to the purchasing of lands, and the location
thereon of the unemployed poor. The rents accruing from these lands to
be applied to further purchases of land, till all who desired to occupy
land, either as individual holders or industrial communities, might be
enabled to do so. A general law, empowering parishes to raise loans
upon the security of their rates, would greatly facilitate and expedite
the operation of Government towards this desirable end.”
If it be but an act of justice to paupers and ratepayers that the
rates should be levied and dispensed as Resolution No. 1 suggests;
it is no less an act of justice to both that the rates should be
expended in the most beneficial manner for all parties, and finally
dispensed with altogether when no longer necessary. Resolution No. 2
has this end in view. It asks the government and ratepayers to use
the _public_ money in the most advantageous way for the _public_. It
does not ask them to take money from one class to give to another,
nor to relieve the pauperism _that is_ at the risk of what may be
elsewhere. All surplus revenue in the hands of government is clearly
public property: it is raised from the whole body of the public. The
proceeds of crown lands, corporation lands, church lands, and various
other descriptions of public property are also clearly amenable to
public uses, without infringing the rights of private property or
vested interests. The seven or eight millions of rates raised annually
for the relief of the poor are also _public_ property,--only with this
important distinction, that being a legal substitute for the share
which the poor formerly enjoyed of the tithes and other ecclesiastical
revenues, their destination for the poor has _equity_ as well as _law_
for its sanction. The celebrated William Cobbett estimated that, if
everything that was titheable formerly were titheable now (that is,
if lay-impropriators had not converted to their own use the “great
tithes,” and if they had not also taken possession of the abbey-lands
at the time of the Reformation), the poor’s share of the tithes, &c.,
would be now upwards of ten millions sterling per annum. For this,
which was their ancient patrimony, the present poor’s rate is but a
substitute. Surely, then, it is not asking too much for the poor to ask
that the eight millions arising from this rate should be appropriated
to the best advantage for them.
And how could it be better appropriated than by purchasing land,
whereon to employ them productively, and locate them in comfortable
habitations? At present their lives are a burden to themselves and
others. Upon the land they would enjoy independence and happiness--the
natural result of their own industry and thrift. After the first
year or two they would be able to subsist themselves in comfort. The
rents paid by them would, in the first instance, go to liquidate the
loans contracted on the credit of the rates; and, these discharged,
they would be afterwards available for the purchase of other lands
as they came into the market. Thus paupers and ratepayers would be
both benefited,--the former made independent, the latter relieved
permanently from a grievous and growing burden on their respective
parishes. Then, as to the surplus revenue and the proceeds of public
property, to what better use could the public possibly apply them
than to the location of the industrious poor on the land? Talk of
repealing the duty on bricks! talk of a sinking fund to reduce the
National Debt!--no sensible man has any faith in these schemes. Every
such man knows that no reduction of taxes can possibly benefit those
who cannot command employment, or an adequate remuneration for it when
they have it. Every such man knows, too, that as long as landlords
and capitalists can create what “surplus population” they like, by
keeping the people from cultivating land _on their own account_, there
can be no security either for regular employment or adequate wages.
Farmers and manufacturers will employ only those they want--those they
can make a profit by. The rest will be left to the union bastile or
to starvation. But let the surplus revenue and the proceeds of public
property be applied in the way we speak of, and, from that moment,
the surplus population diminishes with every fresh location on the
land; the food of the country is increased in amount and cheapened
in price; employment and wages are augmented for the unlocated; and
a new and never-failing home market is created for the benefit of
all, through the conversion of unemployed paupers (half-starved upon
workhouse diet) into substantial husbandmen able to give agricultural
produce in exchange for manufactures. There is a vast deal of public
property in this country, a portion, at least, of whose proceeds a
universal-suffrage parliament would be sure to employ in this way.
There are the crown lands; there is still a good deal of unenclosed
common (though not less than 6,000,000 acres have been filched from
the people during the reigns of the 2nd and 3rd Georges); there are
the lands belonging to the church, the universities and the colleges;
there are the tithes, too; there is a deal of property in the hands of
corporate bodies, and attached to various educational and eleemosynary
establishments, and most of these endowments have been altogether
perverted from their original destinations.
A universal-suffrage parliament would secure to the poor their full
share of benefit accruing from the revenues of all this property. What
belongs to the whole public ought to be applied for the advantage of
the whole public; and it is only a majority of the whole public that
is competent to decide how corporate bodies elected upon property
qualifications have a right to dispose of property which equitably
belongs to the non-electors as much as to the burgesses having votes.
The same remark applies to schools, charities, and other endowments,
the original founders of which intended them principally for the
benefit of the poor. The crown lands do not belong to the higher
or middle classes, more than they do to the working-classes or to
the paupers in our union workhouses. Yet the aristocracy and their
retainers alone derive any benefit from them. The lands and revenues
of the church are _public_ property. A parliament which represents
only a fraction of the public has no right to appropriate these lands
and revenues to the Established Church, or to any church, if the vast
majority of the population desire they should be differently applied.
And who can doubt that such majority is totally averse to their present
appropriation? Many, like ourselves, might not like to dispossess the
present incumbents. But why should not their revenues, as they die off,
revert to the public for public uses, and their successors be left
(like the ministers of other churches, and like all other professional
men) to their own congregations and their own resources? Suppose this
had been done twenty or thirty years ago--the revenues of bishopricks
and livings, as the incumbents died off, thrown into a common fund
for the purchase of lands, and the rents of these lands again applied
in the same way--what a goodly slice of the soil, and what a goodly
revenue, would be now in the hands of the public! And who would be
wronged by such appropriation? Clearly not the then clergy, for the
reform would not have taken effect till after their death. Clearly
not their present successors; for these would have no legal title to
a property which the public and the law had chosen to appropriate
otherwise. Indeed, the majority of them--the poor curates--would have
been even benefited by the change; for, if left to the voluntary
principle, their congregations would provide better for them than does
the present Establishment. At all events, they could not be said to
have lost what they never had; and even if they fared worse than they
do now, they could not blame the public for having “done what it liked
with its own.” What was not done twenty or thirty years ago ought to
be done now: the public should now insist that church property and
every other description of property belonging to the public, should
be henceforward devoted only to such public uses as a majority of
the public may sanction. Any other application of it is robbery. A
parliament has no more right to rob the public for the benefit of
individuals, than it has to rob individuals for the benefit of the
public. This is their own maxim, and they should be held to it.
The proceeds of public property and the poor’s rate would, if honestly
applied, be amply sufficient to locate the unemployed poor upon the
land. Estates are every day coming into the market for sale. To the
owners it matters not a straw who buys their lands, so long as the full
price is paid for it. They are willing to sell, and the public are
willing to buy. The funds wherewith to buy are the surplus revenue,
the proceeds of public property, and some £8,000,000 of poor’s rate.
Assuredly, here is ample means of restoring their own to the people,
without robbing anybody. All that is wanted is an honest parliament to
legalize the work.
If it be said that such application of public property would benefit
the poor only, and be an injustice to the rich, the answer is that
the lands so purchased would not be the property of the poor, but the
property of the whole nation--rich and poor; and that, inasmuch as
the rents accruing therefrom would be applicable to public uses only,
the whole public, and not the poor alone, would have the benefit
in the remission of rates and taxes. The only disadvantage the rich
would suffer from such reform is that it would gradually emancipate
industry from their iron grasp. Now that disadvantage is its best
recommendation. The rich _may_ have a right to use their own _private_
property as they like (though with respect to _land_ they have no
such right), but they can have no right to use the _public_ property
otherwise than as a majority of the public may decide--much less to use
it for the enslavement and degradation of the great majority.
As to the present parliament doing anything like what is here
recommended, it would be madness to expect it. A parliament which
represents only those who thrive by labour’s wrongs will never
recognise labour’s rights, nor legislate for labour’s emancipation.
Such a parliament will never apply public property otherwise than to
the injury and enslavement of the industrial classes. If it had a
surplus of twenty millions, these classes would not derive a shilling
benefit from it. Indeed, not even the distressed portion of the middle
classes can command its sympathies where aristocratic interests stand
in the way: of this we have a remarkable instance in the result of a
motion for the repeal of the window-tax--the tax on air and light. At
the same time there was an opportunity of saving about a million a year
by calling home the African anti-slavery squadron. But no; the precious
House would neither repeal the tax on air and light nor disband the
anti-slavery armament. Everybody is now aware that this blockading
squadron on the Gold Coast was the veriest humbug that ever provoked
derision.
In the next chapter we shall treat of the 3rd Resolution. We are on
the eve of great changes, and nothing but a clear understanding by the
people of their social rights can enable them to profit by what may
occur.
[Illustration: Decoration]