OUR SIDNEY LETTER.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume III, Issue 437, 3 April 1890, Page 4

OUR SIDNEY LETTER.

HENBY GEORGE'S MISSION. (VBOM OVB OWN CORRESPONDENT.) Sydney, March 12. Mr George deserves the thanks of the news-paper-reading public for having done so mnch to redeem the “ silly season ’’ from utter vacuity and inanity. The letters of the correspondents who profess to reply to him are a comedy in themselves—a comedy of errors mostly, bat still very interesting as showing the unconscious but consummate ingenuity which the average human mind can display in evading an unwelcome issue. Mr George's assertion is that the unearned increment in the value of land belongs to the State, and may therefore rightfully be taken by the State, subject of course to such modifications as may be found necessary in the public interest, in order to avoid too great and too sudden a disturbance of the existing order of things. The Stare conferred it, and it belongs therefore to the State as indefensibly as a field of wheat belongs to the farmer who raised it. The State may, and does, in my opinion very foolishly, entirely forego its rights in this matter. But that does not alter the real central fact. A stolen watch remains in law and in right the property of the man from whom it was taken, no matter how numerous the circle of guilty or innocent receivers. But so far as I have seen no one has attempted to controvert this central and fundamental principle. Not one of the polemical army who have invaded the columns of the Herald to my knowledge has denied that the unearned increment in the value of land is conferred by the community or that it would be more equitable, as an abstract proposition, for the State to take that which belongs to itself than that which belongs to other people. Something it must take, because taxation is indispensable to civilisation. To take what it has itself produced is simple justice and self-evident wisdom. To levy any unnecessary penalty on the labors and enterprise of the individuals who com-

pose it is cruel injustice and rank unwisdom, because it robs them of their property in the first place, and discourages the labor and enterprise on which the wealth of the community depends in the second place. But all the arguments of the host of cavillers who have rushed into print to defend the existing state of things, when they are all added up together, amount to nothing more than the time honored excuse of the unwilling and slothful: —“There is a lion in the way." Some with an unconscious but none the less utter confusion of thought suppose that because Mr George wants the State to take its own property therefore he desires it to take the property of other people. This is calling good, evil, and evil, good. As a matter of fact the State at present is robbing the community of the results of its labor right and left, whilst it is allowing the vast revenue which is rightfully its own to be turned into an instrument of extortion, and to become a danger to the public, instead of a source of public wealth. Others get behind the skirts of the “poor” widow, the “poor” selector, and the “poor ” this that and the other, who, as is customary in the early his ory of any great reform, are brought forward as stalking-horses behind which injustice and oppression may work its will. The “ poor widow ” or the small planter who owned slaves, was made to play the same part, we may be sure, in hindering the advent of freedom. Another class of whom Mr Ninian Melville has constituted himself the spokesman, profess to doubt whether the principles involved in the taxation of unimproved land values can be found in the Bible 1 This is rather a novel criterion to apply to a political proposition. But for all that it would be just as well if it were more frequently resorted to. The answer to Mr Meiville is that the Bible from cover to cover is full of the “spirit of life ” of righteousness. Therefore whatever is good and true may be fouud in the Bible as to its principles whether the exact details are specified or not. If it is biblically true, as it is true on the material plane that every one shall enjoy or suffer the fruit of hia own doings, if it is biblically true that it is unjust to give away what does not belong to us, then it is biblically true that the value which the State

creates belongs to the State just as that which individuals create belongs to individuals. And it is also biblically true that the State, or those to whom its interests are confided, has no right to allow that which belongs to itself and which should be used for the general good, to become in the hands of an irresponsible or unproductive class a means of crushing extortion and a stupendous hindrance to national progress. None of the writers or speakers to whom I have alluded assail with any success this fundamental proposition— suum cuique, to each his own—which is the basis of true civilisation as opposed to barnarism, of equity as opposed to iniquity, of genuine philanthropy and benevolence as opposed to spurious and mawkish sentimentalism. They take, one and all, some apparently distressing consequences which appear likely to follow, but which, if the principle were applied, as it ought to be, with ordinary wisdom and consideration, it is yco means certain would follow. The principle being conceded as an abstract proposition, practical men are at liberty to consider how it may be brought into effect with the least disturbance. It is quite true that you can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs. But there is no necessity to break any more eggs than are wanted, or to make omelettes any faster than is required by a healthy appetite. The intellect arrives a; its conclusions with great rapidity. Under favorable circumstances they often cbme like a flash of light. But the carrying out of those conclusions is a very different matter. It is often the work of a lifetime to bring them into effect. So with social reforms. Only step by step can they advance, and no one need fear convulsions as long as the public countenance frowns upon emissaries of violence and sedition. Tuere is no need to shut one’s mind against elementary truth and justice on any such miserable pretexts. For th* rest, there is this difference between the teachings of truth and those of falsehood, The termer assert themselves by facts. The latter have no real existence save in the fancied interests of those who advance them,

and who imagine that the prosperity of their party or of their own precious selves is threatened. Ancient Borne was blind to the teachings of elementary justice and equity. But the logic of facts which lay behind them demonstrated the truth of the propositions with unswerving accuracy. Anglo-Saxons have greater advantages. They have infinitely better teaching, and above all, they have the democratic power, which enables them to give it effect. They are slow to move and don’t as a rule go very far at a time. Bnt when they have moved they don’t go hick. Sooner or later in spite of the outcries of the landgrabbers, and the morbid fears of the timid, they will take some cautious and tentative steps in the direction of asserting their right to their own property. And when they do, I have no donbt they will find the experiment sufficiently encouraging to induce 'hem, by easy stages, to essay the whole journey. Mr George’s country meetings have not been so well attended as those in town, chiefly for the reason, 1 imagine, that he has been represented to farmers, and to those who depend upon fanners for their subsistence, as an enemy to the landed interest. I need not say that th* charge is entirely groundless. Still, the audiences have been good enough to *x*rt a powerful influence. Truth, be it remembered, in the nature of the case, must begin with a minority. But when it is once made known, it demonstrates its right to exist by it* harmony and oongruity with thing* as they are—a harmony and oongruity which are patent and open to the observation of all, and which sooner or later, all will perceive.

A Sydney paper renews an old tala with an article entitled “ How the Maoris volunteered for the Soudan.” It tells about the great interest evoked by the offer of a Maori chief to eend to the Soudan a contingent of 500 natives, good marksmen, and efficiently equipped, free of charge to the Mother Country. The paper referred to now etates that the whole thing was worked up by a couple cf mischievous pakehae who knew the country would have been well rid ot a rumbesotted Maori chief, who, however, could no store call to bi* command such a force, than b* ootdd get bi* name taken as a pledge for Um wppiy .W more grog on tire tick system,