OUR SYDNEY LETTER.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume III, Issue 460, 29 May 1890, Page 2

OUR SYDNEY LETTER.

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) Sidney, May 12. Henry George has returned from his southern trip, and prior to leaving for Queensland devoted a lecture to answering his critics. His reply was perfectly consistent with the scope of his whole teaching as to first principles, though (as all sensible people at some period or another of their lives find it expedient to do) he modified or explained some of the expressions he had used in setting forth its details. The meaning, for ins ance, which he attache! to the word “ confiscate ” he showed was different to that which attaches to the word as ordinarily used. Wo think of “ confiscation t as an act of high-handed robbery, but differing from other robberies in ihe fact that it is perpetrated by Governments instead of by individuals. Mr George regards it as the orderly resumption by tho State, with all due circumspection and regard for the public good, of that which is indubitably the creation of the State and which indubitably belongs to it. Still it was a pity the word was ever used, for it has furnished a convenient and welcome handle to those speakers and writers who have set themselves to hide from the public the selfevident justice and inherent _ beauty of George’s main thesis. In the leading columns of organs of the landed interest or of other schools of political thought which deem their progress threatened by his teachings, he is set forth in a guise in which he could hardly recognise himself, so distorted is the picture and so perverted the reasoning which pretends to be based upon it. Yet these same organs are the principal media, by which ia all places alike, the great body of the public obtain the impressions from which they form their opinions. How wofully elow then must necessarily be the progress of truth, whilst this animus (or passion for perverting truth) is so openly and shamelessly indulged by those who should be its ten detest and most jealous guardians. It may be expedient to re-state what. I conceive to be George’s central and unassailable position, which the host of his selfdubbed critics have so far failed to touch, or even, so far as I have seen, to mention : The

State requires money for public purposes. Ought it not rather to draw from a fund, which is purely its own creation, in preference to seizing a portion of the money honestly earned by the industry, enterprise and outlay of its individual members? Surely it ought first to take that which ia its own, and only the pressure of stern necessity can justify it in laying hands upon that which belongs to others. Such a fund exists in the unearned increment in the value of the land. It accrues simply by the presence and prosperity of the people generally, and independently of the exertions or expenditure of the owner or occupier. It ia truly and really public property, and it is quite as unjust, as unwise and as ruinous to make it over to a handful of favored individuals as it would be to revive the iniquitous and corrupt praotioe of making grants of land to those who could ingratiate themselves with the Government of the day. Pure reason, that is to say, candid, dispassionate and disinterested reason, aeae the truth intuitively. It sees, moreover, the arrant and crass folly which is involved In offering premiums to enterprising Bedouins to monopolise the waterholes and oases in front of the advancing caravan, by giving them the right to extort their own price from the main body for the privilege of using the precious and necessary fluid. But as is the case with all unjust usages of long standing, vested interests have so clustered round this one that large numbers believe it to be the mainstay of social prosperity rather than the incubus and hindrance which it really is* It is therefore impossible even were it expedient to advance at one bound from what actually is to what ought to be. The opposing forces are too strong. Numeric illy the people who are personally or pecuniarily interested in the monopoly of land are only a handful, it is true, as compared with those whose interests they threaten, whose prosperity they hinder, and whose comforts they abridge. But what they lack in numbers they more than make up for in power. Their intelligence is sharpened to a wonderful degree of acuteness by the edge of their self-interest. Their wealth, and their possession of the spring of wealth—the land—give them also the power of purchasing all the purchasable intelligence that is in the market. Consciously, or unconßciously, they control a large section of the press, and a much larger proportion of the Legislature. Every ambitious and unprincipled politician, every ambitious and unprincipled writer on political suojeots eagerly rushes forward as ths defender of a Glass which is able to reward its champions so richly. On the other hand many who are heither unprincipled nor ambitious have the wool so completely drawn over thrir eyas by their class sympathy or by their pacuniary interest, that they unhesitatingly, and to all appearance in thorough sincerity, call good evil and evil good—avow that the security of the public depends on ths spoliation of the public and that acts of righteous restitution are acts of robbery. Truly “ a gift blinds the eyes.” In this case as in so many others, the wealth of the rich, though gotten by means which have made others poor is their strength. The poverty of the poor, on the other hand, ia their destruction. It has dulled their

intellect to such an extent that in many instances they are the willing henchmen of their oppressors and regard as their enemies those who would set them free. But so it has ever been. The story of the Hebrew liberator and lawgiver has been many times repeated sincejhis day. as doubtless it had been many times enacted before i\ And still, in spite of the apparently overwhelming odds against truth and righteousness, there it a power which works for justice in the world, and which slowly but surely—slowly on account of the blindness and perverseness of those whom it designs to bless, sorely by reason of divinely benevolent persuteuoe and omniscient wisdom, is accomplishing its end, Mayna est veritas et prevalebit—grott is truth and it shall prevail. At present the tokens and portents.of the great victory come rather from combinations of men seeking increased wages raiher than from the clear setting forih of the flret principles of political economy. L\bor ia oombining, and what is more, combinations of different branches are learning tn work together and form a mighty power which cannot ba resisted. At present a great war is raging in Queensland, and the issue is being watched here with mingled sympathy and apprehen.ion aoooording to the proolivities of the watcher. TheQueonilaud unions have taken up the cause of the station “ rouseabouts " and deolare that tho lowest wage which ought to be paid them ia 80s per week. At the same time they have asserted the position of the Shearers' Union and have refused to allow some hundred bates of wool shorn at Jondsryan by non-union labor'to be shipped. The Carriers’ Union, the Wharf-Laborers’ Uuion, and the Seamen’s Union have all combined to enforce this claim, and so strong are they that tho B I S.M. Co. have not ventured to ship the wool in question. Ac long as the men remain thus determined and united, their victory is oertain, for they have everything in their own hii*ds and the employers are not likely to bring about the stoppage of the indu.trlas by whioh they make their money, for tho sake of gaining o victory of principle over a few bales of wool. That’s not how they made their money and that’s not how they Sropose to keep it. But there can he no oubt that victory in this instance will only prepare the way for farther demands, and thers Is an obvious danger that tho new and almost irresistible power whioh is being oclled into existsnos may so increase its exactions as to take away the hone of profit in the employment of capital. Then indeed there will be trouble, employes! banded and massed and no one to employ them. However, it is not to ba doubted, that the labor organisations will learn wisdom and moderation from experience and that a modal vtvlndi which will conserve the oommon interests of both will be discovered. We seem to have entered upon ths era of 1 terrible railway accidents. Following the fatality at Bathurst oomes the reports of another at Farley, near Maitland, where a mail train from Brisbane ran into anothw train proceeding to the earns Thwe was a terrible smash and worse still, see passengsr was killed and nine others soriomly injured. Truly the Comml.alouers' yoslfiea utt now l« hot a bed of rotet.