WCP6983

[1] [p. 3]

The Nationalisation of the Land

Last night Professor Newman¹ lectured at the Alexandra Hall, Clifton, under the auspices of the Land Nationalisation Society, on the Land Question. Mr E. D Girdlestone² presided, and said he should not have ventured to have presided, but he happened to be about the only member of the society resident in Clifton. Professor Newman needed no introduction, and before asking him to address them he would read an extract of a letter from Mr. A. R. Wallace, the author of a scheme of land nationalisation which would be referred to that evening:- "I note a fallacy in Professor Marshall's³ lectures on "Progress and Poverty". He endeavours to show that the condition of the labourer has greatly improved in the last century, by comparing wages at the two periods estimated in wheat. Now this is quite as fallacious as to estimate it in money, and is, in fact, no test at all. In the last century the bulk of the labourers lived in the country, and had cottages and some land in permanent tenure, with the use of commons and woodlands. They obtained a considerable portion of their income from the produce of their gardens, from pigs and poultry which they could keep. They had milk often free from the farmers; they had wood and turf free from the commons and woodlands; and they used, to a considerable extent, rye or oats or barley bread instead of wheat. Their cottages too, were often copyhold, or at mere nominal rents. Now, the bulk of the labourers are town-dwellers, with no land or common rights. Rents are high, and every scrap of food and fuel has to be bought, while cheaper bread than the finest wheat is not to be had, and thus beggars and paupers eat it, though it is dearer, less wholesome, and often less palatable than the old brown bread! Consequently the value of four pecks of wheat now, in wages, may leave a man worse off than the value of two pecks in the last century. Such a fallacy ought to have been exposed at once, but I cannot see that it was noticed. The political economists, always ignore the difference of condition of labourers formerly as regards "use of land", when comparing wages, yet it is the essential thing. Another supposed error of George's⁴ was attacked by equal fallacies. Interest was said to be high and wages low in Asia- ignoring the fact that interest there includes enormous risk owing to plundering and bribable government, while wages are only low estimated in money, food and all that land produces being cheap, and fuel and house rent being usually nothing. I hope Professor Newman will expose these errors. Perhaps you will bring them to his notice."

Professor Newman said there was an idea that his lecture was announced in consequence of the recent lectures of Professor Marshall. This was not so, for the lecture had been fixed long previously. While not undervaluing the political economy, his subject was not one of political economy, but of morals, politics, and history. The present system of land tenure was the origin of great injustice, and there was no chance of landlords giving way unless it was in consequence of a general movement of the nations. Their business was to show they had the moral right to make such a movement. There was no doubt that landholders now exercised mor than royal rights over their land, rights such as the king never gave the barons; for no English king was the owner of the soil, not one claimed the right to drive the people into exile. The landlords were originally officers of state allowed certain revenues for certain duties; their functions had been swept away, and their revenues should have been in justice surrendered. It was said they could not go back into the past on this matter, but their question should not be how many years old was the injustice but simply had the lapse of years removed the evil. The inheritor of a wrongly acquired property could have no right title, though the wrongful acquisition occurred a long time back. The case was analogous to the holding of slaves. What would they think of the man who excused the holding of slaves on the ground that they were stolen from their native countries more than sixty years ago. The craft of evil Conservatism pretended that injustice was sacred because it was old. The first great encroachment in connection with land could be discerned as a fact, but could not be assigned an era—the enormous extension of claims on the part of the lords of the manor. Wild land and bogs were not recognised as property in old days, but gradually the claims of the lords were extended to them. Then, in the reign of Henry VIII. there was a second great usurpation by the landlord class: certain landlords began to eject their tenants to make large sheep farms, so as to raise wool for export. Then was it that the system of squeezing rent out of the tenants, according to the pressure of competition, came into force. If justice was separable from mercy, they might treat the present landlords as harshly as their predecessors treated their tenants whom they massacred; but Mr Wallace and his society desired national harmony and universal goodwill. They could not, however, award the landlord class anything beyond what a merciful consideration dictated. T third scandalous act occurred, and from it they had suffered for two centuries. It was the settlement made by the aristocracy in the time of Charles II. The landlord class agreed to give up one-fifth of their revenues to the nation when they got rid of their feudal liabilities. No new valuation for assessment had been made, and for some reason the Chancellor of the Exchequer chose to wink at the landlord class not paying the nation £28,000,000 annually. The longer the settlement was delayed the easier the payment. They must call upon the landlord class to make good of which it had defrauded the nation. A fifth great accusation against the landlord class was its voting to itself common lands, besides those usurped in the shape of paths and roads. In 1845 it was estimated that since 1710 seven million acres of land were usurped by private Acts and since 1345 the landlord class had got 800,000 acres more by what was called public Acts. Durdham Down was usurped, and had to be bought back again by the citizens. How were they to avoid Government jobbery, favouritism and despotism if the land remained the property of the State? For years he believed that the landlord class was a deplorable evil; he then preferred a thousand petty despot under the Government to one despotic Government. Mr Wallace's plan however, had to a great extent removed the difficulty. The power arising from landowning was to be taken from the Executive Government, and everything settled by the local land courts acting under the sacred engagements of justice, and they would decide every case according to the principles laid down. He could suggest imagery difficulties, but it must be remembered they were at the beginning of a great movement, and those difficulties would be overcome if the general principles were laid down. Mr Wallace thought the rent of land could be divided into parts; that the area of the land and that of the improvements made in it by cultivation, &c. Mr. Wallace's scheme left to the landlords all the improvements made for 800 years by the tenants of the soil, but claimed the other part for the nation. In concluding Professor Newman referred to the annuities system proposed to be given to landlords, and remarked that the landholders; power was falling.

Several questions were asked and answered at the close of the lecture.