Book VII.—JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY.

Auckland Star, Volume XX, Issue 147, 22 June 1889, Page 4 (Supplement)

Book VII.—JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY.

Chapter I.—The rightful basi9 of property is, primarily, the right of a man to himself, to the use of his own powers and the fruits of his own exertions. What he produces is his own against all the world, to use, to exchange or to give. Hence, there is in the owner of things produced by human exertion a clear title from the original producer. Nob only is there no other natural right from which any other title can be derived, but the recognition of any other title is inconsistent with and destructive of this. When non-producers can claim as rent a portion of the wealth created by producers, the right of the producers to the fruits of their labour is to that extent denied.

Chapter ll.—lf chattel slavery be unjust, then is private property in land unjust. The ownership of land will always give the ownership of men to a degree measured by the necessity (real or artificial) for the use of land. This is but a statement in different form of the law of rent.

Chapter lII.—It is not righb that there should be any concern aboub compensabing the proprietors of land. Private ownership of land is nob merely a robbery in the past; it is a robbery in the present, for rent is not drawn from the produce ot the past, but is a toll levied ou labour constantly and continuously. Chapter IV— The common right to land has everywhere been primarily recognised, and private ownership has nowhere grown up save as the result of usurpation. Chapter V.—The American people have failed to see the essential injustice of private property in land because they have not felt its full effects. ' Our superiority of condition over that of the Old World has sprung from unfenced land — our public domain. But#the republic has entered upon a new era, an era in which the monopoly of bhe land will tell with accelerating effect. The public domain is receding. Property in land is concentrating. The proportion of our people who have no legal righb bo bhe land on which bhey live is becoming steadily larger. We did nob establish the republic when we declared the unalienable rights of man, nor abolish slavery when we ratified the Fourteenth amendment; and unless we come back to first principles and acknowledge the equal right of all to land, our free institutions will be in vain E our common schools will be in vain, our discoveries and inventions will but add to the force that presses the masses down.