HAVE MEN A RIGHT TO LIVE?

Auckland Star, Volume XXI, Issue 261, 4 November 1890, Page 2

HAVE MEN A RIGHT TO LIVE?

(To the Editor.)

Sib, — Your morning contemporary has lately been advancing some singular ideas. Perhaps the. most peculiar appeared in its issue of tho 29th ultimo. The pivot one is that society may, if it thinks fib, abrogate the Creator's laws, and decide who are fit to live. How delighted tho writer of that article would have been had he lived a hundred years ago, when two hundred crimes were punishable by death. What grand society ! in those days sometimes a dozen persons hanging at once in front of Newgate. In these latter days some feeling sentimentalists have lifted up their whine against capital punishment even for murder. Pity 'tis, 'tis true. Certainly, society might as well have allowed Ginx to havedrowned hi 3 thirteenth aesoon as born, as to have knocked it aboub from pillar to post until at majority he took a header rrom London Bridge. If thia sentimentality did not stand in the way so much, society might determine—perhaps, come day it will, who knows ?--whab the natural increase shall be, and what proportion the lower orders shall contribute. Should the number be exceeded by twins instead of units, act like the little fellow proposed to do, who, when shown the recent addition of twins, asked, " Which one shall we keep 1" Why should not the " human animal" obey eociety , sbeheßts?Thewriterinnocentlyaskß: " Did any power on earth ever wish to exclude any man from the soil 5" Wishing or not, a good many powers have done it. .Wβ read that between the years 1811 and 1820, 15,000inhabitantsof Sutherland were ejected from their snug inland farms by means for which we would in vain seek a precedenb except, perhaps, in the history of the Irish Maeßacre. In 1853, the Glengarry property was turned into a sheep run, people evicted to make room for sheep. The wail of the poor women and children ac they were torn from their homes would have melted a heart of stone. Their houses were burnt and levelled to the ground. Said the " Quebec Times," " For cruelty less savage the slaves dealers of the South have been held up to the execration of the world." But of course no power on earth ever wishes to exclude any man from tho soilhardly .ever. How calamitous ib will be when the people, each man possessing a vote and no more — J beg pardon, the mob in a fit of lunacy—paßS a tax on land values so that the cities will have to contribute to the common fund a percentage of tho unearned increment. But country land being so much more valuable than city and suburban, of course the farmers will have to pay all the tax, and the working men will then loaf about Queenstreet, or ail turn brokers. Ain't it funny ? However, as "no two male human animals are precisely equal" (the writer was too gallant to notice the female human animal; no doubt he is a curiosity, wae never born, but like Topsy, growed), there is little doubt but that in some honest way if a man will not work neither shall he eat, unless society continues to recompense some of its members, vide Mr Goldie's speech On the want-of•confidence motion, in inverse proportion to work done. It will take a lob of leading articles to convince the ordinary father of a family that his children have nob the right to live, and. that his fellowman has a Godgiven right to monopolise natural opportunities so fchab he can only exist.—l am, etc. - One of the Mob,