THE LAND PROBLEM.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 168, 15 July 1908, Page 8

THE LAND PROBLEM.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —Of all the social questions that must shortly occupy the attention of British statesmen, that of the land will be the most important. It is a remarkable fact that the country which has led the world in granting civil aad religious liberty should be the one in which the birthright of the whole of its people is so monopolised and so unjustly distributed. That the agricultural conditions must be vary unsatisfactory where 143 landowners own no less than 13,546,----8"5O acres, and where less tha.r 30,000 out of a population of 43,000,000 practicalty own the whole of the cultivatable land, is self-evident. Although the condition of the English fafcm labourer is far from satisfactory to-day, seeing that the rate of wages, taking the whole of the English counties, does not exceed 13/ per week, yet it has greatly improved since ray young days, and that improvement is owing to a spread of intelligence through education and the labours of Joseph Arch and those who assisted him in teaching them the advantages of combination, coupled with sobriety and selfrespect, that led to their political enfranchisement by Mr. Gladstone's Government in 1S85; and to-day they are a factor in political matters that must be reckoned with. It should be remembered that these people, ivho were so pauperised and degraded in my young days by a of things which they had no political power to remedy, and very few of whom could then read or write, are of no alien or inferior breed, but are descended from that yeomanry which figure so conspicuously and creditably in the pages of English history, and who have been immortalised by our <rreat Shak-espeare.—l am, etc., WALTER CRISP. Fencourt, July 6, 1908.