SOCIALISM OF 1775.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 120, 23 May 1928, Page 6

SOCIALISM OF 1775.

A plan to destroy poverty, to provide work for all, and to regenerate society was set forth in particularly plain and uncomplicated terms By a self-taught poverty-haunted but persevering and devoted thinker many years ago. Based, as it was, upon confiscation without compensation of all land already alienated from the Crown, the whole body of capitalists and landowners living at the time were first contemptuous, then alarmed, and finally worked up to the point of attack through the law, and the author (a good and unselfish man) was imprisoned without trial, and afterwards hunted and persecuted for many years.

Thomas Spence's plan was this: Assume that every man has an equal property in the land of the neighbourhood where he resides. Assume also that people live together in society in order to reap the full benefits that they ought to expect. Then let the inhabitants of each parish meet on a fixed day, take possession of their long-lost rights, and form themselves into a corporation, "to be sovereign lord of its own territories." The parish land to be then rented into small lots to tenants, who bid for the land at public auction. The rents to be paid into the parish treasury and used to pay the share of central government expenses, that is, the share demanded by Parliament to maintain the helpless poor, officials, and for public works. The parishes to elect representatives to Parliament, and to manage each and every parish its own (local) affairs. A year's residence to qualify a parishioner as such. Strangers and foreigners to be assisted, but, in the ultimate issue, by funds from the central Government. All parishioners to be drilled, and liable for service should the country need them. Each man to have one vote in parish affairs. "Freedom to do anything cannot be bought. A thing is either prohibited entirely, or entirely free, with out tax or price." There would be no devouring landed interest. No more expense to be incurred than sufficient to pay such taxes as were necessary for the general good, and such officials as were absolutely indispensable. "If only this system is installed, the Empire of Right and Reason will exist for ever."

Thus Thomas Spence, who, whilst struggling by small trade and the sale of his miscellaneous writings to make a living, fought manfully for years to rouse his fellow men to a sense of self respect, and a knowledge of their rights—rights bestowed by birth. "The earth is thine, and the fullness thereof." Miss Olive D. Rudkin has -in this book about him* rescued from oblivion a political thinker of the eighteenth century, and given him a placo as one of the fathers of Socialism. He sems to have trusted to all small details settling themselves if once his broad idea of the public ownership of land were granted. He made no claim for equality, realising that each man is different from every other man, and that equal opportunity does not involve equal success, prosperity or happiness. That no man should hold an inch of land for himself alone is not an incentive to improvement of property, but Spence trusted to the desire of each leaseholder to make the most of his rented property for his own sake. ■ • '•"Thontas Spence and His Connections." b* Olive D. Rudkin. (Allen and Unwin.)