FINDIG ARGUMENT BASIS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 18, 23 January 1933, Page 6

FINDIG ARGUMENT BASIS.

OUR GREATEST NEED. (To the Editor.) Our other needs may be imperative and many, but our greatest is reform in ourselves. * We have no acknowledged common basis or starting point from which to argue. We are, as it were, all at sixes and sevens, some aiming from one aspect and others from just the opposite, with the consequence that we get nowhere, and are not likely to. Surely there is a basis or starting point, some guide of . safety and surety, by which we can say this must be right, it cannot be otherwise. Doctors are known at times to disagree, but at least they have the advantage of a basis or •starting point from which to argue. Now, as ' far as I can see, there is only one basis or starting point we can take with absolute •safety, and surety, and that is Nature and the lollowing of natural law. Natural law is simply that which is natural, that which is just, that which is moral —in other words, natural Jaw is brotherhood, or, as the late ' Mr. 'Massey "would have put it, natural law is a square deal as between man and man, between nation and nation. Natural law acknowledges but one title to land, and the use of land as a means to sustenance. Natural law does not acknowledge the right of man to •the private ownership of land, by which means a monopoly is created enabling the holder to speculate and gamble ijx land. Natural law in trade is barter, trade for trade; you buy from me, then in duty bound I must buy from you —simply, a square deal as between man and man, nation and nation. To-day's conception of free trade is a gross insult to natural law, for how can trade be free if the other party is given the (privilege to force trade. Trade for. trade does not imply that you must open your doors to the dumping of cheap foreign goods, nor does it imply you must open your doors to all trade. Shut your doors by all means to all else but trade for, •trade, open them wide and keep them open, free from the pin-pricking annoyances of duties and tariff restrictions. I have given these two little illustrations as proof of the infal-' libility of natural law as a basis from which we may argue, far argue man will, and talk, talk, talk. Lord, how we do talk! But the trouble is we get no further. J. L. VERCOE.