A GENUINE JUBILEE

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LVI, Issue 88, 19 November 1935, Page 8

A GENUINE JUBILEE

BOARD CHAIRMAN'S DREAM.

HOW TO MAKE IT COME TRUE

(Written for the Guardian by

SIMPLE SIMON)

The following paragraph has been going the rounds of the newspapers all over the Dominion: —

"A suggestion that the farmers of New Zealand might like to celebrate a jubilee of the Biblical sort was made by Mr C. S. Thompson, chairman of the Canterbury Education Board, at the Waddington School diamond jubilee celebrations. After referring to the many jubilee ceremonies he had attended, Mr Thompson said that in Biblical times a jubilee was an occasion not only for | rejoicing, but for forgiveness, and among the things forgiven were a man's debts. What a glorious thing it would be for the farmers if they could celebrate a real jubilee, and all their debts were forgiven once in fifty years." MORTGAGES AND REJOICINGS. A "dream," of course, but I would not be at all surprised if it should come true again some day. We will have a little say-so. on the theme. Firstly, I would suggest that the forgiveness of debts (mortgages) was probably responsible for the major part of the rejoicing; secondly, that things move faster in these days and that the jubilee would require to be about every five years instead of 50, since it seems to take only about five years for a body of farmers in comfortable enough circumstances to get, the land mortgaged beyond its productive powers again. A friend of mine told me that he was stationed in a certain district (as a civil servant), and transferred elsewhere at just about the time when the settlers, who had their land on the L.I.P. (lease in perpetuity) system, got the right to convert to the freehold. He told his own farmer friends that they would be very foolish to convert, as they would have to pay more in interest to the moneylenders than they were paying in land rental to the State. But they were enthusiastic with the freehold fetish, not realising that the desire for the freehold had been subtly instilled into their minds by moneylenders looking for further channels for safe investment. They borrowed and bought. My friend, after a period of nine years, was again sent back to the same district. He said that the change was appalling, for where there had previously been nice, welltended little farms and homesteads, there were now mainly fields going back into second growth. The original settlers had nearly all gone, lost their farms to the money-lenders; they had neither the leasehold nor the freehold, but no hold at all. A genuine jubilee under our present land system would be worse than useless to-day. IN THE DAYS OF OLD. Very' few persons, even among those who pride themselves upon their knowledge of the Scriptures, have a true grasp of the economics of the Bible—the finest work on economics extant, properly understood. The view of the old Hebrews in respect of the land is easily seen in the many references thereto. "The land is Mine, and ye are sojourners with me." "The land shall not be sold for ever." And yet our deeds and titles, and forms of bequest, purport to sell the land to the purchaser "and his heirs and successors for ever." Every tribe, except the tribe of Levi, was given an area of land, and this was parcelled out among the heads of families, including women in certain cases. Thus every man had private and exclusive possession of a piece of land, whereon to provide himself and dependants with a living, so that no man was compelled to be a slave to another man for life. Where a man got into difficulties, and lost his land by mortgage, it was returned to him or his eldest descendant at the jubilee. In effect, the mortgagee or new landlord gave a rental value, based on the period still to run before the next jubilee, for the use of the land. COMPENSATING THE DISPOSSESSED. The bedrock, vital thing about the Biblical jubilee is that it restored the land to the people, without any ncfisensical talk of "compensation" for restoring to the people what was their own. There was a system of compensation, but for the dispossessed, not for those who held land. Thus the tribe of Levi was not given land, the members being required to render certain social services; in order to compensate them for not having possession of land, the tribe of Levi was given a tithe (tenth) of

the total produce of the other tribes; out of this tithe, they set aside a tenth, or a tithe of a tithe, for the provision of the Aaronic priesthood. So we see that, in the Mosaic Code, the view of compensation was the exact opposite of present-day notions jon the part of those who have got the natural law on the matter upside down. DIVISION BY VALUE. When considering the Hebraic land system, it is essential to grasp the salient feature that the land was, primarily, not divided according to area, but according to value; thus the poor land was parcelled out in large areas, and the land which had better fertility, site value, sunny aspect, in a good climate, and so on. was divided into smaller areas, the idea being that each one should receive an equal value, not an equal area. It was a recognition that every person had an equal right in the land; it was a birthright in the soil and its natural fertility or other values, in "the profit of the earth," which was "for all." This is why the policy of the Commonwealth Land Party, to use the rent of land for public revenue purposes, "for all," accords with the natural law, the Divine Plan—the only Plan the "planners" have not studied. They propose to improve upon Creation; they know better than the Divine Architect does about how the Universe should be run. To recall the pungent criticism of Herbert Spencer, they presume to the possession of something more than Divine omniscience.

THE MODERN APPLICATION.

In those ancient days, with the exception of the tribe of Levi, the people got their livings directly from the soil, there being no such industrial magnitude and complexity as we have to-day. It is, however, perfectly simple to apply the same principles to present-day conditions, so long as we recognise the natural law basis that the earth is the common birthright of all, from the newestborn baby to the oldest inhabitant, and that the poorest person has an equal right with the richest in the land to the earth. Ail that it is necessary to do is to collect, per the State, the annual rental value on the unimproved value of land, and royalties on the natural products, such as coal and oil deposits. Use this revenue for all public services, in place of rates and taxation, and you have the Biblical jubilee occasion of rejoicing in being permanently. Individuals would still be able to possess the land in perpetuity, and thus to secure the full benefits of their labour for themselves and their children, but there would be no mortgages on land —nor need of them.

SOME PROGRESS MADE,

We have, despite a land system that is plainly productive of endless economic and social evil, made some progress. For example, our bankruptcy legislation is the most socially advanced legislation on our Statute book, for it enables a man to get rid of the burden of debt, instead of having to remain in a state of virtual slavery for life. The moneylender, it is true, can take all a man's assets, but, apart from the land, he gets no perpetual gain, since these assets all require storage, maintenance, upkeep, and in time they become obsolescent, and perish. But in respect of the land, when that is sold the purchaser has something which does not perish, nor become obsolescent; he can either use it himself, or rent it to others, and he and his heirs can draw .tribute for ever under the present land system.

It is written, "The profit of the earth is for all." The profit of the earth is monetarily represented as stated above, in "economic rent"; this is the "cultural heritage," the "increment of association"; all social reforms, monetary or otherwise, increase this rent fund if they are sound reforms, and until this land rent fund is taken for public purposes the sole final beneficiary of monetary or any other reform will be the landlord vested interest.

WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS

Moses, you will recall from the Scripture, had been Prime Minister of Egypt. The civilisation of the Egyptians was so old that they could laugh at the philosophy of the Greeks (upon which our modern classical culture is based) as the mere babbling of children. Moses was a welleducated man, and he had access to all the lore of the Egyptians, and was learned in three languages. He knew, from Egyptian history, what had given peace and prosperity, justice and freedom, and what had produced strife and poverty, injustice and slavery, hence the two fundamental economic laws of the MosaicCode, that the land was the birthright of all, to be held in trust for all generations, and that there should be a stable monetary system. "Thou shalt have a perfect and just weight,

a perfect and just measure shalt thou have."

Such was the wisdom of ancients distilled out of their 20 and more centuries of experience. The land system, of course, came first, because even without any monetary system at all, any man who could monopolise desirable land could then hold others in subjection, demanding tribute in kind (oil, olives, grain, etc.) for the use of the land. Mere wealth has never been able to place men in a state of serfdom until and unless some means were found privately to monopolise the land, and this is so to the present day. While a different application is required for modern conditions, the principles themselves, as enunciated in Scripture, are Natural Law Economics. Try to thwart them long enough, and a civilisation goes down in red ruin and disaster. Obey the laws of Nature, work in with them, and we have the rejoicings attaching to the Jubilee. The "shrewd" ones think they know better, but: "The wiser man fits into God's plan As water fits into the vessel."

More than 500 British students recently visited Budapest as the guests of the Hungarian National Students' Association. Painting has never been cheaper than to-day. Get a price from J. Smith. (4)