MOSES AND THE EXODUS

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 98, 22 October 1913, Page 6

MOSES AND THE EXODUS

Thanks to the Land Act of 1912 and the Bill of 1913, the number of Crown tenants entitled to purchase the freehold will presently be more than doubled. By the concessions offered in these measures — in breach of existing contracts— .Mr. Massey presents himself as Moses for a new and mighty exodus of tenants of the State, numbering in all not less than 13,175. It is hardly necessary to recall that there is the best authority for the statement that the original Moses never entered the Promised Land j and, coming down to the prosaic present, it is also more than likely that most of the chosen thirteen thousand will not venture into it either. No doubt many of them will prefer -their 3£ per cent, or 4 per cent, leaseholds to a mortgaged freehold existence under a curtain of " limitation," the corner of which Mr. Massey already artlessly raises to let in the mortgagee. Is not this appearance of the mortgagee, in the great freehold measure of 1913, highly symbolic? First, we have, in 1911, the demand for freehold with strict limitation-of-area. Secondly,' wo behold, in 1913, freehold with a limitation suspended for two years in favour of the mortgagee. Critics of the small freehold peasantry of Continental Europe complain that landlordry has merely been succeeded by the mortgage. But Mr. Massey's Bill provides for more than that. It enables the mortgagee to take possession in temporary defiance of the limitation which is the settled law of the land, and which has been adopted as an integral part of the Government's policy. We have said that this appearance of the lending institutions in the great freehold Bill is symbolic. We might further have described it as dramatic, had it not been so unostentatiously effected. The mortgagee looks in like the spectre at the feast, and no doubt the preparations made to give him a seat at the table will bo distinctly encouraging to the children of the exodus. The plain fact is, of course, that Mr. Massey is confronted with one of the obvious consequences of his own policy. Crown lessees asked for the freehold largely as a greater facility for borrowjujßuJfioney.. Ik iEftft jto.be gxßegafil^ „&.

freehold with limitation. Having secur* ed it, they need (or rather tho lender needs, but it comes to the same thing) power for the big landed mortgage© to foreclose, which is the negation of limitation. Thus, ©yon before the citadel of the freehold-cum-limitation edifice is complete, the axe is laid at the root of the protective outworks. Mr. Maguey, of course, is not to blame for the inexorable economic fact that the big oapU talist shadows the email man,' in Ri»il cultivation a* in all otlier undertakioge j but he will be open to sharp criticism if he endeavours to face two ways, and that is what he U in great danger of doing. If a right of foreclosure by hig land-holding persons or corporations automatically follow* the small freehold, they why talk about limitation at all! No doubt when the modern Moses firs,t preached liberation of th& tenants from State landlordry, by moans of a freehold title with limitation-of-area, he meant exactly what he said; but tho ©xodus which he has brought about is carrying both him and his followers out of their depth. They are confronted with a greater Moses who has already driven the thin end of the wedge into the limitation clause. By the amendment which allows a mortgagee to hold land, not» withstanding his existing landed posses. sions, the letter and tho spirit of limit tation are clearly . broken. To palliaw the breach, a time-factor is introducedi and at present the period is two year*; but friends of foreclosure state that this is not enough, and Mr. Massey himself hardly dares to hope that it will bo found sufficient. One of his Parliamentary supporters proposes that the mortgagee should be allowed to hold "limitation" land for five years. A.nothor prescribes three. Mr, Massey admits that three fears might be better, "but," he says, "give two years a trial, and then we will see." Thua, while presenting a yielding surface to pressure, ho gains time. H© «.aves himself by a compromise — one that not ' only tampers with the principle, but can be indefinitely extended, What hope in there, then, for the permanence of what might ba called the safety section of the policy of freehold-cum limitation ?