STATE OWNERSHIP AND PRIVATE MONOPOLY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVI, Issue 14167, 15 September 1906, Page 4

STATE OWNERSHIP AND PRIVATE MONOPOLY.

Otm Conservative friends are parading for our admiration a learned dissertation by a professor of political economy in which the land proposals of the Government are gently deprecated. The professor says,that according to his text hooks the proposals should make owners look with suspicion upon the State’s attention to the land question, and our friends, of course, hail the professor as the highest authority that • has yet spoken on the subject. We have a very great respect- for the gentleman ourselves. He is a capable, conscientious teacher, who has already done much for the cause of education in this community, and who is dcstinedj we feel sure, to do much more. But his acquaintance with the land question, as ho frankly admits himself, has been obtained in the study and the lecture-room, and if, as we are told, an ounce of practice is worth a ton of theory, he cannot claim to speak with the same authority as did another gentleman who a little time ago was being quoted by onr friends as a champion of free trade, : freedom of contract, freehold and all the other orthodoxies of the hook economists. It was during the debate on the second reading of the Land Bill in 1891 that William Rolleston, the very greatest of all our land reformers, startled his political friends by the countenance he gave: to the heresies propounded by John M’Kenzio. The whole report of his speech on that occasion might be profitably read by the opponents of Mr M’Nab’s Bill, but there is one paragraph in particular w© should like to commend to their attention. He was dealing w r ith the objections that had been raised to the leasehold:—

In speaking of the general principle of the perpetual lease, before I deal with the question in detail, I may say that it is no' objection to me to speak of State landlordism, ieven if the evils attach to State landlordism that are attached ■ to it hy those who take the opposite line regarding it that I take. I say we had better have parliamentary presilure, we had better have State landlordism, than the class animosity that arises out of the extremes of poverty and wealth. We had better have a system tliat distributes the land, and which enables people to distribute themselves over the face of the country and live d happy social life. We hrid better have State landlordism than give occasion for those evils to arise which those who watch the signs of the times see arising here and in the Old Country from the aggregation of large estates, and the accumulation of land in the hands of a few people. And it seems to me that, as far as wo can avoid this feeling by dealing with this great question, so far is our land system good. But if our land system tends to the aggregation of properties, tends to give undue advantages to capital as against the industrious occupiers of the soil, so far it will fail of the most beneficial effect we ought to have in view in our legislation.

The name of William Rolleston is still a name to conjure with among the grateful people of the colony, and we have no doubt that during the debate on the Land Bill it will be quoted on the side of the freehold and monopoly. But no one who knew the man and his work, or who will take the trouble to read the reports of his speeches in .“Hansard,” can doubt the side on which his sympathies lay. The professors of political economy may put forward their test books in support of freedom of contract, and they may preach the sacred rights of property and advocate the special privileges of capital, but experience in tins country has shown that State ownenship does not involve any injustice to the individual and that security of tenure docs not rest on the maintenance of private ownenship. “If our land sj’stem tends to the aggregation of properties, tends to give undue advantages to capital as against the industrious occupiers of the soil, so far,” in tho words of William Rolleston. “it will fail of the most beneficial effect we ought to have in view in our legislation.” Our Conservative friends are more than answered cut of the mouth of a member of their own party.