The Marlborough Express PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24, 1907. THE PRICE OF LIBERALISM.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLI, Issue 95, 24 April 1907, Page 4

The Marlborough Express PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24, 1907. THE PRICE OF LIBERALISM.

It is a curious fact that Liberalism in England has always been on its trial, so to speak. Every-'Liberal Ministry has been expected to justify its existence by a hold policy of reform, and every failure has been followed by a return to reaction, in which the people, with seeming relief, have asquiesced. Sir H. Campbell-Ban-nerman's Ministry has had tb,face all the old elements of interrogatory suspicion,'and some others that are new. The " incidence" of reform shifts with the years. Once it was confined mainly to religious liberty, once.to the emancipation of slaves, sometime to corn law repeal, occasionally to the removal of privilege, and frequently to the extension of the franchise. Today the justification for power must be given in a determination to grapple with the most deeply-rooted social ills. The Radical critics have been warning the present Government that unless it seizes the opportunities presented to it, the party which it represents will soon sink into a condition of obscurity out of which it might never again emerge. If the Liberals miss their chances this time the future will belong to the Tories and the Socialists.

The warning may have been well meant, but assuredly it was not necessary. No Government has ever brought down a bolder or niore comprehensive, or more reasonable programme than that which has been unfolded, by Sir Henry Campbell-Ban-nerman and his colleagues. To s-\j that it embraces in its scope nearly all the conspicuously Liberal measures that its predecessors failed to carry wholly, would, be the; bltrest justice, though if it were confined to that it would be admirable enough. But the Cabinet has gone, and will go mxich farther. The subjects dealt with hy the Prime Minister at the National Land and Housing Association's lvncheon in London, a few days ago, give, an indication of the direction which reform is pursuing. The title of thfAssociation is almost an index to the measures embraced by this reform, the details of which open up a range of subjects that, so far as legislation is concerned, are quite new. Mr Burns' Valuation Bill is apparent!}aimed at compelling the owners of landed property in London and other large cities to contribute in something like a fair proportion towards the cost of government and the wellbeing of the populace out of which they have amassed their wealth. The value of the property, owned by some of the ground landlords in London sounds almost fabulous. Some of the most opulent of the noble families trace their •wealth to the circumstance than an ancestor, three or four generations back, married the daughter of "a dairyman or market gardener, whose acres, long since absorbed by the metropolis, now grow houses where they formerly produced grass and cabbages. The New Zealand farmer may smile derisively when he is told that the " unearned increment" of his land should belong to the State, but there is no joke about the unearned values that form a portion of estates like the Duke of Bedford's and Lord Cadogan's. There is something that smacks of inequity in, an arrangement by which half a dozen landlords reap the ground revenues of a huge city like London, and virtually escape taxation. But the importance of Mr Burns' Bill is exceeded by that other adumbrated in the Premier's speech, and which, as we learn, aspires to free the land of the kingdom, and give the peasantry some little foothold where they would no longer be tied to men, but be free. A measure of this kind had to come, of course, after what has happened on the other side of St. George's Channel, but that it will be carried with equal facility is doubtful.