MR. G. L. PEACOCKE'S CONVERSION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 9238, 28 June 1893, Page 3

MR. G. L. PEACOCKE'S CONVERSION.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —I am really sorry that in assuming Mr. G. L. Peacocke to have been converted from the land nationalisation heresy I have reckoned my chickens before they were hatched. On Monday, 19th October, 1891, Mr. Edmund Bell and myself met Messrs. G. L. Peacocke and Adam Kelly in a debate at the Manure Public Hall. The subject was, " Would Henry George's Single Tax bo beneficial to Uew Zealand?'" Messrs. Peacocke and Kelly taking the affirmative. The following passage from George's "Progress and Poverty," book viii, chapter 11, quoted by Mr. Peacocke in debate will help to explain his position : "I do not propose either to purchase or to confiscate private property t'i land; the first would be unjust, the second needless. Let the individuals who now hold it still retain, if they want to, possession of what they are pleased to call their land. Let them continue to cull it their land. Let them buy and sell, and bequeath and devise it. We may safely leave them the shell, if we take the kernel. It is "not necessary to confiscate, land ; it is only necessary to confiscate rent. „ . In this way the State may become the universal landlord without calling herself so, and without assuming a single new function. la form the ownership of land would remain just as now. No owner of Ip.nd need be dispossessed, and no restriction need be placed upon the amount of land anyone could hold. For rent being taken by the State in taxes, land, no matter in whose name it stood, or in what parcels it was held, would be really common property, and every member of the community would participate in the advantages of its ownership." All italics are Mr. . George's. Mr. G. L. Peacocke says he is not a land but a single taxer. Quite so. You pay your money and you take your choice, as the above quotation shows.—l am, etc., E. W. Bueton.