MR. STOUT ON LAND TENURE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 5560, 23 January 1879, Page 3

MR. STOUT ON LAND TENURE.

(From the Titular u Herald.) Mr. Stout’s ideas regarding the taxation and tenure of land, as expressed in his recent speech at Dunedin, and on a variety of other occasions, are very remarkable ; and it is exceedingly desirable that the people of this country should know distinctly what they tend to, if Mr. Stout is to have any influence over tho legislation of the future. Stripped of all the cant of political science, his view simply is that no man has any right to own land at all, and his ultimate object is to destroy the individual title to land, and to substitute for it a purely communal tenure. He differs no doubt very widely from his colleagues, and the great majority of his party, in these opinions; ami he regards the land tax from quite a separate point of view from theirs. They advocate a land tax as a means of equalising the incidence of taxation as between the various classes of the people. He, on the other hand, though he ostensibly fell in with that view, as affording the only ground upon which the land tax was at all likely to meet with support, really advocates it as asserting an unalienated and inalienable title of the State in the land, and as a step towards the resumption of the land itself by the State. This is clearly what he meant when he said that the State ought in theory never to part with the fee simple of the land and when he instanced the action of tho Eussian Government in breaking up the estates of the nobility, as a proper example for land legislation in New Zealand. He is, in fact, what in Russia is called a Nihilist, in Germany a Socialist, and in France a Communist, so far at all events as land is concerned. There is, we believe, no term by which those who hold such views as his are known amongst Anglo-Saxon peoples, for the reason that their principles are essentially repugnant to the instincts of tho Anglo-Saxon race. Whether Mr. Stout understands what the precise effect is of the action of the Russian Government, of which he so much approves, we do not know ; but if he does, it is certainly strange that he does not recognise that it has merely achieved the first step from semi-harbarous feudalism towards a condition of society suitable to a civilised age. Prior to the emancipation of the serfs, the Russian nobles were neither more nor less thao territorial princes, sharing the soil of tho empire among them under an autocratic sovereign. The serfs could not own land at all, but were themselves tho property of the proprietor of the land on which they lived. In 1861 this state of affairs was changed to the extent that the property of the nobles in their serfs was done away with, and a part of every estate was made the common property of the emancipated serfs inhabiting each locality. “Communal government,” says a recent writer on the subject, “is the fundamental principle of all the rights of the peasant class. In general, the lauds allotted to the peasants are not their individual property, but belong to the commune and are shared among all its members.” Tha exceptions to this rule are those cases where a peasant has earned special consideration from his rulers, and is rewarded with an individual grant of land. The fact is that the peasants are not yet deemed ordinarily capable of owing laud, or of possessing the full rights of freemen ; aud the communal system is regarded as a cautious advance from the condition of slavery to that of complete liberty. The true friends of popular liberty in Russia look forward to the time when the communal system can be broken up, and when every peasant can hold land with an indefeasible title. Nihilists, on the contrary, seek rather to destroy the privileges of others than to gain equal privileges for themselves. They would secure equal rights by abolishing all rights, and their only definite object is to do away with the individual title of all the lauded proprietors, and make the whole people, from the Czar to tha peasant, share in the communal tenure of the laud. This is precisely what Mr. Stout also sets up as the tumtnum ionun of laud legislation. He was clearly wrong, however, when he implied that this principle prevailed in all civilised countries, aud that he was so is best proved by the fact that he was driven to draw an example from a country which is only now emerging from a state of barbarism. If he required an illustration of the communal tenure he need not have gone so far away as to Russia for it. The Maoris hold their lands on a purely communal tenure, undisturbed by any accidents arising out of military service or autocratic rule ; aud Mr. Stout could not possibly have placed his real views more clearly before the Dunedin electors the other night than by telling them that he aimed at bringing the European inhabitants of this country into the same relation to the land as the aboriginal inhabitants stand in. It is rather curious, however, that when the question of tho Maori franchise was under discussion in Parliament Mr. Stout joined with those who advocated giving the freehold qualification to Maoris, because it would encourage them to individualise the titles to their land. Now, we would ask Mr. Stout how, it it is highly desirable that Maoris should abandon their communal title and obtain Crown grants of particular lauds instead, it can possibly be wrong for Europeans to hold under the very same tenure. Mr. Stout would perhaps tell us that be would not go so far as to destroy the freehold tenure, but would merely place it in such a position that the fee simple should remain in theory in the State, so that the State might participate at east in the unearned increment. This restriction of his theory, however, is manifestly illogical, because it is indefinite, and void of finality. Whatever title is to exist in land it must bo clearly understood and permanently fixed ; else it is not a title at all, but only a loose and precarious tenure, which cannot constitute a property. If, therefore, Mr. Stout is not prepared to go the length of abolishing the freehold tenure altogether; if that is not the ultimate goal of his principle; then it is wrong to take any step in that direction, such as the taxation o£ land for the purpose of asserting the inalienable title of the State. If the State is never to enforce its title by resuming the fee simple, there is no use whatever in assertng its title at all. The strongest argument of all, however, against the practical establishment of Mr. Stout’s theory is that, whatever may be the case in Russia, in New Zealand the Statehas already divested itself of the fee simple of the land, and has conveyed it absolutely, in indefeasible tenure, by an unassailable deed, to the Crown grantees and their heirs, executors administrators, and assigns for ever. Any attempt on the part of the State, therefore, to resume the fee simple, or any part of the increment, whether earned or unearned, or to assert any title in the land, must disintegrate society as at present existing in the country. It would be simply a palpable fraud upon those to whom the State has granted the land in perpetuity for due consideration and value received. This circumstance Mr. Stout wholly overlooks when he addresses himself to the subject of the land tax ; aud yet it is at the root of the whole question,' and practically disposes of it altogether, as far as the application of any principle of tenure is concerned.