LAND AND LABOUR

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7448, 24 May 1911, Page 4

LAND AND LABOUR

NO JUDGE OF A JUDGE. LORD JUSTICE BRAMWELL NEITHER LAWYER NOR ECONOMIST. [This column, weekly set aside for the discussion of land and labour problems, is edited by Mr Arthur withy, general secretary of the New Zealand Land Values League, with whom alono rests responsibility,!©' the opinions expressed therein.^ Tn closing down the recent single tax controversy in "Town and Country Lite, the editor, who is evidently no judge of a judge, says: “As the last word in the present controversy, therefore, we prefer to commend to the notice of our readers Lord BramwelUs opinion on the subject.” He then quotes the .following from Lord Bramweil’e pamphlet, Nu tlonalisatiou of Land; A Review' Henry George’s 'Progress and "Mr George speaks of the ‘justice oi his remedy. 'Justice / A man labours and saves,* acquires a piece of landj-pev-haps taken in payment of a bad deblrand dies with the comforting belief that he lias provided for his widow' and orphans. Mr George calls it ‘justice to confiscate it. Another man has been a member of a building society and built his house and believes it was his own. But Mr Georg© would charge him a heavv rent for the land on which it stands because 'every patch of land has become of great value/ This is Mr George’s notion of 'justice/ They are robbers, receivers of stolen goods, knowing they are stolen, and can have no- rights themselves, nor give any to the widow and orphan. No doubt to confiscate land and raise the public revenue out of it would be a fine thing for all the community. save the landowners. But so would confiscating chattels be a In© tiling for all but the cnattel oivne.s, and the confiscation of labour would oc a splendid thing for all but the labourer, It may be there is MUCH TO BD SAID TOR THE TAXATION OP LAND, and that a community would do weu if it resolved at the outset to raise us taxation exclusively from land. , fhcie id much to be said for it, especially if the taxation is not so excessive as to deprive the landowner of all interest in improvement. But when, the law tor ages has allowed private property id land, to take that property from one nan and leave property in oxen and horses to another, because the land is 'stolen goods/ and its owner ought to. know that—that, I say, is 'robbery and* repugnant to all notions of fairness, Mr George does not, indeed, propose to take ■all the rest. He would leave enough (to make it worth the while of landjowners to become tax collectors. Mr 'George says; 'ln every civilised country the value of the land, taken as a ■whole,* is sufficient to bear the entire expense of government/ , We flatter England is a civilised country. If it is. the statement is untrue. The whole agricultural rent without abatement fox coi-* lecting it would not defray those ex j penses. If the expense were so borne, personal property would be untaxed, ana Mr George, this friend of the poor and wailing infant, would let the and Astore go untaxed, while he filched the patch of land got by the savings of hard work, which gave a bare su.. sisteuco to the widow and orphan I "And that (adds the editor of Town and Country Life’) as nearly express s our opinion upon the business as an; - thing wo have read/' BAD LAW AND WORSE ECONOMIC;;, This passage is a mixture of threadbare claptrap—for “the widow and oiphan’Uhave been trotted out right down through thehges as a.Shield for the vested rights which’ are essentially publ-e wrongs—bad law* and worse cconon-ii--The writing in cold blood of such a precious “opinion” as that quoted abo\e argues on the part of -1-oid BramueJ eitker utter ignorance of British history and of British law, or worse. Hho ig- ■ noranoe. the blank ignorance, that can hold such an “opinion" to be good anO valid may be to some small extent excusable in the case of the able editor of "Town and Country Life, but it is absolutely inexcusable on the part of an English judge. Sir William Blackstenel ana Sir Edward Coke, the fathers oi English constitutional law, laid it down that “Allodia! (i.e., absolute) properly in land no subject has; it is now an undeniable principle m law that all lands in England are held mediately or immediately of the King —as represertn ing the nation. The late Lord Chi f Justice Coleridge told the Glasgow Judicial Society: “Our land laws might bis for the general advantage, and. if they should be maintained:_ but a slateof law, under which such mischief cou.d exist—under which a country would exist. not for its people, but a mere hand-* ful of them—ought to be instantly and absolutely set aside.” Williams, in his "Handbook of Eeal Property, says; “THE FIRST THING THE STHDEN. OF LAW HAS TO DO

is to get rid of the idea of absolute ownership of land. Such an idea is unknown to English law. . . • AH landowners are merely tenants in the eye of the law." Yes; tenants of the nation, and wo Henry Georgettes simply demandj that they shall pay their rent. . Wo in-; troduce lha reform gradually, too. We might in justice introduce it at one fed swoop and demand full payment oi, arrears, too. That is what landlords, themselves demand in, similar cases, and, landlord-made laws enforce it. Again, Sir Frederick Pollock, on “English Land, Laws,” says; “It is commonly supposed; that land belongs to its owner, ( in _ the< same sense as money or goods. This ia' not, and it never has been, the theory' of English law.” And the Eight Hon. Justice Longfield says: ‘Property m, land differs from any commouity produced by human labour. The products of labour naturally belong to the labourer who produced them, but the same arga-. ment does not apply to land, which is UlO, gift of the Creator to mankind. Every argument used to give an ethical founda-, turn for the exclusive right of private property in land has a latent fallacy." l So much for the law of the case.. As’ for the history of the matter, every real, student of English history must know, that “private pioperty in land,” as it ,is commonly misunderstood to-day, dates only, at farthest, from IGGO, when on. -the restoration of Charles lE, of noble memory 1 the State-rent charges iij, return for which the landlords originally held their lands—England did “at the outset raise its taxation exclusively from .the land”—were abolished and “tonnage .and poundage" taxes on the public at largo substituted. This was. indeed, ‘robbery* and repugnant to all notions of fairness,” and Henry George was,, therefore, quite ‘right in stigmatising l hind-‘‘owuers” as “robbers or receivers •of stolen goods"; and be with perfect • justice demanded—the reversal of the, process by which the landlords stole the) fan<ist CONFISCATE THE POWER OF COK-j FISCATION. Of course, a tax on land values, as such,' could never "deprive the landowner of all interest in improvement.”’ As a matter of fact, the heavier thg tail on land values the more it would quicken his interest in improvements, lor ib would gradually deprive him of all other interest in the laud. _Aud rightly so; for any other interest in the laud sims ply arises from the power that land J oivnership gives him to confiscate thehm provements. . and the earnings generally, oi others. That interest in the land, and that interest alone, that power of confiscation, Henry George would confiscate, and the sooner it is confiscated the better for honeet industry. The merest beginner in, economics should grasp these elementary principles. And even a fourth-form schoolboy should not be deceived by Lord Bramwell’s ridiculous “reply”—•‘The whole agricultural

rent (of England) without abatement for collecting it would not defray those expenses”—to Henry -George's contention that "In every civilised country the value of the land, taken as a wholo, is sufficient to bear the entire expense of government." It is difficult, indeed, to believe that a man of Lord Bramwell's presumed intelligence could honestly hold that “the whole agricultural rent" of England is the same thin'' as "the .value of the land (of England), taken as a whole.” The agricultural rent of the Kingdom, because that is pre-

sumably what Lord Bramwell meant by England, is some fifty millions sterling. But the total land value of the United Kingdom must bo at least .£250,009,010 to ■£309.030,010; while the rates and taxes of the Kingdom amount only to come ..£200,000,000. thus illustrating the correctness of George’s contention. Equally absujd and untrue is the assumotion that under- the single tax "the Rothschilds and Asters”—some of the biggest land-"owners” in the whole world—would “go uataxed.”ARTHUR .WITHY,