TOPICS OF THE TIMES

Southland Times, Issue 21578, 16 December 1931, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE TIMES

“The first and most general social function of property is to provide that undisturbed use of material things without which man can do nothing that is consecutive or purposeful,” says Mr Ernest Bcaglehoe in a treatize on the question of property. “Control carries with it a measure of liberty and a definite degree of responsbility. So long as the direction of one’s life and the ability usefully to employ one’s capacity depends upon the free use, enjoyment, and control of property objects, just so far does it depend upon one’s undisturbed possession of such property. This is true of the individual as of the corporate association. Freedom of choice, freedom to direct one’s own development, freedom of enjoyment, will thus rank along with a sense of security and permanence as some of the more complex constituents of the sentiment of ownership. Though this freedom, however, does away with certain obvious responsibilities, it imposes on the owner of property the particular kind of responsibility involved in self-dependence. It thus brings with it the necessity for foresight, prudence, self-control. It teaches the individual the price he must pay to satisfy his fundamental needs. In a word, since property is the economic basis of freedom and personality development, the possession of individual property above what I have called the psychological minimum is a desirable thing; and not only for individuals, but for any corporate body that has to direct its own affairs.”

A warning against neglect to safeguard natural beauty was given by Professor G. M. Trevelyan, OM., in a lecture at University College, London. He said two things were characteristic of our age and more particularly of Britain—the conscious appreciation of natural beauty’ and the rapidity with which natural beauty was being destroyed. The action of the State continued to be increasingly inimical to natural beauty by its activities, particularly in taxation. Science and • machinery had armed man with weapons that would be his own undoing unless he now took pains to make rules for the preservation of natural beauty. Unless he consciously protected it at the partial expense of some of his other greedy activities he would cut off his own spiritual supplies and leave his descendants a helpless prey for ever to the base materialism of mean and vulgar sights. “The matter has become a public question of the first magnitude,” Professor Trevelyan added. “The value of natural beauty’ is admitted in words by’ our public men, but when it, comes to deeds the doctrine is too new to bear much fruit. It has for centuries been held sacrilege to destroy a church, so churches are guarded from destruction and even exempted from taxation. But a place of beauty may be destroyed and is now actually to be taxed by the State in order that it may the sooner be sold to the jerry-builder. Meanwhile the State itself pours forth the money of the ratepayer and the taxpayer for the perpetration all over the island of outrages on the beauty of the country. Unless the State reverses the engines and, instead of speeding up destructions, plans the development of the country’ so that the minimum of harm can be done to beauty, the future of our race, whatever its social, economic and political structure may be, will be brutish and shorn of spiritual value.”