The Star. MONDAY, FEBRUABY 25, 1895. To-Day

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5191, 25 February 1895, Page 2

The Star. MONDAY, FEBRUABY 25, 1895. To-Day

• | Influenza is once more ravaging England, j and the Prince of W&lea having caaght a I chill, hoe gone off, post haste, to the I Riviera to eacape the cold of winter. That ia well j but what of the millions of semistarved, badly-housed, ill-clad English men, women and children who cannot afford a trip to tho Riviera, and on whom the rigours of winter hare been telling with terrible results ? Piiy the " splendid paupers " of England j We quite agree with the open-air meeting of Saturday evening last that immediate measures should be adopted to prevent the continued robbery of the people under the system which allows j private landowners and lessees to appropriate the increment of value created j by the growth of population and < the execution of public works. The j periodic revaluation of Crown leases j would, however, be but a fragmentary : reform, whereas the establishment of a ! Fair Bent Court would be a thorough- I going measure. Under the revaluation ' proposal only Crown tenants would be ! affected, and the private landowners would escape. A Fair Bent Bill would, however, affect every description of property, and instead of being only effective at stated intervals, it would beincontinuoußoperntion, and would have the effect of very quickly bringing us to those "bed-rock values" which are on all hands admitted to be desirable. The Fair Bent Court is not only the necessary complement of " the eternal lease," but it is more. The Minuter of Lands in choosing' this, rather than periodical revaluation, is adopting the more radical and drastio remedy for the evils of rack-renting and private appropriation of the unearned increment:. We should like to see a strong public demand for the passage of a Fair Bent BilL A Liberal Ministry cannot govern well. There is something innately crooked m its nature that causes everything it does to be badly done. That at all events, is what we must believe, if we accept tbe dicta of Tory newspapers, particularly of those specimens of the tribe which we have in Christshuroh. The morning organ of the monopolists to-day tells us that it is wrong, utterly wrong, for the' present Government to have a surplus. Ever since the Liberals came into office tbe Tories have been shrieking that we are galloping to a deficit. Year after 5 ear public accounts, with aggravating perversity, persisted in showing a surplus and now the Tories have discovered that a surplus is a bad thing, that if Mr Sgddon's anticipations are realized, it will • «nly mean " that the Government has co miscalculated its revenue and ita expenditure, that it has raised £350,000 more th&n was necessary. It ha 3 plundered the farmers to this extent without any need , for it." How "hard-up" for weapons to use against the Government must be the opponent who writes such rubbish as this. Were we in the habit of throwing our ) surpluses into tho sea there might be some r force in the contention. As we can arid do always find plenty of ways in which a \ Burplus can be os'd to benefit the countiy , and ease the burdens of the people, this ■ Had of writing is simply airant nonsense. • Even if we admit that the Liberal Government has erred in getting a surplus, we \ may claim that it has erred in good com- ; pany, for many Governments of this and other countries, have shown a creditbalance at the end of the year. Some of » them have been Conservative Govern--1 monte, but in their case, we suppose, it was not the result of miscalculation, but of able a 3 ministration, which so benefited the country that the sources of revenue were healthily stimulated to as unexpected degree. The problem of "the unemployed" continues to be the most pressing of the questions demanding solution. There are news items concerning it from London and Sydney, in addition to remarks bearing upon it made in our own immediate vicinity. Mr Keir Hardie has told the commission, now taking evidence on the subject in England, that a large sum of money must be expended in immediate relief of the workless mass, or the "unions" will be over-crowded, and the existing relief system will collapse. These statements may be true ; but it seems as though nothing short of a disgraceful collapse will arouse English public opinion to a due sense of the importance of this matter. Nothing but relief proposals will be entertained in the meantime — a thoroughly "English," but very irrational way of dealing with the problem of tho unemployed. From New South Wales comes the news that the Government is doing its best to eliminate the "relief" element from the system of dealing with surplus labour. No person will be relieved unless he renders an equivalent in the shape of labour. A democracy that did not insist upon such a condition would be falsa to its cardinal principles. All praise to the Government of New South Wales for its efforts to keep honeat workers from the stigma of pauperism. But there is a still more excellent way of dealing with the unemployed than the money relief of England or the relief works of New Soutb Wales j and that is the system of settling the people on the land, as pursued in New Zealand. The public meeting in Cathedral Square did well in calling upon the Government to largely extend the allotment Bystem, and we hope Ministers will give earnest and immediate attention to this matter. There ii happily no need for spending millions of pounds in that work; but if there were the Government would cheerfully incur the liability,and the country would approve the expenditure knowing that thus would the difficult of unemployment be effectively grappled with, and at the came time the expenditure would prove reproductive. The remarkn of Mr Collins, M.H.8., under this head show him to be sound on the subject of the people's right to the land. It is largely due to the Government's liberal land settlement policy that New Zealand now suffers less from the unemployed difficulty than any other country; and in tho face of this the Conservative attempts to turn 'sections of the people against tbe Ministry are only fitted to provoke ridicule.