The Advantages of Peasant Proprietorship.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 43, 31 July 1891, Page 9

The Advantages of Peasant Proprietorship.

If a workman's wages be sufficient to enable him to maintain himself, his wife, and his children in reasonable comfort, he will not find it difficult, if he is a sensible man, to study economy; and he will not fail, by cutting down expenses, to put by a little property : nature and reason would urge him to this. We have seen that this great Labour question cannot be solved except by assuming as a principle that private ownership must be held sacred and inviolable. The law, therefore, should favour ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many of the people as possible to become owners. Many excellent results will follow from this ; and first of all, property will certainly become more equitably divided. For the effect of civil change and revolution has been to divide society into two widely differing castes. On the one side there is the party which holds the power because it holds the wealth ; which has in its grasp all labour and all trade, which manipulates for its own benefit and its own purposes all the sources of supply, and which is powerfully represented in the councils of the State itself. On the other side there is the needy and powerless multitude, sore and suffering, and always ready for disturbance. If working people can be encouraged to look forward to obtaining a share in the land, the result will be that the gulf between vast wealth and deep poverty will be bridged over, and the twoorders will be brought nearer together. Another consequence will be the greater abundance of the fruits of the earth. Men always work harder and more readily when they work on that* which is their own ; nay, they learn to love the very soil which yields in response to the labour of their hands, not only food to eat, but an abundance of good things for themselves and thosethat are dear to them. It is evident how such a spirit of willing labour would add to the produce of the earth and to the wealth of the community. And a third advantage would arise from this : men would cling to the country in wnich they wire born ; for no one would exchange his country for a foreign land if his own accorded him the means of living a tolerable and happy life. These three important benefits can only be expectedon the condition that a man's means be not drained and exhausted by excessive taxation. The right to possess privateproperty is from nature, not from man ; and the State has only the right to regulate its use in the interests of the public good, but by no means to abolish it altogether. The State is, therefore, unjust and cruel if, in the name of taxation, it deprives the private owner of more than is just.