THE BEAUTIES OF A PLUTOCRACY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XX, Issue 17, 12 February 1892, Page 18

THE BEAUTIES OF A PLUTOCRACY.

The following able letter has been written by Dr Bakewell to the Auckland Herald. Sir— You have for Beveral weeks past kept up a continuous bat. tery against the present Ministry. According to you and your correspondents, there is hardly any political wrong-doing of which they have not been guilty. Ido not know whether you have determined to admit no defence of them into your correspondence columns, but it seems that it practically amounts to that, for no defence has appeared. It is with tbe greatest reluctance that I have ever written or spoken on any political subject, and it is, aB I have said before, only because my professional life has thrown me into contact daily for over 40 years with the victims of our political and social systems, and has shown me the horrible cruelty of them, and, the unspeakable , miseries, sufferings, diseases, and deaths resulting from them, that I have ever stirred in matters political. And it is because I recognise in the Ballance Ministry an honest, hearty, and earnest effort to go to to tbe root of the matter, and to endeavour to amend our laws in favour of the bulk of the population, instead of in the interests of a small plutocracy, that, putting aside all minor differences of opinion, I am prepared to give the present Ministers what small modicum o f support it lies in my power to give. I am, naturally, like most Englishmen, a Conservative, Ido not like rash or sudden changes ; I have seen revolutions enough in my time, and have lived in a country where martial law was proclaimed, battles were being fought, and the places I visited in had still on the walls of the houses the marks of the cannon and the musket balls which had been flying about a week or two previously. And it is because the present Ministry is really the most Conservative which I have seen during 19 years residence in New Zealand, that I sincerely hope it will remain in power long enough to complete those great reforms which it has already commenced. For the first time in the history of the Colony, the democracy has begun to assert itself ; for the first time Parliament has begun to legislate in the interests of the maisea instead of in the interests of one class, and we now see a prospect of the despotism of the plutocracy being overturned. No doubt it will fight well, and die bard, but I sincerely hope it will ba defeated, We have four possible forms of government in these new countries— a plutocracy, a democracy, despotism, and an aristocracy. I prefer an aristocracy, in the sense of the original Greek words, that is a Government of the best men. But how are we to get tbe best men lAn aristocracy is, I fear, unattainable. Hitherto we have bad a plutocracy. Our legislation has all been in favour of the rich capitalists. Now of all the forms of government a plutocracy is the meanest, the most stupid, the most selfish, and tbe most cruel. It knows nothing of either patriotism, or honour, or humanity, or morality. It cares only for money. Gold is tbe only God it worships, and its own interest is the only code of ethics. A democracy may have its faults, and it, too, may be cruel but it can never work the misery that a plutocracy effects. Even its least wise legislation mast be, at least in appearances, for the benefit of the greatest number, and its very selfishness is a respectable sentiment compared with that of a plutocracy. You complain of the Government because its measures tend to break up the larga estates by imposing on them such a weight of taxasion that it will be unprofitable to retain them. This is the one thing on which more than anything else the democracy is resolved. It is just the one point on which you can excite enthusiasm at a public meeting in New Zealand. The people are determined that they will not have a landed plutocracy — lords over the soil of thia new inhabitance as if they were tbe peasantry of a conquered territory. If the plutocracy were not as stupid as it is cruel and mean, it would read the signs of the times. It would see in the hunger after land a sure sign that a few men will not be allowed to usurp an absolute property over millions of acres, while the cotter, or labourer, or small farmer cannot get a few acres on which to build a cottage or keep a cow. It would hasten to establish village settlements in favourable localities, near a market or a port ; it would break up the large estates into small farms suitable for persons with small capital, and would insist on selling with each farm allotments of a small size suitable for labourers. I have driven on a summer morning along a wellmetalled road in Canterbury for a distance of 18 miles, through land of which every acre on both sides of the road was either sold or leased, and I have not seen one human being in all that 18 miles, or a human habitation, I have seen in the same neighbourhood the homestead of a man who owns 90,000 acres, a magnificent house, beautiful stables, built with all tbe modem improvements, lofty, well lighted, well ventilated, and paved with the finest concrete. And I have been in the " men's quarters "in the shearing yard— a low erection built of sods

o( earth, fitted with three tiers of banks on each side and tt one end, A table running down the middle and two forms, its only furniture. This was good enough for the men, though horses would have died in it in a month. I have seen larg* owners of land who have picked their land so as to block ont all except the back country, thus enabling them to bold it on lease at merely nominal rent. And I am daily seeing the victims of this system in the shape of feeble, unhealthy young people, who have been brought up in towns, where healthy conditions of life are unattainable ; and why ? Because life in the raral districts is impossible. Do you think an educated and intelligent democracy is going to tolerate much longer a system under which a bank manager or runholder is able to say that on a territory as large as many a German principality no child shall be born, and no man with a family shall reside. But this is done in almost every sheep and cattle run in the colony. A married couple is employed, but only those who have no children, or at most one child, are engaged. The birth of a second child is the signal for dismissal. Is it a healthy and wholesome condition of things when a respectable marriei woman shall apply to a doctor for the means of producing abortion, because her husband and herself are employed on a run ; they have already one child, and will be dismissed without mercy if there is another 7 It was said of the Russians in Warsaw, " Solitudinem faciunt,pacem appellant." They make a solitude and call it peace. Our plutocracy make a solitude and call it prosperity. They fill their own pockets, and they think that for all the time to come they and their descendants are to be allowed to perpetuate and profit by a system under which millions are made sickly, miserable, and degraded, in order that a few hundreds may enjoy wealth, luxury, and the highest ideal of their lives. There is not a day passes in which I do not see cases that would be cared by a little rest and a healthy country life, or disease which would never have attacked the patient if his occupation and surroundings had been healthy ; or again cases from the country where anxiety and overwork, bad roads, difficulties of transport for produce have caused such grinding poverty that even wholesome and necessary food is not procurable. Had the land been settled steadily from tbs four principal centres, and no man allowed to take up more than he could cultivate and no man allowed to keep his land waste, to the detriment of his neighbour, then good roads would have accompanied settlement, rural life would have been easier and pleasanter, and agriculture would have afforded at least means of living comfortably to the poorest, and a fair prospect of independence to all who had a little capital and a sufficient amount of energy, industry and skill.

Yon think 1 am speaking of a Utopia — well, it is a Utopia that is realised in Jamaica and Trinidad. You hear a lot of howliag and whining about the ruin that has fallen on the West Indies, because nobody thinks it worth while to explain that all the ruin fell upon a few hundred families, and that everywhere there is peace, plenty and prosperity amongst the toilers of the soil. It requires there, as everywhere else, qualities not possessed by the multituJe, if it is to be attained, but all the necessaries of life can be procured by a very small amount of toil ; nobody ever need Buffer from want of good and sufficient food ; no one need labour in bucq a way as to injure health, and everyone does or can procure land in small lots close to the ports. All this was done by imposing a tax of 6d to Is an acre on all land. The conßequenca is that no one hold lands they do not use or cultivate.