WORKSHOP THEORIES ON EQUAL RIGHTS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXI, Issue 24, 13 October 1893, Page 15

WORKSHOP THEORIES ON EQUAL RIGHTS.

The following is the report given by tba Liverpool Catholic Times of a paper contributed by the Higbt Bey Abbot Snow, 0.8. 8., to the Conference of Catholic Young Meu'a Societies recently held at Carlis'e. In his paper the writer said that in workshop discussions certain maxims passed for current gold, whereas more light would expose them as pieces of battered silver. " Men are by nature equal ; " 11 In the beginning all things were in common ; " " All things are in common by the law of nature ; " " All men should be made to work ;" " Every maa has a right to live on the fruits of the soil ; ' " What man can make man can own ; what no man mad*, no man can claim as exclusively bis;" •' The land belongs to the nation ; the State should be the only owner ; " " Property in land differs wnolly from property in manufactured goods." Such and similar axioms passed from mouth to mouth as golden maximc, beyond dispute, defini'ely settled, aod taken as the foundation of all argument. The writer of the paper proceeded to show at some length wherein lay the danger of sucb maxims, Most of the wrongs under which the working classes of this or any other age had groaned had their origin in the weaknesses of human nature. Greed, ambition, love of power, selfinterest, pride, were at the bottom of all the troubles between c ass sod class. None of the proposed social reconstructions proposed any change in human nature. Theorists were fond of appealing to the state of nature— the law of nature before government and a privileged class meddled with it. But what was the fact 7 The sate of nature gave rise to such confusion, uncertainty, and meal obliquity, that a special positive law— the Ten Commandments became necessary. The Ten Oommaniments did not chaDge the nature of man j they only made the law known and definit?. They continued to kill and to steal. Was it probab'e that a new code issued by the theorists would be more successful than the Ten Commandments, especially when the tenets of the new tables were of doubtful utility. Thou ■halt be tqual one with another ; thou shalt not own land ; thou ■halt not heap up wealth ; thou ehalt not be poor, would fare worse than the Tsn Commandm nts in contest with the passions ani weaknesses of human nature. Suppose that any of the forms of universal equality obtained h fair start ; suppose a social democracy established, all wealth equally distributed, the passions of men would immediately begin to work ; men would still steal and over-reach each other ; there would be a set who refused to worx, a set to barter their birthright for a mess of pottag« ; there wonld be scheming for power and place, and it would inevitably end in inequali y, in wealth and poverty. When all were reduce! to the dead level, received a common wage, had no prospect of bettering themselves, how many, taking human nature as it was known, would care to slave and exert

themselves for the vague ideas of bettering tha general community f Given a thousand people would any single individual by extra effort and labour care to earn £1,000, that all might have a pound a piece f Such a commonwealth, from repeated analogy in history wonld result ill a one man rule, and reversion to despotism from the natural work* ifgof the passions, and weaknesses of human nature. Besiles the general objections that applied to all socialistic theories, each one of the schemes had its fallacies and i»s innate weakness. Take the nationalisation of the land and the abolition of private property. It was assumed that land differed from property in manufactured goods; that what man made man could own ; what no man made, no man could claim as exclusively his. If mao only owned what he made he could not own a horse or a dog, a rose or an apple. la what did land differ from manufactured goods 1 The value of land consisted mainly in the labour that man had put into It. As soon as man's labour had made it productive it became valuable, and in this waj did not differ from iron ore, coal, cotton, or the wood of the forest. Those were not made by man, and were of little übo to man, until they acquirsd a value from man's labour. The nationalisation of tbe land implied th*t the State took over not only the original and uncultivated condition, but also the labour of man that bad made it productive. The grievances and wrongs of private ownership in land would still continue in the ownership of the Btate, for thej mainly arose from the labour (manufactured) value of the land, and the tenants' and labourers' interests. Having pointed out other difficulties in the way of the nationalisation of the land, it was asked— ls then the workman to regard his wrongs and his hard lot as inevitable 1 By no means. The remedy was to be sought in practical measures, and not in impracticable socialistic dreams. The legislation of the past half century, by attacking one point after the other, bad proved that the greed of capitalists aad their powers of oppression conld bo restrained. Factory Acts, Mines Regulation Acte, Truck Acts, Adulteration Acts, all pointed to substantial gains in the social condition of the workiegman. If existing grievances were tellingly represented and practical remedies suggested, there was every dis. position to redress them, and failing this, the working class had now * large share of political power, and could insist by their votes. To advocate the wholesale upset of society by fanciful socialistic schemes, which were impracticable, would alienate sympathy, provoke opposition, delay reforms, and must result in failure and probably in a worse state of things,