Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/434

428 cess of cultivation, that it has been practically, so far as its present condition and value are concerned, as much created by the skill and labour of man as any manufactured property which can be named. In the second place, land is not only by no means a necessity to man in the same sense as the air, which is essential to his existence; but there is this broad and marked difference between them, that whilst the one is inexhaustible, the other is limited in quantity. Moreover, whilst the one is intangible and invisible, the other is not only visible and tangible, but taxable into the bargain; and if it is desired by Mr Chamberlain and his Socialist friends to put air and land upon the same footing, their first logical step should be to take all taxation whatever from off the land as a preliminary step. This, probably, is a step which has hardly suggested itself to the minds of these eminent politicians, yet it is one without which their parallel cannot for a moment hold good. If, indeed, this view should be adopted by the nation, it is difficult to see to what it would lead. Whether the "private ownership" of land be or be not desirable in the public interest, it is beyond all question the fact that the vast majority of private owners at the present time, or their fathers before them, have acquired their land by fair purchase, under the laws of their country – have, in many instances, paid largely for it – and could not be dispossessed without repayment from the coffers of the State. To take the land for the purpose of redivision, without fair and adequate compensation to those whom the State had permitted to acquire it, would be as flagrant a robbery as to appropriate the three per-cents, to refuse to pay interest on the National Debt, or to violate national faith by any other similar proceeding.

This, however, is not the path which we are at this moment invited to tread. If we read attentively Mr Chamberlain's Ipswich speech, delivered a few days subsequently to the Birmingham oration, we shall find that these general platitudes about the "natural rights" of men, and "the right of every man to a part of the land of his birth," are little more than the smoke under cover of which the real and more immediate objects of the speaker may be approached with greater safety. "Ask for a great deal, that you may get a little," is a favourite motto with encroaching politicians; and sufficient bluster about "natural rights" and the like may create a feeling of distrust and alarm in people's minds which will be followed by such a natural reaction as may induce a more favourable reception of Mr Chamberlain's real meaning and desires, when they are proclaimed to the world in a tangible and practical shape. At Ipswich, indeed, we must do the speaker the justice to say that he withdrew nothing that he had advanced at Birmingham. He stated boldly, indeed, in other words, the text from which he had previously preached.

"I am certain that our Liberalism has no chance at all unless it will recognise the rights of the poor, – their right to live, and their right to a fair chance of enjoying life. In the earlier stages of society these rights were fully recognised. Land used to be held in common. Every man who was born into a community had his apportioned share in the great natural inheritance of the race, and if he was willing to work, his livelihood was assured. Now all that has changed: the birthright of the English people has been bartered away for a mess of pottage, and it has become the possession of private owners of property."