Page:The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery.djvu/130

 A parliament which represents only a fraction of the public has no right to appropriate these lands and revenues to the Established Church, or to any church, if the vast majority of the population desire they should be differently applied. And who can doubt that such majority is totally averse to their present appropriation? Many, like ourselves, might not like to dispossess the present incumbents. But why should not their revenues, as they die off, revert to the public for public uses, and their successors be left (like the ministers of other churches, and like all other professional men) to their own congregations and their own resources? Suppose this had been done twenty or thirty years ago—the revenues of bishopricks and livings, as the incumbents died off, thrown into a common fund for the purchase of lands, and the rents of these lands again applied in the same way—what a goodly slice of the soil, and what a goodly revenue, would be now in the hands of the public! And who would be wronged by such appropriation? Clearly not the then clergy, for the reform would not have taken effect till after their death. Clearly not their present successors; for these would have no legal title to a property which the public and the law had chosen to appropriate otherwise. Indeed, the majority of them—the poor curates—would have been even benefited by the change; for, if left to the voluntary principle, their congregations would provide better for them than does the present Establishment. At all events, they could not be said to have lost what they never had; and even if they fared worse than they do now, they could not blame the public for having "done what it liked with its own." What was not done twenty or thirty years ago ought to be done now: the public should now insist that church property and every other description of property belonging to the public, should be hence-*forward devoted only to such public uses as a majority of the public may sanction. Any other application of it is robbery. A parliament has no more right to rob the public for the benefit of individuals, than it has to rob individuals for the benefit of the public. This is their own maxim, and they should be held to it.

The proceeds of public property and the poor's rate would, if honestly applied, be amply sufficient to locate the unemployed poor upon the land. Estates are every day coming into the market for sale. To the owners it matters not a straw who buys their lands, so long as the full price is paid for it. They are willing to sell, and the public are willing to buy. The funds wherewith to buy are the surplus revenue, the proceeds of public property, and some £8,000,000 of poor's rate. Assuredly, here is ample means of restoring their own to the people, without robbing anybody. All that is wanted is an honest parliament to legalize the work.

If it be said that such application of public property would benefit the poor only, and be an injustice to the rich, the answer is that the lands so purchased would not be the property of the poor, but the property of the whole nation—rich and poor; and that, inasmuch as the rents accruing therefrom would be applicable to public uses only, the whole public, and not the poor alone, would have the bene