Page:The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery.djvu/138

 CHAPTER XX.

NATIONAL LANDS AND CREDIT FOR THE USE OF THE PEOPLE.

Unjust Laws to enable the Few to deprive the Working Class of their Earnings—Private Property in Land the Basis of Wages-Slavery—Raw Materials of Wealth belong to all—Land and Money Lords govern the World—Right of Working Class to the Use of Credit—Surplus of Earnings of Working Class beyond Consumption the Source of all Capital.

To provide a full, adequate, and permanent remedy for the manifold and all-pervading ills that are the consequence of land-monopoly and usury, the people must reclaim their right to the National Territory, which has been gradually and surreptitiously usurped by private and sinister interests; the enactment of laws to secure for all, co-ordinately therewith, the mighty engine of Credit, which must be utilized for the industrious orders of society, who are the strength and mainstay of the nation, and therefore the most entitled to its benefits.

The fourth and fifth resolutions of the League run as follows:—

"The gradual resumption by the State (on the acknowledged principle of equitable compensation to existing holders or their heirs) of its ancient, undoubted, inalienable dominion and sole proprietorship over all the lands, mines, turbaries, fisheries, &c., of the United Kingdom and our Colonies, the same to be held by the State, as trustee in perpetuity for the entire people, and rented out to them in such quantities as the law and local circumstances may determine; because the land, being the gift of the Creator to, can never become the exclusive property of individuals; because the monopoly of the land in private hands is a palpable invasion of the rights of the excluded parties, rendering them, more or less, the slaves of landlords and capitalists, and tending to circumscribe or annul their other rights and liberties; because a monopoly of the earth by a portion of mankind is no more justifiable than would be the monopoly of the air, light, heat, or water; and because the rental of the land (which justly belongs to the whole people) would form a national fund adequate to defray all charges of the public service, execute all needful public works, and educate the population, without the necessity of any taxation.

"That as it is the recognised duty of the State to support all those of its subjects who, from incapacity or misfortune, are unable to procure their own subsistence—and as the nationalisation of landed property would open up new sources of occupation for the now surplus industry of the people (a surplus which is daily augmented by the accumulation of machinery in the hands of the capitalists)—the same principle which now sanctions a public provision for the destitute poor should be extended to providing a sound system of National Credit, through which any man might, under certain con