NATIONALISATION OF THE LAND. 103 



public, as opposed to private, ownership of land, the curious 

 thing is, as in the case of the Cardinal's curse 



" Nobody seemed one penny the worse " 

 or better. 



If public ownership is so much superior to private owner- 

 ship and increases so greatly the happiness of those who 

 occupy and cultivate the land, why are not more signs of its 

 advantages apparent on the Crown lands ? On one occasion, 

 when Mr. Higdon had reiterated his conviction that Land 

 Nationalisation (and not co-operation, which happened to be 

 the subject of debate) was the remedy for all rural ills, Lord 

 Bledisloe remarked that he would be glad to welcome Mr. 

 Higdon to his house, which was on the border of a national 

 property. He would then learn what a lack of civic life, 

 an absence of conscience in the matters of land and house 

 improvement, a deficiency of commercial enterprise and a 

 prevalence of low wages characterised that locality. 



It was not until the Club had been going for nearly a 

 year that the subject of Land Nationalisation was formally 

 introduced for discussion. Mr. Christopher Turnor, in 

 February, 1919, read a paper which he opened by saying 

 that I had asked him to do so, and that he felt with me that 

 the time had come to ventilate the question and invite 

 discussion. It so happened that the meeting was that to 

 which I have previously referred as being the only occasion 

 on which I was absent from the Club. After remarking 

 that the subject was so large that people had fought shy of 

 tackling it, Mr. Turnor declared that he did not approach 

 it in a hostile spirit, and was not opposed to nationalisation 

 in principle, but as applied to land, he wanted to consider 

 it on its merits and to see if it would indeed benefit the 

 nation and the great industry in which all took so deep an 

 interest. He proceeded : 



In general terms the arguments put forward in favour of the 

 nationalisation of land are : 



(i) That the community would secure to itself the increment 

 value of the land instead of the individual benefiting by 

 an increased value caused by the community itself. 



