752 REPORT— 1888. 



true of industry, why is it not true of strpnp:th and cleverness ? They are natural 

 gifts, as well as the love of work. Natural rights are talked of. Nonsense ! 

 Natural rights may exist when man is in a state of nature. What they may be, I 

 know not. But when man is in a social state his rights are what the law gives 

 him ; and if the law is wise it will give him all he can get. Poverty and misery 

 shock us, but they are inevitable. They could be prevented if you could prevent 

 weakness, and sickness, and laziness, and stupidity, and improvidence ; not other- 

 wise. To tell the weak, the lazy, and the improvident that they should not suffer 

 for their faults and infirmities would but encourage them to indulge in those faults 

 and infirmities. If it is said that poverty and misery may exist without fault in 

 the sufferer, it is true. But it is but rarely that they do, and the law cannot dis- 

 criminate such cases. To attempt to remedy the disparity of conditions would 

 make the well-off poor, the poor not well off. Socialism is not good for man till 

 man himself is better. 



Not that I think that SociaHsm would be better even then than our present 

 state. Nothing could compensate for the loss of the pleasure and excitement of 

 struggling for the good of ourselves and of those dear to us, unless, indeed, we 

 could feel an equal pleasure in working for the hive. But then we shoiild be 

 something different from what we are. 



Private charity may be useful, not in indiscriminate gifts and doles— soup 

 kitchens, coals, flannel, and clothes given to all who apply — but in careful relief, 

 given in no case that is not investigated and seen to be deserving of help. All 

 charity is mischievous which is given to those who ask merely because they ask 

 and say they are in want. In this way, by careful and discriminate charity, the 

 man of wealth with Mr. Newmarch's socialist tendency may do good and relieve 

 his conscience. 



But besides this Socialism — the Socialism of the streets, well so called by Mr. 

 Crofts, who gives a clear account of it — this Communism — there is a mischievous 

 disposition abroad which is continually urging on Parliament — and Parliament is 

 too ready in agreeing to — invasions of private liberty and of private property. It 

 is quite certain that the number of orders we are under has vastly increased. It 

 is very clear also that private property is not regarded with as much respect as 

 it was. Everything that is said or written against it is listened to with 

 favour. The land particularly is attacked. Mill's ' unearned increment ' is quoted 

 as justifying taxation, as though, wlien private property in land was established, 

 it did not, as in reason it did, include all increment, earned or unearned. The 

 legal proposition of Mr. Joshua Williams that all land in this country is held 

 of the Crown or other lord, and so the absolute property is not in the owner, is 

 quoted to justify taking away all property in it. My old friend would have been 

 horrified at the ridiculous and erroneous conclusion drawn from what he said. It 

 is quite true. But all it means is this — that if a man dies intestate and without 

 heirs, his land escheats to the Crown or other lord ; so do his horse and his watch. 

 We are not so bad as Mr. George, who has the audacity to suggest that land 

 should practically be taken from its owners without compensation — on this prin- 

 ciple, that their ownership was always a wrong, and they should not be compen- 

 sated for being stopped doing wrong. Is it credible ? Two men have saved a 

 competency for their old age. One has bought railway stock, another land. Both 

 have trusted to the law. The one is to have his land taken from him because he 

 is a wrongful owner ; the other is to keep his railway stock ! This is approved of 

 by some who call for the 'nationalisation of the land.' The best thing to be said 

 in their favour is that they attach no definite idea to the words. They don't know 

 what they mean. 



Another remarkable instance of this attack on property in land is the desire to 

 tax what are called ground-rents. I think this is the result of want of knovring 

 better. A man has three pieces of land of the same size, situation, value. On one 

 he builds a house at a cost of 1 ,000/. and lives in it ; on another he builds a house 

 at a cost of 1,000/. and lets it at a rack rent of 65/., putting the annual value of his 

 land at 15/. ; the third he lets to a tenant at 5/. a year for fifty years on the terms 

 that the tenant lays out 1,000/. in buOding a house. He, the landowner, gives up 



