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THE LAND PROBLEM — PEASANT FREEHOLDERS. ...
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ASSOCIATED HOMES. Miss Martinkau has sei...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Financial And Parliamentary Reform. Dari...
the People in the appearance oi grudging insufficiency ; while the nature of the popular demands is confessed in the very nature -of the measures . Sharing , therefore , the objects of the Financial Reform Association , we are bound to urge upon them once more a reconsideration of their policy ; and we do so with the aid of the experience derived from the last half year . We can appeal to the flatness of the Associa
which has attended the proceedings - tion , to the small public estimation which they have yet earned . We would gladly see them have a spice of excitement more congenial than that supplied at the meeting on Monday in the form of suspicion , innuendo , and mortification : we would have them rise to importance not only in the favour of the People , but in the fear of a retrograde
Government . To do that they must recognize the insufficiency of their present programme , and endow it with sufficiency . It is insufficient on many grounds . It is insufficient because it falls short , expressly and intentionally , of the wishes avowed by the People . When there is no real objection , even in the mouths of the leading men , to universal suffrage , it is very impolitic to propose something which falls short even in name , and by that falling short implies an alienation from the People , a censure of the demand sanctioned by the
People . It is very impolitic we say . The hints of financial reform thrown out , also fail for very manifest insufficiency . They are not enough to claim the ready and cheerful concurrence of the People . The People wish for something more . But we recognize the insufficiency still more vividly when we see that it would not only be gratifying to the People to ask for more , but that in point of fact it would be quite easy to obtain more . A great deal more . It is quite evident that opinion in favour of a very thorough taxation reform goes very far
beyond parings of expenditure . We allow that it is vexatious to devote some thousands of pounds for the prospective advantage of a little boy , the Prince of Wales ; but the saving of that sum , judicious and respectable as it would be , would not effect the slightest advantage to the People . We might give that , and stables , and marble arches , and yachts , and state ball finery , and palaces for Ambassadors at Constantinople , and many other things besides , equally needless—we might give all that out of the immense wealth of the United Kingdom , and yet have such financial reforms as should within the
year tell very decidedly and beneficially upon the outgoing of the working man . This is the point . The income tax is to be revised next year . Whether wages are short or high , the working man will continue for some time to have his tea , and to pay two shillings to the State every time he buys a pound at the shop — ask the working man of Manchester or Leeds ,
Stockport or Bradford , how that fact lies—his tea , and his tobacco , and his sugar ; always paying to the State . The middle class would hail any clear and intelligible proposition to abolish the tax upon Income , that odious , inquisitorial , inconvenient , untimely claim for cash . The working class would bless the public body that should take the tax off the necessaries of life . Why , then , fall short of this manifest reform , of these most politic
and obvious measures ? The Financial Reform Association has had some alliance with the Freehold Land Societies , and excellent societies they are . But the whole subject of land is rising in the public mind with the most intense interest . You shall hear the word echoed in drawing-rooms and huts , —in Parliament , in parish meeting , and in public meeting , —in omnibus and railway carriage , both first class and third class . AVhy , then , does the Reform Association neglect the dictate of the time , and abstain from putting
forth a distinct declaration of principle on the subject of recovering for the English People the land which has been alienated from the English People ? In all quarters of England and Ireland is rising into practical treatment the great question of industrial occupation forthe People—that of securing subsistence to the poor man who shall be industrious . Even parish officers are trying their hands at the practical solution of this great and vital question ,
in Slu'flield , in Cork , in Leeds , in many electoral districts of Ireland , in Bradford , in Abingdon , and in many places which we might name : why then does a body professing to take the lead in ( Economical reforms neglect this clamorous dictate of the time ? The Financial and Parliamentary Reform Association is sulVerinfr itself to be in the rear of public opinion - il . is allowing parish ollicers to take precedency of it in public agitation ! L-au we more
distinctly express the immense short-coming which it suffers in its own policy ? Will it follow behind the guardians of Leeds or Bradford , the United Chartists and Social Reformers , nay , the very guardians of Ireland ? Or will it really take the lead ? If it would take the lead , in truth it must take a heart of grace , and must really put forth such measures as stand , not in the rear of disorganized public opinion , but in advance of it . And as practical men the leaders of the association ought not to be offended with us for restating explicitly the duty which they must know to be theirs .
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The Land Problem — Peasant Freeholders. ...
THE LAND PROBLEM — PEASANT FREEHOLDERS . In a letter from Mr . F . W . Newman , full of much practical wisdom , on the condition of the poor , which we published a few weeks ago , after remarking that we had touched the real source of much of the evil in our articles on the land question , he goes to observe that the disease of England is that < f her rural industry is unescpansive , hence the whole
encrease of population flows over into the towns . How to make rural industry expansive , and prevent the ruinous overcrowding of the towns , is a problem which must be solved before we can hope to see any substantial improvement in the condition of the wretchedly poor . As a valuable contribution toward the solution of that problem , we call the special attention of our readers to the following letter from our intelligent and thoroughlypractical friend who writes to us from Germany : —
Bonn , Oct . 15 , 1850 . I observe that the "land-question" is gaining increasing attention with you ; and it may , perhaps , not be uninteresting to your readers ( or perchance to your writers ) to hear something of a plan propounded thirty-five years ago by my venerable neighbour , E . M . Arndt , for the creation and preservation of a substantial yeomanry . It was in 1815 , at the conclusion of " the peace , " when Europe and Germany were to be reorganized , and a new era was to open to mankind , with untold hopes—as is always the case at the beginnings
and ends of historical chapters . The " land-question " had already in those days received some decisive treatment : church lands had been appropriated , crown lands been divided amongst peasants , copyholds and feudal tenancies changed by royal edicts into freeholds . In his own country , the island of Itugen and ( then ) Swedish Pomerania , Arndt had witnessed the operations of extensive " clearings " effected by wealthy proprietors , the destruction of whole villages for the formation of < l large farms . " His sympathies , besides , were always with the peasants , which , in Germany , means * ' the people . "
Considering the nature of his plan , it will also be well to premise that Arndt has always been a democratic man , that he had , at that time , been actively associated with the best men of his period : with Stein , Schon , Gncisenau , Scharnhorst . Though a man of decided " historical views , " he has never had—like other eminent German professors and politicians—any feudal predilections ; on the contrary , his favourite notions are all eminently Saxon ; and feudalism , he somewhere shows , had never been a Saxon institution , but had been brought to Saxon countries by Gaulicized Franks and Normans . The reader will bear this in mind .
The propositions are introduced by some reflections of a social-political nature , which , considering that they were made a generation ago , are remarkable . I will try to epitomize some of them . Many desire a liberty which on earth never can or ought to be realized . —When everything is made free , nothing remains free ; but each gets , in its turn , intruded upon and swallowed up by its adjoining " liberty . "—The secret of true liberty consists in a wise regulation of things which touch the freedom of men , not directly , but indirectly , and cause them to move within such limits as
to produce the feelings and habits of permanence and continuity , without which no good citizenship can be . — But the tendency of the time is to loosen and disengage , to " emancipate" men from the soil , and to make them shifting , nomadic , and volatile ; a tendency pregnant with dangers to the individuals and to the state , and which the latter ought , therefore , to meet by lasting arrangements , whereby a number of citizens , at least , should become permanently attached to the land j for , in a highly-developed and often much-entangled state of
political society , men are apt to reverse the order of nature , and consequently of society , till what is called " liberty" becomes the mere rule of chance , everything being left to shift for itself—what has been called the " Doviltake-the-hindmost" rule . To such sort of liberty all wise legislators have , from of old , thought it necessary to set limits . ( And here begin the special propositions o the plan !) It can bo accomplished by means of agrarian laws . —Land and property in land should not bo alloivvd to go " free " like persons . The pcasaut
—^ - ^^^^ mm and small landed proprietor should , wherever it is possible , hold his land immediately of the State ; should , in fact , be a sort of free "bondsman" ( Horige ) of the Statethat is o the law , and not of any individual—and thereby be saved from becoming the slave , or the victim , of " circumstances . " This he proposes to realize , or commence realizing , by the disposal of Crown lands , waste lands ( encumbered estates ) , or any other lands the State could get the disposal of . Such lands to be divided into small farms , but large enough to maintain an industrious and frugal family in comfort and independence ; and to
be sold as properties held in fief of the State ; that is , the State shall have the inalienable right to enforce the observation of the conditions of the holding for ever . The principal of these conditions are : —That those lands shall remain peasant properties for ever . No " gentleman , " merchant , capitalist , & c , can possess them ; neither can they be let for rent ; but the owner must always be occupier . In the succession to these properties
sons shall precede daughters ; one son only ( or in th e absence of sons one daughter ) to be the heir . The arrangement who is to be the " one" might be left with the family . The successor to the property to maintain " honestly" his mother , grandmother , & c , during the remainder of their lives , and to support and educate his minor brothers and sisters till they are eighteen . The property may be sold entire , to a peasant holder ; but not to be subdivided , nor joined to another holding .
There are more details , but these are the main conditions o the "bond" between the State and its " feoffees ; " and he thinks it desirable that one half of the land of every country should be held in this way . " May God , " he adds , " soon send us men who look upon this all-important subject with the eyes of a Moses and Lycurgus ! " and to the politico-economical objector he answers in the name of the State , " My laws and regulations must , above all , assert this principle , that silver and gold , and what ye call ' wealth , ' is not with me the matter offirst consideration , but general well-being and permanent virtue . " I may , perhaps , take another opportunity to give you some account of the actual state of the
German peasantry . At present I will only say that , without the special protection of laws or " custom , " small properties of land , wherever they come in contact with accumulated capital , are soon swallowed up by it . There is a striking illustration of this under my eyes . On the opposite side of the Rhine , where the country stretches towards Westphalia , there are few large towns , and no great capitalists ; and the cultivators of the land are also the owners of it . While , for miles round this town , which is the residence of many rich people , " gentlemen , " and retired merchants , and manufacturers from Cologne , Elberfeld , & c , who have capital to " invest , " most of the peasantry have , by degrees , become labourers and tenants of the " townspeople . " J . N .
Associated Homes. Miss Martinkau Has Sei...
ASSOCIATED HOMES . Miss Martinkau has seized upon an interesting subject in the letter which we publish , on Associated Homes for Poor Ladies . Her minute , graphic description of the every-day life of an elderly unprotected female in London is in her happiest manner , and will have the effect which she anticipates . Indeed , there are many persons besides the class she describes who might greatly encrease their comfort and happiness by planning
to live in " self-contained chambers , " forming parts of large houses . We have often wondered why so little advantage has been taken of the associative principle by persons of good culture and limited income , of whom there are so many thousands in London . Were any liberal speculator with a due amount of constructiveness to turn his attention to the erection of one or two large houses of this kind , he might obtain " a good return for his outlay , " and at the same time pave the way for a great social reform . What Miss Martineau says with relation to poor ladies is no less applicable to hundreds of poor gentlemen : —
" The money dribbled away in providing twenty lodginghouse lives will provide each inmate with a room , and the whole household with a cheerful sittingroom . Their few books put together might make a library . Among so many , a piano would not be out of the question ; nor a subscription to a library , and to lectures here and there . " Why should not some active , bustling 1 , planning philanthropic builder try what can be done in
this direction ? He might commence with an Associated Home planned to accommodate single men , possessing incomes , say , from £ 60 to £ 100 or so . If that succeeded , then the plan might be extended , by the erection of Associated Homes for marr ied couples with families , and ultimately for married couples without families , to whom the isolation of a separate home is frequently as irksome and cheerless as is that of single men and women . The experience of model lodginghouses
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 19, 1850, page 12, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_19101850/page/12/
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