The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1886-04-10 00:00:00

AGRARIAN SOCIALISM AND PEASANT
PROPRIETORSHIP.
Professor Goldwin Smith, writing hi the Toronto
Tricek, affirms that in respect to the land question, the
cases of Ireland and England are peculiar, and can
afford no ground for general conclusions on the sub-
ject of property in land. "Ireland has, in the first
place, suffered from the absenteeism of landlords,
which, if its economical effects have been overrated,
has socially been the bane of the country; and, in the
second place, from the abnormal raising of rents by
the desperate competition for land among an over-
crowded population. Ireland and England alike
have suffered from the retention of feudal laws and
customs respecting succession in real estate, which
have led to the undue aggregation of land in the
hands of a few great owners, and which the Gracchus
of the Irish Land Act has, strangely enough, allowed
to remain in existence by the side of his agrarian
legislation." Under the British system, too, much
land has, perhaps, been devoted to parks and plea-
sure-grounds; though, as beauty and salubrity are
valuable to the inhabitants of a country generally, it
is doubtful whether by driving the plough over every
park in England, as Mr. Labonchere, Mr. Joseph
Arch, and Mr. Bradlaugh propose, the happiness of
the nation would be much increased. Otherwise
property in land stands upon exactly the same footing
as property of any other kind. "Equally with pro-
perty of any other kind, it has in its favour the testi-
mony, at once independent and unanimous, of civilized
nations, all of which have adopted—and the more
definitely the further they advanced. in civilization—
the system of private ownership in preference to that
common ownership which prevailed among primeval
men. Equally with property of any other kind, it is in-
dispensable as a motive to production, which would
cease if the husbandman were not allowed to reap
where he had sown, and if private capital could never
be invested in the improvement of the land. That
they are in danger of destroying the motive-power of
production, and thus producing famine instead of
felicity, does not seem to enter the minds of the
Agrarian Socialists. Yet they have had a tremendous
lesson on this subject from the French Revolution.
Land, we are told by the Agrarian Communists,
ought not to be appropriated, because it is the gift
of Providence to the people, not the product of in-
dividual labour. "Precisely the same may be said of
the raw materials and the natural forces which enter
into any other production. Stone, wool, water-power,
or the power of steam, are all as much the gifts of
Providence as the soil, nor is the labour which works
them into the house, the bale of cloth, or the engine
more individual than that which is expended in the
cultivation of land. Investment in land has been
recognised and is guaranteed by the law of every
civilised State hist as emphatically as investment in
goods or stocks. Rent, which agrarianism depicts as
something portentously criminal, is nothing more
than the hire of land, or rather of the results of the
labour and capital by which the land has been re-
claimed and made fruitful; nor is there anything
more invidious in taking rent for the farm which a
man or his father has tilled than in taking hire for the
ship which he has built, or for the horse which he has
bred. Rapine once let loose cannot be arrested at the
line of landed property; it will go on—proof has
already been given that it is actually going on—from
land to houses built upon land; nor is there any
logical limit to its progress. The owner of goods or
of stocks need not think that by throwing the land-
owner's head to Socialism he will save his
own." The cry in England is now for
creating by main force a body of peasant pro-
prietors. The scheme would deserve rather more
serious attention if it were propounded by disin-
terested economists and not by demagogues in quest of
the peasants' vote. "It is obvious that it can confer
what is imagined to be the special bliss of land-
owning only on a very limited number of people;
not even Mr. Jesse Collings would propose to take
the factory operative from the loom and the mariner
from the ship and to turn them into small farmers.
To the bulk of the population the land must continue
to be simply the provider of food, anel their highest
interests in relation to it must continue to be that it
shall provide as great an abundance of food as pos-
sible. That peasant proprietorship leads to an in-
crease of productien is very far from being an ad-
mitted fact. The rate of cereal production in Eng-
land is on the whole far higher than in any other
country; it is double that of France. As to the con-
dition of the peasant proprietor, Lady Verney reports
from personal observation that in the principal
countries of Europe it is decidedly below that of the
English labourer; and her observations are con-
firmed by high native authorities. If Ireland is
miserable, it is not for want of small proprietors, inas-
much as there are 150,000 holders of lots too small
for their owners to subsist on. To the argument that
the possession of land has an ennobling effect, Lady
Verney replies with force that degrading drudgery,
from which the wife and children are not exempt,
with servile dependence on the money-lender, can
scarcely be very ennobling." All these considerations,
however, will find their true level; and commerce
will take, in agriculture as well as in esery other de-
partment, that which is practically the best course
for all, if only there can be free trade in land. What
is wanted is the Torrens system, together with the
abolition in England of primogeniture and entail.

THE CLAIMS OF ISMAIL PASH&.
A Vienna correspondent of the Morning Post
writes: I am enabled to give some particulars regard-
ing the claims put forward by. Ismail Pasha, which
have attracted the attention of the Press. They
formed the subject of an animated discussion among
the Consuls-General of the Great Powers at Cairo,
and a communication on the subject has been ad-
dressed to the leading Cabinets of Europe. They
amount to ~.E5,121,000, and are divided into three
distinct categories: (1) Claims against the Domains.
It is said that when the Khedive's family ceded their
property to the State to contract the 1878 Loan the
lands had all been sown, the taxes paid in advance,
and the directors of the property were the possessors
of capital in specie. The Domain Commissioners
considered it necessary to take this situation into
account on behalf of the old proprietors. The Govern-
ment, too, recognised the fairness of these claims, but
arbitrarily fixed the compensation• to be paid at an
absurd sum. The Khedive and his family, therefore,
demanded that a new and fair valuation should be
made, and the books of the Daira examined.
(2) At the moment of the cession of these pro-
pertie3 the Egyptian Government, represented by
his Excellency Nubar Pasha, President of the
Council of Ministers, and his Excellency Riaz
Pasha, Minister of Finance, granted by means of
written edicts perpetual incomes to the ceding
parties. One year later, that, is to say, in 1870, while
confirming the value of these incomes, they were sub-
ject, for the first time, to a considerable reduction.
in 1880 Riaz Pasha again effected a reduction. The
Khedive Ismail and the members of his family now
claim the execution of engagements entered into with
them by the Egyptian Government. (3.) The
Government has appropriated to its own use the pro-
perty which constituted the personal fortune of
Ismail and the members of his family, and this pro-
perty was not included in the cession made to the
Domains. The Commission of Liquidation refused to
legalise this apparent act of spoliation. Then the
Egyptian Government, notwithstanding all the rights
alleged and the constitution of the Ottoman Empire,
promulgated a decree of confiscation. The Khedive
Ismail and the members of his family now demand
the restitution of this personal property or a corre-
sponding indemnity. The claims put forward by the
Khedive Ismail are supported by the legal opinions
of Sir Hardinge Giffard (now Lord Halsbury), Sir

Charles Russell, Mr. S. M. Underdown, MM: Oscar
Falateuf and Betholand, of Paris, Signori Orsini and
Rigoletti, of Rome, MM. Devilmousky and Von
Gippert, of Berlin, and Baron Hasdal, of Vienna.