The Sun.
London, England, 1867-10-21 00:00:00

MONOPOLY OF THE LAND.

In the course of a lecture cn "Labour and Capital" de-
livered by Mr. Ernest Jones to a largo audience in the City
Hall, Glasgow, he made the following remarks :—" In 1770
there wore 250,000 landlords in the United Kingdom; now
there are less than 30,000, of whom nearly 9,000 are in Ire-
land. Five men—the Earl of Breadalbane, the Dukes of
Argyll, Athole, Sutherland, and Buccleuch—own one-
fourth of all the land in Scotland ; twelve men possess the
half ; and half of England belongs to 150 persons. 30,000
mon, say, to 30,000,000 people—here you shall plough and
sow and reap, and there not : here you shall build and
plant and work, and there not : here you shall breathe
and live and die, and nowhere else, except where we per-
mit " Ho concluded by saying, " I seek not to In-
fringe the rights of property ; 1 seek not to confiscate a
single acre; ner is there the slightest need for any such
proceeding. But Ido say the rights of private property
is land have their limits. Those limits have been recog-
nised by Parliament. They were recognised when the
Legislature drove a railroad through the landlord's acres
against his will. if it is right to send the people through
his acres, it is right to send them to his acres also. They
plosp:yrtynoman
hasa
were recognised when the Legislature established the En-
cumbered Estates Court, and sent ono-seventh of all Ire-
land to the auction mart. They are recognised when a
lawm an
stpuan
in
nblaen
dt ommanaangaegae wisely—the
right, whore labour is redundant and food deficient, to keep
fruitful land out of cultivation. The men who do that are
criminals; every such uncultivated acre is a national crime ;
it for howini.n
every such uncultivated acre is a landlord's theft. I lay
down the axiom that no man has a right to more land than
ho his capital or means to cultivate. Whoever keeps an
acre out of cultivation keeps the loaf from the poor man's
cupboard—takes a span from the poor man's life. He has
no right to that acre, I care not who ho is. Though a
king gave it to him, who gave it to tho king ? The title to
the land is culture, God is the only landlord, and our
labour is the rent we have to pay."

THE ATLANTIC TELEGRAPII.—After a consider-
able amount of negotiation between the Atlantic
Telegraph and Anglo-American, and the New York and
Newfoundland Companies, the basis of au agreement Las
been come to for a reduction of the present tariff of charges.
The assent of the Nosy York and Newfoundland Company
has not yet been obtained to some of the minor details, but
the proposed reduction has received the assent of all the
parties interested. It is proposed to reduce the present
charge of £lO to .£5 for a message of ten words, giving five
words net exceAing twenty-five letters for the name and
address of the sender and receiver of the message. All
extra charges for code messages are to be abolished, the
rate being the same as for ordinary business. Thu com-
panies, however, reserve to thems,lves the right of de-
clining to scud any particular form of code which may be
offered to them. For any word over and above ton; and
five for name and address, the charge will be 7s. Gd. 'rho
reduction is to take effect on the Ist of November, and pro-
vision is made in the agreement for a further revision of
the tariff, and return to original rates if the receipts dur-
ing the current three months do not reach a certain speci-
fied sum.—Raittray Neztv.
TELEGRAPHIC CABLE BETWEEN FRANCE AND
AMMICA.—The Debats contradicts the statement that the
Government has granted a concession for a submarine tele-
graphic cable between Franco and the United States,
adding that. the State will give neither subsidy nor privi-
lege, but will leave the undertaking to be accomplished by
private enterprise.