The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-09-30
LABOR VS.. LAND.
A., e,usIauRht Upon the English AristOcracy by
- the london WOrkinRnlen's Organ.
-. th. Toados Reehipe


This monstrous evil--which caps all other
social and political evils that aflict our
country-has grown up and become hoary in
its iniduities; plethoric with the wealth it has
uniustly accumulated; and swollen out and
oyerprown with pride and insolent import
ance; and no wonder, when we consider that
it has fattened and battened, and ground
down and oppressed the people of these
realms for eight hundred years and upwards
1t had its originals most people known
that great buccaneering raid which William
of Normandy made upon this country in 1866,
aided by soldiers and priests and host of
dissipated adventurers which he gathered
from all parts of Europe by his offers of
plunder; and who were filed with fiery zeal
for the conquest of our unhappy country
by bull from the Pope, consecrated ban
ner. and ring said to contain a hair of
ST. Peter. With this united band of fighting
adventurers, priests, and monks, William
succeeded in overcoming our Saxon ancestors;
and. after having established and consolidated
his power by confscating, pillaging, burning,
and destroying in all directions, he finally
parcelled out the land of the country among
his rapacious followers, the noble-blooded an
eestors of sour hereditary aristocracy. Not
that the line of this noble blood has been
preserved unbroken; for very many families
of them have risen, and fallen, and sunk in
oblivion; so that most of our present
nobility have been very recent creations; yet
from this plundering origin our hereditary
aristocracy sprang. The Cenqueror, however,
wanted power and means to sustain him
in possession of his throne and his spoils;
and hence, in parcelling out the estates of the
country, he granted them on feudal tenure;
that is, he granted them conditionally, that
the holders should pay him service and tri-
butte of various kinds; such as military SER
vice, or being compelled to arm themselves
and their tenantry in support of the Govern
ment when requested by the king; as also to
pay certain fines or sums of money, under
the names of aids, reiefs, wardships, ETC.,
which were, as Blackstone says, sin the ma
ture of q modern land tax" The money
raised from this source, and from the crown
lands, or the estates the king kept for him
self, constituted at that time the only reve-
nue. of the kingdom; for the people then paid
no taxes, they being serfs or laborers.
This, then, was the origin of our landed
aristocracy; men who were bound by their
tenure to defend the country and to meet
the expenses of the nation in return for the
vast benefits they enjoyed; that of sharing
among them'the greater portion of the land
of the country. They subsequently succeeded,
however, in getting their military service
commuted for money; but this, and various
other payments they were compelled to make,
and continued to pay down to the time of the
restoration of Charles IT, when the Conven-
ton Parliament entered into an agreement
with him that he should free them from all
the landed obligations which they had hth-
erto paid for their estates, and that they
would present him and his successors with an
excise law. In other words, that he would
enable them, for this boon, TO shift the
burden from their own shoulders on
to those of the people Having thus,
for their own selfish ends, cut
&c
having subsequently cajoled our rulers out of
the chief portion of the crown lands, there
were no means for the carrying on of the
governments so that in the reign of William
the Third they were under the necessity of
imposing land-tax of four shillings in the
pound on the full annual value of the land.
This, however, was too good thing to be
continued, and our aristocracy now managed
to skirk, or to render it almost a nullity for
in 1898 they passed a law declaring that ''the
land-tax should only be levied on the original
assessment of William the Third" SO that,
taking into account the immense increase in
the value of land the tax does notnow amount
to farthing in the pound; for if it were
assessed at its present value, at four
shillings in the pound it would realize sum
of upwards of twenty-five millions whereas,
the land tax raised in 1868 amounted to only
e1,092, 695. But in the interim the excise
duties, which they imposed on the people,
have increased from about million to up
wards of twenty millions, and the customs
and all other public burdens to total of 699
millions With the possession of the land
they have possessed the control over the
tenantry, and the power of returning to what
ought to be the peoples House, the majority
of their own tools and mouth pieces to dc
their bidding, and to crush or retard all mea-
sures made by the friends of the people in
favor of retrenchment or reform.
The possession of this power to pack the
House of Commons has placed the State also
at their disposal, and most of its offices have
been filed by our aristocracy or their nomi-
nees; and fierce and savage have been theil
attacks upon the few outsiders who have lately
obtained possession of places in the ministry.
The Church, too, has ever been creature and
tool of their own, and its bishops and clergy,
their brethren or relations, or their own no.
minees or slavish dependents; for, in addition
to the vast estates of the Church which at diffe-
rent times they have shared among them, they
have now $3.50 Church livings to bestow on
whom they choose, and about nine or ten
millions of Church revenue to divide between
the persons they elect The clergy and aristo.
cracy have also got all the charities of Eng
land under their control, amounting to above
nineteen millions sterling The army anC
navy, also, are for the most part ruled an(
Officered by them; and all efforts to reduce
the enormous sum of about twenty-eight mil
lions paid annually to support them, arr
strenuously opposed by the numerous repre-
sentatives of these two services found in botl
Houses of Parliament.
In fact, the aristocracy have ruled ou
country for centuries have divided all place
of How Iokr, fha fNUn faction