Idaho County free press. [volume] (Grangeville, Idaho Territory) 1886-current, 1890-12-12

all land capable OF cultivation has been
absorbed, while in that portion where
irrigation is needed to produce crops,
the water as we'll as the land has teen
monopolized. There tho unfortunate
immigrant, after having bought right
to earn his bread by the sweat Of his
brow from the monopolist of land, finds
himself compelled to pay heavy tribute
yearly to the monopolists Of the water,
who have seized the sources of supply,
turned the streams from their natural
channels into artificial 'ditches," and
exact for their use prices so extortion-
ate as to swell the dividends OF those
corporations TO eighty, ninety and one
hundred per cent annually on the cap
ital invested. OF the millions Of acres
OF public land yet remaining, large por-
tions arc included in the great Amer
lean desert; in the barren alkali lands;
in tracts too mountainous and sterile for
cultivation; and comparatively little re-
mains outside of the Indian reservations
and tho tracts set aside for railroad Sc.
lections, that is sufficiently inviting to
tempt speculative investment.
considering this condition Of tho
land into which by the will of God we
have been brought, can one turn to tho
Holy Scriptures and read a declaration
such as that made in the text: The
land shall not be sold forever; for the
land is mine or can he read that tho
earth is the Lords and the fulness
thereof and that the earth hath lie
given to the children OF men, without
having forced on him the conviction
that the benefcent purposes of God are
being set at naught and frustrated by
the greed and selhshness of those whose
grasping avarice and lust of power
prompts them to appropriate what Ne
Father of all made for the equal use
and benefit Of alp
us 1T possible for anyone to believe
that tho mereiful Creator made the
earth that greed and avarico might seize
on its best portions, and through their
possession enable the idle to revel in
luxury on the fruits of the poor mans
toll? Has God given any generation of
men the right to disinherit their sue
cessors to the very end of time, and in
doing this deny that the earth hath Ho
given to the children Of menT No!
What tho Creator did was the reverse
of this. His law, immutable as Him
self, is announced in my text: The
land shall not be sold forever;
1t is Mine, and We are strangers and
sojourners with Me- To generation
after generation, as they should come
and go, the right to the use OF the land
that only-was given, while the crea-
tor Of tho land kept and still keeps the
ownership in His own possession. The
land is NINE, saith the Lord.
''If l am told that this divine law OF
land was given to the Jews only, reply
that so the moral law of the ton com
mandments was given to the Jews only;
both laws, that of life and that of land
were given by the same God, and are in
vested with equal authority What was
good, right and just for Jew is good,
right and just for Christian also. III
am told, as l may be, that the moral
law is binding on all men because of its
nature, l reply that the same is true of
Gods law OF land. 1t is so eminently
wise and, in the nature Of things, SO
just, as to have commanded the assent
of the clearest thinkers Of the world.
Mr.. John Stuart Mill, whose reputation
as political economist is world wide,
says: The land of every country belongs
to the people Of that country Thomas
Jefferson said 1T Is a self-evident truth
that the land belongs in usufruct to the
living Herbert Spencer, confessodly
among the profoundest thinkers Of the
age, says: Equity does not permit pri-
vate property in land. For If one por-
ton of the earth surface may justly be-
come the property of an individual, then
all the earth's surface may be so held
Tho world he says, is Gods bequest
to mankind. All men are joint heirs to
it In saying this tho first thinker of
the age tells us that pure reason vindi,
Gates the dictum of revelation by lead
ing up to the very statement made in
our text-the land belongs to the Gre
ator, who gives the use OF it to the
creatures he places on it, as in their sue
cessive generations they come and go,
and to no generation has He given the
right, nor can they in any other way
have gained the right, to 80 dispossess
the generations to succeed them as that
a limited number Of mankind may claim
TO own the planet on which all must live
and from which the distressed must de.
rive food, water, raiment and shelter
Yet he who, to-day, reading in Gods
word the declaration that the earth and
its fulness-its ample resources-is the
Lords should turn from the sacred
oracles to human laws, would find him.
self confronted with what men esteem
as higher scripture-yot a man-made
one-which dominates the Inspired
Word and gives the earth and the full
ness thereof into the hands OF a single
class, disinheriting all others"