The net produce of the soil is now absorbed by individual expenditure, which contributes nothing in itself to theadvancement of the nation. Abolish all taxation which encumbers industry, and at the same time apply the revenue toencourage education, literature, and art, and to extend the means of communication: economical and intellectual progresswould receive an incalculable impulse. This is what Australia and the United States might do in the future, if they grantedleases of land, instead of selling it as they do now.
Mr Mill truly said that proprietors of the present day unjustly enjoy the increase in the value of their lands and rents,resulting from the general progress of society. This increase of value would accrue to the public who created it, by thegradual increase of the rent demanded by the State or the commune.
In England and in the United States, as in the middle ages, when a charitable or educational institution is established, it isfounded on an endowment, which allows of its existing on the revenues accruing therefrom. Thus provision is made for anobject of general utility, without its costing any one any thing. Is not this a better means than having recourse to taxation? Ifall public services were similarly paid entirely by the revenue of State or communal lands, would it not be an immenseadvantage to society?
The difficulty of administering the public domain would be nothing in comparison of that which certain States, which engagein any industry, now have to deal with. In Java, the Dutch State, regarding itself as proprietor, not only collects the rents ofthe lands of the dessas , but on one part of the public domain it has coffee plantations, of which it superintends thecultivation, and gathers and sells the crops. (18) The State is not contented with the part of proprietor, an easy functionaccording to M. J. Say, but it is engaged in agriculture and commerce, which is certainly an arduous undertaking. InBelgium the State manages the railways, as complicated a work as we can conceive, demanding technical and commercialknowledge, and an organism of machine-like regularity. If the State is capable of administering a network of railways, itmust be still better able to collect a rent instead of a land tax by means of its receivers. Therefore, we may admit that newStates do violate the right of future generations, by taking from them their domain in the constant alienations which theyeffect.
Apparently some colonies are beginning to understand that they need not alienate the fee ****** of their lands in order to getthem cultivated. Thus in Java, a law of April 9, 1870 ( Begeling der uitgifte in erfpacht van gronden in Nederlandsch Indie )empowers the government to grant hereditary leases (erfpacht) of unoccupied lands for 75 years. A law of 1867. passed inthe province of Nelson, New Zealand, empowers the Board of Uncultivated Lands to grant leases of 14 years of unoccupiedlands, renewable at the expiration for a new term of 14 years, at double the original rental. A lease must not comprise lessthan 50 acres, or more than 10,000. (19)
On the East coast of New Zealand, the Maoris have formed a league, the object of which is the total suppression of the saleof land and the substitution of leases in its place. The son of a New Zealand chief, who had been sent to London to study,and had gone through a course of law at the Temple, was at the head of the movement. The idea is ingenious; for if theMaoris lease their lands instead of selling them, they may hope to become one day proprietors of a fertile and well cultivatedterritory, with towns, farms and mines; and they will thus eventually have incomes to rival those of the Dukes ofWestminster or Devonshire. But would it not be better if all this increase of wealth some day accrued to the State?
1. See especially the excellent treatise of Land Tenure in India, published by Sir George Campbell in the volume of theCobden Club, quoted several times before, Systems of Land Tenure in Various Countries .
See also Ancient Tenures and Modern Land-legislation in British India , by Henry Dix Hutton, 1870.
2. Systems of Land Tenure , etc., p. 151.
3. Systems of Land Tenure , p. 229.
4. Ibid. p. 195.
5. Systems of Land Tenure , p. 168.
6. Ibid. p. 173.
7. Systems of Land Tenure , p. 174.
8. Ibid. p. 179.
9. The Order in Council said:"It must be borne in mind as a leading principle, that the desire and intention of theGovernment is to deal with the actual occupants of the soil, that is with village Zemindars, or with the proprietarycoparcenaries which are believed to exist in Oudh, and not to suffer the interposition of middlemen, as Talnqdars, farmers ofthe revenue or such like..."
Lord Lytton, in a speech delivered in the sitting of the Grand Council of October 9, 1876, did this work the honour to noticeit at length, stigmatizing; however, as incorrect what in the previous edition the author had written concerning Oudh. Theauthor had, in fact, omitted to take account of certain legislative dispositions; but several highly competent authorities,whom he consulted, and also an Indian paper of considerable repute, The Pioneer Mail , Nov. 4, 1876 ( Optimism in HighPlaces ), are of opinion, that his criticism of the agrarian policy pursued by the Government in Oudh, was in the maincorrect.In order to avoid all charge of inaccuracy, the author now principally makes use of official documents, which heowes to the graceful kindness of Lord Lytton himself, and particularly of the excellent account given by the Hon. JohnStrachey, Chief Commissioner of Oudh, in the General Council (July 17, 1869), when proposing the Oudh Taluqdars' Bill .
