in the Land Act 1908 and The Land for Settlements Act 1908, these undeveloped lands may be compulsorily acquired by the Crown upon payment of the unimproved value of the land as given in the Valuation Roll, plus 10 per cent. up to £50,000, and 5 per cent. on all amounts above that sum. For the protection of the owner against undervalue, he may at any time call upon the Valuer General to increase the value. But it must be remembered that upon this unimproved land value the owner is liable to pay a land tax of a penny in the pound, and where the value exceeds £5,000, a graduated tax commencing with onesixteenth of a penny in the pound in addition.

The land therefore having been acquired, is divided into small farms and let on lease to the applicants at a 4 per cent. rental on the capital value, fixed at a rate to cover first cost, together with survey, administration, and roads if required. The lease is for a term of thirty-three years with the perpetual right to renewal for successive terms of thirty-three years at a rent to be determined by re-valuation. This is only one of the methods by which the New Zealand Government seek to encourage a numerous and prosperous agricultural population. Underlying the whole system is the principle of restricting the area which any one man may own. No one may hold more than 640 acres of first class land. That is to say, no one may acquire more land than he can reasonably want for his own use. Land speculators and rent receivers are discouraged. The object of the Government is not to obtain revenue, though this is not overlooked. Rents are therefore reduced to the lowest possible figure consistent with sound finance. And as a further aid to their main policy, advances of sums varying from £25 to £3,000 are made to settlers upon their freehold or leasehold securities at 5 per cent. per annum, reducible to 4 per cent. on punctual payment. These loans are repayable by half

yearly instalments of £3 on every £100 until capital and interest is repaid.

A few words by way of digression may be said upon the situation in the cities and large towns. Whilst rents continue to rise in the urban centres the industrial classes are driven into the wilderness of mean streets. In the noisome slums to be found in every town and city, the casual labourer and the sweated hand are breeding a degenerate, stunted and debilitated race, which is already a menace to our boasted civilization. Land is “held up” here, not for social position, not for love of sport, and not even for love of power, but purely and simply for greed. In the pursuit of wealth the present landowner is too often blind to all considerations of equity, to all considerations of right and wrong conduct. From the smallest tradesman to the most prosperous industrial company or municipal corporation he takes toll-of the wealth to which, as landowner, he has not contributed one sixpence. In the long run under the present leasehold system, surplus wealth finds its way into the pockets of the landowner. And this is not the least evil. Industry and commerce are strangled and their development checked in every direction. Upon what principle of common justice should a tradesman or a limited company be liable to this toll upon the renewal of the lease? The most important element in the value of the goodwill is the right to continued occupation of the business premisesnay, it constitutes the first essential to be acquired at any cost. Who is better entitled to the value of this element, the man who created it by his industry or the landowner who slept during its creation?

Two notable attempts have been made by the present Government to remedy the existing evils of the land system. First, by Mr. Harcourt's Small Holdings Act; secondly, by Mr. Lloyd George's provisions for the tax

ation of land values in the Finance Act 1910. But the first method, invaluable as it is proving, has up to the present met with only partial success, owing almost entirely to opposition from those landowners who are animated either by purely selfish motives or by traditional dislike to an independent land-holding class.

It is not my present purpose to discuss the provisions for taxation of the unearned increment of land. Nor do I desire to suggest that individual ownership in land is everywhere and always harmful. Mr. Balfour contends that land differs in no way from other forms of capital. I submit that, inasmuch as it is limited in amount and is a prime necessity, it differs in toto from every other form of wealth. It is a monopoly of unique character, and when such a monopoly is so used by those who control it as to become a danger to the general welfare of the people as a whole, it must be curbed or destroyed.

I now propose to trace the history of the agricultural proletarian, in order to show that for at least a century land in rural districts has not been put to its full use, and that the present position of the labourer, directly due to this failure, is not merely a loss to the material resources of the country, but a national danger of first magnitude.

We must go back at least to the Norman manor for the origin of the agricultural labourer, but it will not be necessary for my purpose to go behind the Conquest. Whatever may have been the old English agricultural organisation, the Norman manorial system was more highly developed than that which it displaced. Almost everywhere, all men, free and unfree, within a given district lived under a politico-economic subjection to one person. He was called "lord," and the sphere of his lordship was "the manor." Up to the commencement of the 13th century the organisation of labour was based on dues and services. The agricultural labourer in the modern sense had not yet come into existence.

We may picture a manor as a cultivated area surrounded by waste with the manor house and its appurtenances in the midst, and a large block of plough land adjoining. Hard by lay the village inhabited by the lord's tenants, a survival of the primitive village community. The villagers, too, held land in addition to the homestead with its curtilage, and this was to be found, not in continuous blocks, but lying in strips scattered up and down the large open fields which surrounded the village. In these fields the lord also not infrequently held some strips. The latter were cultivated under what is known as the three-field system, viz., two crops and a fallow. After the harvest was in, the tenants' cattle were turned on to the open fields. Obviously the open or common fields were insufficient for any considerable number of cattle, and so the tenants were entitled to share with the lord in the use of the pasture which formed part of the surrounding waste. Another part of the waste might be either woodland in which the villager might feed his pigs and cut his firewood, or marsh land teeming with wild fowl, a welcome addition to the cottage larder.

The tenants were divisible roughly into four classes, viz., the free, the unfree or villeins, farm servants, and superintendents of labour. The freemen held their holdings of the lord upon various conditions, viz., from a nominal peppercorn rent to a not inconsiderable sum in money; by military service; by suit of Court, or by labour at exceptional times of pressure such as spring sowing or harvest. Actual manual labour, however, was rarely exacted from the freemen. Little beyond superintendence of labour was as a rule required of him.

It was upon the second class, the unfree, that the chief burden of labour fell. To these men parcels of the manor were granted by the lord in consideration of receiving their labour. They worked upon the lord's demesne in proportion to the size of their holdings. Those holding about 30 acres

were known as virgators," and were liable to render to the lord three days' labour a week. Those in the like manner holding 15 acres or so were called "half virgators," and worked for a proportionately shorter time.

Their principal work was the tillage of the arable land, and this they ploughed with their own oxen or horses, known as "plough teams."

Others were the "borderers" and the "cottiers," holding from five to two acres, who gave to the lord one day a week of manual labour, in which as a rule farm implements were used. The holdings of these humbler tenants lay outside the open fields. Lastly, come the village artisans-smiths, carpenters, masons, and the like-holding of the lord a house and garden only.

The third class was composed of the servants of the home farm who were concerned almost exclusively with the care of the live stock. They lived at the farm and received board and clothes, and, as a small bonus, a share in the fruits of their labour or the produce of small holdings.

The fourth class consisted of the superintendents of labour, of whom the chief was the bailiff. If the lord possessed several manors, a seneschal or steward acted as his agent, with authority over the bailiffs.

Such was the typical organisation of the ancient manor. Speaking generally, the freeman was mainly occupied on his own holding, whilst the unfree or villein worked for himself solely from a-half to two-thirds of his time. Both alike held land of the lord and possessed capital of their own in respect of which the villein was liable, on succeeding to the holding on the death of his predecessor, to pay a fine and render a heriot to the lord. Under such a system, there was little room for the landless hireling. The villein, indeed, was incapable of legally hiring himself out, and it was quite unusual for the freeman to do so, except on special occasions. During the century and a-half commencing with the year