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"Where wages are highest, there will be the largest production and the most equitable dismost active, and the brain guide best the hand. There will be the greatest comfort, the widest the truest patriotism."-HENRY GEORGE (Pro

tribution of wealth. There will invention be

diffusion of knowledge, the purest morals, and tection or Freetrade).

JUNE 1ST, 1895.

In July last, nearly a year ago, the people of New South Wales elected a Parliament with the express mandate to establish Free Trade, and the Taxation of land values. Nobody pretended to be in doubt as to what the will of the people was. Every newspaper and every politician admitted it, yet nearly a year has passed by before the newly-installed Government has made an attempt to carry out the people's resolve. When, in the course of last month the Ministry at last proceeded to carry out its instructions, its proposals were made the excuse for a Parliamentary intrigue, happily abortive, which for cynical disregard of principle and callous selfishness exceeds anything that has previously been attempted in Australian politics. Even now, however, it is by no means certain that these proposals are safe. The log-rollers

this and that profitable duty, and behind all lurks the formidable opposition to the land tax of the nominee Upper House.

All these delays, difficulties, and doubts illustrate the danger to which a people exposes itself when it creates vested interests. The little finger of the protected or landlord monopolist is stronger than the people's loin. Like leeches they stick to the body of the commonwealth, and it requires the sustained enthusiasm of an undivided democracy to remove them from their battening ground.

Happily that enthusiasm, that undivided co-operation, exists in New South Wales, and has received a new impetus from the unscrupulous conduct of the Opposition, Sir Henry Parkes, the Colonial Sugar Company, and that ilk. Nothing could tend more to consolidate the party of progress than the coalition with the Protectionists of those selfish Free Traders who for years have used the aspirations of the people to obtain power and pelf for themselves. Their leader is Sir Henry Parkes. Again and again he has been returned with the express instructions to remove the last traces of Protection from the statute book of the colony. Again and again he has disappointed the expectations of the people, and kept open the door to the entrance of new protective duties. His open alliance with the Protectionists for the purpose of defcating the only determined attempt to get real Free Trade, clears off the road the most formidable obstacle to honest legislation.

At this distance, it is difficult to estimate the value of Mr. Reid's proposals in every detail. His division of the existing tariff into duties to be removed at once; duties to be removed a year hence; and duties to be gradually lessened until they disappear between this and six years hence, has much to recommend itself, and yet

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The

gives rise to great objections. immediate removal of all the Dibbs duties is unexceptionable. They were imposed upon the people against its will by a scratch majority in Parliament, and by the help of men who acted as traitors to their constituents and party. But opinion will assuredly be divided about the wisdom of giving a year's grace to the older specific duties, as, for instance, that on candles. The reason for the delay, which Mr. Reid alleges, is that these duties have existed for a long time, and that their immediate removal would be a hardship to the beneficiaries. The hardship is as undeniable as that which a policeman inflicts on a burglar when he prevents a well-planned "job." But, on the other hand, it may well be urged that the hardship would have been no greater now than it will be a year hence; that the long existence of the duties is a reason for their speedy extermination, and not one for delay; and that this very delay encourages and gives time for intrigues and cabals which may succeed in preventing their abolition a year hence.

This same objection tells with even greater force against the gradual extinction of such duties as that on sugar, and there is the additional evil that sugar being the raw material of many industries, it would be an act of injustice to remove the protective duties which make dear sugar supportable to the latter.

Yet there is much to be said for Mr. Reid's moderate plan. It must be admitted that every change in economic conditions, however beneficial, brings with it disturbances which, for a time, may inflict hardship on a few. The greater and the more sudden the change, the greater must be the disturbance of trade, and the greater the area over which it is felt. It may well be that such a sudden and quickly-passing shock, in

flicts in reality less of suffering on the people than the partial continuance of existing conditions, which a slower procedure necessitates. But the suffering which is spread over a long period of time is felt and remarked upon with less acuteness than smaller suffering compressed within a short period, and therefore is not as likely to produce reaction. It may therefore be wise statesmanship which induces Mr. Reid to proceed with caution and circumspection, in spite of the danger that part of his plans may be defeated by that very caution. For, even if partial defeat should come to him it would be for a time only. Mr. Reid has behind him the united Democracy of the mother colony, a Democracy which will not rest till the last traces of Protection are removed from its laws; which is determined that the rent of land shall yield the revenue which the State requires; and he may therefore contemplate with equanimity a partial and temporary check.

In the meantime, the Reid Budget has received the unusual compliment of being commended by the "Argus as well as the " Age." We call upon our Protectionists to remember that the "Age" has praised it as a "truly democratic budget," in spite of its Free Trade proposals; and our Conservatives ought to recollect that the Argus" has spoken of it with the highest praise, in spite of its proposal to tax land values. The Reid Budget is nothing but the legislative expression of the policy of the Free Trade Democratic League. Yet while these two papers unite in commending this policy when it is sought to be applied in New South Wales, they equally unite in resisting its application in Victoria. That hypocritical resistance, however, will avail nothing, and will disappear fast enough should Mr. Reid succeed in establishing this policy, even partially, in the sister colony. For as things are now, the conversion of Sydney into a free port will either compel Victoria to follow suit, or will drain her of her capital and energy, hastening the present slow decline into a rapid consumption.

The fact that our own Parliament will plunge into the discussion of the Tariff issue at the same time as that of New South Wales provokes comparison, humiliating as it must be to the so-called Democratic colony. For while that issue will be debated on the widest and clearest principles in

New South Wales; while there the question turns on the taxation of land monopoly v. the taxation of labour, the discussion in our own colony must as yet be of the narrowest and most provincial kind. All that the Free Traders can hope to accomplish here is to curtail to some extent the stealings of the monopolists; to clip, to a slight extent, the claws which are dug into the body politic, and to bring some small relief to the overburdened industries of the country. We are at least ten years behind the onward march of New South Wales, and the fault lies entirely with the leaders of our Labour party. Their devotion to the "settled" policy has wedded them to conservatism of the most unreasoning kind; blocks the way to the progress of Democracy, and inflicts on this colony suffering and degradation from which our neighbours are escaping. Even the fact that the entire Labour party in New South Wales gives its cordial support to the Reid Budget is unable to shake their bigotry. Signs, however, are multiplying that their dominance is waning; that the working classes are recognising and resenting the false policy which they are pursuing, and that the time is approaching when the intelligent section of the working classes will unite with the farmers to initiate an era of democratic progress for this, the Cinderella of the Australian colonies.

After the eviction, the Davitt family, amidst much hardship, made its way to Lancashire, and settled in Hasling. den, near Manchester. His parents' poverty compelled them to send him into a factory at a time when the children of happier homes are still carefully tended in the nursery, and here, at the mature age of ten, he lost his right arm, that limb having been caught and crushed in a portion of the machinery. During the following five years he attended the Wesleyan school at Haslingden, and when 15 years old he found employment as assistant letter-carrier and bookkeeper in the printing office which was attached to the local post office. In 1868 he exchanged this position for that of commercial traveller for a Birmingham firm of gunsmiths, an employment which led directly to the most tragic issue of his life.

Lancashire had proved to be the haven for great numbers of the evicted peasantry of Ireland. In his home, as well as in the circle of his friends and companions, an atmosphere of patriotism surrounded the thoughtful lad, and fostered in him that devotion to the cause of his unhappy country, of which he has since given such convincing proofs. His dominant spirit soon made him the leader among his equally minded associates. As such he commanded a portion of the 2000 North of England men who had gathered in 1867, to attack Chester Častle and appropriate for the cause of Ireland the arms which were stored there. Fortunately this enterprise had to be abandoned on account of the discovery that the plans of the conspirators had been revealed to the English Government.

In the reorganisation of the Irish movement, which followed upon this abortive attempt, Davitt took a prominent part, till he was arrested on May 14th, 1870, on the charge of feloniously conspiring to depose the Queen, and to levy war upon her. The ground of the accusation was that he, in company with his employer, John Wilson, had furnished large quantities of arms to the Fenian conspiracy. Both men were found guilty, after a protracted trial. Davitt had pleaded earnestly that his employer was ignorant of the destination of the arms, and prayed that Wilson's sentence should be added to his own. His pleading, however, only availed so far as to reduce Wilson's sentence to seven years,