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represented it, or sought to keep it back, are in general the principal sufferers. We would much rather be slandered than slander, be lied about than lie. Perhaps the day will come, when politicians will learn to feel the same, and that a man is bound to carry into all his political discussions and exertions, the same candor, sincerity, and strict integrity, generally insisted on as requisite in private life.

The abolition of hereditary property is a measure we have contemplated for a long time. We expected to be censured for proposing it; but we confess that we did not expect to find our countrymen quite so much surprised by its novelty. The question has been discussed before; but our countrymen seem not to have known it, probably because it was not discussed in England. However, some questions are discussed out of England; for there is some little intellectual, and, perhaps, moral power, besides what is indigenous in the Island of Great Britain. We expected the proposition would startle; but we confess that we did not expect to find people uniting to condemn what each one, taken singly, will uphold. We have never met a man who would not say, that he believed it a serious injury to a young man to inherit a fortune. We have heard our rich men, very generally, remark, that they regard it as by no means desirable to leave a large inheritance to their children. We have often been told by rich men, when we have referred to the destitute situation in which we ourselves were left, when quite young, that our "poverty was the richest legacy our father could have left us." Now, here is admitted nearly all we contend for. We believe it a serious injury to inherit a fortune, but to receive on setting out in life a moderate capital, as a ground on which our industry may display itself, we hold to be highly desirable. Our plan avoids the evil and secures the good.

Some have undertaken to accuse us of borrowing our notions from the French Radicals. The first knowledge we had of the views of the French Radi65

VOL. III. NO. IV.

cals, we obtained from their exhibition, as the original from which we copied. Our countrymen dislike whatever is French, and our conservatives like whatever is English. We will close this article, therefore, by subjoining a document, placed in our hands a few days since, by a gentleman from Liverpool. The document appears to be a sort of circular, sent out by an association, composed, we believe, of gentlemen of some eminence. The proposition it contains is as bold as ours, although, in some important features, quite different. It may be well to add, that the doctrine of this circular has been substantially advocated by one of the London Quarterly Reviews. As it comes from England, we have no doubt that it will be quite acceptable to our conservative friends, who, just at this moment, are doing, consciously or unconsciously, their utmost, to bring this country into subjection to the English bankers and stock-jobbers.

EDITOR.

No. 2, BY THE LAND REDEMPTION SOCIETY.

The flagrant injustice of the Corn Laws will induce the people to look more closely into first principles than they have ever done as yet.

MORGAN.

The Land of England belongs to the People of

England.

For God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over all the earth. GENESIS.

And land shall not be sold forever, for the land is mine, saith the Lord. LEVITICUS, XXV. 23.

The riches of a state arise from the labor of the people. - MONTES

QUIEU.

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The state owes to every citizen a proper nourishment, convenient clothing, and a kind of life compatible with health. MONTESQUIEU. Labor is the source of wealth, it is the source of the revenue of the state, and of the rents of the landlords. - THOMPSON. There is no foundation in nature, or natural law, why a set of words on parchment should give to any one the dominion of land. — BLACK

STONE.

No one is able to produce a charter from heaven, or has any better title to a particular possession of land than his neighbor. PALEY.

* God said them, and not a portion, or particular caste, or body of them, called landlords.

Sic vos non vobis mellificatis, apes. — VIRGIL.

Have the landlords dominion in their lands? or do they lawfully possess only the use of them? Can they do what they like with their lands? COBBETT.

If the land of England does not belong to the people of England, to whom does it belong?

Is it not evident, that if the air could have been appropriated, it would have been parcelled out like the land ?

Is not land the immediate gift of God, like air or water? * Is it not different from all other things useful to man, seeing that it is not the product of industry?

In thickly-peopled countries, heavy rents are demanded from labor; these rents are spent chiefly in ostentation, riotous excess, debauchery, and gambling. In proportion as a nation becomes skifful and numerous, does rent or the monopoly price of land increase, thus supplying more ample funds for the landlord's follies.†

What do we propose? Is it to take land from one individ. ual, and give it to another? No. Is it to rob the living possessors? No. Might not the following plan be adopted?

COULD NOT THE STATE HOLD THE LAND FOR THE BENEFIT OF ALL?

MIGHT NOT COMMISSIONERS BE ELECTED, IN WHOM ALL LAND MIGHT BE VESTED? ‡

MIGHT NOT THE PARLIAMENTARY VOTERS ELECT THESE COMMISSIONERS ? §

Might not the rental of the land in England, (on the death

*Rent paid to water companies is for steam engines, pipes, &c., not for the water.

Taxation may be reduced as population and wealth increase, but rent must rise and become a most serious tax on labor in thickly-peopled countries. Rent being the creation of the industry of all, must be devoted to the benefit of all. At home, and in our colonies, the fee simple of the land is sold forever and ever; now, no generation can sell the land forever, as the land belongs to the next generation, when it grows up to manhood.

This is not new. In Liverpool, the rental of the town, (the corporate estate,) belongs to the public, (the municipal voters,) who elect commissioners, (town councillors,) every year. This estate, £50,000 per annum, is devoted by law to the public good; as also are crown lands, estates of the Greenwich Hospital, of the Universities, &c.

§ The tenure of land is of more importance than political institutions. If taxation were annihilated to-morrow, rent would exist and increase. In America, where population increases, land will become more valuable, and a landed aristocracy will come into existence, who will constantly be plotting against popular rights. The present absurd tenure of land in the United States will overthrow their otherwise excellent political constitution.

of the present holders, and their sons born before a given date,)

be spent on

1. EDUCATION—of all, without distinction of rank or sect. 2. ON COMMUNICATION railroads, harbors, &c.

3. ON DEFENCE- army, navy, police.†

4. ON JUSTICE on courts of law, always open, and without charge.

5. ON RECREATION

gardens, museums, theatres, libra

ries; on improvements of towns and villages.

6. ON EMIGRATION fitting out first rate vessels to carry out those desirous of trying their fortunes in a new land, free of charge.

Would not this expenditure of rent be better than its present appropriation to the absurd caprices, vicious indulgencies, and gambling propensities of our landed aristocracy?

Is it not the fact, that previous to Cromwell, the landlords held the land of the King, as representative of the state? Our proposition, then, is not a novelty, but a return to an old sys

tem.

The earth and its products belong to the living, and not to the dead; therefore no man has a right to dictate the possession of the land after his death. The law allows him; but our proposal is to alter the law.

*The right to leave land to nephews or more distant heirs, to be abolished at once, or in a few years.

Taxation would thus merge into rent. Rent we cannot destroy, any more than wages or profits; we can, however, appropriate it to the state. The discovery of the great principle of representation renders this possible and easy.

Last year, a young nobleman retired to Boulogne, after gambling away £30.000 per annum, (the earnings of hundreds of tenantry, and thousands of laborers); a Duke is building a conservatory covering an acre of ground; and another with £200,000 a year, is going to the continent to recruit; a third, in Staffordshire, is wasting the hardearned rents of his tenantry in the most whimsical conceits.

LITERARY NOTICES.

France, its King, Court, and Government. By An AMERICAN. New York: Wiley and Putnam. 8vo. 1840. pp. 191.—This work is ascribed to Governor Cass, American Minister to the French Court. Our attention has been called to it by seeing in the pages of a respectable contemporary, the following extracts, presented as the original from which the writer in this Journal for July last, on the laboring classes, derived his "Horrible Doctrines."

"I have been surprised, that the judicial proceedings to which I allude, and whose developments are so extraordinary, have not excited more attention out of France. I have met with but one notice of it, and that a meagre one, in any English publication; and as to the Continental press, I believe it has overlooked it entirely. And yet, as well from its authenticity, as from its developments, it justly merits the attention of every observer of the signs of the times.

66

The judicial proceedings to which I have adverted disclose the existence of certain secret societies, and also their machinery, principles, and objects. Their organization appears to have been well adapted to the ulterior designs of the party. Candidates were admitted with prescribed ceremonies, tending to produce a powerful impression upon their imaginations. They were blindfolded, accompanied by a guide, who made the necessary answers, and took an oath of secrecy and obedience. A poniard was placed in their hands, as a symbol of the power of the society over its members, and they invoked its employment in the event of their infidelity. The members were not known by their actual names, but each received a nom de guerre. They were required to propagate their principles; to make no confessions if interrogated by the authorities; to execute, without reply, the orders of their chiefs; to furnish themselves with arms and ammunition; and carefully to avoid writing upon the subject of the association. At the initiation a series of questions and answers passed between the President and the Candidate, which discloses the objects of the association, and the means it proposed to employ. This political catechism is a mixture of the wildest fanaticisin and of the most frightful cruelty; and reveals a state of feeling, and an aberration of principle- and, I might almost add, of reason wholly unknown in our calmer and happier country. Before I touch these articles of faith, I am tempted to advert to another document, which, while it will provoke a smile upon the countenance of every American, will perhaps bring home to his conception the true character of these efforts better even than a mere formal enunciation of them. The chiefs of the party published a journal devoted to their doctrines, which escaped for a while the researches of the police, and which was extensively, but secretly, distributed. In the fourth number, dated February, 1838, is an article entitled Exterior Review,' in which a sketch is given of the condition of some of the free countries in the world, with the apparent design of impressing upon the French republicans a just idea of the high destiny to which they were called, in the formation of a model republic, by exhibiting the un

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