were naturally opposed, instead of being, as they are, perfectly compatible when fairly and accurately defined. "Private ownership" of property, whilst it encourages individuals to acquire that which is advantageous to themselves and their families, entails upon them that adequate contribution towards public objects which Mr Chamberlain improperly calls "a ransom for the security which property enjoys," and which, in his speech at Ipswich, he somewhat more justly called "the insurance which wealth may find it to its advantage to provide against the risks to which it is undoubtedly subject." Neither definition, however, expresses with entire accuracy the real nature of the payments which are entailed upon individuals, and applied to the advantage of the community by and through the existence of "private ownership." These payments, levied under different forms of taxation, are made by individuals in support of the laws and settled institutions which have enabled them without disturbance to employ their skill, labour, and capital in the acquisition of property in one form or another, and towards the maintenance of the framework of the constitution under which they happen to live. It is by taxing these results of individual efforts and individual enterprise that the State or general community – obtains a revenue which could never have been obtainable if those efforts had been restrained and that enterprise stayed by any such veto upon "private ownership" as that which appears so desirable in the eyes of our semi-Socialist Cabinet Minister and his ally. Therefore it is as clear as daylight (save to those who do not wish to see) that "private ownership," adding, as it does, to the aggregate wealth and available resources of the State, is very far from being the evil which these democratic orators would teach us to believe. Meanwhile, it is the "common right" of every member of the community in which private ownership exists, to profit by the results which are obtained by the taxation of property for the general good; nor is such common right in the least degree opposed to the existence of that private property by which, indeed, it is assisted and secured.
There is one point, however, which we must not omit to mention before we go further in our criticism of those wild and extraordinary "extra-parliamentary utterances." Mr Chamberlain's diatribes are all directed against "private ownership" in land. But if "private ownership" per se be a bad thing, why stop at land? Upon what principle can you deny to "every man who is born into the world" a fair share in the mills, the shops, the mines, the houses, and in every other property which happens to exist in the "land of his birth"? The Socialist may reply that there is a difference between land and property which the skill and labour of man has created; and may fly off into eloquent declamation to the effect that land is to man as much a necessity as the air he breathes, – that God gave both, and human laws have no right to refuse either to "the people." This is the kind of argument with which these gentlemen commonly reply to any such awkward question as the above. It is an argument, however, which will not hold water for a moment. In the first place, the far larger proportion of the land of this country has been so treated, so cultivated, and made the subject and recipient of so much expenditure in the pro-
