Volume Iii Part 15 (1/2)

'Well, then,' said Wentworth, 'I will. A gentleman sends me a scheme of a cooperative home colony, which will give the settlers three good meals a day, a house, a full suit of clothing every year, education for their children, and an allotment of half an acre of land, which shall be entirely at the disposal of the head of the family so long as he makes a good use of it and renders proper service during the regular working hours. For the purchase of fuel or tea and coffee, and such things as cannot be grown in this climate, the director will sell in the public market any surplus produce such as eggs, b.u.t.ter and poultry, far too much of which we get from abroad. One-sixth of the harvest and other produce will be sold to pay the salaries of director and foremen. A farm of three hundred and forty acres in the Isle of Sheppey, for instance, can be had if it be deemed desirable. If we get a population of five hundred on it, fifty acres of wheat will supply the settlement with all the bread that can be eaten there. If the cows were stall-fed, one hundred acres of land would keep over a hundred head of cattle, and such a herd would supply all the requisite milk, cheese, b.u.t.ter, beef and hides every year in abundant quant.i.ties. Flax could be cultivated and linen woven. A flock of sheep could be tended on the estate sufficient to yield five pounds of wool every year per head of the population. There would be no expense for manure, as the settlement would provide it all. Are you weary?' said Wentworth.

'Not particularly. Pray proceed. But why not try it-why not begin a scheme of the kind at once?'

'All we have to do is to get the people back to the land. By the establishment of such home colonies work will be offered in rural districts to men and women who would otherwise be driven into our great cities to increase the pauperism which threatens our whole social edifice. The scheme, if carried out, will encourage habits of industry and thrift-unlike the work given in our workhouses, which demoralizes and degrades the recipients; it will help the societies inst.i.tuted to distribute charity, as it will offer strong men and women healthy labour rather than doles, which they are ashamed to accept, which they do not ask for, and which, when taken, have a tendency to break down that spirit of independence and self-reliance which lies at the foundation of all decent manhood; and lastly, and this is an immense benefit, it would prevent land now in cultivation from becoming a desert. It seems to me this of itself is no common recommendation of the plan, when farmers are giving up farming, and their farms either allowed to run to waste or farmed by the landlords at a heavy loss. Our great Free Traders never dreamt of this when they got Parliament and the people to destroy Protection, yet such are the facts we have to face.'

'And yet there are people who believe in Cobden still,' said Buxton.

'I knew him well,' said Wentworth, 'and a better man never lived. He was right in the main, though his enthusiasm led him astray, and no wonder.

Let me, in the language of Goldsmith remind you-

'”How wide the limits stand Between a splendid and a happy land.”'

Buxton laughed when Wentworth had finished his rhapsody. Buxton was given to laughter. He was not a man who took life very seriously.

Perhaps he would have done better had he done so as far as his own personal interests were concerned. As Swift said of Arbuthnot, it might be said of him, that he knew his art better than his trade.

'Wait a moment,' he said, as he rushed out of the room to his own den, whence he returned with an old faded handbill, which was as follows:

SPENCE'S PLAN

for Parochial Partners.h.i.+ps in the Land is the only effectual remedy for the distress and oppressions of the people.

The Landholders are not Proprietors-in-Chief; they are but the _Stewards_ of the Public, for the LAND IS THE PEOPLE'S FARM.

The expenses of the Government do not cause the misery that surrounds us, but the enormous exactings of those _Unjust Stewards_, Landed monopoly is indeed equally contrary to the benign Spirit of Christianity, and destructive of the Independence and Morality of Mankind.

'The Profit of the Earth is for all.'

Yet how deplorably dest.i.tute are the great ma.s.s of the People!

Nor is it possible for their situations to be radically amended but by the establishment of a system founded on the immutable bases of Nature and Justice.

Experience demonstrates its necessity, and the Rights of Manhood require it for their presentation.

To obtain this important object by extending the knowledge of the above system, the Society of Spencean Philanthropies has been established. Further information of its principles may be obtained by attending any of its sectional meetings, where subjects are discussed calculated to enlighten the human understanding; and where, also, the regulations of the society may be procured, containing a complete development of the Spencean system. Every individual is admitted free of expense who will conduct himself with decorum.

'I never heard of Spence,' said Wentworth.

'Of course not,' said Buxton. 'In these days of boasted progress we know nothing of what has been. Radicals always ignore the past. You really need a little enlightenment. Shall I enlighten you?'

'By all means.'

'It was in 1775 Mr. Spence began his public career. Like most original thinkers, he commenced in the country. His political opinions were first p.r.o.nounced in the form of a lecture read before the Newcastle Philosophical Society in 1775, and printed immediately afterwards, from which time, he says, he went on continually publis.h.i.+ng them in some shape or other. They are fully explained in his ”Const.i.tution of Spensonia: a Country in Fairy Land Situated Somewhere between Utopia and Oceana.”

According to his scheme, the land belongs to the people, and individuals should rent the land from their respective parishes, the rent const.i.tuting the national revenue, and the surplus, after all expenses were paid, was to be divided equally amongst all the paris.h.i.+oners. The larger estates were to be let for one-and-twenty years, and at the expiration of that term relet by public auction, the smaller ones by the year, and the larger ones sub-divided according to the increase of population. The legislative power was to be vested in an annual Parliament elected by universal suffrage, women voting as well as men.

The executive was to be in the hands of a council of twenty-five, half of which was to be renewed annually. Every fifth day there was to be a Sabbatical rest, not a Sabbath, for no provision was made for public wors.h.i.+p, and in the new world no mention was to be made of parsons, though the const.i.tution was to be proclaimed in a more or less religious form. At the end of the pamphlet, as it was published, was an epilogue, intimating the flight of poverty and misery from this lower world, and there was an appeal:

'”Let us all join heart and hand Through every town and city, Of every age and every s.e.x, Young men and maidens pretty, To haste this golden age's reign On every hill and valley, Then Paradise shall greet our eyes Through every street and alley.”'

'Ah,' said Wentworth, 'I see there is nothing new under the sun.'

'But the taxes?' said Buxton. He continued: 'This scheme was published long before the French Revolution broke out. Up in the north there had risen a solitary and original thinker who advocated female voting, universal suffrage, annual Parliaments, and had got hold of the idea-which has led many of our modern apostles to fame and fortune-that the land lay at the root of the Condition of England question, that all private property in land must be destroyed, and that it must be done at once.

'Spence, then, was, to use the cant of the present day, a Progressist.

To him belongs the honour of having first presented the land question in all its bearings to the general public. What was his reward?-a Government prosecution with a fine of 20 and a year's imprisonment at Shrewsbury. Well might a n.o.bleman, as Wilberforce tells us, show him the picture of crucified Christ, and bid him mark the end of a Reformer.