16 JANUARY 1886, Page 5

MR. CHAMBERLAIN ON COMPULSORY EXPROPRIATION.

IN his speech at the Westminster Palace Hotel on Monday, Mr. Chamberlain not only took up once more the subject of Local Government in connection with allotments for the labourers, but descanted at length, and with much earnestness, on the principle of compulsory expropriation. Lord William Compton had proposed to drop the word ' compulsory ' and to substitute ' legal ' for it. Mr. Chamberlain remonstrated with him in the most eloquent manner. He would not lose the word ' compulsory ' for the world. "It is a blessed word," he said,—not, we imagine, in reference to the historical remark of the old lady on "that blessed word Mesopotamia,' "—pro- bably, indeed, for nearly the reverse reason. That pious woman liked the word 'Mesopotamia' because she had not the least idea what it meant, and did like a word of six syllables. Mr. Chamberlain gives his blessing to the word 4 compulsory ' because, "when people will not do their duty, it is the business of a representative Government to make them do it." So it is clear that Mr. Chamberlain blessed it for the drift it con- veys to him, not for its volume of sound. Well, in the particular case to which he applied it, the word ' compulsory ' means that the State, when acting in the interest of the poor man, ought to apply its beneficially compelling force to make the rich give way. In that sense, no doubt, the emphasis he lays on the word ' compulsory ' may have a popular ring. But surely Mr. Chamberlain should reflect that there may be a very unpopular ring given to it, if at the very dawn of a regime in which property, especially landed property, is to be more widely distributed, he begins by exerting the compelling powers of the State to expropriate, without compensation for

disturbance, those who supposed that no man could compel them to sell what they had acquired except at their own price. Is it true that the bonus paid to private owners beyond the market value of the land, has been paid chiefly out of deference to the prestige of the rich ? To our mind, though we may agree with Mr. Chamberlain that too muck oil of this kind has often been used to make these compulsory transfers of private property run smoothly, the reason why the State sanctioned the principle at all was entirely sound, and entirely in the interests of society at large. It was felt that it is a very grave responsi- bility to diminish the authority attaching to the sense of owner- ship ; that you cannot do so to any great extent without diminishing most perilously the inducement not merely to save, but to identify men's energies with their material posses- sions of every kind ; that every time you lower a man's pride in owning or improving a property with which he has taken pains, you chill the motive for industry, depreciate the earnestness of effort, and sap the springs of originality. That, we take it, and that only, is the reason why, when a man is unwilling to sell, and the State compels him to sell in spite of his unwillingness, the State has always been ready to acknow- ledge that some bonus over and above the market value ought to be given, as a mode at once of curbing the readiness of the State to interfere in this undesirable way with the prestige of private property, and also of compensating the owner for that surrender of his absolute discretion whether or not he will part with his own, which is half the magic attaching to the idea of property. We neither wish the State to meddle, except in urgent need, with the delight in ownership, nor do we wish to let that delight in ownership dwindle, as it certainly would do under a regime of constant and arbitrary interference without compensation. That is, as it seems to us, a reason in the interest of the public, and not by any means in the interest of the rich alone, why when the State de- cides that the public good requires the expropriation of owners, it should at least award more than the market price of their pro- perty to unwilling sellers. Now, is it a popular policy to propose that, on the very eve of a much more equal division of property, this principle should be ignored? To our mind, nothing could be less popular. What we enforce on the rich we shall have to enforce on the poor. And if the market rate at most is to be paid to unwilling sellers, we shall have within a few years small holders in numbers expropriated without any of that "compensation for disturbance" which we have admitted in the case of Ireland as a legitimate claim even of tenants-at-will, who are not owners at all.

Mr. Chamberlain may be quite right,—though figures, of course, are dangerous in so unverifiable a region,—that £50,000,000 of bonus has been paid to landowners for the expropriations which railways have rendered necessary, and consequently that the people are paying near .C2,000,000 a year more than they need, for locomotion, by way of compensa- tion to those landowners. Nothing is more difficult in the case of an arbitrary award of this kind as a solace to hurt feelings, than to fix a reasonable rate of solace. Very likely too much may have been paid. But we understand Mr. Chamberlain to assert on behalf of the public that nothing should have been paid for expropriation beyond the market rate, or, in other words, that it would have been fair,—for we wish to illus- trate the question from personal property, as well as from landed property,—to have bought out the Water Companies some six or seven years ago at the then market rate of their monopoly, without any bonus for a forced expropriation. We think that if that had been proposed to us, not only the rich but the poor would have taken fright. Supposing the State had contemplated a compulsory system of insurance as one of its sources of gain, and had been compelled, therefore, to extinguish existing Friendly Societies, does Mr. Chamberlain think that the poor members of those Societies would have been satisfied if the Friendly Societies had been extin- guished arbitrarily, with no further compensation than the market value of the securities ? There never was a time, as it seems to us, when it would be not only more unjust, but more unpopular, to refuse compensation to unwilling vendors than it would be now. The labouring classes are becoming richer every year, and are more and more interested in the rights of property. And yet, at the very moment when they are likely to °Lim their share in compensations paid for compulsory sale, Mr. Chamberlain is preaching the doctrine that the State should always have the right to appropriate, for the benefit of the public, all the land it needs,—and we do not see why what is claimed for land should not be claimed for other property,—at the existing market value, without any sort of consideration for this arbitrary interference with private pro- perty. Mr. Chamberlain speaks of landowners who get more than the market price of their land as "black-mailing the public." In our view, it is very far indeed from black-mail ; it is a fine voluntarily paid by the State for an unexpected interference with private rights of ownership, an interference which it admits to be undesirable, and therefore wishes to make as exceptional as may be. And the reason it pays this fine, and pays it voluntarily, is that it is of far more import- ance to the public that the sense of ownership shbuld be strong, and eager, and even peremptory, than that the State should be able to acquire private property at easy rates. The one aim is at the very root of all healthy social feeling, of all diligent acquisition, and of all salutary ambition. The other aim is quite a secondary one, often involving public con- venience, but never involving the primary cement of society. We maintain, in the interests of the people themselves, that it is of infinitely greater importance to them to foster the in- numerable traditions and aims which are bound up with the sacredness of private property, than it is to be able to secure this or that bit of property at an easy rate. Mr. Chamberlain should remember that in the next generation it may be the poor who will of tenest claim compensation for arbitrary ex- propriation, and that it will be then by no means a popular policy to insist on turning them out, on payment of a mere market value, from property to which they may often attach a sacredness which no market rate could adequately represent.