18 SEPTEMBER 1869, Page 3

The International Working-Men's Congress at Bale has not impressed Europe

either by its discussions or its decisions. The former, indeed, have not been so reported in this country as to give us any clear conception of them. But as some gauge of the latter, it has decided in favour of communism as regards landed property, 54 having voted for the abolition of private property in land, just 4 against the abolition, and only 17 having abstained from voting, 4 from absence, and 13 intentionally. What speaks badly for the intelligence and training of the deputies, is that the discussion seems to have turned chiefly on the barest abstract principles, in relation to which, of course, it is the easiest thing in the world to show the anomaly of private property in land. The true hinge of the dis- cussion, how public property in land would be workable, how you would provide an equal motive for improvements and sacrifice, how you would secure wise and thoroughly interested management, how you would propose to divide the proceeds, and so forth, seems to have been utterly overlooked by the debating society. Yet that is the core of the whole matter. Private property in land could only be justified, if nations were to start afresh, by showing that the interest of the community required it, that the produc- tiveness of the soil could in no other way be brought up to nearly the same level, and that the problem of dividing the produce must on any other principle lead to infinite and hopeless embar- rassments.