“The provision for the aged and deserving poor—it was time it was done. (Cheers.) It is rather a shame for a rich country like ours—probably the richest country in the world, if not the richest the world has ever seen—that it should allow those who have toiled all their days to end in penury and possibly starvation. (Hear, hear.) It is rather hard that an old workman should have to find his way to the gates of the tomb, bleeding and footsore, through the brambles and thorns of poverty. (Cheers.) We cut a new path through it (cheers), an easier one, a pleasanter one, through fields of waving corn. We are raising money to pay for the new road (cheers), aye, and to widen it so that 200,000 paupers shall be able to join in the march. (Cheers.) There are many in this country blessed by Providence with great wealth, and if there are amongst them men who grudge out of their riches a fair contribution towards the less fortunate of their fellow-countrymen they are shabby rich men. (Cheers.)”
“Not far from here not so many years ago, between the Lea and the Thames, you had hundreds of acres of land which was not very useful even for agricultural purposes. In the main it was a sodden marsh. The commerce and the trade of London increased under free trade (loud cheers), the tonnage of your shipping went up by hundreds of thousands of tons and by millions, labour was attracted from all parts of the country to help with all this trade and business done here. What happened? There was no housing accommodation. This part of London became overcrowded, and the population overflowed. That was the opportunity of the owners of the marsh. All that land became valuable building land, and land which used to be rented at £2 or £3 an acre has been selling within the last few years at £2,000 an acre, £3,000 an acre, £6,000 an acre, £8,000 an acre. Who created that increment? (Cheers.) Who made that golden swamp? (More cheers.) Was it the landlord? (Cries of “No.”) Was it his energy? Was it his brains (laughter and cheers), his forethought? It was purely the combined efforts of all the people engaged in the trade and commerce of that part of London—the trader, the merchant, the ship-owner, the dock labourer, the workman—everybody except the landlord. Now you follow that transaction. The land worth £2 or £3 an acre ran up to thousands. During the time it was ripening the landlord was paying his rates and his taxes not on £2 or £3 an acre. It was agricultural land, and because it was agricultural land, a munificent Tory government (laughter) voted a sum of two millions to pay half the rates of those poor distressed landlords. (Laughter, and cries of “Shame.”) You and I had to pay taxes in order to enable those landlords to pay half their rates on agricultural land, while it was going up every year by hundreds of pounds from your efforts and the efforts of your neighbors. Well, now that is coming to an end. (Loud and long-continued cheering.) On the walls of Mr. Balfour’s meeting last Friday were the words, ‘We protest against fraud and folly.’ (Laughter.) So do I. (Great cheering.) These things I am going to tell you of have only been possible up to the present through the fraud of the few and the folly of the million.”
“All I can say is this—the ownership of land is not merely an enjoyment, it is a stewardship. (Cheers.) It has been reckoned as such in the past, and if they cease to discharge their functions, the security and defence of the country, looking after the broken in their villages and neighborhoods—then those functions which are part of the traditional duties attached to ownership of land and which have given to it its title—if they cease to discharge those functions, the time will come to reconsider the conditions under which land is held in this country. (Loud cheers.) No country, however rich, can permanently afford to have quartered upon its revenue a class which declines to do the duty it was called upon to perform. (Hear, hear.)”
(Note: What classes declining to do their duties might we have quartered upon our revenues today? A certain class with longevity of title and security of place…and an utter absence from their duty, which is broad & great participation in public life and public governance — that firstly and indubitably — and secondly, adherence to the morals and fundaments in the name of which they were trusted with said title and place. To use the vulgate: our “experts” are not much, and our politicians aren’t even that.)
“it is the beginning of new things if you only come along with us. We have, I will not say lions, but jackals in the path, but there are a good many jackals which will run away if you stand up to them. But you have got to do it…”