sessions will, first and foremost,
benefit trade, and the merchant will naturally become of greater
importance with us. There is already talk of great plantation societies
to be started with enormous capital."

"It is just against the formation of these societies that I intend to
exert my whole influence, Your Royal Highness. We could commit no more
fatal error than to allow the state-privileged speculation in landed
property, which has produced such unwholesome fruits in the old
civilised states, to exist in our colonies. Real property must be
no object of speculation, it must remain the property of the state.
Agriculture belongs to the classes, who at the present time suffer most
from economic depression. Nothing but an increase of the protective
duties can preserve the agricultural population from the threatening
danger of economic ruin. Increase of protective duty will bring with it
increased profit, combined with a further increase in the value of land,
which is also an article of traffic. Then the increase of land values
will at the same time create an increase of the rents to be obtained
from landed property, and for this reason I cannot help fearing that,
in spite of an increase of protective duties, agriculture will have to
suffer in the next generation from the further increase in the value of
land and the higher rents that will be the result.

"In our colonies we must not fall into the same error that has produced
the socialist question in modern civilised states. The earth belongs to
those creatures who live on it and by it in accordance with a higher law
than human imperfection has framed. Therefore the soil of our earth must
be no object of traffic. Its growth is inseparable from that of the
body of the state. I dare not hope that it will be allotted to me or my
contemporaries to solve this question, yet I shall never tire of using
all my influence to prevent at least a false agrarian policy in our
young colonies. Injustice dies from its results, for injustice breeds
its own avenger. Mankind committed a fatal wrong in permitting the land
that supported them to become an object of speculation. This noxious
seed brings noxious fruits to light. It must be the highest task of all
governments to carry out land reform--the great problem that decides the
destiny of a world--by all possible legislative measures. Now that, in
all human probability, peace is assured, now that external dangers
no longer threaten the