stone 
 
 Some Notes of the Writings of 
 Professor Fawcett, Mr. Leslie, 
 and Professor Newman on the 
 Land Laws of England
 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 %4 
 
 .4''% 
 *%
 
 SOME NOTES 
 
 i)N THE WKITINOS OF 
 
 PROFESSOR FAWCETT, MR. LESLIE, 
 
 AND 
 
 PROFESSOR NEWMAN 
 
 ON 
 
 nm LAND LAWS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 LEWIS STONE. 
 
 CONSISTING OF 
 
 FUirniEU COMMENTS BY ANOTHEK HAND. 
 
 LONDON : 
 THOMAS BOSWORTH, 215 Rp:OENT STREET. 
 
 1867.
 
 H3) 
 
 SOME NOTES ON THE LAND LAWS 
 OF ENGLAND. 
 
 A FREE COUNTRY must expect that its institutions and 
 its laws will be not only discussed but often vituperated. 
 The extent of such discussions and vituperation will, in 
 general, be proportionate to the true liberty which the 
 country enjoys. In turbulent times beneficial laws and 
 institutions may be overborne and destroyed, but in 
 the main, the goodness of laws and institutions is tested 
 by the fact of their bearing discussion and surviving 
 vituperation. 
 
 There is a class of politicians and writers of the pre- 
 sent day to whom the landowner is the bete noire, and 
 the land laws altogether naught. Sometimes it is the bad 
 laws which have made the landowners bad, sometimes 
 it is the landowners who have made or maintained 
 the bad laws and sometimes these are made to 
 mutually react on each other till both have attained 
 the very acme of wickedness, and are rapidly hurrying 
 the country into the abyss of ruin, if it be not already 
 there. The land laws of England are not perfect, and 
 the landowners are men and, no doubt, are not fault- 
 
 A 
 
 1075391
 
 less but it appears to me that the laws are, in some 
 cases, misrepresented ; that results which have no 
 existence are assumed as facts, and evils alleged to be 
 impending or actually operating, which are purely 
 "problematical. It appears to me, also, that in some 
 cases the subject is discussed in a temper and tone 
 wholly unsuitable. 
 
 When a popular orator proposes, as one of the 
 remedies for the grievances; of- Ireland, that some half- 
 dozen of the best managed estates in the country shall 
 be purchased by the Government from the present 
 owners, because they are Englishmen, though they may 
 not wish to sell, and be resold to the occupying tenants 
 because they are Irishmen, though they may not wish 
 to buy, the proposal is startling, and not of obvious 
 utility. And when it is recollected that only some 
 fifteen years ago an Act (The Incumbered Estate Act) 
 was passed for the purpose of bringing into the market 
 Irish estates, mismanaged by reason of the incum- 
 brances of the owners, and with the hope that the 
 sales would attract English and Scotch capital, and, in 
 fact, benefit the country by putting the land into the 
 hands of owners with sufficient means to manage it pro- 
 perly, without regard to the birth-place of such owners, 
 we are struck with the difference of the policy of Mr. 
 Bright and of the author of the Act in question ; but 
 the Act was generally approved of, and w^as not, I 
 think, opposed by Mr. Bright or any of his school. 
 When, moreover, we consider that the Act has been 
 vigorously carried into effect, so much so that land was
 
 brought into the market to the value (measured by the 
 price) of nearly thirty miUions sterling, it is clear that 
 purchaseable land has not, of late years, been a scarce 
 commodity in Ireland. And when we further consider 
 
 that the policy or expectation of the authors of thj2 
 
 Act has (I will not say been disappointed, but) mis- 
 carried (so far as regards the attraction of English and 
 Scotch capital), as shown by the fact that these vast 
 purchases have been made by Irishmen, and with Irish 
 money, it is impossible not to see that Mr. Bright's pro- 
 posal was neither necessary, nor in any sense wise. But 
 the proposal shows that, in the hands of a fervid par- 
 tisan speaker, whether he speaks sense or its opposite 
 (I wish to avoid offensive expressions) is wholly unim- 
 portant to the success of his speech with the bulk of 
 his ordinary admirers. The conditions of pubHc par- 
 tisan-speaking are pretty generally understood, and 
 when it is possible to extract from these rhetorical 
 vagaries some definite proposal to be acted on, they 
 give to people who think a little for themselves the 
 measure of the practical wisdom of the speaker, if he 
 be sincere. In fact they mislead only those who are 
 born to be misled, or who are ready to receive with 
 applause anything which helps to foster discontent. 
 
 The case is different when men of character and 
 position make, in scientific works, statements tending to 
 render their readers dissatisfied with the government 
 and institutions of their country statements which . 
 (whether material to the author's own conclusions or 
 not) are wholly misleading. 
 
 A 2
 
 Mr. Fawcett's ' Manual of Political Economy ' is a 
 work of real merit, and his views and statements will 
 be received by his readers with a confidence of which, 
 in general, they are entirely deserving. But in the 
 chapter headed ' Peasant Proprietors ' there are state- 
 ments which cannot fail, it appears to me, to convey 
 wholly erroneous notions. In that chapter the follow- 
 ing statements occur : 
 
 'In England many causes combine, not only to prevent 
 
 * the partition of large estates into small properties, but also 
 
 * to encourage the rapid absorption of small properties which 
 ' were so numerous in former times. The conveyance of land 
 ' in England is cumbrous and costly : the title to a hundred 
 
 * acres may often be proved at as little expense and trouble as 
 *the title to a single acre. The cost of conveying a small 
 
 * estate is therefore, in proportion to its value, much greater 
 
 * than the cost of conveying a large one. The law of England 
 
 * permits land to be entailed to such an extent that a landed 
 
 * estate can be settled upon an unborn child, and hence a con- 
 ' siderable portion is strictly hereditary property. The power 
 
 * of entail i<^ defended because it tends to preserve a landed 
 
 * aristocracy, since, if our great landowners w^ere permitted 
 
 * freely to sell their titles, a great number of those properties 
 
 * which have belonged to the same family for many genera- 
 
 * tions would quickly be dispersed. Owing to the fact that 
 ' entailed land can rarely be sold, 07ily a small portion of 
 
 * the land of England can properly he considered a mar- 
 ' ketable commodity.^ 
 
 The above extracts contain an implied censure of 
 the legislature for creating or permitting the continu- 
 ance of laws which tend to the absorption of small 
 properties, and which have brought about such a state
 
 of things, * that entailed land can rarely be sold,' and 
 that ' only a small portion of the land in England can 
 properly be considered a marketable commodity.' 
 
 Mr. Fawcett is evidently not a lawyer. When he 
 speaks of the power of entailing to such an extent that 
 land can be settled on an unborn child, he is probably 
 not aware that the feat can be performed without any 
 reference to the law of entail. It would, perhaps, have 
 been well, for popular purposes, that he had given 
 a definition of his understanding of the terms ' entailed 
 estate' In popular understanding (a notion which is 
 not wholly obsolete, and which Mr. Fawcett's language 
 rather fosters than corrects) an entailed estate is an estate 
 so settled that it must descend from father to son, or 
 from parent to child, without any power in the tenant 
 in tail for the time being to disappoint his successor by 
 selling or mortgaging the fee. By a very artificial 
 construction of an Act passed in the time of Edward I. 
 called The Statute de donis, there did grow up and 
 existed in England down to the reign of Edward IV. 
 estates tail answering, or supposed to answer, the 
 above description. But in the last-mentioned reign a 
 mode was discovered (due also to the ingenuity of 
 judges) of barring such estates tail, in other words of 
 enabling every tenant in tail in possession to make 
 himself absolute owner of the estate, and as a conse- 
 quence to sell or mortgage, and so far as the law of 
 devises applied, to dispose by will or in the absence 
 of any of such dealings, to permit the estate to descend 
 to the heir general, whether the line of entail had or had
 
 6 
 
 not become extinct. The mode by which a tenant in 
 tail could make himself a tenant in fee was, down to a 
 somewhat recent period, absurdly cumbrous, but is now 
 simple, cheap, and expeditious. It may be doubted, 
 however, if a tenant in tail who was disposed to sell or 
 mortgage was ever in a single instance deterred from 
 doing so by the mode of proceeding, cumbrous as it was. 
 The other gentlemen upon whose essays I venture to 
 write some notes, namely, Mr. Leslie, the writer of an 
 article in the February No. of Fraser's Magazine entitled 
 ' The land system of the country a reason for a Eeform of 
 Parhament,' and Mr. Newman, the author of an essay en- 
 titled 'The Land Laws,' in a volume of essays with the title 
 of ' Questions for a Eeformed Parhament,' appear to be 
 lawyers and to be conversant with the existing laws. 
 They agree with Mr. Fawcett in condemning those laws 
 even more emphatically than he does, and trace out evil 
 results as flowing from them whicli would hardly have 
 occurred except to gentlemen of a very imaginative 
 turn of mind, stimulated by strong partisan feelings. 
 When Mr. Fawcett states that by reasori of settlements 
 only a small portion of the land can be considered a 
 marketable commodity, I can believe that he was not 
 aware that when land is settled, it is by a rare accident 
 if the settlement does not contain a power of sale so 
 that in the case supposed of a settlement on an unborn 
 child a sale may be made not only during the minority 
 of the child, but even before it is born, and that he was 
 equally unaware that where the power of sale is omitted 
 in a settlement, power is vested in the Court of Chancery
 
 to make a sale whenever it may appear expedient to the 
 parties interested. Tliis power in the court is so far from 
 being a dead letter, that it is acted on in daily practice. 
 Mr. Fawcett's statement, that 'only a small portion of the 
 land of England can be considered a marketable com- 
 modity,' is so wide of the mark that it would be more 
 correct to say that, with the exception of Blenheim, 
 Strathfieldsaye, and some three or four other estates in 
 the same category, there is scarcely an acre of land in 
 England that is not saleable. These considerations, 
 which would appear very material, and which must be 
 perfectly known to Mr. Leslie and Mr. Newman, are not 
 permitted by them to interfere with their course of 
 argument. I do not recollect that Mr. Leslie ever refers 
 to these powers by which sales may be effected. Mr. 
 Newman, indeed, after endorsing in his text the state- 
 ment that the laws ' enable an owner of land by settle- 
 ment or will so to affect his estate that it cannot possibly 
 be sold in many cases for fifty, and in some cases even 
 for sixty, seventy, or one hundred years,' does, in a note, 
 advert to the powers of sale in settlements, and to the 
 above-mentioned statutable power, but appears to 
 imagine that the effect, upon his argument, of these 
 powers (which in fact destroy it altogether) is disposed 
 of by stating in the note, that ' this is of no great im- 
 portance, as the purchase-money is liable to be rein- 
 vested on other land to be settled to the same uses ' 
 What then ? the land is saleable, and if sold, as it 
 very frequently is, has it not been in the market? and 
 the purchase money being invested on consols or
 
 8 
 
 other securities, commonly remains so invested for 
 years, in no way interfering with the land market, 
 and very frequently, perhaps most frequently, is never 
 reinvested in land at all, but is paid out as money to 
 the parties who would have been entitled to become 
 absolute owners of the land on which it might have been 
 invested. Is this, on Mr. Newman's part, a candid or 
 reasonable mode of conducting an argument ? 
 
 Mr. Fawcett further urges that ' the conveyance of 
 land in England is cumbrous and costly.' This general 
 assertion cannot be met by an answer as precise and 
 clear as the answer to his other objections. The mean- 
 ing is that the cost and trouble are unnecessarily great 
 and may be diminished by legislation. The complaint 
 is of long standing ; and gave rise, a few years back, to a 
 commission which sustained the complaint in a learned, 
 elaborate, even rhetorical report. That report was 
 followed by the Act establishing a land registry. That 
 act was framed by a personage of the highest repute 
 as a law refonner, the originator and the most zealous 
 member of the commission. The commission, the 
 report, and the act, all secured the hearty applause of 
 the press, high and low, and, what was still more 
 important to the success of the measure, provided a 
 most tempting bribe to the whole class of solicitors 
 connected with the dealings in land. If a solicitor 
 can prevail on his client to register his title under 
 the Act, he will be able to make out a biU of 
 much the same amount, so far as regards his profit, as 
 on a sale of the estate, while the estate will stiU remain 
 in the hands of his client to furnish materials for future
 
 bills on mortgaging, settling, and devising. Considering 
 the magnitude (as it was represented) of the evil to be 
 remedied by the Act, the completeness of the remedy, 
 and all other favourable circumstances, it was not 
 doubted that the measure would, in theatrical phrase, 
 prove a ' great success.' The officers appointed to con- 
 duct the business were, I believe, all gentlemen com- 
 petent to their duties. Well, in spite of all these favour- 
 ing circumstances, to the surprise no doubt of that public 
 which knew no better, the offices in the registry have 
 turned out to be unexpectedly good places ; that is, the 
 work is much less than that for which the salaries 
 were to be a compensation. In short, the registry 
 office is but sparingly resorted to a fact admitted by 
 one of the writers under review. Is it otherwise than 
 a fair inference that the representations as to the legal 
 expense and trouble of tlie transfer of land were, to a 
 considerable extent, exaggerations ? In truth, the law 
 expenses of the transfer of land (the only expenses 
 which have been attempted to be diminished) were 
 not, except in comparatively rare cases, excessive. 
 The surveying and mapping of estates, preparing and 
 circulating particulars of sale, and other forms of 
 advertisement ; the commission to land agents and 
 auctioneers, not to mention the stamp duties, form, and 
 always have formed, the real expenses of the transfer 
 of land ; and these expenses, except the stamps paid 
 by the purchasers, are voluntarily incurred by the 
 vendors, and incurred because they find, or fancy they 
 find, their account in incurring them. 
 
 It appears to be imagined by the gentlemen on
 
 10 
 
 whose writings I am commenting, that under some 
 perverse instinct, the landed proprietors, who alone 
 have a direct and palpable interest in cheapening the 
 transfer of land, are opposed to any diminution of the 
 expense. Such an imputation looks more like a per- 
 verse instinct in the fault-finders to make out their case 
 against the landowners. In fact the landowners, 
 great and small, are naturally and necessarily anxious 
 to diminish the expense of the transfer of land, and of 
 all other dealings with it ; and nothing short of the 
 fanaticism of partisanship would insinuate the contrary. 
 Mr. Fawcett, Mr. Leslie, and Mr. Newman all agree 
 in alleging and deploring the absorption of small 
 estates by great estates, and the consequent scarcity of 
 marketable land. JSTo doubt such absorption is con- 
 stantly occurring in certain quarters ; but there is also 
 a countervailing operation, which is no less continuously 
 in progress, namely, the breaking up of great estates 
 into morsels. While there are great landowners, 
 who happen also to have money, they will add to their 
 estates by new purchases when the opportunity occurs ; 
 and while great fortunes are made by commerce and 
 manufactures, the owners of such fortunes, when their 
 taste lies that way, will become owners of large landed 
 estates. But the continuance of these great accumula- 
 tions of land is always at the mercy of the spendthrift 
 or speculative habits of the owners, and these whole- 
 some elements of dispersion are and ever will be in 
 operation ; and Mr. Fawcett and his friends are mis- 
 taken in fancying that the land laws of England create
 
 11 
 
 any serious impediment to the working of these 
 elements. 
 
 The same writers also agree in alleging and deploring 
 the scarcity of purchasable land, and in attributing 
 that scarcity mainly to the law and the practice of 
 settling. I have already stated and shown that settle- 
 ments do not prevent sales when the parties interested 
 think sales desirable, and they will in general consider 
 sales desirable or otherwise, according to the price 
 offered ; so that, in truth, whether a sale be effected or 
 not, depends more on the will of the purchaser than 
 of the vendor. But does tliis scarcity of land in the 
 market, so strongly insisted on, actually exist? It 
 appears that Mr. Fawcett, Mr. Leslie, and Mr. Newman 
 can never have looked into the advertising columns of 
 ' The Times ' newspaper, or of the scores of provincial 
 journals teeming with offers of land to be sold, other- 
 wise they would have known that there is at all times 
 plenty of land in the market ; still less can they have 
 made themselves acquainted with the particulars (as 
 tliey are called, I believe,) under which the sales are 
 made, otherwise they would have known that great 
 estates are constantly broken up into small parcels, and 
 sold in what are called lots, varying in size so as to suit 
 all purses. In fact, in the midst of this alleged 
 scarcity of land, with a plutocracy thirsting to become 
 purchasers, it is very remarkable, that land, when not 
 recommended by some special amenity, can be pur- 
 chased so as to pay 4/. per cent, on the purchase- 
 money. Such purchases are of daily occurrence.
 
 12 
 
 Mr. Leslie quotes Adam Smith, who says : 
 
 ' Eegulations which keep so much land out of the market, 
 ' that there are always more capitals to buy than there is land 
 
 * to sell, so that what is sold is sold at a monopoly price ; the 
 ' small quantity of land moreover which is brought to market 
 ' prevents a great number of small capitals from being em- 
 
 * ployed ill its cultivation, which would otherwise have taken 
 
 * that direction,' 
 
 Would it not have been merely candid, on the part 
 of Mr. Leslie, to notice that Adam Smith thus expressed 
 himself in a country in which really unbarrable estates 
 tail existed (such as have not existed in England since 
 the days of Edward IV.), and were every day being 
 multiphed, a country, moreover, in which an un- 
 usually large portion of the land was in mortmain? 
 Would it not, also, have been worth inquiring whether 
 Adam Smith was not guilty of some exaggeration when 
 he spoke of monopoly price ? Either he was so, or the 
 other alternative must be admitted, that even under the 
 most aggravated form of that system of settlement 
 which Mr. Leslie and Mr. Newman so strenuously im_ 
 pugn, the improvements in agriculture have been 
 enormous ; for it is notorious that an estate in Scot- 
 land, which, in the time of Adam Smith, might have 
 been purchased for 12,000/. or 15,000/., would now 
 sell for 80,000/. or 100,000/. It is clear that the land in 
 the mean time must have been dealt with in a manner 
 beneficial to the owners, and also favourable to the in- 
 crease of the wealth of the country. This enormous 
 increase in value is true of a country where the law of
 
 13 
 
 primogeniture, and the system of settlement and entail, 
 have been in fiiU operation. And be it understood that 
 I am speaking not of estates of which the value has 
 been factitiously raised by the growth of a great town, 
 but of estates in districts purely agricultural. Apropos 
 to the above quotation from Adam Smith, Mr. Leslie 
 says : 
 
 * By one and the same system, the old farmer class of 
 
 * proprietors is extinguished, and a farming class is prevented 
 ' from rising, and a non-productive class is maintained, and 
 
 * gains ground. The unproductive owners of great estates, 
 
 * though heavily encumbered for the most part, are seldom 
 
 * actually dislodged, and, when they are, and a rich man buys 
 ' their estates, he does not buy them for immediate profit, 
 ' so he can afford to buy legal advice in his subsequent deal- 
 ' ings with them.' 
 
 On this, that is the first part of the above passage, I 
 would remark that there has risen a very industrious and 
 wealthy farmers' class. And that when an ' unproductive 
 owner ' of a great estate is dislodged, that is, when his 
 estate is sold, it may be sold in bulk to a rich man, or 
 it may be, and as often is, sold in parcels to many men. 
 But when a rich man buys, as far as I have been able 
 to ascertain, he goes to work much as the rest of man- 
 kind would do in the same circumstances, that is, he 
 sends a surveyor or other competent person to value 
 the estate, and fixes his price with reference to the 
 return which the rents are likely to yield for his outlay. 
 What the ' affording to pay for legal advice in subse- 
 quent dealings ' has to do with the question is wholly 
 beyond my comprehension.
 
 M 
 
 The extinction of the class of small freeholders who 
 farmed their own estates is a subject of lamentation 
 common to all these writers. They may have been 
 a valuable and estimable class, but there is little sense 
 in the lamentation, and no justice in charging their 
 extinction on the existing land laws. If the owner of 
 one hundred acres of land which he has been in the 
 habit of cultivating himself, finds, or fancies that he 
 can improve his fortune, by selling his land and in- 
 vesting the produce of the sale in trade, or in stocking 
 a farm of three or four hundred acres which he rents ; 
 it is the natural consequence that he will sell his one 
 hundred acres, and he will certainly sell to the man 
 who offers the largest price, even though the purchaser 
 be the owner of a larger adjoining estate, to which the 
 one hundred acres are to be added. Do the gentlemen 
 who utter these lamentations say that there ought to 
 have been a law, or that they would now propose a 
 law, to prohibit such operations ? Unless they answer in 
 the affirmative, where is the sense, or what is the 
 purpose, of the lamentations ? If they do answer in 
 the affirmative, they ought to inform us what alteration 
 of the law they propose for the carrying out of their 
 views. If the alteration be not such as to interfere, 
 in a manner wholly new to Englishmen, with their free- 
 dom of action, it would appear that it will bear a close 
 analogy to an act of parliament, forbidding, in certain 
 cases, the operation of the law of gravitation. 
 
 The origines mali, the fontes malorum, with all this 
 school, appear to be the law of primogeniture, and the
 
 15^ 
 
 power of settling land on an unborn chikl, and the 
 remedy proposed is to assimilate the law of real pro- 
 perty to the law of personal property. This assimi- 
 lation will get rid of the law of primogenture, but it 
 will not get rid of the power of settling land on an 
 unborn child. It is a noticeable fact that Mr. Leslie 
 and Mr. Newman, who speak so bitterly against the 
 power of making such a settlement of land, do not, I 
 think, once advert to the fact that the law with respect 
 to eight hundred millions of parliamentary stocks, four 
 hundred millions value of railway property, all the Bank 
 stock, the India stock, mortgage money, in short all 
 personal property, is in this respect similar to the law 
 with respect to land. The suggested assimilation would 
 therefore fail in its most important branch. This sub- 
 ject of the power of tying up personal estate we would 
 have expected to find at least adverted to, if only for 
 the piu-pose of distinguishing its effects from the like 
 law as relating to land. To show its importance, I 
 have made somewhat extensive inquiries. On such a 
 subject I cannot pretend to speak with certainty, but 
 I believe that for every acre of inheritable land which 
 is settled, above 100/. value of personal property is 
 subject to a like restriction. Though the power of 
 varying investments, usually inserted in settlements by 
 deed or will of personal estate, may be fairly taken as 
 equivalent to the powers of sale in settlements of land, 
 there is no equivalent with respect to settled personalty 
 to the powers in the Settled Estate Act, under which, 
 land as before mentioned, may be sold by the Court of
 
 Chancery. If the power of settling land were taken 
 away, some reasons must be given for retaining the 
 power as to personalty, or if the power of settling per- 
 sonalty be also taken away, it will probaby be found 
 that you are interfering with a practice affecting a 
 larger amount of property than the settled land, and 
 with the interests and wishes of a more numerous, and 
 not less influential class than those who are in the 
 habit of settling their estates. 
 Mr. Leslie's language is : 
 
 ' There is one way to remedy the old and the new evils 
 
 * together, and at once to purge our jurisprudence and emanci- 
 ' pate the land from burdens and trammels, that is, to extin- 
 ' guish the force of settlements as binding and irrevocable 
 
 * instruments, save as to a wife. And to enact that each 
 ' successive proprietor shall take the land he succeeds to free 
 
 * from any restriction on his rights of proprietorship ; and 
 
 * further to make provision that all lands left burthened with 
 ' any charges, shall be sold immediately on the death of the 
 ' owner, to pay off the incumbrance.' 
 
 Mr. Leslie adds, that ' a moment's reflection might 
 satisfy an unprejudiced mind ' of the many evils of 
 settlement, and in effect of the expediency of his sug- 
 gestions. Whether Mr. Leslie's own mind be preju- 
 diced or unprejudiced I will not express any opinion, 
 but I doubt if he gave ' a moment's reflection ' to the 
 extent to which his proposal for immediate sales to pay 
 charges woidd interfere with arrangements of a per- 
 fectly legitimate and very convenient character. Why 
 should a younger child be compelled to receive his 
 portion and find a new security, when he would rather
 
 IT ^ 
 
 leave it on the estate on which it was originally 
 charged? and why should a mortgage for a fixed 
 term be no longer practicable ? which would be the 
 effect of the proposed law! Is Mr. Leslie aware of 
 the amount of property (including, perhaps, half the 
 invested capital of all the insurance companies of the 
 country) which is, -with advantage to all parties, so 
 invested? These startling proposals of Mr. Leshe are 
 adopted by Mr. Newman ; in fact he concludes his 
 paper by quoting, with full approval, the above extract. 
 Again, Mr. Leshe suggests as a remedy for the assumed 
 evils, ' a Hmitation of the amount of land that any 
 single individual shall take by inheritance.' I do not 
 anywhere find that even Mr. Leslie proposes to abolish 
 the power of devising, and if that power be left, whatever 
 enactments be made with respect to land in the case of 
 intestacy is of the least possible importance. As the 
 law of devises now stands, under which law a will, 
 devising in general terms, affects all the land to which 
 the testator may be entitled at his death, an intestacy as 
 to land is simply a rarity, occurring, in fact, very seldom 
 where the intestate is not under some disability. The 
 proposed enactment, therefore, would be of the shghtest 
 possible effect for good or for evil, and, considered as a 
 remedy for the general evil complained of, would be 
 simply ridiculous. But if Mr. Leslie means by ' taking 
 by inheritance,' to include taking as a successor by any 
 form of limitation under a settlement, he will admit that 
 he expresses himself so inaccurately that I am not 
 justified in imputing tliat meaning to his words, and, 
 
 B
 
 18 
 
 therefore, abstain from those comments which a measure 
 framed on that construction would provoke. 
 
 With respect to the power of devising, which, so far, 
 I do not see that it is proposed either to take away or 
 to restrict, its bearing on the law of primogeniture is all 
 important. It is possibly true that the existence of 
 this law is the parent of that feeling generally pre- 
 vailing in England to settle land on the eldest son. Such 
 a feehng undoubtedly exists, and has been the growth 
 of many ages. It will take as many ages to eradicate it, 
 and if the right of devising be left intact, the abolition 
 of the law of primogeniture, and even the abolition of 
 the right of settling on an unborn child, would be of 
 very slight importance. 
 
 Whatever sense Mr. Leslie attaches to his words, 
 taking by inheritance, if he be aware of the number 
 and extent of the questions which would be involved 
 in the limiting of the * amount of land ' which one in- 
 dividual could so take, he is a bold man to make the 
 proposal so lightly. Mr. Newman says, p. 120 : 
 
 * It is the least of the objections to this policy (that is, the 
 
 * law of primogeniture and the practice of settling) that it 
 
 * gratuitously withdraws England from the main-stream of 
 ' European progress.' 
 
 This is one way of putting the matter, but suppose it 
 be put thus, which is more hke the true way of putting 
 it : Under this policy England has been in advance of 
 all other European countries in most of those particu- 
 lars which are supposed to constitute, or to flow from, 
 good government, such as commerce, manufactures,
 
 19 
 
 agriculture, civil and religious liberty, including a free 
 press, full liberty for public meetings and free discus- 
 sion. Other European countries, in emulation of 
 England, are, I hope, gradually lessening the distance 
 between us and themselves. Why not ? I cannot 
 imagine a more despicable poHcy than that which 
 grudges the advance of other nations. They have 
 hitherto been far behind England, and are, I hope, 
 making greater steps in advance, for they have more 
 ground to win. But if it be intended that England is 
 not making progress, is standing still, that assertion 
 is wholly groundless. 
 
 One evil is very strongly insisted on as a fruit of the 
 law of primogeniture and the law and practice of settle- 
 ment, namely, the restraint upon the free growth of 
 towns and their overcrowding. It is asserted that from 
 these causes land is not to be had to increase the area 
 of towns, and thence overcrowding, misery, physical 
 deterioration and demoralisation. 
 
 Mr. Newman states the case in the following glowing 
 terms : p. 118. 
 
 ' Immense unapproachable estates, overgrown demesnes, 
 
 * restricted rights of proprietorship, defective titles, and other 
 ' causes, keep land out of the market, keep manufactures and 
 ' trades from many natural homes for their settlement, and 
 
 * imprison them within bounds where space is at once in- 
 ' sufficient and extravagantly dear.' 
 
 Mr. Leslie adds : 
 
 * The evil has indeed been enormously increased by the 
 
 * merciless encroachments of companies powerful in parlia- 
 ' ment, with the instinct of the landed interest on their side.' 
 
 B 2
 
 20 
 
 Such is Mr. Leslie's language. These imputed instincts 
 of ' a landed interest' are of the most inexplicable des- 
 cription. Though it seems that this interest is poor and 
 embarrassed, it sets itself resolutely against its own 
 pecuniary advantage, besides giving its weight on the 
 wrong side, where its interference must be purely 
 gratuitous ; for I think it must be impossible to dis- 
 cover any reasonable ground on which the instinct of 
 ' a landed interest ' should engage it '(as Mr. Leslie 
 seems to say it does) on behalf of the underground 
 railways. With respect to its impeding the extension 
 of the area of towns, take as a specimen of the kind of 
 argument by which Mr. Leslie supports his case, when 
 he says : 
 
 * A wealthy manufacturer deplored to the writer of this 
 
 * paper some years ago, that he could not extend his manu- 
 ' facturing premises where he Hved, and had been driven to 
 
 * invest a large capital in a factory many miles from his own 
 
 * eye, because he could not obtain the security of a sufficient 
 
 * lease from a proprietor of the soil who had only once visited 
 ' his immense estate, and had not even a residence upon it.' 
 
 In other words, it appears that some years ago a manu- 
 facturer poured into the sympathising ear of Mr. Leslie 
 his version of his failure in getting precisely the spot of 
 ground which he wanted to enlarge his business pre- 
 mises. That the owner of the desired spot had a large 
 estate, that he had never visited it but once, and had no 
 residence upon it, seem to be circumstances wholly 
 irrelevant, and introduced only to aggravate the terra- 
 phobia. We canijot collect whether the failure to get a 
 sufficient (perhaps the apter word would be satisfactory)
 
 21 
 
 lease arose from the perversity of the landlord or from 
 the defects of the settlement under which he held ; but 
 we are told that the landlord had a large estate, visited 
 it only once, and had no residence upon it. We are 
 told, moreover, that the manufacturer was wealthy. We 
 have not got the landowner's version of the story (which 
 would probably somewhat alter the aspect of the trans- 
 action), but only Mr. Leslie's report of the some-year- 
 old oral narrative of the manufacturer. Assuming his 
 narration, however, to be hterally correct, who doubts 
 that there may be a perverse owner of land who will 
 not lease or sell to another the precise spot which the 
 other desires to have, or that the other will not accept, 
 as sufficient, the lease which the owner has power to 
 grant, and will refuse to go to the expense of having the 
 impediment removed ? Is it other than egregious trifling 
 to put forward such a case, as a grave argument to 
 revolutionise the land laws of the country? Has Mr. 
 Leslie ever inquired as to the cost of land for building 
 purposes in the environs of Paris, of New York, or even 
 of Chicago ? If he had inquired he would have found 
 that impediments to the enlargement of towns spring . 
 from other causes than the law of primogeniture, or 
 the Enghsh practice of settlement. I cannot doubt that 
 a gentleman so largely instructed as Mr. Leslie appears 
 to be, is perfectly acquainted with the state of facts to 
 which I refer. Mr. Leslie is, as above shown, much 
 given to attributing certain unaccountable instincts to 
 ' the landed interest.' Will he pardon me for suggesting 
 that his entire silence as to the cost of building land in 
 llUnois forces on the mind a suspicion that nothing
 
 22. 
 
 short of a revolutionary instinct creating a narrow one- 
 sided fanaticism fatal to temperate and rational discus- 
 sion prompts his assertions and conclusions? There is 
 no class of the community which has so direct, so obvious 
 an interest in the enlargement of towns as the owners of 
 land. As a town in its growth approaches a landowner's 
 estate he feels and fully appreciates the increased value 
 of his property. To imagine that a landowner could 
 repel such obvious good fortune, is to deny that land- 
 owners have the ordinary feelings of mankind. The 
 same instincts will make landowners well-pleased to en- 
 courage the planting of new towns in new localities. To 
 beheve the contrary, we must invent some new theory as 
 to the motives of human actions. Let it not be under- 
 stood to be contended that there will be no such thing 
 as a fantastic or perverse landowner who will sacrifice 
 his pecuniary interest to some whim or prejudice. Of 
 course such cases will occur in England or in any other 
 country ; but who would expect grave arguments to be 
 founded upon such cases, as if they were the general 
 rule instead of being, as they are, the rare exceptions. 
 Mr. Leslie's story of the wealthy but disappointed manu- 
 facturer, and the absentee landowner, may be conceded 
 to him, but it belongs pecuharly to Mr. LesUe and his 
 school to draw general conclusions from such a case, as 
 if it represented the ordinary course of events. 
 
 It is assumed that the state of agriculture in England 
 is bad, and that its imperfections are occasioned by the 
 land-laws, by the extent of the farms, and by the 
 absence of -leases. And that state is contrasted, greatly
 
 2a 
 
 to its disadvantage, with a petite culture of pea- 
 sant proprietors, in certain selected localities, and, as 
 usual, general deductions are drawn from particulars 
 infinitely too few and too narrow to justify them. A 
 strange mistake is made in concluding, that because 
 there is a larger resident population in a given area 
 where the petite culture prevails, than in a like area 
 where the farms are larger, the petite culture must 
 be the more productive, disregarding altogether the 
 larger surplus produce, which may proceed from the 
 large fann cultivation to feed a population elsewhere. 
 
 The general objection to the writings both of 
 Mr. Leslie and Mr. Newman, the vice which destroys 
 their utihty for any practical purpose, is that they, in 
 every instance, overstate their case. The agriculture 
 of England is not bad, but Hke the agriculture of 
 every other country it might be better. Eelatively 
 to other countries it is good, and is every year im- 
 proving. Large farais prevail in some counties, in 
 others the farms are comparatively small. In many 
 cases there are excellent reasons for the difference, in 
 other cases the difference exists without any apparent 
 reason. The manifest advantage of large farms in 
 certain cases created some years back an undue pre- 
 ference for that system in quarters in which it was 
 neither necessary nor desirable. My own opinion is, 
 that farms ought to vary in size, so that a small farm 
 should be accessible to any farm-labourer, who from 
 his industry and prudence is fit to manage it. It is the 
 natural road by which he is to rise, and I fully agree
 
 24 
 
 that no system is right under which the individuals of 
 any class are excluded from a fair chance of improving 
 their condition. Far be it from me to write or say one 
 word which would tend to the withholding from the 
 labouring man of any advantages which can be con- 
 ceded to him consistently with the well-being of that 
 society of which he is a part, and of which the labourers 
 form necessarily the most numerous class, and form, 
 in my view, the class whose well-being is of the first im- 
 portance. There is no man of just feelings who would 
 not impart the advantages of the few rich to the many 
 poor, if such transfer could be made ; and such a man 
 would only be withheld from the attempt by the belief 
 that the advantages would never reach the poor, but 
 be lost in the act of transfer. Nevertheless, sincere 
 sympathy for the labouring man forms no reason for 
 exaggerating the evils of his lot. Mr. Leslie says : 
 
 * In no other civiHsed land, and even in few savage lands, 
 ' has any class of human beings a look so cheerless, so un- 
 ' reasoning, so little human as the English agricultural 
 * labourer.' 
 
 Now the position of the English agricultural labourer 
 is, and, for the last thirty-five years, has been this : a 
 greater amount of unskilled, highly-paid labour has 
 been open to him in his own country than ever existed 
 at the same time in any country of no greater extent. 
 The facihty of emigration to another country has been, 
 and is, greater than the world has ever known. And 
 an Englishman has this rare advantage, that he can 
 choose his climate and his soil, and find himself in his
 
 26 
 
 new home, among men speaking his own language, 
 and not materially different from him in habits of 
 life. Bearing this in mind, and also the extreme diffi- 
 culty of procuring by enlistment the necessary number 
 of soldiers, it is difficult to believe that, as a general 
 rule, the agricultural labourers' case can be so excep- 
 tionally miserable as Mr. Leslie says it is. With re- 
 spect to the ' cheerless look ' to which that gentleman 
 adverts, he should bear in mind that a cheerful look 
 is not a national characteristic. ' Us s^amusent triste- 
 ment^ selon lew nature^' is as old as Froissart. Indeed, 
 when reading the doleftd jeremiads of Mr. Leslie and Mr. 
 Newman, on the laws and condition of the richest and 
 freest country in the world, I am tempted to think that 
 these gentlemen are not in earnest, but are writing 
 rhetorical exercises, and that, in handhng their theme 
 in this dolorous manner, the national temper being in 
 them unusually strong Us s'amusent tristement, selon 
 leur nature^ and that is all. But I do not question 
 that mistaken theories have led to practices injurious 
 to the agricultural labourer, practices which are being 
 gradually amended, amended by that which, in a free 
 country, is the true source of all practical improve- 
 ments, full unfettered discussion. 
 
 On the subject of granting leases, the impugners of 
 the landowners assume the character of, and are natu- 
 rally advocates, of the farmer, for the lease is a one- 
 sided bargain ; it seems well known that the tenant 
 finds httle difficulty in relieving himself from his obli- 
 gation, while the landlord is bound by his. The prac-
 
 26 
 
 tical importance of the question is much exaggerated, 
 for in those parts of the country where the farmer is 
 generally tenant from year to year, he is, as a rule, 
 under no fear of being disturbed while he acts up to his 
 own bargain, and would set less value on a lease than 
 his advocates suppose. It is not the practice to have 
 frequent valuations with a view to the raising of the 
 rent on such tenancies. The absence of leases, however, 
 is not chargeable on the law, as there is hardly such a 
 case as that of a settlement which does not contain a 
 power of granting agricultural leases. And it may be 
 fairly contended, that the question should be left to the 
 parties interested, that is, the landlord and the tenant 
 to make their bargain in their own terms. It sounds 
 very plausible that leases favour good husbandry, for a 
 man who, by his lease, secures the fruits of his own 
 improvements, will improve. That is true, but he is 
 also much given to taking care not to make improve- 
 ments which he will not exhaust before the end of his 
 lease. It is, moreover, true, that a tenant from year to 
 year who is an improving tenant, is never disturbed. 
 As a general rule, those great estates which are so 
 obnoxious to the gentlemen on whose views I am 
 commenting, are occupied by a body of tenant farmers, 
 forming a far easier and more prosperous class than 
 the yeomen occupiers of their own freeholds whose dis- 
 appearance is so much lamented. 
 
 I am far from contending that the questions agitated 
 by Mr. Leslie and Mr. Newman are unfit for discussion 
 that is, that the discussion of them is improper. What
 
 27 
 
 I object to is, the impassioned, one-sided, and dogmatic 
 temper in which those gentlemen advocate their own 
 views, the sedulous exclusion of all considerations which 
 do not help their own argument, and the accusatory, 
 querulous tone in which that argument is urged. Mr. 
 Newman, p. 123, says : 
 
 ' In reality, what the law produces is not an aristocracy but 
 ' a plutocracy ; without having achieved the smallest public 
 * service, the capitalist finds himself in a position to play the 
 ' Ehadamanthus among the unborn.' 
 
 Surely this is a very deep-mouthed way of saying 
 that a capitahst ought not to be able on his marriage to 
 settle his land or his money on his childeh's children. 
 This sort of language may impress persons who have 
 little knowledge on the subject under discussion, but it 
 cannot edify them much. Far be it from me to criti- 
 cise as a matter of taste the writings of gentlemen who 
 are such masters of style, and who, in literary skill, are 
 so far above my mark. But there is nothing which 
 prevents the subject of the hind laws from being discussed 
 in plain language, without figures of speech, which in 
 such cases often perplex and never simplify the argu- 
 ment. I may illustrate this by a passage from a speech 
 of the first Lord Plunkett. The passage is cited by 
 Lord Brougham with an exaggeration of praise for its 
 picturesque beauty, its strict application to the matter 
 in hand, and its happy illustration of the argument. I 
 think I have found the passage no less than three times 
 cited by Lord Brougham, and always with unbounded 
 commendation. It occurs in a speech on the subject
 
 2g 
 
 of the statute of limitations that is, on the policy of 
 fixing a time after which adverse enjoyment of land 
 shall give a good title. Lord Plunkett says : 
 
 * Time, with his scythe in his hand, is ever mowing down 
 ' the evidences of title, wherefore the wisdom of the law plants 
 
 * in his other hand the hour-glass by which he metes out the 
 
 * periods of possession, that shall supply the place of the 
 
 * muniments his scythe has destroyed.' 
 
 This is very fine and very striking, no doubt. But it is 
 to be regretted that it is pure nonsense ; and it is beyond 
 measure strange that its absurdity should not have been 
 seen by its learned utterer Lord Plunkett, or by its 
 admiring critic Lord Brougham. The hour-glass met- 
 ing out the periods of possession, is not for the purpose 
 of supplying the place of the muniments which the 
 scythe has destroyed, but just the contrary, that is, to 
 protect the man in possession against muniments which 
 the scythe has failed to destroy. Such are the perils of 
 fine writing. I quote the passage as an example of the 
 danger of discussing in a heated and grandiloquent 
 rhetoric matters where calmness and plain language 
 would be more appropriate. 
 
 Mr. Leslie and Mr. Newman both write in the cha- 
 racter of instructors of the reformed parliament 
 anticipating and counselling great, and (so far as their 
 subject is concerned,) revolutionary changes, and that 
 in a style quite suitable to the advocacy of revolutionary 
 measures. Is it not possible, however, that a reformed 
 parliament may not regard matters from their point of 
 view? The Prince of Conde, speaking I think to De
 
 29 
 
 Retz, of the chroniclers of the Fronde, said : ' Ces coquins 
 nous font agir et parler comme ils auraientfait eux-memes 
 a noire place. Let us hope that a reformed parhament 
 will be more respectful towards its volunteer advisers ! 
 But above all, let us deprecate their counsels being sub- 
 jected by a reformed parliament to the indignity which 
 Horace Walpole said that Europe would offer to the 
 quarrels of David Hume and Eousseau, when the former 
 expressed his fears that that quarter of the world would 
 be filled with their disputes. 
 
 POSTSCEH^T. 
 
 Since the above was written, I have seen the article, in 
 the July number of 'Fraser's Magazine,' by Mr. 
 E. Arthur Arnold, with the title ' Mr. Cobden and the 
 Land Question.' Mr. Arnold discusses the same ques- 
 tions as Mr. Leslie and Mr. Newman, and, in the main, 
 participates in their opinions ; but he seems capable of 
 looking at both sides of a question, and so writes 
 calmly, and dispenses with the ambitious and Burke- 
 Scapin style with which the two latter gentlemen clothe, 
 perhaps I should say decorate, their speculations. 
 
 In conclusion, I may remark, that there is a party 
 in a literary point of view a very active party who
 
 30 
 
 regard reform in Parliament as valueless unless it pro- 
 duces such changes as will amount to revolution. It is 
 one of the many blessings attending a free press, that 
 the country has full warning of the existence and views 
 of such a party. In the last number of the ' Fortnightly 
 Eeview,' there is an article, by Professor Beesly, on the 
 Trades Unions Commission. The article is an out-and- 
 out defence of the trades unions. At the end comes a 
 postscript, in the following words : ' At the moment 
 of going to press, the terrible Sheffield disclosures are 
 taking place ; ' and after a passing notice of the willing- 
 ness of the advocates of the unions to hang Mr. Broad- 
 head, the professor adds : ' But I am glad that I have 
 just time to declare deliberately and emphatically that 
 there is not a word in the above remarks that I desire 
 to withdraw or qualify.' Of course not. A brave man 
 never repents. We have since heard Mr. Beesly's 
 Exeter Hall speech. It is well that the country should 
 know that it has its sucking Dantons. France had no 
 such warning, till it was overtaken by the deeds of 
 1792 and 1793 ; deeds, discrediting a just and neces- 
 sary revolution, blasting many of its expected fruits, 
 and postponing to this day many of the benefits which 
 would otherwise have followed it.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Vebilt, the dammed-up waters are ready to burst. The deluge 
 is heralded by the cry, * Free Trade in Land ; Protection for 
 Labour.' It is assumed that great constitutional changes are 
 about to provide the means of gratifying all popular desires, 
 however extreme and conflicting. Zealotry anticipates the 
 speedy removal of those barriers that * keep the wild flood 
 confined,' and calls on the restless elements of disorder to 
 gather their forces for the rush. The writers and declaimers 
 on the land-laws of England belong, with a few honourable 
 exceptions, to a school which aims, like the trades-unions, 
 whose cause, indeed, it espouses, and whose logic and style it 
 affects, to wield the engine of a reformed parliament for 
 ultra-democratic and despotic purposes. Permissive measures 
 would not content it. Eendered rabid by a peculiar political 
 virus, stung by disappointment,* it demands, with arrogant 
 infallibility, compulsory registration, compulsory leases, com- 
 pulsory compensation for voluntary improvements, the 
 compulsory building of suitable rural labourers' cottages, 
 and it would hardly stop short of compulsory salesf or even the 
 compulsory distribution of estates ; | and as, on failure of such 
 rather violent experiments, we are threatened with others 
 yet more radical, the crowning good may be confiscation. 
 
 * It was fondly hoped that a demonstration of landowners would inaugurate 
 Lord Wiestbury's registrars. 
 
 t Questions for a Reformed Parliament, pp. 90, 93, 104, 105, 112, 125, 126. 
 Fraser's Magazine, Feb. (1867), pp. 148, 161, 162 ; July (1867), pp. 80, 84, 90. 
 
 J Fraser's Magazine, July (1867), p. 88. 
 
 ' These questions are but the mere rudiments of social reform.' Qiustions, 
 #c., p. 126.
 
 32 
 
 The land does not belong, it seems, to the individual owner, 
 nor to the state, but to the state as ordered and coerced by 
 the dogmas and decrees of the school. It would extinguish 
 the rural lord to organise a worse than feudal tyranny. If 
 its reverence for the institutions of the country be little, its 
 regard for truth in advocating a cause so sacred would 
 appear to be yet less. 
 
 It is proposed to offer here some cursory remarks on the 
 recently published essays of Mr. T. E. Cliffe Leslie,* Mr. W. 
 L. Newman,t and Mr. E. A. Arnold,| on our land-laws, but 
 chiefly on the speculations of the two former writers. 
 
 In a long desultory preamble, Mr. Leslie sets forth a series 
 of grievances, which, according to his theory, have inordinately 
 swelled the mural population, and sunk the residuum of the 
 rural to its present degraded chap-fallen condition. This 
 state of things, the pauperisation of the country, and the 
 overcrowding of the greater towns, is contrasted with the 
 Arcadia of some former period (but of which we do not re- 
 member that any authentic record has been preserved), and 
 is attributed mainly to the assumed fact of ' the little land 
 
 * which enters the market being artificially dear, and of the 
 ' greater part never entering it at all from one century to 
 
 * another.' Finally, this acre-less state of the land-market 
 is due to some ' limitation ' or ' restriction ' imposed by our 
 land-laws. 
 
 Now, the reader of articles of the class under consideration 
 should be warned against too implicitly trusting to the ac- 
 curacy of the premises from which conclusions are there 
 drawn, even as regards legal matters affirmed by writers 
 of presumably competent knowledge. From the gravamina 
 of Mr. Leslie, we extract the following 2)assage ; ' Nor does 
 
 * what has been said exhibit the whole change for the worse 
 
 * in the agricultural labourers' lot. " A hundred and fifty 
 
 * Fraser's Magazine, Feb. (1867), p. 143. f Questions, ^-c, p. 7!). 
 
 \ Eraser's Magazine, July 1867.
 
 33 
 
 * " years ago there was scarcely a parish without a considerable 
 ' " extent of common, on which every householder was at 
 
 * " liberty to turn out a cow, or a pig, or a few sheep, or 
 
 * " fowls. The poor man, therefore, even after the loss of 
 
 * " the fields attached to his cottage, might, nevertheless, 
 ' " contrive to support his family with plenty of milk and 
 ' " eggs and bacon at little or no expense to himself." * The 
 
 * process of enclosing common land began in the reign of 
 
 * Anne, on a scarcely perceptible scale, increased steadily in 
 ' the two following reigns, and afterwards with such rapidity, 
 
 * that between 1760 and 1834, nearly seven million acres had 
 
 * been taken from the public property of the poor and added 
 ' to the private property of the rich.'f The simplicity, the 
 philanthropy, the maudlin sympathy and lacteal com- 
 miseration of such passages, require only the trick of metre 
 and the tag of rhyme to make them worthy of Wordsworth 
 in the soft-eyed days of his lyrical innocence. Dele the pig, 
 and we have not in Virgil or ' Groldie ' a sweeter assemblage of 
 rural images.^ If such was the aspect of merry England a 
 century and half ago, well may we turn a retrogressive eye 
 on her green youth, and despairingly exclaim, ' Rus, 
 ' quando ego te adspiciam T But the unblushing mendacity 
 of the passage is yet more astounding. Does not Mr. Leslie, 
 as a lawyer, or dabbler in law, know that the soil of the 
 so-called common belonged to the lord of the manor or to 
 some other person as a private owner, subject only to certain 
 commonable rights belonging to other persons, who, in respect 
 of those rights, were equally private owners, that those rights 
 were defined and regulated by law, and, as well as the soil, 
 were dealt with by alienation, settlement, and devise, as 
 
 * Thornton's Over Population and its Remedy. 
 
 t Eraser's Magazine, Feb. (1867), p. 149. See Questions, ^c , pp. 107, 110. 
 
 \ Mr. Nev^'man's pastoral pipe had preceded in a similar strain amant 
 alterna CamoencB : ' The common arable land, with its bolt of pasture and 
 woodland, which formed so prominent a feature in the English landscape of 
 last century, largely disappeared, and its wrecks (!) went to augment tlie mass 
 of land already in the hands of tlie large proprietors.' Questions, ^r., p. 92. 
 
 C
 
 34 
 
 private property ; that in no sense, except the vulgar popular 
 sense in which the claims of the three millions to Wimbledon 
 Common and Hampstead Heath have been so dishonestly 
 urged, were * nearly seven million acres ' ever * the public 
 * property of the poor,' or ' the labourers' common fund ! ' 
 (phrases too obviously introduced to gratify the periodical 
 craving for sentimental cant) ; and that he (Mr. Leslie), speak- 
 ing at once as a well-read lawyer, sound political economist, 
 and veracious teacher, ought rather to have said that these 
 seven millions had been taken from the unproductive state 
 incident to the joint ownership, but discordant interests, of 
 the lord and commoners, and added to the fructifying fund 
 of the community ? * The substance of Mr. Leslie's general 
 argument may not be materially affected by this particular 
 instance of unfairness, or rather untruthfulness, in the alle- 
 gation of facts, but it is important to put the reader of these 
 one-sided advocates upon enquiring for himself how much 
 of their arguments is based upon the suggestio falsi and 
 suppressio veri. By Mr. Leslie's notions about byegone 
 rustic beatitude, we are forcibly reminded of the Deserted 
 Village and its political economics, of that Irish Auburn 
 which (paradoxical as it may appear) was laid waste by 
 capital and depopulated by enterprise, exhibiting the strange 
 spectacle of Parson, Schoolmaster, Innocence and Mirth, 
 all flying before the demon Progress. 
 
 Assuming the starved condition of the land market to be 
 the main cause of at once rustic and civic misery, assuming, 
 too, that starved condition to result from the ' limitation ' 
 fixed by the land laws what, we ask, is that limitation ? It 
 is involved in the rule of law, founded on a principle of 
 policy, and finally settled, in our own time, by solemn adju- 
 dication of the highest tribunal, that (to state it broadly and 
 roughly) property may be settled so as to go to consecutive 
 takers, born and unborn, first for partial interests (as a life 
 
 * Mr. Leslie suppresf^cs the fact that, in allotting the lands on inclosure, 
 compensation was made fur tlic common riglits.
 
 35 
 
 interest or a term of years), and ultimately in absolute pro- 
 prietary right, for a period commensurate with a life or lives 
 in being (a child en ventre being for the purpose of this 
 rule treated as born) and twenty-one years ; in other words, 
 the whole and absolute disposable interest of the settlor must 
 vest in possession in some person or persons on or before the 
 expiration of that period, and does ordinarily so vest witJdn 
 that period ; nor can the property be by any device of the 
 conveyancer withdrawn longer from the market. This rule 
 is universal, it has not any exclusive application to land, 
 it is not distinctively the land law, but rather, comprehen- 
 sively, the law of the land, governing the settlement of every 
 species, as well of personal property as of real property. Of 
 course the ultimate right may vest in one or many, (and if in 
 many all must concur in selling,) or the period of complete 
 alienability by the takers may be postponed by minorities 
 or other incapacities ; but these are accidents which may 
 equally occur to the unsettled fee, and against the latter of 
 which, moreover, legislative provision has been made. The 
 limitation fixed by the above rule, as regards the corpus, (the 
 accumulation of income being confined within reasonable 
 bounds by a modern Act,) has been proved by experience to 
 be consistent with the exigencies and convenience of families, 
 generally, and with a reasonably provident care of an expectant 
 offspring, and to be not inconsistent with commercial enter- 
 prise and large enlightened views of public policy. It has been 
 settled, not on narrow technical grounds, much less with any 
 view to the maintenance of monarchical or aristocratic insti- 
 tutions, but for the advantage (gratification, if you will,) of 
 the proprietary body, great and small, high and low ; and so 
 far from being the jealous land wall that excludes the com- 
 monalty from the preserves of a few swollen territorial lords, 
 it is the broad, though measured, gate opened by the law to 
 all alike, and judging from the general prevalence of settle- 
 ments, pre-nuptial, post-nuptial, purely voluntary, and testa- 
 mentary, embracing every species of property, we conclude 
 
 c 2
 
 36 
 
 that it is no less acceptable to the small and low than to the 
 great and high. It has no feudal rust ; it is consecrated, not 
 by age or precedent or prejudice, but by free, deliberate, 
 national adoption in our own trade-fostering times. Speak- 
 ing of these settlements in the mass, whether of land or 
 money, realty or personalty, they have nothing to do neces- 
 sarily with the law of entail. If that law were swept away 
 to-morrow, settlements nearly as strict, even of land, might 
 still be made ; the substantial, practical difference between 
 fee simple and fee tail consisting chiefly in the special form 
 or mode of assurance (now ready and cheap) prescribed by a 
 late Act for facilitating the alienation of entailed estates. It 
 is true that estates are perpetuated, or rather long preserved, 
 in families by force of re-settlements, such re-settlements 
 being, however, nothing but the exercise from time to time of 
 the absolute proprietary dominion, reviving, after short inter- 
 vals, over the entailed acres, which, at each crisis of their 
 devolution, the same volition might have sold and dissipated. 
 Nor, during those intervals, is the land ordinarily unsaleable ; 
 on the contrary, as every attorney's clerk who has passed an 
 examination would inform Mr. Leslie, it may in the great ma- 
 jority of cases be brought into the market. Unless, therefore, 
 Mr. Leslie contemplates some compulsory process, or some 
 nostrum to inspire landowners with eagerness to sell, as well 
 as the landless with desire, bringing with it the means, to pur- 
 chase, it is difficult to see what material facilities he would 
 superadd to the provident devices of the law and legislature. 
 It may be admitted that the machinery provided by the Act 
 to which we have referred for facilitating the barring of 
 entails is itself susceptible of simplification, but it would be 
 idle to charge on the law of entail, as it now stands, any 
 appreciable portion of the alleged difficulties in the way of the 
 alienation of land. 
 
 The question, if to be entertained with a grasp worthy of 
 a cosmopolitical professor, must take a very much wider 
 range. It must embrace all property, all classes, all condi-
 
 37 
 
 tions. It involves nothinof less than the reconstruction of 
 our commftn law, statute law, and equity, as respects proprie- 
 tary rights generally. The true question, though our self- 
 constituted teachers appear unable or unwilling to com- 
 prehend it in its breadth and depth, would seem to 
 be, whether the limitation or restriction fixed by the 
 rule already stated (or rather the privilege which that 
 rule defines) shall or shall not be dealt with, and in 
 what manner, by the forthcoming legislature? whether a 
 rule so based, so matured, so sanctioned, and of such wide 
 influence, shall be experimented upon by caprice and 
 charlatanism ? 
 
 It is true of legal, as well as of political disquisitions, that 
 when the advocates of extreme opinions attempt anything 
 practical, they generally betray their incompetence ; and it is 
 from a sense of the difficulty, as well as danger, to the cause 
 of pushing their principles to the working point, that they 
 commonly either abstain from the suggestion of remedies or 
 conclude with the enunciation of some vague generalities. 
 What remedies does Mr. Leslie really contemplate ? Would 
 he abolish, not only entails, but every species of ownership 
 less than the immediate and absolute dominion ? Are there 
 to be no life interests, no remainders, no future destinations 
 of any kind, vested or contingent ? He says, * there is one 
 
 * way to remedy the old and new evils together, and at once 
 
 * to purge our jurisprudence, and to emancipate land from its 
 
 * burthens and trammels, and that is to extinguish the force 
 ' of settlements as binding and irrevocable instruments, save 
 ' so far as a provision for a wife is concerned ; to put family 
 
 * settlements, save as to a wife, on the same footing as wills, 
 
 * ipso facto void upon marriage, and revocable by any sub- 
 
 * sequent conveyance or will ; to enact that every successive 
 ' proprietor shall take the land he succeeds to free from any 
 ' restriction over his rights of proprietorship.' Nothing more 
 wild and vague than this ever proceeded from philosopher or 
 jurist. 'Marriage' of whom ?' revocable ' by whom?
 
 38 
 
 the settlor? It may sound strangely on this side of the 
 water that a marriage settlement should be avoided by the 
 very event which induced it. Is an instrument which is re- 
 vocable at the pleasure of any person or persons, other than 
 its objects, any settlement at all? Is it meant that settle- 
 ments by will shall, after the testator's death, be irre- 
 vocable ? Does Mr. Leslie propose to restrain the testamentary 
 power ? if not, what would be the practical value of any 
 change in the law of inheritance? Is Kent, where, for the 
 most part, distributive male descent prevails, more healthily 
 yeomanised than those counties whose peasantry rots under 
 the withering influence of primogeniture, or flies to one- 
 roomed citizenship from the malaria ? Is there no concen- 
 tration of land in Kent ? * Does Mr. Leslie adopt Mr. 
 Bright's notion, that equality is equity, that if a man has 
 ten cliildren variously circumstanced, this provided for by a 
 bachelor uncle, that by a maiden aunt, another an imbecile, 
 daughters married to bankrupt or profligate husbands, his 
 property shall necessarily go to all the ten, share and share 
 Alike, and for absolute unprotected interests ? f And, as regards 
 the land question, how would this change antedate the bless- 
 ing of a small cowkeeping yeomanry? a blessing, indeed, 
 which would seem to be a possibility far remote, as it involves 
 the repeal of so many Inclosure Acts, and the restoration of 
 some nine millions of cultivated acres to a state of nature. 
 
 * Mr. Arnold speaks of ' the high sanction, the reverenced teaching of the 
 law, in every county but one.' Eraser's Magazine, July (1867), p. 84. ' It is ' 
 (says Mr. Arnold) ' the lower class of proprietors for whom the assimilation of 
 the law to that of Kent should be demanded.^ lb. p. 85. Before this experiment 
 is tried, it would be as well to enquire whether partible descent exerts any and 
 what influence over settlements and wills in that portion of Kent which is sub- 
 ject to the custom, and whether the owners of the disgavelled portion are not 
 better content under the ' teaching ' of the general law. 
 
 t ' What ' (asks Mr. Arnold) ' is the duty of a parent in regard to the dis- 
 position of his property ? This the legislature should decide ! ' Fraser's Maga- 
 zine, July (1867), p. 84. The answer is plain : his duty is to adapt the disposi- 
 tion to his own family circumstances, and to exclude the necessarily undistin- 
 guishing decision of the legislature.
 
 39 
 
 The land must be sold, and even if sold in lots, may be 
 bought by one capitalist (probably not an aristocrat, for 
 aristocracy is more frequently the seller than the buyer), or 
 it may be taken at a valuation by one child. 
 
 This school talks of dividing an intestate's land equally 
 among his * surviving children,'' ignoring, in terms at least, 
 the issue -of predeceased children.* Have the writers ad- 
 verted to the infinitely variable circumstances of families, 
 and asked themselves what they really mean ? It happened 
 that a late able Law Eeader was in company with half a 
 dozen well educated married laymen, who joined in ridiculing 
 the idea of a family man requiring professional aid in making 
 a gift of his property among his * children,' as by that term 
 the objects would be unmistakeably ascertained. But when 
 the effect of its use, with reference to the state of the family 
 of each, came to be clearly set before them, all confessed that 
 it had not occurred to them to consider it in its various 
 aspects, and that, in each instance, its unadvised use would 
 disappoint the intention. 
 
 Does Mr. Leslie seriously think that his tamperings with 
 the law of settlement would avail to insure to the country 
 primitive ease and competence, and to the towns, elbow- 
 room; to the woodbined cottager his paddock, cow, pig, 
 common fund, and ' scrannel pipe,' and to the enfran- 
 chised lodger his spare room withal to revive that fine 
 model of robust, unschooled wisdom, the defunct yeoman, 
 abnomiis sapiens; and (if, like these writers, we may 
 hazard a stroke of the sublime) to place the cereal, oaten 
 crown of Alfred on the brows of Victoria ? In short, the 
 objections and remedies of speculators like Mr. Leslie tend, 
 under the specious veil of liberating entailed lands and 
 modifying the law of settlement, to such radical changes in 
 the system of our law of property as would far outrun any 
 reform in the * representation of the people ' framed with a 
 
 * Frascr's Magazine, July (1867), pp. 80, 85, 87.
 
 40 
 
 due regard to the expediency of * standing ' (with whatever 
 infirmity of footing) ' on the old lines of the constitution.' 
 Whether such changes would be agreeable, not to the lords 
 of Parliament, or to the greater lords of Birmingham, 
 Manchester, and Leeds, those mightiest of land-gluttons, (for 
 that is not the question,) but to the more humbly-estated 
 community, to the genius, habits, and wishes of the people 
 of the United Kingdom, may well be doubted by the simple- 
 minded. But these are enquiries not apt to trouble the 
 professorial intellect, exalted in transcendental abstraction, 
 and intent on the realisation, at any sacrifice, of some pet 
 philosophic vision.* 
 
 But it is really a waste of words to expend them on such 
 futilities. The whole fabric of grievances and remedies is 
 built on the false assumption that the bulk of the land of 
 the United Kingdom is withdrawn from the land market, and 
 is so withdrawn, not by the indisposition of its owners to 
 sell, but by their inability to confer a marketable title. The 
 dispute is less about dogmas than facts. Such an assertion 
 as that ' little land enters the market ' is simply untrue, and 
 best met by a flat denial and reference to the advertising 
 columns of the Times. 
 
 Here, from sheer weariness of Mr. Leslie * On the Land 
 
 * System of the Country,' we had broken off, but we linger 
 to drop a tear over *the pale youth (behind counters) which 
 
 * might have recruited the ranks of a blooming tenantry,' 
 over * the children and descendants of the fading yeomanry,' 
 over * the rural clergy and country gentlemen themselves,' 
 over ' the many shops and trades that might have prospered 
 
 * well in country towns,' over * the families of every middle 
 *grade whose incomes are no longer equal to the costly 
 
 * luxury of a country home,' all these, the miserable results 
 of our land system. Now, taking for once a short excursion 
 
 * Mr. Arnold, though not disinclined to sweeping changes, does recognise 
 the expediency of consulting ' the genius and habits of the people.' Eraser's 
 Magazine, July (1867), p. 88.
 
 41 
 
 on the Leslie-Newman hippogriff, we might perhaps view the 
 * pale youth ' in a different light, see him returning from 
 India or Australia with wealth and honours, purchasing some 
 disentailed domain, expending largely in improvements, and 
 diffusing around him science, hospitality, elegance, and 
 charity. We might contrast such a career with that of the 
 prosperous shopkeeper or trader of the country town, stand- 
 ing, not behind the counter, but with arms a-kimbo at his 
 shop door, except on market days, and then scrupulously 
 weighing out pennyworths of rancid bacon and spurious tea ; 
 contrast it, too, with that of the ' blooming tenant,' yoked to 
 Blouzalinda, and rejoicing in the rubicundity often ' coheirs' 
 apparent. As to the * fading yeoman,' have we, then, we 
 might ask, made so very bad a bargain in exchanging /iim 
 for the substantial, better educated farmer? Instead of 
 sighing over the extinction of the race of * rural clergy ' and 
 ' country gentlemen ' of the GTeorgian era, we might wonder 
 who seeks to disturb their repose, or that of the painted 
 Briton ? And though it may not be obvious to common 
 apprehension how the proposed changes in the land laws 
 would tend to provide ' families of every middle grade ' with 
 the ' luxury of a country home,' we might plainly see in 
 
 The villas, with which London stands begirt, 
 Like a swarth Indian with his belt of beads, 
 
 and in the similarly studded zones of other large dark- 
 skinned towns, that somehow or other the so densely hived 
 ' middle grade ' does swarm out and expatiate among the 
 fields and flowers. "VSTien had great towns the means of mov- 
 ing and breathing more freely ? When did wealth, science, 
 and sympathy unite more earnestly to provide healthy exer- 
 cise and recreation for the masses ? But as grave truths are 
 not illustrated by a blazon of words, any more than old, 
 deep-founded states are to be swept away by a flourish of 
 trumpets, we dismount, and alight on the dirty acres whence 
 we rose.
 
 42 
 
 When we might have flattered ourselves that we had dis- 
 persed the array of objections, we are met by Mr. Newman 
 with a ' sentiment.' * And what shall we reply to a sentiment ? 
 It is one of those intangible essences which escape in the at- 
 tempt to grapple with it. Admitting that the land-lock is 
 not attributable to settlement and primogeniture, yet their 
 existence, it is argued, generates a vicious taste, puts it into 
 foolish people's heads to make complicated family provisions, 
 and, in Mr. Newman's swelling phrase, ' to establish in the 
 
 * centre of each family a magnificently fed and coloured 
 
 * drone, the incarnation of wealth and social dignity, the 
 
 * visible end of human endeavour, a sort of Great Final 
 ' Cause immanent in every family.' f This sounds like the 
 language of the Beehive. 
 
 This insult is aimed by a writer who, if stripped of his 
 florid disguises, would relapse into sheer nudity, at an as- 
 sembly which, were it disrobed and shorn of every adven- 
 titious aid, would stand ennobled and of mark to all time, by 
 its intellectual preeminence and inherent lustre. Happy, 
 indeed, the community for which such working ' drones,' 
 ranging over the wide fields of policy, science, and humanity, ' 
 gather and store up, in ordinances of provident wisdom, the 
 richest spoils of ' human endeavour ! ' Illustrious the ' family' 
 in whose * centre' there beats the heart of a Stanley or a 
 Cooper ! But for the reverence due to the ' Great Final 
 Cause,' we might breathe a prayer that of this august, here- 
 ditary hive, ( while another associated hive of fellow-workers 
 quickly runs its periodical course, 
 
 ' Neque enim plus septima ducitur setas,' ) 
 
 * 'Its (the law's) success in creating a sentiment.' Questions, Sfc, -p. Q\. 
 ' Follow the example the state sets you in regulating intestate successions.' 
 ib. 94. ' The law tells the parent that primogeniture is right, while nature, 
 leading him to love all his children equally (?), contradicts the law.' Frascr's 
 Magazine, July {lS67),Tp. S5. 
 
 t lb. p. 96.
 
 43 
 
 some Laureate, to be crowned in the far future, may truly 
 sing in strains like those of the great agrestic poet of old 
 
 ' genus immortale manet, multosque per annos 
 Stat fortuna domus, et avi numerantur avorum.' 
 
 But the sentiment has, or has not, rooted itself deeply and 
 spread widely. If it has not, no great harm is done ; if it 
 has, is it not a fair inference that the state of the law harmo- 
 nises with our social condition, and finds a response in the 
 feelings and cravings of the people, while not injuriously 
 affecting their interests ? And what has been the fate of 
 laws which have denied indulgence to tendencies which may 
 be deemed, by philosophers, such weaknesses ? Moreover, is 
 it true that the law's destination of the land on intestacy 
 suggests the course of settlement, or is it not dictated by 
 other considerations ? 
 
 We see, though indistinctly, through the cloud of Mr. 
 Newman's big words,* that his catalogue of grievances f re- 
 sulting from the bad laws consists of 1st. The contraction 
 of the land-market ; 2nd. The keeping of the lands in the 
 hands of a political proprietary, whence the discouragement 
 of the application of capital to agriculture ; this discourage- 
 ment arising from three causes 1. The withholding of 
 leases ; 2. The preservation of destructive game ; | 3. The 
 mutilation of the proprietor's own interest in the land ; and 
 that his ' broad outline ' of remedies is Ist. Assimilation 
 of the intestacy law of real property to that which governs 
 in the case of personalty ; (a remedy in itself, practically 
 
 * ' The majestic period for which title must be prored.' Questions, ^c, 
 p. 92. ' The moral force of nations is their most precious possession, and we 
 cannot afford to have it shattered and pulverised by a half-humorous cynicism 
 which would defend compurgation and frankpledge.' lb. p. 95. 'As each mil- 
 lionaire emerges triumphant from the commercial mUee, and by pure weight of 
 capital forces open the gate of the landed paradise,' &c. ib. p. 117. 
 
 t Ih.-g. 111. 
 
 :j: ' The rotund completeness of the game laws.' Questions, ^c. p. 128. Mr. 
 Nowman was thinking, naturally enough, of a perfectly foolish legislator, but 
 Horace ' totus teres atque rotundus ' of a perfectly wise man.
 
 44 
 
 nugatory, except in the sentimental point of view ;) 2ndly. 
 Modification of the mischievous power of settlement; but of 
 which modification he does not seem to have formed any 
 definite notion, for he asks whether it would suffice to pro- 
 hibit limitations to unborn children ? Of any such prohibition, 
 however, doubting the efficacy, he dimly foreshadows the 
 necessity of ' other and more stringent remedies,' and 
 * among them that proposed by Mr, Leslie.' We have already 
 seen what is the response of that darker oracle. 
 
 The demand is, first, for assimilation of the laws of realty 
 and personalty, by subjecting the realty to the same law of 
 succession on intestacy which distributes the personalty (but 
 which law certainly does not give it to the * surviving children') ; 
 but as, by degrees, a little light dawns in upon the clamourers, 
 they perceive that something more is requisite, some modi- 
 fication, if not the abrogation, of the law of settlement, 
 perhaps even of the testamentary power. But the land, 
 the land, is still the password to popularity ; nothing is said 
 about any corresponding limitation of the disposing power 
 over personalty ; and thus not only would the beautiful idea 
 of a harmonious system vanish, but the divergence would be 
 aggravated. 
 
 On the supposition, hardly, however, to be entertained by 
 the wildest visionary, that not only settlements inter vivos, 
 but also settlements by will are to be abolished, that, in 
 short, the multifarious forms of ownership in which proprietors 
 of all classes have so long indulged themselves, and that 
 concurrently with still increasing national prosperity, little 
 or nothing is to be left but the power of each successive taker 
 to sell and spend, and the tenants' right of improving the 
 landlord out of his fee, we should have, in effect, a perpetuity 
 of entail stricter than that which is represented as now exist- 
 ing, in a succession of virtually life tenants and hungry ex- 
 pectants, with vested rights to be defeated only by getting 
 rid altogether of the subject of property. Yet how, by any 
 milder treatment, is the work of subdivision to be brought 
 about ? Neither Mr. Leslie nor Mr. Newman may seriously
 
 45 
 
 desire to push matters to this extreme point, but until they 
 speak out they must be exposed to injurious surmises. 
 
 There are other essayists, such, for example, as Mr. 
 Arnold, who write with graver thought, with better know- 
 ledge, and in a more sober vein. But to one and all we would 
 submit that, as regards the supposed land-lock, the case is 
 palpably overstated ; that the alleged obstructive influence of 
 entails, primogeniture, and settlements has little or no prac- 
 tical existence; that the land law cannot be justly and 
 effectually treated as an isolated subject of policy, nor other- 
 wise than as involved in a general reconsideration of the 
 property laws of the United Kingdom, of its whole consti- 
 tutional system, and its inveterate habits ; that the professed 
 end (beginning?) of these writers, namely, the breaking up 
 and dispersion of large estates, would not be attained to any 
 sensible extent by any such alterations in the land laws aa 
 they avowedly contemplate, nor by anything short of a social, 
 to be necessarily and speedily followed by a political revolu- 
 tion, by a fierce struggle for the populai'ity ' that is run 
 after,' a struggle (as distinguished from the praise *that 
 follows,') in which honest enthusiasts would find themselves 
 outbid by professors of a darker school, the abettors and apolo- 
 gists of assassination. The more the subject is considered in 
 all its relations, the more clearly will it appear that such 
 a sweeping result would be inevitable. Indeed, Mr. Arnold 
 foreshadows such a convulsion when he says ' that the cost 
 ' of the adoption of this system (a compulsory distribu- 
 ' tion of land) would be a social revolution, with the 
 ' disappearance of institutions to which the English mind is 
 ' habituated, and by which it instinctively prefers to be 
 ' governed.' He does not, indeed, advocate its adoption, 
 but seems to resolve the ^vhole matter into the enquiry, 
 * How are landlords to be made to grant equitable leases ? ' * 
 
 * Fraser's Magazine, July (1867), p. 90. 'Laws for enabling the landlord 
 to improve will not meet the necessity of the case.' Questions, ^t. p. 26. 
 (Mr. F. H. Hill on Ireland.) This essnyist speaks of 'the right of the tenant 
 to improvements made without the hindbird's consent' as an admitted ' prin-
 
 46 
 
 May not this question be met by another, Hovv are tenants 
 to be persuaded that such leases as alone a landlord could 
 prudently grant would be such very good things for them- 
 selves as to be worth a resort to compulsion ? While so 
 many farms are profitably used in the absence of leases, 
 without a murmur on either hand, why this emphasis on 
 leases ? Has he ascertained what are the relations of land- 
 lord and tenant, what the state of cultivation, and what the 
 rate of progress, in those agricultural districts where leases 
 are almost unknown ? 
 
 So that, of all this * hubbub of words ' about the land laws," 
 when condensed into plain language, the whole result, short 
 of that * social revolution ' which supplies the only not 
 nugatory purpose^ is, 1. Descent in the male line ought 
 to be altered, because primogeniture tends to breed a 
 ' sentiment ' by which settlors and testators are influenced, 
 though unconsciously, in their family arrangements; and 
 2. Landlords ought to be, not enabled, but * made ' to grant 
 leases which tenants do not want.* But, in truth, it is not 
 entail, it is not primogeniture, it is not even strict settlement, 
 against which the combined assault is really directed, but 
 
 eiple'l (p. 27). He thinks that 'the abolition of the laws of primogeniture 
 and entail, and the restriction of the right of settlement, would prohably tend 
 to the establishment of more satisfactory relations between landlord and 
 tenant' (p. 26) ; and that ' there is no likelihood that any revolutionary change 
 would follow' (p. 25). Pleasant prospects, these ! radical legislation on the doc- 
 trine of chances ! He refers to Mr. Goldwin Smith as having ' recently asserted 
 that in consequence of the entail of the Duke of Buckingham's estates being 
 broken, five hundred (?) freeholders have been called into existence in Buck- 
 inghamshire,' (p. 23) a strange assertion, were it true, to be ad\anced by those 
 whose lament is that entail has rendered land unsaleable. The Ducal estates 
 (that is, some only,) were sold, not in small portions, and not as a consequence 
 of the breaking of the entail, but because there was occasion to sell them, 
 which occasion not arising, they would hav remained, though alwaj's saleable, 
 unsold ; just as land, generally, enters the market only if, and when, its owner 
 has need or desire to sell, and just as the greater portion of England might 
 enter it to-morrow should such need or desire exist. The special <papiJ.aKov of 
 Doctor Hill is, of course, a peasant-proprietary, to be created, how? by 
 Leqislation ! 
 
 * See the speech of Lord Naas in the Commons, July 26, 186".
 
 47 
 
 against the right of disposing within the limits now assigned 
 by law, and as that right of disposing constitutes 'property, 
 we find ourselves, when all the mist is dispersed, confronted 
 by the grave question, to what extent, and in what form, shall 
 property in land be longer permitted to exist ? This may be 
 a fair problem for a Social Conference, but let us not be blind 
 to its true nature, ignoring the fact that, while it may seem 
 to lie only spit-deep in the soil, it has its roots in the ancient 
 rocks of the constitution. Be assured that the movement, 
 though professedly economic, is covertly, however transpa- 
 rently, agrarian and ultra-democratic. If the outcry does 
 not mean a new edifice on new foundations, has it practically 
 any meaning? If such is its meaning, does it touch any 
 sympathising string in the social heart of the country ? Is 
 it the voice of a great people ; or only the clamour of a few 
 malcontents, aiming to raise a Dictatorship on a perpetuity 
 of partible succession and fixity of tenure ? 
 
 Unquestionably there are hundreds of thousands who have 
 neither land nor money to buy it; but there is plenty of land 
 in the market, and plenty of money in the country. There 
 is overcrowding in the busier towns ; but it is not more just 
 and reasonable to charge it on the land laws than it would 
 be to charge it on the last census. Unquestionably, too, 
 there are important truths in social economics yet to be 
 thought out . All honour to the thinkers ! It is possible, 
 let us hope probable, that among those hidden treasures of 
 philosophy, some cure may be latent for that disparity of lot 
 which all communities exhibit, for that infirmity of ' flesh 
 and blood ' which has hitherto rendered it necessary to the 
 well-being of every society that provision should be made for 
 a residuum of destitution. Rare honours will encircle the 
 brow of the gifted discoverer ; but, demonstrably, it is not 
 destined to any professor of this school, pursuing the land- 
 law phantom, to win that, the palmiest of coronals.
 
 LONDON 
 
 J"Bl>(TI'.D BY 8POTTISWOODE AND CO. 
 
 NBW-STBKKT OUABB
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 rm L9-Series 444
 
 Syracuse, N. Y. 
 Stockton, Calif.