Mr. Bright has written a very neat letter, explaining what
he means by "free land," to a gentleman at Stockton-on-Tees—Mr. G. W. Sanders, who made the inquiry. He means by it "the abolition of the law of primogeniture, and the limitation of the system of entails and settlements, so that life interests may, for the most part, be got rid of, and real owner- ship substituted for them. It means also that it shall be as easy to buy and sell land as to buy and sell a ship, or at least as easy as it is in Australia, or in most or all the States of the American Union. It means that no encouragement shall be given to great estates and great farms, and that the natural forces of accumulation and dispersion shall have free play." And it means, too, that the lawyer, though well paid for his work, shall not have " unnecessary work made for him." We are not sure, however, that Mr. Bright realises the chief diffi- culty. There are legal liens on ships which sometimes prevent them from being even so easily sold as land-is in various quarters of the world ; and the problem in simplifying the land laws will be the difficulty of abolishing the chief security for money lent no mortgage. Certainly, if land were to become as saleable as it is in many countries, some system of official trusteeship would have to be substituted, as a safeguard for trustees' investments.
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