Sir Charles Dilke brought in a Bill on Wednesday the
object- of which we do not quite perceive. He wanted the State, he said, to take all the estates belonging to corporations,. municipalities, commissions, public bodies, and charities through- out England, and entrust them to paid overseers, who should manage them in the interests of the owners and of the public, should protect common rights, let lands to co-operative societies, and so on. He also proposed to abolish the- law of mortmain. As to the first proposition, which, as the Attorney-General remarked, would transfer the manage- ment, among other trifles, of all the Docks in the country to the State, its only result would be to root out the most lenient landlords in the country, to destroy municipal spirit, and to de- prive testators of all temptation to leave lands for public purposes.. As for the second, we doubt if both parties in the House com- bined could pass it. It would have for its first result the per- manent endowment of the Catholic Church with wealth over which the State would have no sort of control, and which, as priests neither die, nor gamble, nor waste, would speedily become immense.
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