TENANT-MEMBERS FOR COUNTIES.
THE announcement that Mr. Bone, Tenant-farmer, intends to contest South Hampshire at the next election, is, we believe, serious, and is well worth the attention of the country gentlemen. It is by no means impossible that M. Gambettes idea of a new couche sociale, a new eocial stratum coming to the top, may be realised in Great Britain before it is realised in France, or any other country of the Continent. A distinct and permanent change in the social grade of our County Members would involve, or at all events commence, a social revolution of the highest importance, and we are by no means certain that it is not at hand. We are told that in many counties of England, more especially the most agricultural, the tenant-farmers are determined to see if they cannot find representatives of their own class, to represent their own views, and to claim at least one of the two seats in each division. A good many ideas, half formed it may be, but still powerful, are fermenting among them just now, and they say there are points, such as tenant-right, compensation for improvements, game laws, and lay control in parochial affairs, upon which the landowners cannot be trusted, do not feel with the farmers, and must, now the ballot has been obtained, be quietly superseded. On one of these points, the preservation of ground-game, the feeling is very bitter, the tenant seeing his crops injured every day by animals kept for sport ; and on another, Mr. Clare Read's point—the insecurity of capital invested in tenancies-at-will—it is scarcely less intense; while a third impulse, seldom described, is perhaps stronger than them both. The dignity of the farmers is beginning to be hurt. The class, though still in great need of improvement, has decidedly advanced since 1832; reads more, thinks more, and is more wounded by its exclusion from the control of local and political affairs. Few townsmen reflect how perfect this exclusion is. John Smith, the draper, or chemist, or bookseller in Anyton, may be a lead- ing man in his borough, may rise to be Mayor, .may be the most influential vote in the Liberal or Tory Committee, may, if he gets much money, be at all events named as a conceivable candidate for the seat. His elder brother, George Smith, tenant- farmer of 350 acres, bred with his brother, and in his own view the abler man—the tradesman not very well knowing barley from wheat—is permitted to influence a vestry called
supply a vacancy in the House of Commons, the representation of that true middle-class which has little money and feels severely every fiscal change. They will bring a new and THE ATHANASIANISTS' MEETING.
reform, that of the land laws, and they will secure a thorough James's Hall and the Hanover Square Rooms deserve to revivification of municipal institutions in the counties. They be treated with every respect. It cannot be denied that the will help materially to strengthen the foreign policy of the tone of the speakers was conciliatory, simple, and profoundly Government, for besides being 'dour' persons apt to resent earnest,—nor that they expressed a feeling much above the aggression, their interest, real or fancied, is in war, not peace, inveterate caution and obstinacy of ordinary ecclesiastical con- and they will serve as a strong counterpoise in emergencies servatism. At St. James's Hall there were nearly three to the still overwhelming influence of the landlords on the thousand persons present, mostly laymen, and mostly elderly House. Above all, their election will give a shake to that laymen ; and though the cheering in reference to the use of exclusiveness. in the representation of the counties and of the Athanasian Creed as a Processional chaunt appeared to the countrified boroughs which of all causes tends most to show that the meeting was almost exclusively High-Church, impair the representative character of the Commons, and there was no sign of the effeminate Ritualism of the cope and make the House the reflection of a class, instead of a micro- chasuble' kind. At the same time, after reading very carefully cosm of the nation. Their entry, too, will not in the end be all the speakers have said, we can only express our own bewilder- injurious to the labourers, for it will drive the landowners to ment that they should be so little able to enter into our posi- seek political support in them, while it will be decidedly Eon, and should be so easily contented with their own arguments inimical to the growing millionaire power. As to party con- in relation to positions which they have, as far as we can see, siderations, they are of minor importance, but tenant repre- never yet mastered.
sentatives can hardly be more Tory than the Squires, will on Our position is this :—If the Athanasian Creed is so the next great question, the land, be decidedly more liberal, essential a part of the Gospel of Christ that the Church and will work one important change in the feelings of the can only suppress it at the peril of mutilating and injuring Liberals. They will compel them to understand and reckon that Gospel, these gentlemen are unquestionably quite right with rural ideas, prejudices, and feelings, to be more con- in fighting for it as they do ; but then they are utterly sulerate in their legislation, and to rely less exclusively than wrong in not so far modifying the language of the Creed, they usually do upon urban enpport. The present geographi- as to make it express what they say it means, in language canine of cleavage between Tory and-Liberal is utterly absurd, that shall be as intelligible to the simplest creature 111 in question, swamp the elected guardians in them too. The attitude of Tenant-Members towards the ecclesias- When a seat in Parliament is vacant a dozen gentlemen meet tical questions which now mix themselves up with everything and select the candidates on either side, and the farmers have is more difficult to predict, except upon one point. Their faith in most counties to accept them whether they like them or may be described, we believe, in the rough, as orthodox—though not, their powerlessness being sometimes so complete with odd reserves, usually concealed—and they will be in the that they may be obliged to carry out a private main on the side of the Establishment, as the most respectable family compact of which they never heard. Of course sort of organisation; but they have almost all of them one feeling the degree of exclusion varies in different counties,—from which, if they became powerful, would greatly modify existing counties like North Devon, where two families rule, and rule institutions. They are all, we believe, with one accord, weary well, to counties like North Essex, where no proprietor of their powerlessness in ecclesiastical affairs. They would possesses 4,000 acres in a block,—but the governing spirit is the have voted for Lord Sandon's Bill to a man. They want a same in all. The gentry decide, and the farmers vote. The voice in the selection of their vicar, and a means of directly farmers are tired of it, are beginning to speak oat in influencing him when he is selected, and they will make that, Chambers of Agriculture and elsewhere, rejecting the gentry's a direct and visible extension of lay power in the Church, the leadership sometimes with asperity, and are, we are told, resolv- condition of their support in ecclesiastical affairs. The Squire ing to make a change in county representation. That they can does not feel that, because he has social means of influence ; do it if they please is certain, as has been shown in Mr. Bead's but the tenant has none, and he intends, if he can, to have election, and in all recent elections in Scotland, where, if the legal means, and if he enters Parliament easily will as- present spirit holds, to be a "gentleman " will, in the next suredly get them. That will be, for good or evil, his direc- election, be equivalent to being disqualified by plebiscite. tion of change, and he will within this region subordinate Their main difficulty is to collect money for expenses, and to his action to that.
find candidates who can and will live in London for seven It may be asked why, if the farmer has all these distinct months in the year ; but they can obviate the former by sub- ideas, he has not hitherto given them utterance through his
scriptions, are getting over the latter, as the Scotch farmers elected representatives. Because in the majority of are, by stepping over county limits, and will by degrees be counties he never has had elected representatives. He sufficiently supplied. They are very resolute when they see was free, no doubt, to reject a very unpopular man, their way, they can make alliance a condition of support to and in a few counties to choose out of many candidates ; the old Member, can heap second votes on their own man, and but he was not, except in rare cases, free to step may if they choose carry forty or fifty Members with con- out of a limited circle holding an esoteric creed, or to
siderable ease. dictate terms to his representative. It is all very well to say We believe a change of the kind near enough to be worth a he was free, but he was not. A tenant who acted on his moment's consideration of its results, which will not all be freedom found things uncomfortable for him, found that he good. The tenant representatives, unless selected with very had lowered himself, found that he was held to have broken great care, will not be so well educated or so political in the rules of respectability. Landlords did not coerce, perhaps, their line of thought as the squires they supersede, will be less but a tenant who voted with his landlord was "My excellent under the influence of ideas and more selfish in looking after friend Brown," and a tenant who voted against him, was "That the interests of their class. They may press their aide of the person who holds the Uplands of me." Social pressure is tenure question a little too far, they will certainly be unrea- greatly felt by farmers, who will be more emancipated by the sonable about rates, and they may, though this is more Ballot than any class in the country. Besides, the fiercest doubtful, be lukewarm about education. They do not exactly fight of our days was on the Corn Laws, on which landlords hate it, but they want it for their own sons as well as their and farmers thought alike, and the tradition of that great labourers. They will be economical to a fault, they will act struggle is only just beginning to die away. The Irish die- very much together as a body rather than as Members of the °union, too, woke up feelings only sleeping because change Commons, and they will do all in their power to retard the was considered impossible, and provoked everywhere the desire admission of the labourer to the ballot. Upon this point we for security as in Ireland, where it was roughly but racily hope nothing from them, and should not wonder to see them said, "Bad tenants got everything good tenants wanted, just try to remodel the Poor Law so as to make of it an engine for by being bad." There is, however, no necessity to analyse preventing agricultural eombination. But on the other hand, the causes of the change. Our point is that it has come, and their entry will give representation to a most important class that in all human probability it will at the next election make which _greatly requires it and is not represented now, and will itself more visible than the country gentlemen will like.
Previous page
