SYSTEMS OF LAND TENURE.*
ALTHOUGH few of these essays have a direct bearing on the Irish Land Question, the writers have always kept it steadily in view, and their frequent allusions to it show them to be conscious that the main interest of their volume will arise from the opportune- ness of its appearance. We see this as much in Mr. Morier's admission that it is impossible to apply Stein's legislation in Prussia to the present state of Ireland, as in Mr. Campbell's com- parison of Lord Canning's confiscations in Oude to Queen Elizabeth's Irish policy. No doubt this method of treatment is fully justified by the course which discussion has taken. The examples of Stein and Hardenberg in Prussia, and of the Perma- nent Settlement in India, have been so often cited for our guid- ance, that such a book as this would be incomplete if it did not deal with them. But the two essays devoted to these subjects do not throw much light on the question of the day, and, moreover, Mr. Morier's suggestions, like those of Judge Longfield, have been to some extent superseded by Mr. Gladstone's measure.. The materials collected by all the writers will, however, be of much service to the debate on the second reading. It is not likely that any of the speakers will confine themselves to the country that is actually before them, and therefore Mr. Wren Hoskyns's search- ing analysis of the clumsy expedients for perpetuating the feudal system in England, M. de Laveleye's eloquent defence of in petite culture in Belgium, Mr. Cliffe Leslie's confirmation of that view by a reference to the system in France, and Mr. Fisher's sketch of the simplicity of tenure and transfer in America, will not lose in comparison with the essays on Ireland, India, and Germany. The principles that underlie the whole system of land tenure are put more definitely forward in some of the former essays than in the three last. M. de Laveleye is especially worthy of notice, and the revolution he works in all the received ideas about the inferiority of in petite culture makes his essay as remarkable in a political sense as it is in a literary.
What first strikes us with surprise in M. de Laveleye's paper is that Flanders is disadvantageously contrasted with Ireland. The rainy climate of the latter, which is often held up as the cause of its agricultural distress, is just what the Flemings desire. They have a soil which is mere sterile sand, and which, after having been fertilized by ten centuries of laborious husbandry, does not yield a single crop without being manured. The Irish soil, on the other hand, produces excellent pasture spontaneously. It is true that cereals do not ripen so well in a rainy climate, but this fact should teach the Irish farmer to build more on his live stock than on cereals, and the rather, as the value of the former goes on in- creasing while that of the latter remains stationary. M. de Laveleye draws a glowing picture of what Ireland ought to be, if its inhabitants had the energy and the " agricultural traditions " of the Flemings. But without these the advantages assigned to the country are almost illusory. We do not detect many other causes of the prosperity of Belgium which are not common to Ire- land, though the one country possesses that simplicity of land transfer which is especially desired by the other. How far this of itself would suffice to bring about a radical change of tenure may seem very doubtful. M. de Laveleye admits that it has not created a peasant proprietary in Flanders, where, according to him, there are still too many occupiers. Still the simplicityof transfer is an important element in the simplification of tenure, and other writers lay the greatest stress on its necessity. Judge Longfieldconsiderathe want of frequent transfer of land, arising, as it does, from "the law of primogeniture, the heavy stamp duties on conveyances, the law which permits property to be settled on unborn persons, and the general complications permitted in the titles to real property," one of the main causes of absenteeism. Mr. Wren Hoskyns gives
• Systems of Land Tenure in Various Countries. A Series of Essays published under the Sanction of the Cobden Club. London: Macmillan. 1870.
us a list of the expenses attending the transfer of small landed pro- perties in England, which is sufficient in itself to explain the progress of accumulation. It appears that while the purchaser's expenses, irrespective of stamp duty, amounted to £54 where the purchase-money was £4,667, they were exactly the same upon a purchase of £1,895, and they amounted to £72 on a purchase of £2,274. On purchases below £1,000 the inequality was even greater. Rather more than £23 went upon a purchase of £100 ; £48 on £746 ; £39 on £230 ; while only £17 was paid on £1,260, and only £24 on £1,800. " The vendor's expenses,' adds Mr. Hoskyns, " would be in every case much higher." We can hardly wonder if such a tax on the acquisition of small properties drives a large class of possible buyers out of the market It is the want of public registration that makes English and Irish titles so insecure as to need the elaborate investigations repre- sented by such an outlay, although the legal formalities add largely to the cost. In Belgium, as M. de Laveleye shows us, deeds of transfer are executed before a public officer, and are entered on a register which is accessible to every one interested. But the United States, as we learn from Mr. C. M. Fisher's essay, present an almost perfect system of transfer. A simple deed of a few lines is enough to convey an estate, but it is not valid against creditors or other purchasers unless it is recorded. The form of these American deeds is very nearly the same as that contained in an Act of Lord Brougham's which has never been accepted by the legal profession. If we contrast the perspicuity of the wording used in such instruments with the deplorable verbiage that still prevails in England, we shall fully appreciate the force of Mr. Hoskyns's complaint that " the title to land is locked up in private boxes and stowed away in uninsured offices to be doubtfully educed from the perishable evidence of MS. deeds written (in the fifth century since the invention of printing) in language requiring some- times the translation, sometimes the deciphering, but always the interpretation of an expert."
It is not only in regard to intelligibility that the American deeds have the advantage of the English. We see in the case of leases that the unjust construction put on certain covenants by genera- tions of Tory judges finds no favour across the Atlantic. In England it has been held that a tenant who binds himself to leave premises in good repair must rebuild them if they are destroyed by fire, although he may not have been to blame for their destruc- tion. The roundabout way in which this injustice is usually guarded against leads to further expense and delay. The American law obviates it by a single clause which might well be copied in any future English Act, and would tend to make the relation of landlord and tenant more consistent with equity. Again, in most of the American States the real property of in- testates is distributed like personal property, there being a pro- vision that if an estate is too small to be divided, or cannot be divided without great injury, the whole or any part of it may be allotted to one of the heirs, and he may be called upon to pay the rest their shares in money. It will be remarked that in this and other respects the present volume of essays goes far beyond any of the temporary requirements of the Irish Land Question, and that it touches the very existence of our English system of tenure. This may certainly be said of Judge Longfield's suggestion that the law of primogeniture should be abolished in Ireland, and that all owners in possession should be allowed to lease for forty-one years. It may equally be applied to the more sweeping proposal of Mr. Hoskyns to restrict the power of settle- ment. He quotes Mr. Caird to the effect that a great proportion of the land of England—more than two-thirds, according to the evidence given before Mr. Pusey's committee—is so encumbered by settlements that the tenants for life have no means of making improvements. It is argued that if the present system of settle- mentsis touched, there will be no security for landed properties. The existence of all estates will depend on their actual holders. But why should there be such exceptional safeguards for land? Why should not consols, stock, and debentures be tied up in the same manner? People seem to be afraid that if landed proprietors are not looked after sharply they will follow the example of tenants in India, who, as Mr. Campbell tells us, sometimes decamp in the night with- out paying their rent, and carry their houses with them. We grant that this regard for settlementsis consistent with the English practice of accumulation, and that the result of Mr. Hoskyns's proposal would be to reduce the bulk of estates. But it is difficult to read these essays without coming to the conclusion that on economical grounds this result would be highly desirable. In Ireland, Judge Longfield tells us, it would bring proprietors into residence and elevate the tenantry. In England, says Mr. Hoskyna, it would improve agriculture by introducing more capital, and by giving
more people a personal interest in landed property. In America it wakes every Irish emigrant ambitious to own real estate. In France and Belgium it brings into cultivation lands which would otherwise remain fallow. Take the accounts given by Mr. de Laveleye and Mr. Cliffe Leslie. The first says:—
" It is the small cultivator only who, spade in hand, can fertilize the waste, and perform prodigies which nothing but his love of the land could enable him to accomplish. His day's work he counts for nothing ; he spares no exertion, and shuns no trouble ; and by doing double the work, he produces double the result he would do if he worked for hire. Thus he has made fertile farms of the dunes and quicksands which 'border our dangerous coast. Penetrating into the interior of these dunes in the neighbourhood of Nieuport, you observe little cottages with a few :scree of rye and potatoes around them. Their owners succeed in keep- ing a few cows, which the children take out to graze wherever a blade of salt grass can be found. With the manure of their cattle they mix sea- -weed and whatever animal matter the sea throws up, and thus they raise crops of first-rate potatoes and vegetables. La Veluwe—the Campine of Holland —has been reclaimed in like manner inch by inch by the peasantry.
have elsewhere given an account of the rise of one of these sand vil- lages within recent years. In Savoy, in Switzerland, in Lombardy, in all mountainous countries, land has been reclaimed by la petite culture which large landowners could not have broached without loss. In those high- lands man makes the very soil. He builds terraces along steep inclines, lining them with blocks of stone, and then carrying earth to them on his back, in which he plants a mulberry or walnut tree, or a vine, or raises a little corn or maize. Whoever, after paying for the labour, should take a lease of the ground thus created would not get one-half per cent. from his outlay, and therefore a capitalist will never do it. But the small cultivator does it ; and thus the mountain and the rock become trans- formed. So, too, under la petite culture, even when aided not by pro- prietorship, but only the kind of tenure to which the name of emphyteusis has been given, and which corresponds to a long lease, the most ungrate- ful land has been reclaimed in Flanders. The tenant being secure of the future, builds a house, clears the ground, manures and fertilizes the rebellious soil ; and though he will not reap the same benefit from it that a peasant proprietor would, he reaps much more than either a large farmer or a large proprietor would."
And the second,— "The truth is, as we have said, that the large and the small farming compete on fair terms in France, which they are not allowed to do in England; and the latter has, to begin with, a large and ever-increasing domain within which it can defy the competition of the former. The large farmer's steam-engine cannot enter the vineyard, the orchard, or the garden. The steep mountain is inaccessible to him, when the small farmer can clothe it with vineyards, and the deep glen is too circum- scribed for him. In the fertile alluvial valley, like that of the Loire, the garden of France, his cultivation is not sufficiently minute to make the most of such precious ground, and the little cultivator outbids him and drives him from the garden ; while, on the other hand, he is ruined +by attempts to reclaim intractable wastes which hie small rival converts into terrains de qualite superieure. Even where mechanical art seems to summon the most potent forces of nature to the large farmer's assistance, the peasant contrives in the end to procure the same allies by association, or individual enterprise finds it profitable to come to his aid. It is a striking instance of the tendency of la petite culture to avail itself of mechanical power, that the latest agricultural statistics show a larger number of reaping and mowing machines in the Bas Rhin, where in petite culture is carried to the utmost, than in any other department. Ex- plorers of the rural districts of France cannot fail to have remarked that la petite culture has created in recent years two new subsidiary industries, in the machine-maker on the one hand, and the entrepreneur on the other, who hires out the machine ; and one is now constantly met even in small towns and villages, old-fashioned and stagnant-looking in other respects, with the apparition and noise of machines of which the large farmer himself has not long been possessed."
We do not think any further justification is needed. The question between large and small properties must in future be argued on very different grounds, and for that we shall have to thank the writers in this volume.
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