TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. BRIGHT AND THE TENANT-FARMERS.
TENANT-FARMERS and Mr. Bright—that is an ominous conjunction for landlords. We have often wondered that the member for Birmingham, who sympathizes much more strongly with the middle class than the workmen, should not have tried to place himself en rapport with the farmers. He and they have many qualities in common—hardness, directness, and a sort of limitation of view, which, like the limitation in the field of a telescope, rather increases force. They are both, though for widely-different reasons, in a position of quasi-antagonism to the landlords, their interests operating on the class as his convictions operate on the individual, and are both inclined to be somewhat contemptuous of argu- ment, unless directly enforced by action. Above all, tenant- farmers are within the limits of the existing suffrage the richest unworked mine of political power. Supposing Mr. Bright able to guide them on serious questions, he would secure a more direct influence in the House of Commons than any extension of the suffrage could yield, would in fact be in a position which would compel his most formidable opponents either to give way or to accept some endurable compromise. It is therefore with consider- able interest that landowners will observe tenant-farmers and Mr. Bright finding a point of rapprochement in the Game Laws. The farmers belonging to the Midland Counties Club are, it appears, highly irritated at the losses caused by the system of high preserving. At a meeting on Thursday week they cheered a speaker who declared that game cost the farmers 4,800,0001. a year, and endorsed a letter from Mr. Bright reccommending a revolutionary change in the existing law. Mr. Bright proposes that the ideal of a lease should be one conveying to the tenant the same absolute right over the -wild animals on any farm as he has over the domestic species, and that farmers should combine to obtain those terms, either by legislative action—which is impossible, private contracts being beyond legislation—or by contract, which is perfectly feasible, if the farmers will combine.
Let us see how the new system would, if carried out, work. In the first place the loss of the game, being a loss of one of the pleasures derived from property, would have to be compensated in money, but that compensation would be fixed, like rental itself, by competition alone. Then all complaints against landlords for over-preserving, or damage to crops, or annoyance to tenants, would perforce cease, the matter being left to the discretion of the tenant him- self. If his own game increased inconveniently he would kill the game, and if they trespassed from other proper- ties kill them still. On the other hand, the farmer, being just as fond of sport as the landlord, would have precisely the same interest in keeping up a head of game sufficient for amusement, and he has five hundred reasons for not refusing his landlord a share in anything he himself enjoys. Within reason- ablelimits a scarcity of game actually increases sport, the battue appealing to the destructive instinct alone, and not to the hunting one. There is neither manliness nor sport in shooting down flocks of hand-fed pheasants, so numerous that the sportsman is compelled to make bargains with poulterers to take them off his hands, and the farmers are certain to pre- serve wilder birds in moderation. The immense loss and annoyance now caused by the monopoly of sport would cease, and there would be no further necessity or excuse for any special game law, beyond a fine for trespass by men carrying gun or snare. A general law against trespass such as has frequently been proposed would make England uninhabitable. When less than ten thousand persons own the bulk of the soil, those ten thousand cannot be permitted to push the thirty millions off it at their own discretion. The power of resist- ing trespass is already a most serious question in the High- lands, where territory is held in enormous blocks, and where owners, partly from a bad spirit of exclusiveness, partly from a justifiable fear for their rights of property, but chiefly to preserve their game, are inclosing whole dis. stricts in the most outrageous style. One Peer is even said to have threatened personal violence to trespassers on paths open for centuries, forgetting apparently that in Scotland he would not be tried by squires, but by the sheriff, who is as little amenable to his influence as any other Crown judge. The punishment for a conspiracy to assault would be somewhat severe, but the mere fact that such arguments should be necessary shows the urgency of the question. A law . against armed trespass would, however, be endurable, and with it we see under this plan no difficulty whatever in abolishing the game laws, and declaring all game the property of the occupier upon whose land it is shot.
Could the tenant-farmers carry such a law ? Clearly by political action alone they could not. Supposing the whole House of Commons willing to pass such an Act, that would not prevent the landlords from contracting for the preservation of their game and a law to forbid a contract of the kind. would upset all English ideas of property. We might as well. pass a law to prevent the Duke of Portland from forbidding the intrusion of shops into certain streets owned by himself, or to prevent a lodging-housekeeper from rejecting a lodger with children. But the farmers have, if they please, a. perfect right to combine against leases without a clause con- ceding to them the game right, and, as Mr. Bright shows, are perfectly able to do it. The tenants of a whole county could not be expelled in an hour, even if the competi- tion for land were more severe than at present. Public' feeling would be too strong for competitors for the aban- doned farms, even if they could be found, and the landlords would run one serious risk. The tenants in England and. Scotland could, if the owners adopted measures of unqualified harshness, unseat them all, and political power is too heavy a price to pay for the effeminate luxury of battues. No class, as Mr. Bright points out, can combine so easily, none has so perfect an organization. What with club, and' market, - and poor-law meetings, the farmers can always- ascertain each others' feelings' and we question if they have ever rebelled unsuccessfully. Look at West Norfolk, where a, tenant was returned in the teeth of the landlords, at the last- election for Cambridgeshire, at the present election for Shrop- shire, at the slight majority by which Major Beresford, with all. the squirearchy and all Liberal voters against him, was thrown out for North Essex. They could unite as easily against the "game law "—by which we mean the landlord monopoly of game—just as easily as against the malt tax, and slow as they are to move, there is, when once excited, the " grit " in them which keeps combinations firm. Of course they would have to contend against the remaining influence of the feudal feel- ing, but with the growing education of the class and the. gradual aggregation of small farms, this is rapidly disappear- ing. It is as strong in Scotland as anywhere, and in Scot- land it proved upon the question of sites of very little import- ance.
Then comes the old objection which to so many minds seems final. The gentry, it is said, must have sport, or they will abandon their homes and seek it abroad, to the permanent injury of the neighbourhoods in which they dwell. Menaces of that kind should not be too often repeated, lest the duties of property should become more visible to the public mind than its rights ; but we have no wish to do away with sport, or any other manly and legitimate pleasure. There are few enough of them left, and the country life of an English gentleman is- far better than a life of salon intrigue. But we believe Mr- Bright's proposal with modifications would not do away with sport, not even with coursing, but would simply restore to it- the zest and excitement over-preserving have diminished. Peasant holders no doubt would extirpate game, as they once. did in France simply because they would be too poor to bear any loss whatever, and they would for the same reason cla- mour for savage laws against trespass, but the farmers would do neither. The landlords would lose nothing except the power of over-preserving outside the demesne, and the time is visibly at hand when they must, if rents are to be main- tained, give up either luxury or profit. The day of dear wheat is gone, and though the market is still supported by the new wealth which is crowding on to the land, and the competition of men who seek an out-of-door occupation rather than profit, still tenures must be made easier, or rents must fall. One of the simplest ways of easing them is to grant game rights, and. Mr. Bright has suggested an ideal of leases which may be sub- ject to a hundred modifications, such as that just sanctioned by Lord Southesk, but which tenant-farmers all over Erigland will do well not to forget.
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