THE SALE OF SAVERNAKE FOREST.
IT is said that the remaindermen interested in the descent of the great Savernake estate will appeal against the decree of the Lords Justices who on Saturday decided that the tenant for life, the Marquis of Ailesbury, a spendthrift Peer of thirty, "with whom the Court had no sympathy whatever," has the power to sell. We question, however, much and justly exasperated though they are, whether they will waste any more treasure on the suit, or whether, if they do, they will obtain a different verdict from the Lords. The Appellate Court was a very strong one, Lords Justices Lindley, Bowen, and Fry being unanimous ; and there can be no reasonable doubt that the object with which the Settled Estates Act was passed was to protect those who live on a great estate—tenants, employes, and cottagers—from the misery they may suffer under a bankrupt owner who can do nothing for any of them, or a foreclosing mortgagee whose sole interest in them is the extraction of cash. In this case, if the Marquis cannot sell, a hundred tenants and a thousand cottagers, besides a whole tribe of artisans, will be left, it may be for fifty years, to the mercy of a mortgagee who cannot fix his family on the estate, and can therefore have no interest in it except in collecting and saving every possible shilling. That would be a calamity to an appreciable district of Wilts ; and as public policy and the intention of the law coincide, it is improbable that the Lords will be so moved by respect for the natural pride of an ancient house as to revert once more to the decision of Mr. Justice Stirling. We suspect that the fight is virtually over, and that the Braces, who are as old as the Royal House, and, indeed, are in one way part of it, and who have held Savernake for so long, will vanish from Wilts, and be superseded by the Guinnesses, most successful of mortal brewers, who out of the profits of porter have paid an extravagant price just to buy them out.
If this were a country with aristocratic institutions, instead of a country with aristocratic leanings, a man like Lord Ailesbury would be unable to ruin himself out of sheer selfish- ness and folly. He would be compelled to place some limit on his expenditure, and to keep the patrimonial estate in safety, or power over it would be taken out of his hands, to be lodged in a family council. There is a good deal to be said for that system, as there is for everything else which ensures the stability of existing things, and an interesting paper might be written on the causes which render arrange- ments that commend themselves to all Conservatives, and are tolerated even under a democracy like that of France, im- possible in England, where one would fancy the desire to pre- serve old families from ruin would still remain as a potent force. The principal cause is, we believe, an invincible dislike to the control and espionage of kinsmen which pervades all classes here, and which, like the habit of wandering to the ends of the earth, is strangely at variance with Englishmen's idea of themselves as the only " domestic " people. The arrangements are, however, admitted to be impossible ; and we are more interested in discussing the reasons which induce a man like Lord Iveagh not only to buy Savernake at twice its value, considered as an investment, but actually to expend large sums and infinite trouble in obtaining legal permission to effect the purchase. The forty thousand acres of farm
and forest and hill which make up the estate called "Savernake Forest" do not yield 227,000 a year gross ; and this is reduced, the Judges say, by rates, taxes, in- surances, repairs, and suchlike unavoidable demands, to 212,000 net per annum. The owner does not, however, receive even the smaller sum to spend. The cost of maintain- ing the great house, the palings of the forest, the vast gar- dens, and the establishment necessary to prevent decay, is 210,000 a year; so that the whole surplus available for use or pleasure is only 22,000 per annum. Yet Lord Iveagh, a cool- headed millionaire accustomed to vast business transactions, believes it worth his while to give 2750,000, or, say, the equivalent of 225,000 a year, in good trustee securities, for this white elephant, and that at a time when it is imagined that the whole tendency of opinion and legislation and events is making against the perpetuation of families or of large estates. They carry with them, it is thought, no more social prestige than large fortunes do, and, indeed, in one respect less, for it is nowadays money, and not the ownership of land, which tells in matrimonial alliances. The " smart " people want money to spend, not trees to look at, and on both sides the lawyers inquire into income far more rigorously than into title-deeds, which, poor things, have fallen into disrespect even with intending mortgagees. You could raise more on Gros- venor Square or Kentish Town than on a larger rent-roll from a purely rural district. Political power hardly belongs, under the ballot, to the owners of the soil, who are baffled at once by the new independence of their tenantry and the new habit of lying about votes; and as for local power, the man who evicts is called a tyrant, and the man who presumes on ownership so far even as to shut up a cricket-field, is denounced in every evening newspaper. A landlord is now only a man to be vilified with impunity, and before long every tenant who pays his rent will be able to make faces at him, with a certainty that his discourtesy will not endanger his tenure in any appreciable way. It is doubtful, indeed, if a great estate retains its old quality of permanence. Lord Salisbury himself has urgently begged the Lords to abolish primogeniture ; the right of settlement is condemned by. all Radical opinion ; a progressive death-duty will shortly render it safer to split up great properties ; and there are men who are talking—the Echo, for instance, a most respectable paper, entirely deferential to all the Commandments, talks every day—of the policy of legal restriction on the accumulation of land in single hands. Finally, there is no temptation in the way of ease or of pecuniary return, to induce any one to hold a great estate. The worry of owning more than five thousand acres is becoming to men with consciences, and without the passion for administration of details, almost unendurable; while even good estates, if they are thirty miles from a great city, cannot be made without oppression to yield a clear 3 per cent. It is not everybody, it is true, who has bought at Lord Iveagh's rate, and there are such things as " residential " properties well away in the country ; but still, an ordinary buyer in an ordinary rural district, who is only as grasping as a gentleman usually is, may think himself very fortunate if he gets Consol interest—Consol interest after conversion, we mean—for the bulk of his land.
Nevertheless, Lord Iveagh gives 2750,000 to receive net 22,000 a year, and is probably in the right. He is believed to be one of the richest men in England; indeed, we have heard it said on good authority that he is the richest in available personalty; and if that is anything like the truth, it is still worth his while to spend a million, or, in other words, throw away half-a-million, to seat himself in Savernake. Its owner, so long as he is owner, and can live on other resources, is a prince in the land. His possessions are visible as Consols are not, and are appreciable even on a county map. He owns one of the most beautiful bits of the most beautiful of countries, and he can, if his leases are decently drawn, and if he keeps his woodlands in his own hands, preserve its beauty, it may be through long ages. For the fear of legislative confiscation is like the fear of death by lightning or poison or dynamite, only real in a certain way. The thing may happen, but it is ex- cessively unlikely that it will. England has had a changeable history, and Jack Cade lived; but we know a yeoman whose male forbears farmed the same land from the same homestead before Simon de Montfort summoned the knights of the shire, and see every year a farmhouse which is believed to have remained unchanged since its existence was recorded in Domesday-Book. The Legislature may take, probably will take, all profit from the land ; but it will not take the land itself, or order the glorious old forest of Savernake to be hewn down. In spite of the democratic wave now passing over us, the owner of Savernake, if he is only rich, may remain a great lord in the land after the words "Tory "and "Radical" have ceased to be intelligible except to students of history. Then, though it is said political power has passed away from property, the words require to be interpreted. Power in its old sense has passed away, but not influence, and not the potentiality of being first in the popular regard. The people will still choose the "big man," if he will only let tbem ;—they do it now when everything is in efferves- cence, as Mr. Schnadhorst well knows. He can give so much to a neighbourhood ; he can, by taking himself away, make such a terrible difference in its aggregate income ; he can make it so hard or so easy to obtain what every man desires, the home that suits his fancy. His mere power of purchasing affects the value of a whole district. Above all, if he is personally respected, he can give, and so far as we can judge from democratic countries, will for ages retain the power to give, a notice which is very nearly the equivalent of rank. People may talk as they like, but in England, as in France and America, it is others who settle your grade ; and among the others, the vote of the most noticeable counts heaviest. The possessor of these privileges, descending with his property, and independent of what is called power—real power hardly appertains to any individual in modern Europe not occupying a throne—holds a position, or may hold a position, which, if he is rich without his land, is well worth the sacrifice, if we put one worldly advantage fairly against another, of a first-class income. He has the primacy in his district, and to all but the incapable, primacy involves, not indeed power, but the best opportunity of acquiring influence, of con- ferring favours, of securing that kind of respect, half affectionate, half interested, which makes life pleasant and death regrettable. The desire for such a position may not be very noble, though men as gifted and as good as Scott have entertained it ; but it is a good deal nobler than the desire of a very rich man for another heap of the money which already, by making volition too easily executive, takes much of the interest out of life. To the writer, the single charm of Savernake would be the power of saving it from the spoiler, otherwise the man who improves ; but to the aspiring it offers, in spite of radical theories, a social pedestal such as no pos- session of unseen cash can possibly afford.
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