Lord E. Fitzmanrice addressed his constituents at Caine on Friday
week, in a speech of some importance as an indication of the next great struggle coming. He wants a radical reform of the Land Laws, not through equal division or the assumption of landed property by the State, but through the total abolition of primogeniture, entail, settlement, and every part of the system which separates personalty from realty. There should be free trade in land, and a system of local registers, so that land could be sold or bought like Consols. That reform is certain to be brought forward some day, though it will have to be preceded by a radical reform in the system on which lawyers are paid. They would be ruined, or nearly so, by any thorough-going registration of land as personalty, and have helped to defeat every each proposal. On one occasion it was said publicly that the House of Commons was "white with attorney's petitions" against an Act which would have been a mere step toward Lord E. Fitzmaurice's proposal.
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