FREE TRADE IN LAND Belfast, 19th Dec.; 1863.
SIR,—it is with sincere regret I have seen such an article in an English Liberal journal as yours on "The future of the farm labourer." Your proposition is, that we dare not apply the simplest principles of free trade to the land of England, lest those men who would be able and willing to buy it should invest so largely and so imprudently in its purchase and cultivation as to lead to national injery ; and you draw a picture of English society reduced by fifty years of absolutely free trade in land to a dead level of pauperized peasant proprietors—a picture which I firmly, believe to be as unreal as that which Sir Robert Peel, in the earlier part of his career, once drew of England con-rented by free trade in food into a country of great manufacturing towns, separated by morasses and rabbit-warrens.
To what purpose have we learned political economy, if we are to restrict free trade only to commodities and capital? I under- stand the principle of free trade to mean that the industrial organi- zation of society ought to be left to the spontaneous action of society itself, never hindered, though sometimes helped, by the State. You think the Limited Liability Act was an im- provement in our laws. You desire to see further changes in the same direction, in order to facilitate co-operative societies. I agree with you here ; but the case for a change in the laws affecting the sale of land is incomparably stronger ; for the right to sell land, in large or sniall parcels, is a natural corollary from the right of ownership; while the right to form partnerships, or to enter into any contract whatever that a court of law will recog- nize, is no natural right, but is the result of legislation.
So much for the h priori argument, in favour of making land as easily transferable as a watch. I have now to speak of the cal- culable results. You say that landowners in difficulties would sell their estates slice by slice. I believe they would, as at present, mortgage before they would sell ; and the proposed change in the law need not affect the security of mortgagees in the least. But when mortgaged up to the full value, they would sell ; and you fear that in England, as in Belgium the land would be bought in small patches by peasants, ignorant of any other investment, and willing to give sixty years' purchase. I reply, that the clams who are at present able to buy small patches of land, if they were on sale, are more familiar with any other investment than with land, and would commit no such absurdity ; and before the labourers can do so, they must earn and save the money, which at present they either do not earn or do not save, so that their ability to make such purchases, foolish as they would be, would represent a clear unbalanced increase of national wealth. But I doubt whether English labourers would ever pay prices for land that capitalists could not afford. Plenty of invest- ments are open, and their knowledge would increase with their means. I do not see why the average size of farms should be at all affected by absolutely free trade in land. Many persons, no doubt, would purchase small patches at high prices to build houses and make gardens on ; but this is very different from small farming, and the size of farms in any country iedetermined by a great variety of influences, some of which are beyond the control of legislation, and almost impossible to calculate. It must not be forgotten that the most reckless and disastrous competition for land that has ever been seen in any country took place in Ireland before the famine, under a system of large properties artificially held together by the same system of laws as in England. It is true that Ireland, till a late period, had no poor-law, and I believe it is also true that, other things being equal, a Celtic population will divide the land into smaller parcels than a Teutonic one.
You say that in Belgium and Holland the number of persons dependent on public charity increases every year. . I do not see how you reconcile this with your opinion that a people of small landowners would not submit to a poor-law. But as to Holland, I believe that you are misinformed, and that it is not a country Of peasant proprietors.
In Ireland we have had for some years a very much greater degree of free trade in land than has existed in England, in virtue of our Lauded Estates Court, though I maintain it is quite insuffi- cient, and I have been disappointed in seeing that there is no tendency whatever to the formation of a peasant proprietary. In Ireland the insolvency of a great proprietor is always a bleasing to the neighbourhood. Every one in Belfast is aware that the pecuniary embarrassments of the Donegal family have been of the greatest service to the town, by causing the sale of the land to the persons who live and build on it ; and it would be a great advan- tage to Lisburn and its neighbourhood also, if the wealthy noble- man who owns the land were compelled to sell it. Could there be a bitterer satire on our land laws?
You refer to India, and China as proofs that a nation of small farmers has no nobility of character and no power of self-govern- ment. Surely Switzerland and America may be quoted on the Opposite side. In comparing Asiatic nations with European, we Must make an indefinitely large allowance for Christianity and all those incalculable influences that make up the civilization of modern Europe. To quote India and China as instances of a democratic treatment of the land, is as unjust as it would be to quote the deep degisdation of Spain in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- turies, as a legitimate result of monarchy and aristocracy.
It is a strong presumption against an argument if it cannot be made to look fair to a fair opponent ; and what could an intelligent, aspiring, saving labourer think of yours? What but this :—" These aristocratic Liberals are, after all, nothing but Tories with a little philanthropy. They have guaranteed us 2i per cent. on our sav- ings. We are as grateful for this as we need be for a boon by which no one sacrifices anything. They propose a change in the laws of part- nership, which, if it produces all the results we are seeking for, will sacrifice the small shopkeepers to the labouring class (and the small tradespeople are, as you lately pointed out, not only unre- presented, but unthought of, by Parliament) ; but when we ask leave to purchase the kind of property that nearly all men desire most, they refuse us those facilities which would not only be received by us as the greatest benefit the Legislature could bestow, but Would actually increase the selling price of their own land, lest their monopoly of social influence might be threatened l" You may feel sure that this would be unjust, but how are you to prove it?
J. M.
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