THE USE OF LANDLORDS IN ENGLAND.
,,T M.", in another column, puts the popular argument against eJ the land laws in a very popular way. He obviously believes in the petite culture, and even quotes the examples of Switzerland, where society is stereotyped, and America, where the State gives every settler fifty acres as the minimum farm worth tilling, as examples of its successful working. But aware that Englishmen, ignorant as they may be, at least know something of France, with its glorious soil cultivated in patches without adequate stock or drainage, with its population arrested and its agriculturalists steeped in mort- gages up to the lips, he does not push that argument, but prefers one much more subtle—an appeal to free trade and the justice by which Liberals profess to be guided. It' free trade in commodities, he says, is wise, why is not land to be in- cluded in the commercial list ? If all classes are to be equal is all other respects, why should not the poor man be able to purchase land up to his means just as readily as the rich ? To such a question, so put, there is, of course, but one answer—that free trade is a sound principle even in land ; that justice requires us to give the poor man an equal right to his unequal chance. Only, when those wide abstractions have been conceded, the public is not one step nearer to a practical decision. The point is not whether free trade is wise, which is beyond discussion, but whether as regards land free trade has not limits fixed by nature and not man, not whether justice be righteous, but whether the class of Liberals whom we represent, and without whom "J. M." will get no alteration of the land laws, have any idea of refusing justice in fullest measure. We propose to examine those two points, striking out a third, which is always flung by prejudiced thinkers heels foremost into the controversy. The law of primogeniture, which they are incessantly quoting, has an infinitesimal relation to the subject on hand. To say that it is unjust is nonsense, for it only supplements opinion, and if the owner is allowed to regulate descent at all, he would in most instances give his estate just as primogeniture does. If he is not, then, of course, the claims of all children on the State are equal, though even that is a matter of social expediency and not of moral justice. But to interfere with the power of bequeathal is a greater interference with free- dom than any law of intestacy can be, and if bequeathal is allowed people will bequeath according to public opinion on the expediency or inexpediency of aggregating land, that is in England they will " make an heir." The law might be abolished to-morrow without perceptible effect, and is, indeed, rather kept up as a protest against the principle of subdivision than for its practical value. The only real questions are the two raised by our correspondent. We question. the complete applicability of the doctrine of free trade to land for this reason,—land differs from every other commodity in three distinct qualities, its supply never bears or can bear any relation whatever to the demand, the quan- tity being immutable ; its utility is subject to deterioration, tending permanently to total extinction ; and its destruc- tion or serious impoverishment is fatal to human existence. It is in these respects absolutely unique in nature. Air which is only equally necessary is beyond the power of man, light which is equally valuable can be partially made, water, without which also there is no existence, can be carefully stored up, but land while subject to human labour is as to quantity absolutely beyond the control of all except its Maker. The existence, therefore, of any country once fully peopled depends on a permanent and successful struggle with the tendency of the soil to yield less and less for labour. That struggle may end in defeat, and has so ended in Baby- lonia, Numidia, and many regions once alive with cities and humming with men, but now deserts, because political or social changes deprived the inhabitants of the capacity to contend any longer with the soil. They could not keep up the watercourses as in Babylonia, or save their trees as in Numidia and parts of India, or keep down the influx of salt water as in the vast desert province which divides cultivated Bengal from the sea, and which was once as rich as the remainder of the Delta. It is possible to lose the battle even in Europe; and, indeed, were it not for the intelligence which is at last being applied to the collection of manure, it is probable that whenever the guano islands were emptied— and they are emptying fast—we should lose it. To arrange the tenure, therefore, so as to ensure the stoutest battle with the least loss of power, is one of those conditions of mere existence before which all rules of economy must give way.
If it can only be done by the State—to put the extreme ease—owning the whole land, as occurs in a limited form in parts of Holland, the State must own it, whatever any usually wise principle may say to the contrary. Whether the best organization is the petite culture, which "J. M."
approves, or the large culture we believe to be preferable, or a mixture of both, is, of course, subject for argument ; but the argument must be decided by evidence, and not by a mere appeal to great but not wholly applicable principles. Again, as to free trade and justice together, "J. M." arguis that it is unjust to refuse the cottager his Chance of buying an acre, and calls us "Tories with a little philanthropy" for, as he thinks, recommending e that course. He is under a total delusion. So far as the actual sale of land is concerned, we would apply the same law to the poor as to the rich. If he can frame a scheme—subject to the existing system of trusts —under which an acre of land can be conveyed for a shil- ling, so much the better for the country. Indeed, as it is, there is nothing in mere conveyancing which baffles such pur- chases, for any association can buy without feeling that cost, and then split its land into lots, and the Freehold Land Society has done it. We look forward with the greatest hope to the prospect of labourers ultimately applying the co- operative principle to farms, and even to ownership, and so uniting large cultivation with high wages to the actual ploughman. What we contend is that nothing can in Eng- land prevent the arrogation of landed property except the legal abolition of the working system of trusts. Land must not only be as readily saleable as a watch, but as irre- coverable from the buyer as consols. At present if a trustee sells land which he has no right to sell the title he gives is void, and it is the possibility of such perfect trusts which constitutes the special value of land as an investment, which allows of settlement, and which permits mortgage without risking a new ownership. It is possible to alter that system, and make the registered owner the only owner, as the Bank does, but the change would have the most tremendous effect. The absolute security of this kind of property, the power of building a family, of placing the property of women and children beyond the reach of fraud as well as of accident, the possibility of in any degree regulating the future would at once disappear. That power, though sometimes abused, has, on the whole, been most beneficial to English society. It has tempted all accumulators of property to deposit their wealth on the land, which in England needs incessant expense as well- as incessant labour, until every manufacturer or contractor or merchant or banker has employed his surplus in the pur- chase of the soil, and attracted as by gravitation substantial men, who can pay for guano and interest on drainage, into its cul- tivation. It has diminished that feeling of insecurity which is the drawback of every other kind of investment, has increased the tendency to accumulate, which is the basis of civilization, and has provided at least one property really liable for works of long continued charity and beneficence. There may be reasons, and sound reasons, for overturning the system, and they are quite within the range of fair political argument, but to overturn it in order to introduce the petite culture, one is first bound to show that that form of cultiva- tion is, on the whole, the one best adapted to English wants. The subject always, in fact, comes back to that,—the comparative merit of small or large cultivations. As soon as England is convinced that the former is the better for her people, there will be no difficulty and no revolutionary violence in sweeping away the laws which now make land the only property which can be placed in trust without reference to the personal character of the individual trustee, and which, therefore, do tend, as we frankly acknowledge, to aggregate it in large patches. Till then, to abolish those laws, which work on the whole fairly to their end would be a purposeless waste of energy. But in forming the new conviction, as Mr. Bright would have us do, or retaining the old one, as we are disposed to prefer, it is necessary for English Liberals to consider what they really desire, whether they will decide solely according to the return of corn per acre, or whether they will also consider the value of a society in which almost infinite strata allow of almost infinite forms of excellence ; and which admits of a class who, by the very tenure of their wealth and their posi- tion, are compelled to look forward to consequences beyond a single generation ; who, having leisure for politics, are com- pelled by their stake in taxation to study them ; who dare, in their own security, to risk immediate change ; who, when once convinced, have influence enough to guide those who, with their narrow margins, will not hear of innovation. We ask Mr. Bright, would five millions of peasant pro- prietors have repealed the laws which kept up the price of wheat ? The system of trusts in land protects that society, and while we refuse . to consider projects for its aboli- tion as "wild," or "incendiary," or "socialist," we are unable to perceive that they are rendered inevitable either by justice or free trade. As long as land is immutable in quan- tity the principle of free trade can be only imperfectly applied ; as long as any society of poor men buy on the same terms as any individual rich man justice cannot be said to be set at naught. If there were no other way of raising the condition of the agricultural masses, then, indeed, it would be right to fling political considerations to the winds ; but the very basis of the article of which "J. H." complains, is that other and easier means exist.
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