TOPICS OF THE DAY.

AGRICULTURAL POVERTY RELIEVED BY A RENT- CHARGE FR A NCHISE.

Ii' pseudo-official rumour may be trusted, and it has not been started as a diversion of popular claims, Ministers intend to sub- mit a measure for the extension of the Parliamentary franchise. Granting for the moment that property of some kind may be taken as the test, not of intelligence, but of "social responsibility," it is nevertheless becoming daily more apparent that real property is no longer an exclusive test even of influence. Personal property :has outgrown the real property of the country; and it has become , of so much weight and influence, that much longer to withhold from it a due share of electoral rights would be dangerous. The altered state of society- renders such an altered disposition , of the franchise inevitable. Some such idea has been lurking in the most Conservative minds : it was at the bottom of Lord Sohn Russell's hint that sonic day he might entertain a project • for a franchise _based upon a rating to the poor; • it has suggested an income-tax _franchise ; and on the principle that skilled labour is property in- . vested in education, it has suggested various kinds of professional .franchise—for all barristers, all learned professors, schoolmasters, medical men, and even skilled artisans. These special projects tare in the clouds ; but the fact that personal property will not long be denied its due share of the suffrage is plain and tangible enough. Nor is real property without its in- conveniences as a property qualification. Setting aside the dis- advantages, commonly dwelt upon, under which land labours, from entail, insecurities of title, and exhausting expenses of conveyance, it suffers depreciation from its own inherent qualities of fixity of • site, indivisibility, and difficulties of appraisement. It follows that in an age of unexampled commercial activity it has almost ceased to be marketable, and become a very circumscribed. object of sale or speculative investment. No monied capitalist cares to tie up hisi funds in such an immoveable and nnreinnnerative commodity; by its original charter the Bank of England is prohibited from ad- vancing on mortgage ; and it is justly held centrary to sound prin- ciples of banking for private or joint-stock bunks—unquestionably it has been the most frequent source of their failures in past mer- eantile emergencies--to advance any or a considerable portion of .their resources on such an inconvertible security. Partly the same kind of objection must operate to prevent entire • success to the scheme for achieving the county franchise by the buy _Mg of forty-shillingfreeholds. Howcouldthe owners, if need be, with-

out almost the entire sacrifice of their hard-earned savings, hope to realize upon their lands ? or if not tenanted by themselves' or at -a distance, how could they be made remunerative ? Great land-

owners, by the instrumentality of bailiffs or stewards, may collect their rents and oversee their estates ; but it would be a precarious venture to depend on the penny post for a forty-shilling money- order. Small landed properties lie under the same disadvantage as speculations in vehicular conveyances. If a man would succeed

with a stage-coach, it is well understood that he must drive him- self ; and if a man would succeed with a patch of land, he must live upon it or cultivate it himself. Even then. he may fail ; as the awful ,warning of Snig's End has experimentally proved.

But all the drawbacks of real property may be obviated by an ingenious suggestion that has been submitted to us, and the two chief desiderata compassed of efficien.t.monied relief to the agiieultu- rist and a solid basis established for suffrage-extension. The leading objection to land, as we have just hinted, is that it is not, in mercan- tile phrase, a "negotiable security ": but it may be made such, and the interest in it as readily transferable as in scrip, a bill of en- change, savings-bank deposit, or ten-pound note. The modus operands—all the machinery for workiug this conversion—is at hand, and to a limited extent in operation. What is the first step ? Do as has been already attempted in an inadequate and imperfect way by the Drainage Acts : let land- rents be made an open commodity of sale, like_a bill of lading, or a bag of rotton, and in such a way as would make them in like de- .gree an eligible investment to the great or the smallest capitalist. What a revolution would this simple contrivance effect in the in- ternal progress of the empire ! what a ditch it would clear, that now divides classes and obstructs the advance of the United Kingdom ! And the machinery, we repeat, is made and available. .Let us illustrate ; and for this purpose we will commence with the humbler agency. A working man is desirous of obtaining the suffrage : let him buy a forty-shilling rent-charge, that being made a county or even a burgess qualification. Then, as to the accumulation of the re- quisite sum for his purchase, what more need he do than pay his • weekly or monthly contribution into a savings-bank ? the opera- tions of these institutions being extended for the purpose, and

made to afford better guarantees than they now do of official in- tegrity. In the interim, interest to he allowed, on the deposits ; and to secure perfect negotiability of value through every stage ..of the subscription, and for the relief of those who may from sick- ness, scarcity of work, wish to emigrate, or other contingency, be desirous of selling or transferring their inchoate interest in the franchise,—in all these eases, certificates of rent-charge to the full amount of the instalments paid. up to be always demandable and ,saleable to any purchaser.

For the accommodation of capitalists of greater purchasing power, whom it is desirable to draw into the field, and thereby make the movement a national one both for the enfranchisement of the people and the effective deliverance of the landed interest, some, but only slight modifications, would be requisite. This class mostly buy to sell, whether it be stock, bill, scrip, or share. They deal for profit ; and to tempt them en masse, the article offered must be of considerable value, promptly negotiable and divisible to suit varieties of purchasers. To them a forty-shilling land-rent would be beneath commercial notice ; but their capabilities may he met by allowing rent-certificates to be issued, of double, treble, or any amount, like exchequer bills. In the case of certificates of this calibre, the values put in circulation would be too great to be under the control of the savings-banks ; and all certificates above

forty shillings annual income ought tube issuable only by the Bank of England, as affording the best security, and being best acquainted

with the class to whom they might most safely be advanced or paid. That mere trading influences—strong enough already, and chiefly strong frorn concentration and want of channels of distri- bution for capital, like that we are endeavouring to open—might not directly receive any accession of legislative or franchisal force, it would be needful specially to provide that no rent-certificate, whatever may be its amount, should qualify to give more than single vote either for county, city, borough, or claque port. Thus much as to the raising of the money by the selling and buying of rent-charges, and the rendering a new form of suffrage ancillary to agricultural relief. Our next aim will be to explain the apparatus by which advances may be ,judiciously and securely made to landowners. Happily, too, in this direction the working gear is ready, partly in action,. and needs only amplification. By

enlarging Mr. ]Manure's Tithe corps of Commissioners, Valuers, and Inspectors, and under his most able and experienced guidance, the

entire rota of the operation could be at once prescribed, and exe-

cuted in. a mode likely to be most safe both to individuals and the public. Further than offering this hint it does not seem no-

vessary to- explain ; because, with the auxiliary practical aid of the

Tithe Commission :three millions have been already lent without 'failures to landlords under the Drainage Acts ; and the chief rea- son we believe, why the bill of last session for advances by pri-

vaie -persons does not work, is the absence of that essential re- quisite, so -strongly insisted upon in the creation of the new rent-charges, namely, of "negotiability." For a commodity to be merchantable in London, it must be easily transferable—sale- able at sight as well as buyable : for it is by traffic the City is fed and flourishes.

It only remains to collect the chief resulting benefits of our scheme.

1. It would obviate many of the objections that have been raised to the purchase of forty-shilling freeholds, by substituting for them, in land-rents, a more manageable and generally available commo-

dity; and, like them, would not only afford a real property-basis to a new franchise, but would hold. out strong inducements to opera-

tives to industry and economy as the most certain means of its acquisition. 2. It would afford that "cheap capitol" already dwelt upon to meet the two most pressing exigencies of agricultural poverty and. redundant wealth, by opening a most salutary inter- change between them—of rents on one side, for pecuniary advances on the other. 3. It would avert or lessen the hayardous drain of riches for foreign loans, by presenting an outlet in a profitable home investment, and not unfitly retainingfor British objects prios- ity of claim over Austrian or Russian aggrandizement or despotism.

Lastly, the proposal would tend. to allay jealousies between the two great divisions of society; uniting in amicable copartnership the plough and the loom ; agriculture, commerce, and capital cod ra- ting to one great result—the highest possible culture and fertilisa

tion of the common soil. Distinctions of Free-trader and Protec- tionist might then cease ; for the two would be one, living under equallyand reciprocally beneficial laws, and with only one end— the raising of national happiness to the utmost pitch, on the stable and solid foundation of the prosperity of both. Organized and executed by Government, under legislative scrutiny and vigilance, and urged onward by the cooperative agency of the people, it would be impossible to trammel up all the beneficial issues of such a scheme. What emigration is doing to relieve industry, the suggestion offered might do for inactive capital and a half-torpid farm culture. The amount of stagnant resources it would quicken into life at both extremes, it is impossible to estimate, without previous knowledge of the energy with-which the design may be attempted. Investments by the in- dustrious in savings-banks touch on thirty millions. Had this small item—small indeed compared with the country's capabilities —been actively employed in improved agriculture, the benefits re- sulting would have been immense.