THE "FAMILY IDEA" IN ENGLAND.
THE time has scarcely yet arrived in this country for a thorough discussion of its land laws. The true "agri- cultural interest," the farmers and labourers, still look upon those laws as so nearly laws of nature that they never resist and seldom criticize them, while the self-styled "agricultural interest," the landlord class, is so powerful and so resolute to resist innovation that debate is spoiled by its provoking un- reality. Nothing will or can come of any amount of discussion about land till the cottagers have votes, and then very possibly a great deal too much may come. We must, however, call at- tention, not in the interest of land reform, but of argumenta- tive accuracy, to one or two arguments advanced in the course of Tuesday's debate upon the tenure. Mr. Wren-Hoskyns wants, in brief, to make land as saleable as a watch, and Mr. Jessel and Sir Roundell Palmer answered him by two argu- ments vw hich it may amuse our readers for a moment to examine. One of them was that the power of settlement and other incidents of our land tenure greatly increased the saleable value of the land. The rich man, it was said, would give a great deal more for land because he could by settlement ensure its transmission to his de- scendants. The argument seemed on the face of it so sound that it had quite an effect upon the House, but it is, we believe, incorrect in fact, and with all respect for Mr. Jessel, absolutely absurd in theory. The statement itself, and the deduction from the statement, are equally assumptions. It is conceivable that as among big men the man who wants to found a family will be the highest bidder—though he eould found just as well by leaving the freehold to his eldest son, who, on Mr. Jessel's theory of English tendencies, would be all anxiety to leave it again to his,—but the big men are by no means the heaviest bidders for any but great estates. The little men, the men who want homes, will give much heavier prices. It is in the "residential counties," where land buyers are middle-class men who do not "entail," that land reaches its heaviest price ; and there is scarcely any county in Eng- land where, if the conveyance of land were as cheap as the conveyance of Consols, the best method of selling land would not be to chop it up into parcels. The little buyers, who in Belgium give sixty years' purchase, and in Holland eighty years', and in many parts of France even more, and in Ireland give twenty-five years' purchase for mere tenancies, would in Eng- land give double the average value for patches of arable land now selling in large blocks at what is really the very low price of £40 an acre. Of course, they cannot do it while Mr. Jessel's loved system exists, because the conveyance costs too much ; but there is not the smallest reason except the interest of the lawyers and of the system why it should cost more than it does in Bengal, or say a penny an acre. If no tenure is allowed but fee-simple, and all sales are marked on the maps of
the topographical survey, the conveyance of land is just as easy as the conveyance of Consols. Allowing, however, for a moment that our system of tenure raises the price of land, will Mr. Jessel just explain why that, of all earthly results, is an eco- nomic good ? We should have said it was an economic evil.
Every pound added to the price of land means either an arti- ficial addition, which the State has no more right to make than it has to pay Mr. Green for owning so many ships ; or a real addition, that is, a real increase to the cost of pro- duction. It is good, says Mr. Jessel, who is an econo- mist, that necessaries should be cheap. The first necessary is land. Consequently, that should be dear! The truth is, Mr. Jessel cannot give up the notion that a landed aristocracy is a very good thing, and not venturing to say so, is driven to all manner of assumptions to show that his system tends to results better understood or more popular than the uses of aristocracy.
The economic idea breaking down, we have the "family idea." There is something very ingenious, almost astute, in this effort to enlist the family idea in support of the land laws, to connect English fondness for domesticity with a system, which of all the systems ever invented in this world is most hostile to family affection. The English people, says or rather hints Sir Roundell Palmer, is attached to the family idea. Is it ? If it is, it is odd that the English people is the only one in the world in which the " family " has no legal existence, is in no way a unit, has no internal council, is in no way treated as an integer, and displays an invincible centrifugal tendency towards splitting up into fragments, which pitch themselves over the world searching for wealth to exempt them from family dependence. Englishmen are fairly good folk, but it is not among Englishmen that we must seek for the family feeling which everywhere else enables two or three generations to dwell together in one house, without contention, or intrigue, or contempt of parental authority. For that we must go to France, or India, or China, or any country where filial respect still exists, where it is not intensely ridiculous to acknowledge the love and reverence felt, say, for an old grandmother. In England, so far from feeling that, we deliberately provide that if"a land- owner dies intestate, every human being dependent on him, except his wife and his eldest son, shall be stripped of every means of support. Domestic affection is our strong point, so we reduce the wife from the head of the house to a poor dependent in some cottage on the skirts of the estate, and turn all the children but one out of their father's house, to live as they may on their mother's scanty means. But perhaps Mr. Jessel and Sir Roundel]. Palmer do not mean family affection by the family idea, but only the natural pride an Englishman experiences in thinking that his descendants will endure for generations among the wealthy and the respected. Does the Englishman feel that so much ? Then why does he keep up a system carefully con- trived not to satisfy his feeling, carefully and specially con- trived to prevent any descendant being wealthy or respected excepting only one ? How does it happen that great owners of personalty so seldom bequeath it as if it were land ? They can " settle " their Consols if they please. And why is it that no system of State trustees has ever sprung up among us, under which a family once wealthy might continue wealthy for ever ; and that our Legislature and our Courts have for years been conspiring to limit entails by every possible means ? and that our people once out of England invariably and instantly abolish all legal aids to the gratification of this peculiar pride ? Does all English legislation tend to resist the natural instincts of the people ? Land, said Sir Roundel]. Palmer, affectionately patting the soil upon the back, must not be reduced by Englishmen to the position of "mere pro- perty," but if that is the English desire, why are we all trying so to reduce it ? Is it not, on the face of the evidence, just possible that the great lawyers who opposed Mr. Wren-Hos- kyns are confounding the sentiment of England with the sentiment of landlords, and endeavouring, in the teeth of all evidence, to exalt the worst prejudices of a limited class into laws of nature, of affection, almost of God?
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