THE LORD CHANCELLOR'S LAND BILL. (To THE EDITOR or THE
" SPECTETOR."] Sue—Surely there is a very exaggerated expectation of the benefits to be derived from this measure? As lord of half a dozen manors and owner, by purchase, of land in Suffolk Cambs, Essex and Yorkshire, and having always taken an interest—I hope intelligent—in all conveyancing matters, I venture to say that the difficulties in dealing with and trans- ferring land are nothing like so great as they are often repre- sented to be, though land transfer in this country can never be really cheap. In the first place, I would point out that the amount of copyhold land is very small and the process of enfranchisement is neither particularly costly nor excessively complicated—I speak from experience as a copyholder myself is two instances—while I should say that the desire for en- franchisement is, at any rate in rural districts, very small indeed. Buyers of copyhold land pay less for it than if it were freehold, and there are many people whose pockets are suited by the smaller outlay of capital. As for the hardship caused by feudal rights belonging to the lord of a manor, these exist chiefly in the heated imagination of the Lord Chancellor; except in the case of an enfranchisement, say, onco a year in all the six manors put together, I do not get £5 a year out of the lot. The truth is that to-day, though it may possibly confer some dignity, the lordship of a manor brings little or no profit and, now that enfranchisement is easy, causes no hardship to anyone, so why not leave us alone? Of course, you can denounce manorial rights as " an antiquated survival," but the same may be said with greater force of the King's crown and The trappings of Court ceremonial. Surely all survivals, unless wrong in their essence, should be regarded with tolerant interest as links with the past?
As a matter of fact, there is a charge on land in many counties, especially in the East and South of England, which causes a thousand times more resentment than all the feudal dues and obligations that have ever existed, and that is tithe. It is true that people cannot deny that tithe is as legitimate A form of property as any other rent-charge on land, but the ecclesiastical purposes to which tithe is put appeal only to a minority of the people— in some villages only to a very small minority—while to-day, ditving to the enormous increase in the cost of upkeep, tithe represents not one-tenth part of the gross produce of the land, but very often one-third, or even one-half, of the net rental received by the landlord before he pays taxes. In other words, as a result of the War the tithe-owner—the parson—has scored enormously and at the expense of the tithe. payer or landlord. Farm rents to-day are higher than they were in 1914 by, perhaps, 15 per cent., but tithe has risen more than 40 per cent., while upkeep is so much more costly to the landlord that, apart from Imperial taxation, he is actually receiving in the way of rents very much less than he did before the War.
As for cheapening the transfer of land, anybody who has looked through a dozen conveyances must be convinced that the idea of being able to buy land as you de stocks and shares is entirely illusory. If you buy Midland Railway stock you buy an undivided fraction of a gigantic business, a fraction which is, say, a ten-thousandth part of the whole, but is not localized—it is not part of the platform at St. Pancras or part of the permanent way in Leicestershire. On the other hand, if you buy a house or a farm locality is even more important to you than size or acreage—if you wish to live in Leicester you will not be fobbed off with Leicester Square, and if you want to farm in Cumberland a nice holding, even if exactly the right size, in Kent will be regarded as useless. This means that real estate is local—it is not merely something but is situated somewhere—and being local it is subject to local con- ditions, including the rights of neighbouring owners. These rights, involving perhaps questions of water, light, and drainage, may he of a very complicated character, as the result of the transactions of hundreds of years, and therefore in no old, long-settled country can the transfer of land ever be simple. If Lord Birkenhead really wants to save the community millions a year he can do so to-morrow, not by the largest and most involved measure ever introduced into Parliament, but by enacting that solicitors shall have the right of audience in all the courts. What makes civil justice so enormously expensive in this country is the fact that our system of legal procedure insists that two, or perhaps three, men shall be employed to do the work of one.—I em, Sir, &c.,
Previous page
