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all this, will he find it easy to persuade mankind that his plan -with all its outward appearance of equity-is not, in reality, a crusading movement against one distinct and unpopular class, the large proprietors of this country?

The second remedy suggested is one which-with all respect for the authorities which propound it-really does not deserve more than the slightest passing notice. Mr. Mill is very indignant at the abuses hitherto committed under cover of Inclosure Acts. Common lands have been allotted to the lords of manors without due regard to the rights of commoners. The Society regard this disposal of common lands as an iniquity, and demand that it should entirely cease.' That is, we suppose, they demand that Parliament should cease henceforth to legislate in this way, under pain of nullification of its edicts by the Society's ideal Commune, superior to all Parliaments. But, since the Society, or at least Mr. Mill who represents it, is willing to respect existing possessions,' it is difficult to see what object it proposes worth all this expenditure of high principle and indignation. The available common lands in this country are now so trifling in point of extent, that the surrender of them all to the public, for distribution among peasant proprietors or otherwise, would be a measure productive only of the most partial and temporary effects. Our still extensive unoccupied tracts of unavailable mountain and moor form a fund of a very different description, but worthless for such purposes as these, so long as a new and accessible world opens its millions of square miles to the emigrant. It would hardly better the condition of Mr. Mill's clients the landless proletaires' as French fancy terms them -to transplant some thousands of them to Skiddaw Forest and the Yorkshire moors, let alone the Scotch and Irish highlands. Mr. Syme, indeed, believes in thirty-two million acres in the United Kingdom lying waste, though fully onehalf is capable of cultivation.' We doubt whether Mr. Mill -who knows the economical meaning of the word 'capable — would indorse this hopeful statement.

But it is of little use to discuss the details of a scheme like Mr. Mill's, unless we are quite certain that it is propounded in earnest. If it merely represents an ingenious suggestion which has passed though a mind overflowing with speculation on this and kindred subjects, it were best to decline so barren in investigation. Where Mr. Mill finds his active and influential portion of the working classes' who have adopted he opinion that private property in land is a mistake,' we really cannot tell. We all know very well that there is a

portion of the working classes-how influential it were hard to say, how active the smoking ruins of Paris can testifywho have adopted the doctrine that all private property is a mistake. And we all know that there is a certain school of higher-bred philosophers-crotchet-mongers, some might venture to call them-who apply this socialistic doctrine to realty, while, for some reason beyond our logic, they abstain from applying it to personalty. But these, so far as we know, are of a very different class from the advanced politicians among our working men. Where these last are communistic at all, their communism rests on far broader, we might almost say, far more rational, bases. Nothing can be plainer or fairer than the mode in which Mr. Odger, for instance, proposes to deal with Mr. Mill's little plan:

'While I hold it,' he says, 'to be a more liberal scheme than any I have yet met with from so eminent an authority, I am sure that it would fail, were it set forth as final, to satisfy the people. He suggests the propriety of estimating the present value of the land, and preventing owners in future from exacting a larger amount of rental. If Parliament possess the power to do this (and it does), it has the power of carrying out also a still greater reform, at some future date, a reform such as I propose; that is, the restoration of the land to the nation and to the people by purchase. I support Mr. Mill's proposal because it will not only limit the drain upon the people by landlords, but would, if adopted, prevent the amount requisite for making the land national property from being increased by delay.' (Cotemporary Review, August 1871.)

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Such is the natural and inevitable incline on which theorists who begin with the principle that property (in land or aught else) is robbery' soon find themselves descending. They advance their principle, and then suggest a compromise; they are met by the scornful answer that compromise with robbery is out of the question, that it is a kind of national compounding of felony, that individual appropriators of the food of the public may be dealt with more or less mildly, according as they show themselves penitent for the sins of their class; but that the system must come down altogether, or not at all; and so we are launched into full agrarianism.'

We can pursue a discussion so evidently unprofitable-an attempt to make parallel lines meet, which in the nature of things cannot succeed-no farther. For our purpose we must look at society as it exists. We must recognise that the tendency of our industrial age is towards the accumulation of land; that legislation may indeed counteract this despotically, but cannot, consistently with freedom of action, seriously impede it. The prospect may be a doubtful one; it is certainly to many

None of us who are addicted

minds, not an inviting one. to political speculation on coming events, none who really desire the maintenance of English comfort and English greatness, contemplate with satisfaction the tokens which multiply in some parts of our country of the concentration of the right to the soil in few hands; and although this is not really more the case in respect of landed than of other property, the phenomena which attend the change are more marked and more menacing. Most of us who are old enough, and who are familiar with the local history of any particular rural district, have traced, and lamented, the disappearance, once gradual, now rapid, of small estates; the rooting up, here and there, of a nest of yeomen and small freeholders or long leaseholders; the absorption, more commonly, of the old-fashioned esquire, with his few fertile fields, his share of pasturage, his cherished little tract of woodland, and his old manor-house rich in traditions, by his great absentee neighbour. More than this, many of us have watched with their own eyes the outward evidences of that change which our decennial census seems to confirm-the actual depopulation of not inconsiderable tracts of country, the shrinking of the village, the disappearance of the knot of cottages, the effacing of local colour, the consolidation of some little district of varied rural features into a dull tract composed of a few large fields and dotted at great distances with spacious farmhouses. The decayed church-village, isolated in a wide tract of arable, with the site of former streets only indicated by the inequalities of surface which mark the ground plan, is no imaginary picture now, nor confined to Ireland.

Of course we know that there is plenty of compensation to be found, in an economical sense, for the repulsive features of a change like this. But an instinct, stronger than economical reasoning, assures us that it is wrong notwithstanding. A state of satraps and dependents is not a state which can really thrive. The reader may term our language exaggerated if he please. Let him make any reasonable correction from his own experience or reasoning. But much of truth, unhappily, will remain behind. And the impression left on impartial minds will, we fear, be this-that though it is difficult to suggest any but artificial remedies for a condition of things produced by subsisting natural causes; though community of property be a dream, community of land, or agrarianism,' a mere fallacy-yet, when we have to our own minds satisfactorily confuted all the theories of revolutionists, and established the existing

VOL. CXXXIV. NO. CCLXXIV.

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system on a logical basis, the ominous question will recur: Can it last, and what will be its end?

It is a question which the young aspirant in political research and the veteran fanatic are alike ready to answer off-hand; the first confident in that recurring youth of society over which he exults, the other with a faith in theories which the failure of one experiment after another has done nothing to abate. Tamer thinkers than these turn away from the problem with a cheerless sense of inadequacy to deal with it, and a faint reliance on the general principle that problems left to themselves, without injudicious interference or restriction, will settle in the right way at last. We can but patiently enrol ourselves in the latter class; and point out, in the meantime, one important matter in which the ominous tendencies of the existing state of things may to a certain extent work out their own cure, and may possibly be helped to work it out more effectually by extraneous help, without undue interference with liberty.

The English landlord-and-tenant system, to which landholding in all other countries where there is abundance of floating capital, as we have seen, more or less inclines to approximate, rests, as society advances, more and more on simple contracts for the enjoyment of the land by the tenant and the payment of rent to the owner. And it is obvious how greatly this inclination of things is increased by the enlargement of estates. There are, in truth, whole districts in the hands of absentee and non-resident proprietors, or of trustees for such proprietors, in which, were it not that custom has established a different nomenclature, the tenant might practically be termed the owner, and the owner an annuitant; the agent, who really transacts the business of the estate, gradually assuming the position of an arbitrator between the two. Custom and mutual forbearance have by degrees fenced the naked contract in which the relation began with a growth of recognised usages, until something resembling a joint proprietorship has been established between the two principal parties.

'The trust,' says Mr. Wren Hoskyns (on the English system) which the ownership of land brings, as well as its occupation, if these are divided, is enforced by penalties as inexorable as those of natural law. The pressure of the responsibility increases with every step in agricultural advancement, till the rights of one age become the wrongs of another. Modes of settlement, carving out the proprietary interest into a series of limited estates for life, and "in remainder," each in succession barren of power and motive to meet the wants, the improvements, the discoveries of the times, present a very different aspect to the same thing before the rivalry of the farm was a world struggle. The increased energy and activity of the tenant demand the outlay of

capital by the landlord before his own can be safely thrown into the partnership; for such the relation practically is in England, and such it must become wherever the English system prevails. The " expenses of land" are the familiar theme of every man of business. Nothing is more common than to hear the wealthy and unfettered fee-simple owner complain of the voracious demands of his landed property for buildings, draining, cottages, and other necessary improvements exacted by the time; and those who give most attention to the debtor and creditor history of their estates are best alive to the fact that landed property has become more like a business than a mere income. It is so, and, in a certain sense, it ought to be so. The soil was not meant for idle enjoyment, even by its unoccupying owner.' (Cobden Club Essays, p. 115.)

Now it seems to us that as surely as the present state of industry, and of freedom to employ it, tends towards the concentration of the fee-simple of land in few hands, so surely does it tend to render the possession of that fee-simple either barren -a mere right to draw an annuity-or a right to be enjoyed only in partnership with the actual occupier. An incipient cooperative system is created, of which, should revolution keep at a distance, another generation is sure to see a far more extensive development. Call England a community of 30,000 landowners and a million and a half of farmers, and Mr. Cliffe Leslie's indignant view of the situation seems at first sight justified. Call it a community of a million and a half of occupiers and a considerable number of annuitants maintained by those occupiers, and a very different picture is presented to the mind's eye. And yet is the difference between the two suppositions really so very great, and is it not one which tends to continual diminution? And may not imagination, since we are thus far embarked under her seductive guidance, picture to us, at a distance relatively small, the third element entering into this general co-operative scheme-the tiller of the soil, elevated in position by the increasing demand for the services of a more limited number of hands (a paradox, but true) and by the pressure of emigration, becoming by degrees himself comparatively independent; protected not merely by contract, but by usage supplementing contract, and developing into new partner in the concern?

Is it practicable or desirable to accelerate this process, whereby the occupying tenant is assuming more and more the character of an associate with his landlord, by enactments conferring on him more or less of fixity of tenure? practicable, that is, without mischievously restraining freedom of alienation, and without approaching towards the evils of agrarian legislation? These are questions of extreme delicacy as well as

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