LAND SYSTEMS &c. INTRODUCTION. ALONG with a republication of several essays in deference to many suggestions, this volume contains additional articles on the Land Systems of Ireland and England, and on the industrial economy of La Creuse, Westphalia and the Ruhr Basin, and Belgium, founded on later study and local inquiry. It appears to the author that the Land Systems of England and Ireland are best studied together. The two systems react in many ways on each other; their results present some striking resemblances, and where they differ most, the differences are instructive. They have a common origin and foundation. The first sentence in Mr. Furlong's standard treatise on the Law of Landlord and Tenant in Ireland is: The common law regulating the enjoyment of real property Marked with an asterisk in the table of contents. B both in England and in Ireland is founded upon and governed by the principles of the feudal system.' Their similarity of structure is the main cause why the Irish land system has remained intact down to the introduction of the Land Bill now before Parliament. This is so, not only because the landowners of England have been reluctant to permit interference with powers similar to their own, but also through the influence of the structure of the English land system on the ideas of other classes. Had there been in England a simple jurisprudence relating to land, a law of equal intestate succession, a prohibition of entail, a legal security for tenants' improvements, an open registration of title and · transfer, a considerable number of peasant properties, the rural economy of England would long since have created unanswerable objections to the Irish land system in the public mind. On the other hand, there are striking differences in the results of the two systems, which throw much light on both. The Land System of Ireland, for example, tends to suppress the existence of towns; that of England, on the contrary, to give to large towns undue predominance in our industrial and social economy. The English agricultural labourer, again, answers to the Irish small tenant-at-will. And emigration is the movement in the case of Ireland corresponding with immigration into large towns in England. The latter movement is moreover swollen by immigrant |