raise money for their benefit. These provisions combined would greatly restrict the power of keeping together large masses of land in a particular line of descent; and it might fairly be anticipated that a great increase would take place in the quantity of land which would annually be brought into the market.

But Mr. Leslie, we should think, must be as well aware as anybody, how little this would do towards making any great part of the land of this country the property of the actual cultivators. In France, and other countries of the Continent, the sale of land generally means its purchase by the poor; for the poor give the highest price, the rich being neither numerous, nor, in general, addicted to rural duties or pleasures. But in England the sale of land means generally its sale to the rich. The annual accumulation of fortunes in manufactures and commerce raises up a perpetual succession of rich families, eager to step into the place of landowners who are obliged to sell. Unless changes much more radical than an increase of the facilities of alienation are destined to take place in this country, nearly all the land, however it may change hands, is likely to remain the property of the rich; nor are the new proprietors more likely than the old to lease their lands on terms more encouraging to the industry and enterprise of their tenants. No doubt, the increased quantity of land in the market would cause a cheapening of its price, which would bring it within the reach of a somewhat greater number of purchasers; and it would occasionally fall into the hands of persons intending to cultivate instead of letting it, but seldom of those who cultivate with their own hands. If the greater marketableness of land is to be made a benefit to the labouring class, it must be in another manner entirely; as, for example, by buying from time to time on account of the public, as much of the land that comes into the market as may be sufficient to give a full trial to such modes of leasing it, either to small farmers with due security of tenure, or to co-operative associations of labourers, as without impairing, but probably even increasing, the produce of the soil, would make the direct benefits of its possession descend to those who hold the plough and wield the spade. Mr. Leslie has not included any measure of this sort among his proposals, but it is quite germane to his principles, and necessary, we think, to enable them to produce their best effects.

Meanwhile, the measures which he proposes would render possible a multitude of agricultural and industrial enterprises, beneficial to the national wealth, and giving great employment to labour, which at present the restrictions of family settlements make impracticable. We quote at the foot of the page some striking examples of the obstructive operation of these arrangements.1

(1) “About fifteen years ago (Dr. Hancock relates in his Treatise on the Impediments

We have not space remaining for an analysis of the third part of Mr. Leslie's Essays, relating to the land systems and agricultural economy of Continental states. They are, however, a valuable contribution to our knowledge of the subject, relating to regions which to the Property of Ireland') an enterprising capitalist was anxious to build a flax mill in the North of Ireland, as a change had become necessary in the linen trade from handspinning to mill-spinning. He selected as the site for his mill a place in a poor but populous district, situated on a navigable river, and in the immediate vicinity of extensive turf bogs. The capitalist applied to the landlord for a lease of fifty acres for a mill site, labourers' village, and his own residence, and of fifty acres of bog, as it was proposed to use turf as the fuel for the steam-engines of the mill. The landlord was most anxious to encourage an enterprise so well calculated to improve his estate. An agreement was concluded; but when the flax-spinner consulted his legal adviser, he discovered that the law prevented the landlord from carrying out the very liberal terms he had agreed to. He was bound by settlement to let at the best rent only; the longest lease he could grant was for three lives, or thirty-one years. Such a lease, however, at the full rent of the land, was quite too short a term to secure the flax-spinner in laying out his capital in building; the statute enabling tenants to lease for mill sites only allowing leases of three acres. The mill was not built, and mark the consequence. Some twenty miles from the spot alluded to, the flax-spinner found land in which he could get a perpetual interest; there he laid out his thousands; there he has for the last fifteen years given employment to hundreds of labourers, and has earned money. The poor but populous district continues as populous, but, if anything, poorer than it was. During the past season of distress, the people of that district suffered much from want of employment, and the landlord's rents were worse paid out of it than from any other part of his estate." (P. 52.)

"Belfast, the only great manufacturing city in Ireland, owes its greatness to a fortunate accident which converted the ground on which it stands from feudal into commercial territory, by transferring it from a great noble to its own citizens. But the growth of Belfast itself, on one side, has been strictly circumscribed by the rival claims of two noble proprietors, who were in litigation respecting them for more than a generation; and in a step the inhabitant passes from new streets to a filthy and decaying suburb, into which the most enterprising capitalist in the neighbourhood has been prevented from extending his improvements. On the other side of the town is some ground which the capitalist just referred to bought three years ago for the purpose of building; but which remains unbuilt on in consequence of difficulties in the legal title, although in equity the title is indisputable, and is not disputed. Some years ago the same capitalist contracted for the purchase of another plot of ground in the neighbourhood. It proved, however, that the vendor was precluded by his marriage settlement from completing his contract, although it reserved to him the unusual power to grant leases for 999 years. That, however, did not answer the same purpose; in the first place, because (a consequence of the land system, with its distinction between real and personal property), the succession duties are heavier on leasehold than on freehold estates. What is more important, a tenant for years has not the rights of ownership, as was afterwards experienced in the very case before us. The capitalist accepted a lease for 999 years; although diverted from his original design with respect to the ground. In putting it to a different purpose, he proceeded to level an eminence, and to carry away the gravel for use elsewhere. But the Law of Landlord and Tenant says: If a tenant open pits for the purpose of raising stone or waste [] it will be waste. And this being the law, the landlord actually obtained an injunction to restrain the tenant's proceedings, and mulcted him in damages. Once more; in another county the very same capitalist opened an iron mine by arrangement with the lord of the soil, and commenced works on an extensive scale. The landlord then demanded terms to which he was not entitled by his contract; but the price of Irish iron has not been high enough of late years to defray the cost of a Chancery suit, in addition to the cost of production; and delay, worry, and anxiety are not inducements to i dustrial enterprise, so the iron works were suspended.

the author has himself visited, and has been assisted in his inquiries by high economical and agricultural authorities on the spot: in Westphalia and the Ruhr Basin by several persons; in Central France by the eminent M. Léonce de Lavergne; and in Belgium by M. Emile de Laveleye, whose important paper in the Cobden Club volume has recently brought home to many English readers the lessons contained in his remarkable works on Belgium, Holland, and Lombardy. The essays on the Ruhr Basin and on La Creuse are most interesting reading, and the facts they contain, when first published by Mr. Leslie, were almost wholly new to English readers. But the most valuable, for the general purposes of the book, are those on Belgium. Mr. Leslie's paper in the Cobden Club volume had shown, in opposition to a still strong, though diminishing, prejudice, the great success of peasant properties in France. The paper in the present volume on Belgium renders the same justice to the small farms as well as the small properties of that country. If we compare with the minute and well-considered statements of Mr. Leslie and M. de Laveleye, such as are given on the contrary side even by such an authority as Mr. James Howard, in his "Continental Farms and Peasantry" (though Mr. Howard is by no means absolutely hostile to small farms, but expresses a strong sense of the desirableness of a certain admixture of them), we see nothing in the latter which seriously diminishes the consideration due to the former. Everything in Mr. Howard's remarks which is matter of facteverything which is the result of actual observation-may be admitted, without affecting the worth of Belgian example as evidence in favour of what the petite culture is capable of. There is not a single drawback pointed out by Mr. Howard, which is inseparable from petite culture; while even in Belgium the drawbacks are shown by Mr. Leslie and M. de Laveleye to be steadily diminishing. J. S. MILL.

Here are five cases within the author's knowledge, all happening in recent years, in which a single individual has been arrested in the course of town enterprise and improvement by the state of the law. . . . It is well known that there are no manufacturing establishments on the Companies' estates, because these London guilds persistently refuse to give perpetuity lease for mill purposes, while on the borders of the county [Londonderry], Cookstown, Ballymena, Ballymoney, and Coleraine, where such leases are granted, manufactures have increased and prospered, and even in the county, where freehold sites can be procured, manufactures have taken root." (Pp. 77—9.)

THE ROMANCE OF THE PEERAGE.

"Nôsse omnia hæc salus esset senioribus."

"The rest of his dress-a dress always sufficiently tawdry-was overcharged with lace, embroidery, and ornament of every kind; and the plume of feathers which he wore was so high, as if intended to sweep the roof of the hall. In short, the usual gaudy splendour of the heraldic attire was caricatured and overdone."

(See Walter Scott's Quentin Durward-Hayraddin, the Gipsy, goes to the Court of Charles the Bold, disguised as Rouge Sanglier, the herald.)

On the eve of the great Revolution in France, when society was in its most rickety, but not its most corrupt stage, a man of genius painted it to the life in a very diverting play. It was one of the most curious features of that unconscious age, that it delighted in pleasant caricatures of itself. As Carlyle tells us in the opening of his history, "Beaumarchais (or De Beaumarchais, for he got ennobled) had been born poor, but aspiring, esurient; with talents, audacity, adroitness; above all, with a talent for intrigue; a lean, but also a tough indomitable man." The theme of his plays was Fashion, his hero a valet; and being a sort of inspired valet, or factotum, himself, he hit off with art the great world as seen from the valet point of view. Figaro, the adventurer, the factotum, the prince of rascals, became quite the rage; and the delicious impudence which he threw into his servility, exactly caught the public ear. Men laughed to see the fatuous pomp of the ancien régime treated with a kind of fawning mockery by one of its own creatures. But the loudest. laughter came from the great people, in whose faces the witty Barber was snapping his fingers.

In the midst of it all the Revolution burst, and swept away play and player, stage, company, scenery, dresses, and all the gorgeous accessories; and our poor friend saw his comedy end in a very grim catastrophe-which he had done not a little to hasten.

History, for all that they say, does not reproduce itself. In the first place, we have no Revolution, nor indeed, with our admirable constitution, are we likely to have. And most certainly we have no Beaumarchais. The humour and the grace of the delightful Sevillard are as much a thing of the past as the ancienne noblesse. Still we have, even in our day, a society luxurious and absurd enough, although sadly turned into prose. And we have a man of wit who has studied it from life-one-half Jester, one-half Grand Master of the Ceremonies.

"Lothair" is not a mere novel; and its appearance is not simply a

fact for Mr. Mudie. It is a political event. When a man whose life has been passed in Parliament, who for a generation has been the real head of a great party, sits down, as he approaches the age of seventy, to embody his view of modern life, it is a matter of interest to the politician, the historian, nay, almost the philosopher. The literary qualities of the book need detain no man. Premiers not uncommonly do write sad stuff. And we should be thankful if the stuff only be amusing. But the mature thoughts on life of one who has governed an empire on which the sun never sets, have an inner meaning to the thoughtful mind. Marcus Aurelius, amidst his imperial eagles, thought right to give us his Reflections. The sayings of Napoleon at St. Helena have a strange interest to all men. And Solomon in all his glory was induced to publish some amazing rhapsodies on human nature and the society of his own time.

"Lothair" is indeed amusing. Though our grave Editor warns us that these pages are more fitted for what he calls "the social and political significance" of the book, we cannot resist one word of admiration for the brilliance, and indeed rare wit, of much in the writing. There are epigrams in showers, some of them really delicious. That phrase about the critics is perfect, and as true as it is amusing. The Duke who, as he gives the finishing touch to his consummate toilette, each day thanks Providence that his family are not unworthy of him; St. Aldegonde, a Duke's son and a Duke's son-in-law, proposing to abolish all orders of men but Dukes, and calling for cold meat at Lord-we mean Mr.-Brancepeth's dinnerparty; the professor who during a stroll gives more than one receipt for saving the aristocracy; the comparing our young nobles to the ancient Greeks, who were good athletes, knew no language but their own, and never read; the Hansom cab, "the gondola of London," are the touches of a master. For our author, when not in Court dress, is before everything a wit.

Then the dialogue is quick, bright, and easy. The scenes follow with vivacious variety. St. Aldegonde himself might read it without being bored. Nothing lingers. Our author receives his ideal company like an accomplished host. A word for this one; a happy saying to that; a skilful selection of guests; the mind diverted now with this, now with that, entertainment. The characters even have merit. Not that they are characters in the creative sense, but they are happy satirettes. The fatuous Duke, the goose Lothair, the spiritual Cardinal, are portraits not perhaps of true humour, but of a caustic, albeit rather personal, wit. And all this, which is so rare in an English book, is exceedingly pleasant to find. The wit, the light touch, the movement, are those of an accomplished foreignera sort of Mr. Pinto surveying British society from without, and trying to amuse it. The colouring often rises to a high point of art;