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English jurisprudence the divisions of law and equity, and of real and personal property law-is the root also of the artificial limitation of land; and at once to reform our jurisprudence, and to set land free from restrictions against national industry and life, we must strike at the root instead of lopping off branches one by one, as has hitherto been done by a territorial and half-feudal legislature. This being done, the remaining steps to facilitate the commercial transfer of land are obvious and easy, and it could be readily shown that history supplies the same argument in their favour which applies to the reforms already suggested. These steps are (in addition to some stated already)—first, the compulsory registration of all dealings with land in a registry open to the public at a trifling expense; secondly, a new Statute of Limitations, greatly shortening the period within which non-claim shall perfect the title of the present possessors, who might otherwise be injuriously affected by registration; and thirdly, the sale of all encumbered estates, or of enough to defray the incumbrances, with a parliamentary title to the purchasers.

One more measure is requisite to remove the restrictions which limit artificially the trade and manufactures of towns to particular spots—namely, to revise and alter the regulations of the Customs, which confine the import and export trade of the country to particular harbours, exclusive of several well adapted by nature for commerce. It is, of course, well to diminish, as far as can be done without injury to trade, the collection of duties; but the present restrictions un

doubtedly hurt the revenue as well as the trade of the country.

Finally, there is a matter with which, above all, only a Reformed Parliament can deal effectually-the insecurity of tenure, of which the mischief of game may be considered as part. The insecurity of tenure is a public calamity, purposely maintained to deprive tenants of the political power and independence given to them by law; and if some more direct remedy be not applied to remove it, the makeshift of the ballot. will be used.

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THE ENGLISH LAND QUESTION, 1870.

THE land systems of England and Ireland, though closely analogous in many respects, as regards both history and structure, present, nevertheless, some features of striking dissimilarity. The prominent Irish land question is one relating to agricultural tenure; though it is so because the system in its entirety has prevented not only the diffusion of landed property, but also the rise of manufactures, commerce, and other non-agricultural employments. In England, on the other hand, notwithstanding monstrous defects in the system of tenure, the prominent land question is one relating to the labourer, not to the farmer, and to the labourer in the town as well as in the country. The chief causes of this difference are-first, the violent conversion of the bulk of the English population into mere labourers long ago; and, secondly, the existence of great cities and various non-agricultural employments, created by mineral wealth, and a superior commercial situation, but confined to particular spots by the accumulation of land in unproductive hands, by the uncertainty of the law and of titles, and by the scantiness and poverty of the rural population on which country towns depend for a market. An immense immigration into a few great

cities has accordingly been the movement in England corresponding to emigration from Ireland; and no less than 5,153,157 persons, by official estimate, will, in the middle of the present year be gathered into seven large towns-London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, and Bristol; 3,214,707, or one-sixth of the total population, being concentrated in London alone. A twofold mischief has thus been produced by the English land system-in the wretched and hopeless condition of the agricultural labourer on one hand, and the precarious employment and crowded dwellings of the working-classes in large towns on the other.

There is no lack of considerable writers and politicians to assure us that this situation is the natural result of commerce and economic laws; but, alarming as it is, it would be much more so, were such a conclusion generally held; since no reforms could then be looked for, either to diminish the existing misery, or to avert the future catastrophe it threatens; and, in fact, the situation must actually become worse with every forward step in industrial progress, if that conclusion be well founded.

It is, therefore, no matter of mere theoretical or historical interest to ascertain its actual causes; although, even from that point of view, it engages the profound attention of economists on the Continent, struck by the contrast which the distribution of both land and population in England presents to what is found in every other part of the civilised world. 'England,' says a distinguished Englishman on the

Continent, referring particularly to the researches of a German economist,* is the only Teutonic community, we believe we might say the only civilised community, in which the bulk of the land under cultivation is not in the hands of small proprietors; clearly, therefore, England represents the exception and not the rule.'+ It would surely be strange if the exception were the result, as Mr. Buckle asserted, of the general march of affairs;' and if industry and commerce, which are peopling the rest of the world with landowners, had, as a more recent writer expresses it, 'severed the people of England from the land.' § The present author presumes to affirm that the exceptional situation of England, in place of being the natural consequence

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See the work hereafter cited of Herr Erwin Nasse, Professor of Political Economy in the University of Bonn, on Inclosures of Commons in England.'

+ 'Systems of Land Tenure.' Germany. By R. B. D. Morier, p. 322. 6 The history of the decay of that once most important class, the English yeomanry, is an interesting subject, and one for which I have collected considerable materials; at present, I will only say that its decline was first distinctly perceptible in the latter half of the seventeenth century, and was consummated by the rapidly increasing power of the commercial and manufacturing classes, early in the eighteenth century.... Some writers regret this almost total destruction of the yeoman freeholders, overlooking the fact that they are disappearing, not in consequence of any violent revolution or stretch of arbitrary power, but simply by the general march of affairs; society doing away with what it no longer requires.'—Buckle's History of Civilization in England, i. 569. § 'I shall now proceed to trace historically what the economic causes were which have severed the people from the land.

'It is the commercial and not the feudal spirit which in England has worked against peasant properties. Wipe out the commercial element from English history, and you wipe out those causes which have worked against peasant proprietorship in England. But for the commercial element, the feudal system in England would probably have remained in full force as in other countries, and the English peasants have become peasant proprietors.'-The Land Question, by Frederic Seebohm. Fortnightly Review,' February, 1870.

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