the tendency of things? The duty,' he declares with emphasis, in respect to both Ireland and England, 'which I hold to be the specific duty of a landlord, is the keeping down population. If there were no one whose interest it was to limit the number of the occupants of the land, it would be tenanted by all whom it could maintain. Competition would force them to use the food that was most abundant; they would have no division of labour, no manufactures, no separation of ranks, no literature; in short, no civilisation.'* Mr. Senior, however, omitted to consider another great Irish want besides that of small proprietors; one, created by large proprietors; one, too, which caused the very improvidence and consequent over-population he considers it their prime duty to prevent. The most general, and indeed universal, complaint,' the Devon Commission reported, brought before us in every part of Ireland, was "the want of tenure," to use the expression most commonly employed by the witnesses. It is said to paralyse all exertion, and to place a fatal impediment in the way of improvement.' It was this want one persistently maintained to this day by large proprietors-combined with the want of all public relief of destitution, which produced the violence on the part of trade-unions and combinations, from which Ireland formerly suffered so much. When no Poor Law existed in Irelandwhen the refuge of emigration was yet inaccessiblewhen evictions were frequent and sweeping-when the operatives in towns were in hourly danger of invasion • Journals,' &c., i. 294, 295.

by a crowd of starving competitors from the countrywhen, too, no system of national education was established, it is not surprising if ignorant men in such a position sought to defend themselves by a merciless code. They were fighting for their existence, and their code for that end had the same origin as the fierce code of the Irish tenants of which Mr. Senior speaks. In England, too, as in Ireland, the labour question is in a great measure a land question. M. Léonce de Lavergne relates, in his essays on 'Agriculture and Population,' that in 1848 a personage in England replied to some one who feared an invasion of revolutionary ideas among English labouring classes, - No, there is no danger, they know too much political economy.' The danger would be greater if they knew more: if they knew the economic causes of the wretchedness of their dwellings in town on the one hand, and of their degraded and hopeless condition in the country on the other. Mr. Senior himself, in treating of the causes of Irish misery, was led to say of the operation of similar causes in England, 'We bitterly regret that our execrable system of tenures, by making the legal forms attending the sale and purchase of a small piece of ground cost more than the value of the thing which they convey, and our execrable law of settlement, have destroyed the small properties of England. We believe that if we could recall into existence the English yeoman, we should add to our social system a most valuable member. We believe that the remnants of that race are the best agricultural population in Great Britain.'

'The Irish Question' is, in short, in every sense, the English question too. It is a question of equal lawsabove all, of laws relating to land; it is a question which two aristocratic parties' have created, and which only a great national party can solve.

6

THE LAND SYSTEM OF ENGLAND, 1867.*

It is becoming apprehended by all classes, and apprehended in the sense of dread by some, that the question of Reform is not only a great political, but also a great economical question, concerning, especially, legislation calculated to modify the structure of our territorial system. It may, perhaps, tend to reassure those to whose minds the presentiment takes the form that private property is in danger, to be reminded that a lawyer of the highest eminence, now a peer and an exChancellor, and in the enjoyment of all the rights of property known to English law, assured the House of Commons, on the third reading of the Reform Bill of 1832, that he could conscientiously say, that looking to his own interests as a member of the community, and casting about to see how he might place any property he might possess in security, he was at a loss to find out a satisfactory way, and he believed that a large proportion of those who possessed property thought with him. He came down to this House night after night to discuss the Bill, but he felt as he believed others did-depressed more and more on each occasion, with the fear of the results from it.' Sir Robert Peel, too, at various stages of the Bill, uttered several gloomy Reprinted from 'Fraser's Magazine,' February 1867.

presages, foreshadowing among them, as tending to shake the security of property, the very measures on which his own reputation rests,*-of which the one evil has been that they have so prodigiously added to property and wealth, that members of Parliament are disposed to think no evils remain requiring another reform of Parliament for their redress.† The object of this article is to show that evils of great magnitude do remain in our land system, urgently demanding measures of reform which Parliament, as at present constituted, would not even patiently consider, although they are measures in perfect harmony with, and the mere logical development of, successive improvements in our jurisprudence for many centuries, are essential to its symmetry and simplification, and are, moreover, measures which, so far from confiscating the present rights of property in land of its possessors, would very greatly enlarge them.

The prospect of a failure of the supply of coal before many generations pass has occasioned serious alarm, but a far greater peril is at our doors. The supply of

* With respect to property, he had no fear of its destruction by confiscation; but he was afraid that some popularity-seeking Chancellor of the Exchequer might be found by a democratic assembly to propose the repeal of taxes, and adopt steps the ultimate tendency of which would be to shake the confidence of the country in the security of property; and that confidence once shaken, there would be an end to the chief stimulus to productive industry, the foundation of all our wealth, power, and eminence.' - Speech of Sir R. Peel, on the second reading of the Reform Bill, March 22, 1832.

† 'I believe the problem of Reform may be thus stated: On the one hand we have a system which since the great Reform Bill of 1832 has worked admirably, which has carried out so many reforms that no practical grievances remain to be redressed.'-Speech of Mr. Laing to his Constituents, August 27, 1866.

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