REFORM OF FEUDAL LAWS.

THE condition of our land laws in England presents to us a vast problem, one which in its whole bearings on the social welfare of the people is often little recognised; yet there is hardly a question of political interest to the country which is not more or less indirectly influenced by them; and there is no subject which, during the next few years, will form so important a controversial public question. The entire fabric of modern society, of which our aristocracy is the leading feature, is deeply interested in this great question, and the very permanence of the order is menaced in the changes that may take place. Nevertheless it will be the conviction of all thoughtful and serious persons that the sooner the whole subject is not only brought up for discussion but is satisfactorily dealt with by the Legislature, the sooner will certain grave dangers to the stability of our national institutions be removed.

It is marvellous to any observer who has had the advantages of foreign travel, and who has used his opportunities with intelligence, to notice the total and fundamental contrast which exists not only between the land systems prevailing abroad and in England, but also between the social and intellectual condition of the agricultural classes in England and on the Continent. The enormous wealth of the landed proprietors of England, their paramount social influence over the lower classes, their considerable political power, and the class feeling which binds them together, notwithstanding slight differences of party feeling, into one great freemasonry of common interest, stands in vivid contrast with the degraded condition of our agricultural labourers and working classes generally.

In order to analyse this problem we should note the consequences which have resulted in England from the long survival of our feudal land laws, not only in the upper classes of English society, but also on the general condition of the whole people, especially on those classes more or less engaged in the cultivation of the land; we should trace further the natural effect which must result if reform of these laws was to be long delayed; and lastly, taking note of the mode in which this problem has found its solution in other countries of the Continent, we may consider the merits and demerits which can be urged in

favour of the various existing customs abroad, especially the claims of those who advocate the creation of a body of cultivating owners of land. Thus we shall arrive at a knowledge of those modifications which must be brought about in the laws of this country so as slowly, and with as little injury to individual or class interest as is possible, to bring about those great changes which are necessary to stimulate the diffusion of wealth and landed property more widely than heretofore throughout the people of this country.

The condition of Ireland at the present time offers us many valuable suggestions for selecting a path of wisdom in dealing with the land problem in England, and avoiding those evils from which the present race of landowners in Ireland are suffering; evils, too, of very ancient date, yet traceable distinctly to causes which have been slowly and surely operating to create a very gulf between the interest of the propertied classes on the one hand and the poverty-stricken tenantry on the other. Absenteeism and the deputed management of estates may have had much to answer for in the past in Ireland, yet to-day no amount of personal residence or paternal management of a property will weigh in the scale; the divergence of interest between classes is complete; the contest of feeling has become too acute to be adjusted by any act of propitiation by the one class to the other. There is an ingrained feeling of antagonism existing on all sides which has extended itself as a canker into the very heart of social relations in that country, manifesting itself in the socialistic propaganda of the Land League and the bitter outcry against English rule. It was to causes not very dissimilar to these that historians have attributed the origin of those great political movements which have resulted in a land revolution in almost every country of civilised Europe, and it is therefore of the highest importance that this state of things, which fortunately has no existence as yet in England, should not be allowed to take root. Small symptoms of discontent are not wanting; though labourers and farmers' leagues are but in their infancy in England. The remedy is as yet entirely in our own hands. The wretched plea of the Tory party that the national faults of the Irish character were the chief cause of the present political crisis is a most disastrous doctrine to rely upon, and the theory of relying perpetually on force alone to allay a popular movement which has been growing for generations is a feeble cure for such deep-seated evils. A political party that argues thus has purposely blinded itself to the testimony of history, if they think that in the long run the movement of a whole people can be extinguished by repressive

measures.

The ineradicable fault in Ireland, if it lies anywhere, is to be found with those who believe that a system can be indefinitely preserved which has permitted 744 individuals to become the owners of half the soil of Ireland, while 1,942 owners possess two-thirds of the 20,000,000

acres which this country contains. The entire population of cultivators are thus divorced from the only important source of industry which the country possesses, since in the face of the protective laws regarding entail and settlement the divisions of estates into small parcels has been carefully prevented, and it has thus been hopeless for the cultivating class ever to look forward to becoming owners of landed property, or to have any goal of prosperity or contentment to strive for. Labourers must be labourers, tenants nothing more than tenants, all their lives; the only hope they could cling to being that their rents might not be raised, and that in times of distress they might be supported by largesses from the great territorial landlords, or by a demoralising system of public charity.

Can a more degrading state of things than this be conceived to the moral and social well-being of a people? Can a more fertile seed-bed be provided for hatching out every communistic theory, every wild socialistic idea? The origin of the evil is lost in the dispute, the true lines of liberal legislation are discarded, abuse and hatred is levelled not at the exaggerated results of unfair laws of property, but at the English Government, because the State does not step in and divide the land gratis among an ignorant peasantry'landlordism is to be abolished,' the land of the people is to be nationalised,' 'the land-grabber is to be hunted down.' Surely to any rational mind there is food for reflection here? Can we wonder then that moderate statesmen stand confounded often at the difficulties of their task? On the one hand we are saddled with the incubus of these wretched land laws, of which nothing but time can moderate the effects; while on the other we are besieged with the rampant appeals of demagogues, who are steadily preaching a most dangerous social revolution.

There is no great middle class in Ireland composed of manufacturers, intelligent traders, shopkeepers, and farmers to moderate the political tide of socialism. There is nothing but the few helpless, land-logged, mortgage-bound landlords, and the huge struggling class of indigent cultivators.

Does any one suppose for a moment that if it were not for the influence and power of England we have here the elements of a social revolution on the most complete scale, which, of its own accord, would manifest itself without a day's delay. The people would rise as one man against the owners of all property, and abominable crimes of every description would be committed. Forsooth, we have only to thank our good fortune that we can consider this problem to-day while England is untainted by this same antagonism of classes, and thus we may yet solve in time a social problem which possesses potentially factors of the most dangerous and far-reaching character, which the Tory party have too long had the audacity to disregard.

It has in good sooth been truly said that a beneficent genius has

heretofore watched over and guarded the ivy-grown walls of our ancient social monuments in England, and in the words of Pitt, in one of his speeches to the House of Commons after the French Revolution, The spires and domes of ancient buildings arise again above the flood which has so nigh overwhelmed them completely.'

So may it ever continue to be the case in England! Let those though who have studied history turn over once more its pages to the period of the great French Revolution, a revolution such as the history of the world affords us no parallel, extending its influence far beyond the confines of the French territory, and producing a cyclone of political disruption of which France was the centre chief seat, manifesting itself therein by a reign of terror and of political atrocity and crime, which for centuries will afford food for the calm contemplation of the psychological philosopher, and a subject for grave and careful study to the intelligent statesman.

Yet the voice was not in the tempest for us in England; the whirlwind of revolution passed by us and England's institutions remained. By slow degrees, and in former times, through the liberalising influence of the early Reformation and the wise conduct of patriotic statesmen, we had modified the social abuses of the Church and feudal nobles, which in other countries were the immediate cause of the storm.

The revolution of 1640 had once for all asserted the right of the public to being the supreme arbiters in matters of the general weal; the people ruled through their representatives to this extent that no well-defined expressions of public opinion could ever be safely ignored by English statesmen. Hence, at a time when all around abroad was ruin, there survived in England the remnant of former land laws and customs in our Constitution which, in other countries, had been ruthlessly swept away or destroyed. A compromise also in the shape of the great Reform Bill of '32 was eventually effected between the people and our ruling classes, which, with small modifications, has existed down to the present day. By this compact the English people secured to themselves the full advantages of party government and of popular representation, while it left untouched those greater matters regarding the rights of property which have tended to preserve in the hands of the privileged class the sole ownership of the soil in England.

The solution, however, was bound to come, and for years tokens have not been wanting that the struggle could not long be delayed. For many years past able writers on political economy, both in England and abroad, have written on the English and Irish land questions. Able statesmen also, like the late Mr. Cobden and Stuart Mill, have warned us that our condition in England touching the laws encouraging a monopoly regarding land, and the powers of settlement and entail, were the chief cause of the ignorant and miserable condition

of our lower classes, which, working together, would sooner or later raise up a very Frankenstein to judge us. On the other hand, efforts of a herculean character have been made by the landed classes to retain their old position, and induce the lower classes beneath them to accept the paternal form of government of old, and thus stave off indefinitely all projects of reform. Attempts to evade the points at issue, to misstate the arguments of political opponents by covering them with contumely and reproach as revolutionists and republicans, can scarcely much longer be of avail save it be to increase the difficulty, were such attempts unfortunately for a time to be successful. The classes of the electorate who to-day support the Conservative party will melt away from their allegiance in a period of critical excitement, as the mountain snows before a tropical sun, if once the fiery cross of the demagogue and the ominous thunder of the proletariate manifest themselves. An impotent wail will arise from the upper class at injustice, such as we hear to-day in Ireland. Violent denunciation of moderate statesmen who have vainly laboured for a solution will have done its work, until nothing be left to temper the wind to the shorn lamb, save it be an orderly transference of property from one class to the other.'1

Such is the prophecy far-seeing statesmen have made regarding the future of the landowing classes of this country, unless our system of land laws is profoundly modified. It would, therefore, appear that an attentive consideration of some features of the problem would not be out of place at the present time.

The titles to property in land are very different in England to what they are in Ireland. In a few pages of the January number of the Nineteenth Century, Mr. Seebohm has traced in a most able manner the originating cause of the grievance which has so long existed between the Irish landlord and the cultivator. The dispute is virtually one of title to the soil,' and the tenant persistently claims to be reinstated in the position which able statesmen like Sir J. Davis, who was Attorney-General in James I.'s reign, and

The National Assembly in France, on the motion of the Vicomte de Noailles, abolished the feudal exemption of the nobility from taxes in 1789, and on the memorable August 4, 1789, the Duc d'Aguillion said in the National Assembly: 'Who does not groan over the scenes of horror which France at this moment exhibits? The effervescence of the people who have conquered freedom when guilty ministers thought to ravish it from them, has now become an obstacle to freedom at a time when the views of the Government are again in harmony with the wishes of the nation. It is not only the brigands who, with arms in their hands, wish to enrich themselves in the midst of public calamities, in many provinces the entire mass of the peasantry have formed themselves into a league to destroy the châteaux, ravage the lands, and above all, get possession of the charter chests where the feudal titles arc deposited. They seek to shake off a yoke which for centuries has weighed on them; and we must admit that though that insurrection was culpable (what violent aggression is not so?) yet it finds much excuse in the vexations which had produced it.' We might even fancy an Irish peer delivering this speech in the Irish Parliament, did it still exist in the present century.