In the first part of this article I have given a brief outline of the effects of landlord rule in England, Ireland, and Scotland, and I cannot but express my amazement that a writer like Professor Fawcett, who must be fully acquainted with the whole of the terrible facts I have here only been able to hint atwho nearly twenty years ago wrote so strongly on the pitiable condition. of the British labourer-a condition since changed if anything for the worse, since he has become more than ever divorced from the soil and is tending to a nomadic life-and who has depicted so forcibly the land-hunger of the rich, should yet, in his latest teaching, have no other remedy to propose for the evils due to unrestricted private property in the first essential of human existence, the soil, on and by which men can alone live, than to make that property still more easily acquired by the wealthy and still more absolute, by means of complete free trade in land!

It has repeatedly been said, and will no doubt be said again, that many of the admitted evils here pointed out are not due to our system of landlordism, but to various other causes, such as improvidence, over-population, and idleness. To this I reply, that even where these causes do exist they are but secondary causes, and are themselves due to the landlord system. Improvidence is the inevitable result of insecurity for the produce of a man's labour; over-population is always local, and is produced by men being forcibly crowded together and not allowed freely to occupy and cultivate the soil; while idleness is the last accusation that should be made against any of the inhabitants of these islands, No. 288.-VOL. XLVIII.

whose fault rather is a too great eagerness for work whenever they can work for fair wages or with full security that they will reap the produce of their labour. I reply, further, that the close correspondence between the theoretical and the actual results, between deduction and induction, must not be ignored. An irresistible logic assures us that the possession of the soil by some must make those who have to live by cultivating the soil virtual slaves; that it must keep down wages and enable the landlords to absorb all the surplus wealth produced by the labourer beyond what is necessary for a bare subsistence; while it indisputably prevents all who are not landowners from any use or en joyment of their native soil except at the landowner's pleasure-a fact everywhere visible in the unnatural mode of growth of our towns and villages, where, with ample land suitable for pleasant and healthy homes all around them, people are forced to live in closepacked houses with the view of nature's beauties shut out and much of the discomfort and insalubrity of large towns carried into the country. The best way, however, to prove that these and many other evils are directly due to landlordism is to show by actual examples how constantly they disappear whenever the land belongs to those who cultivate it. This is the case in many parts of Europe; and although climate, race, laws, and the character and habits of the people may widely differ, we always find an amount of contentment and well-being strikingly contrasted with what prevails under the system of landlordism.

As regards Switzerland, Sismondi, in his Studies of Political Economy, gives

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full information.

He declares that here we see the beneficial results of agriculture practised by the very people who enjoy its fruits, in "the great comfort of a numerous population, a great independence of character arising from independence of position, and a great consumption of goods the result of the easy circumstances of all the inhabitants." Many other writers confirm the accuracy of these statements. The observant English traveller, Inglis, speaks of the wonderful industry of the Swiss, the loving care with which they tend their fields and fruit-trees, and the complete way in which all the peasants' wants are supplied from the land; while, as a rule, pauperism and even poverty is unknown in the rural districts where peasant properties prevail. The common objection that small proprietors cannot use machinery or execute any improvements requiring co-operation, is answered by the examples of Norway and Saxony. In the former country Mr. Laing tells us how extensively irrigation is carried on by miles of wooden troughing along the mountain sides, executed in concert and kept up for the common benefit. The roads and bridges are also kept in excellent repair without tolls; and he considers this to be done because the people "feel as proprietors who receive the advantage of their own exertions."

Mr. Kay, a most unimpeachable witness, tells us that there is no farming in all Europe comparable with that of the valleys of Saxon Switzerland. After giving a picture of the perfect condition of the crops, the excessive care of manure, and other details, he adds:-"The peasants endeavour to outstrip one another in the quality and quantity of the produce, in the preparation of the ground, and in the general cultivation of their respective portions. All the little proprietors are eager to find out how to farm so as to produce the to produce the greatest results; they diligently seek after improvements; they send their

children to agricultural schools in order to fit them to assist their fathers; and each proprietor soon adopts a new improvement introduced by any of his neighbours."

The late William Howitt, writing on the rural and domestic life of Germany, says: "The peasants are not, as with us, for the most part totally cut off from the soil they cultivate— they are themselves the proprietors. It is, perhaps, from this cause that they are probably the most industrious peasantry in the world. They labour early and late, because they feel that they are labouring for themselves. The German peasants work hard, but they have no actual want.

The English peasant is so cut off from the idea of property that he comes habitually to look upon it as a thing from which he is warned by the laws of the large proprietors, and becomes, in consequence, spiritless and purposeless. The German Bauer, on the contrary, looks on the country as made for him and his fellow-men. No man can threaten him with ejec tion or the workhouse so long as he is active and economical. He walks, therefore, with a bold step; he looks you in the face with the air of a free man, but a respectful air." And Mr. Baring Gould, although showing how poor the peasant of North Germany often is, owing to the miserable system of each farm being cut up into scores or hundreds of disconnected plots, and his cruel subjection to Jew money-lenders, nevertheless thus compares him with the journeyman mechanic "The artisan is restless and dissatisfied. He is mechanised. He finds no interest in his work, and his soul frets at the routine. He is miserable and he knows not why. But the man who toils on his own plot of ground is morally and physically healthy. He is a freeman; the sense he has of independence gives him his upright carriage, his fearless brow, and his joyous laugh."

In Belgium the most highly cultivated part of the country is that

which consists of peasant properties; and even M'Culloch, the advocate of large farms, admits that, "in the minute attention to the qualities of the soil, in the management and application of manures of different kinds, in the judicious succession of crops, and especially in the economy of land, so that every part of it shall be in a constant state of production, we have still something to learn from the Flemings."

In France, though the farming may not be what we call good, the industry and economy of the peasant-proprietors is remarkable, while their well-being is sufficiently indicated by the wonderful amount of hoarded wealth always forthcoming when the Government requires a loan. The connection of peasant-cultivation with well-being is apparent throughout France. Sir Henry Bulwer remarks that by far the greatest number of the indigent is to be found in the northern departments, where land is less divided than elsewhere, and cultivated with larger capitals. Mr. Birkbeck, noticing that in one district the poor appeared less comfortable, found, on inquiry, that few of the peasants thereabouts were proprietors; while, in Anjou and Touraine, Mr. Le Quesne noticed that the houses of the country people were remarkable for their neatness, indicative of the ease and comfort of their possessors, and on inquiry as to the cause was told that the land was there divided into small properties. So when the celebrated agriculturist and traveller Arthur Young noticed exceptional improvement in irrigation and cultivation, he is so sure of the explanation of the fact that he remarks:"It would be a disgrace to common sense to ask the cause; the enjoyment of property must have done it.

Give

a man secure possession of a bleak rock and he will turn it into a garden; give him a nine years' lease of a garden and he will convert it into a desert."

For these and many other examples see Thornton's Plea for Peasant Proprietors.

It hardly needs to adduce more evidence to prove the intimate connection of the sense of secure possession with industry, well-being, and content. But we must briefly notice one more example at our very doors, and under our rule the case of the Channel Islands. The testimony of all observers is unanimous as to the happy condition of these islands, and to its cause in the almost total absence of landlordism as it exists with us. The Hon. G. C. Brodrick, in his English Land and English Landlords, says: "If we judge of success in cultivation by the produce, we find that a much larger quantity of human food is raised in Jersey than is raised on an equal area, by the same number of cultivators, in any part of the United Kingdom. Not only does it. support its own crowded population in much greater comfort than that enjoyed by the mass of Englishmen, but it supplies the London market out of its surplus production with shiploads of vegetables, fruit, butter, and cattle for breeding. Even wheat, for the growth of which the climate is not very suitable, is so cultivated that it yields much heavier crops per acre than in England; and the number of live stock kept on a given area astonishes travellers accustomed only to English farming. Nor are these only the results of spade-husbandry, for machinery is largely employed by the yeomen and peasant proprietors of the Channel Islands, who have no difficulty in arranging among themselves to hire it by turns." Mr. Brodrick, like every one else, attributes this wonderful success to the land system of the country.

Lest it be now said that there is something in the climate or soil of these various localities, or in the character or habits of the people to which these favourable results are to be imputed. I must refer to a few crucial examples in which every other cause but difference of land tenure is eliminated, and which therefore complete the demonstration to which this whole argument

tends. The first of these is afforded by Italy, over large portions of which there are still, as in the time of the Romans, latifundia or large estates farmed by middlemen, and cultivated by labourers or tenants at will. In a recent work the great economist, M. de Laveleye, speaks of the "naked and desolate fields, where the cultivator dies of famine in the fairest climate and most fertile soil; such is the result of the latifundia. Economists, who defend the system of huge properties, visit the interior of the Basilicata and Sicily if you want to see the degree of misery to which your huge properties reduce the earth and its inhabitants." Yet in the same country and under the same laws, wherever fixity of tenure or peasant properties exist, the utmost prosperity prevails. Again, let us hear M. de Laveleye: "I know of no more striking lesson in political economy than is taught at Capri. Whence come the perfection of cultivation and the comfort of the population Certainly not from the fertility of the soil, which is an arid rock. . . . Before obtaining the crops, it was necessary, so to speak, to create the soil. It is the magic of ownership which has produced this prodigy."

Now let us come back to our own country, where we shall find that exactly similar results are produced by similar causes. On the Annandale Estate in Dumfriesshire, plots of from two to six acres were granted to labourers on a lease of twenty-one years. They built their own cottages, having timber and stone supplied by the landlord, and these little farms were all cultivated by the labourer's family, and in his own spare hours. Now note the result. Among these peasant-farmers pauperism soon ceased to exist, and it was especially noticed that habits of marketing, and the constant demands on thrift and forethought brought out new powers and virtues in the wives. In fact, the moral effects of the system in fostering industry, sobriety, and content

ment, were described as no less satisfactory than its economical success.

Again, on Lord Tollemache's estate in Cheshire, plots of land from two and a half to three and a half acres are let with each cottage at an ordinary farm rent, and the results have been eminently beneficial. It is remarked here too that the habits of thrift and forethought encouraged by cowkeeping and dairying, on however small a scale, constitute a moral advantage of great importance.

One more example must be given to show that even in Ireland the laws of human nature do act the same as elsewhere. Mr. Jonathan Pim, in his Condition and Prospects of Ireland, gives an account of how the rugged, bleak, and sterile mountain of Forth, in Wexford, is sprinkled with little patches of land, many of them on the highest part of the mountain, reclaimed and inclosed at a vast expense of labour by the peasant-proprietors, who have been induced to overcome extraordinary difficulties in the hope of at length making a little spot of land their own. "The surface was thickly covered with large masses of rock of various sizes, and intersected by the gullies formed by winter torrents. These rocks have been broken, buried, rolled away, or heaped into the form of fences. The land when thus cleared has been carefully enriched with soil, manured, and tilled. These little holdings vary from half an acre to ten or fifteen acres. The occupiers hold by the right of possession; they are generally poor; but they are peaceable, well-conducted, independent, and industrious; and the district is absolutely free from agrarian outrage."

A volume might be filled with similar cases, but more are unnecessary here, for the evidence already adduced or referred to is absolutely conclusive. Wherever there are great estates let on an insecure tenure, we find in varying degrees the evils here pointed out. On the other hand, wherever we find men cultivating their own lands, or lands held on a permanent tenure

at fixed rents, we find comparative comfort, no pauperism, and little crime. And as this is exactly what a consideration of the immutable laws of human nature and economic science has demonstrated must be the inevitable result, we have fact and reasoning, induction and deduction supporting each other.

Having now cleared the ground by an inquiry into principles and a survey of the facts, we come to the practical question-Can any adequate remedy be found for these widespread and gigantic evils?

The common panacea of the Liberal party, "Free-trade in land," must surely now appear to my readers to be ridiculously inadequate.

It was tried in Ireland by the Encumbered Estates Act, and it so aggravated the disease that a Liberal Government has now been forced to stop free-trade in land altogether in Ireland, and fix rents by act of parliament! It has always prevailed in America, yet many of the evils of land monopoly are beginning to appear even there. It exists in Italy, yet great estates prevail, and the tiller of the soil starves in the midst of abundance as with us. It will do nothing for the poor evicted crofters or the faminestricken cottiers of Ireland. It will not cause the tracts now occupied by sheep and deer to be given up again for the use of men and women; but it will allow rich men, more easily than now, to make more deer-forests and sheep-farms if they choose. It will not help the labourer, the mechanic, or the shopkeeper, to a plot of land where he requires it. It will not give back the land to the use of the people who want it most, and who, as the universal experience of Europe shows, are always benefited by it both physically and morally. Let us then appeal to first principles and simply follow their teaching.

We have seen (1) that private property in land cannot justly arise at all; and (2) that its results, except where small portions are personally

occupied and tilled, are always evil. Hence we conclude that the land of a country should be the property of the state, and be free for the use and enjoyment of the inhabitants on equal terms. In order that every one may feel that sense of property in the land he cultivates which is the best incentive to industry, absolute security of tenure is necessary. This given, a man becomes virtually the owner of the land he holds from the state, and can deal with it like a freehold, only that it remains subject to such rents and such general conditions as may from time to time be held to be for the good of the community. Another important principle is, that sub-letting must be absolutely prohibited; for if this were allowed the evils of landlordism would again arise, as middlemen would monopolise large quantities of land which they would let out at advanced rents and under onerous conditions, so that the actual cultivators would be no better off than under the present landlord system.

Recurring again to first principles we find, that although land itself cannot justly become private property, yet everything added to the land by human labour is truly and properly so; and this leads to the important subdivision of landed property into two parts (as is so common in Ireland), the one represented by the landlord's rent for the use of the bare land, the other the tenant-right, consisting of the houses, fences, gates, plantations, drains, and other permanent and tangible improvements there always made by the tenants. Now these improvements, which for purposes of sale or transfer may here also be conveniently termed tenantright, should always be the absolute property of the occupier of any plot of land, the state being the owner of the bare land only; and by this simple and logical division it will be seen that all necessity for state management, with the long train of evils which Professor Fawcett so properly emphasises, is absolutely done away