LAND QUESTION
 
 THE 
 
 LAND QUESTION 
 
 WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO 
 
 ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN MACDONELL 
 
 BARRISTER-AT-LAW 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1873 
 
 A II rights reserved
 
 LOVOOS : 1'KIXTKD BY 
 
 SPOTTISWOOBK ASIJ CO., JTBW-.sTRRKT SQUARB 
 AXU PAIU.IAMK3T 8TIIKKT
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 I HAVE OMITTED all reference to the Game Laws 
 and many other portions of the Land Question. 
 Perhaps, however, the chief principles with respect 
 to it have been stated ; and the application of them 
 is easy. 
 
 I must acknowledge my obligations for not a 
 few practical suggestions to Mr. Webster, land 
 surveyor, and to Miss McCombie, both of Aber- 
 deenshire, who have aided me by information 
 freely communicated, if indifferently utilised. 
 
 J. M. 
 
 March 10, 1873. 
 
 1491063
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PACK 
 
 I. THE SUBJECT 1 
 
 II. FKEE TKADE IN LAND 8 
 
 III. THE PEINCIPLES OF THE QUESTION . . 44 
 
 IV. UKBAN LAND 83 
 
 V. AGKICULTUKAL LAND 108 
 
 VI. PKOPEKTY IN MINES 174 
 
 VII. COMMONS AND WASTE LANDS . . . .206 
 
 APPENDIX A. . . 251 

 
 THE 
 
 LAND QUESTION 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE SUBJECT. 
 
 ALL men love land, and the land question comes 
 home to all. People are disposed, as perhaps 
 they never were before, to scrutinise and question 
 the policy and character of the laws specially 
 governing the use and distribution of the soil of 
 England. From men of almost all shades of poli- 
 tical colour come words of doubt or open censure 
 with respect to this portion of our law. ' Back to 
 the land,' say not a few of the common people : they 
 are irritated at the spectacle of the great bulk of the 
 soil of England being owned by some thousands 
 
 I
 
 2 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 of persons; 1 they will not believe that this aggrega- 
 tion of property in few hands was brought about 
 and is maintained by natural and legitimate causes. 
 'Back, therefore, to the land,' say those people, 
 filled with a dim, perhaps an unhistorical, idea that 
 it was once theirs, and buoyed up by a hope 
 perhaps false also that in some way or other they 
 will yet share in the ownership of the soil. We 
 may be told that such fantasies are the staple 
 dreams of democrats of all time the current coin 
 of those who, jealous of their social superiors, are 
 wounded by the very sight of all that they do 
 not enjoy, and who make principles of their dislikes. 
 But it is a new thing, and one of much significance 
 distinguishing the present movement from the 
 abortive agitation of Fergus O'Connor for land 
 reform that thoughtful men and good citizens 
 see much to be amended in the land laws, and that 
 
 1 It is true that the returns obtained with a view to illus- 
 trate the probable results of Mr. Gladstone's Reform Bill of 
 1866, show the number of male freeholders to have been 
 358,526. But it can be alleged that there are as many land- 
 owners, only in the same sense that it is geographically true 
 to say that there are thirty millions of Christians in the 
 United Kingdom.
 
 THE SUBJECT 3 
 
 not a few economists and jurists are found avowing 
 that they sympathise with much of the often blind 
 demands of the poor. Never, and in regard to 
 no other question, has there been a closer and 
 quicker communication between the thinker and 
 the workman. A novelty, indeed, witnessed in 
 regard to no other political question, has been the 
 power of the uneducated classes to take in swiftly, 
 and to understand, somewhat abstruse or abstract 
 economical theories relating to land. From the 
 lips of the very class which owns it, I might 
 gather materials for the' framing of the indictment 
 of the existing system professions of generosity 
 in admirable contrast to the law ; confessions of 
 defects therein ; prompt disavowals of an intention 
 to avail oneself of it to the full extent ; and proofs 
 of a thousand kinds that the landowners are, in 
 practice, better than the laws which have been 
 made so often for their advantage. 
 
 I mention only one such testimony. It is, per- 
 haps, enough. Lord Derby has sneeringly alluded to 
 the multitude of ' land quacks ' now abroad ; and 
 he has thereby borne witness to the existence of 
 
 B2
 
 4 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 serious defects in the land laws which he extols ; for 
 quacks live by the presence of disease, and flourish 
 by the presence of pestilence. 1 
 
 Now, to examine dispassionately the seething 
 mass of suggestions scattered about, and to sift the 
 truth from a heap of writings and talk, forms the 
 task of those who would investigate the land ques- 
 tion a question which begins to overshadow all 
 other political problems set before the country; 
 one, perhaps, of that rare kind which, with no 
 rhetorical flourish, we may say that States must, 
 in good time N and in a wise fashion, solve or 
 decay. It is not, I repeat, rhetoric to say so. A 
 people are what their land system makes them ; the 
 soil that they till is stronger than they ; and the 
 essence of their history records the changes in the 
 ownership of their land. Frugal and industrious, 
 or unfixed and unstable in their ways, they are 
 according to the nature of their tenure of land ; and, 
 saving the birth of a new religion, or the influx of 
 
 1 We were lately told that already the land agitation had, 
 in some instances particularly in Ireland affected prices and 
 the terms of mortgages. See Law Times, December 25, 18G9, 
 and January 8, 1870.
 
 THE SUBJECT 5 
 
 a new race, or the lapse of time itself, there is, 
 perhaps, no force more subtil ely potent over a nation 
 than the character of its land laws. Disappointingly 
 feeble as is most political machinery to alter men 
 for better or worse, and apt as is most legislation 
 not in accordance with the current of society, to 
 glance off the cuirass of ancient prejudices and 
 adverse habits, a statesman has one instrument 
 which pierces through all obstacles and uses men 
 as clay. That instrument is legislation affecting 
 land. A Stein or a Hardenberg, who knows how 
 to use it, may shape the morals and destiny of a 
 people. On the one hand, he may create a land 
 system which will raise assassination into the like- 
 ness of a virtue, and make patriotism a byword, 
 and frugality scarcely prudent ; or he may scatter 
 the seeds of hope among people that moiled and 
 tilled with no thoughts beyond the horizon of to- 
 day ; he may inspire the humblest cotter with an 
 affection towards his one field somewhat sordid, 
 perhaps, but deep as that which any member of an 
 ancient family feels for his broad ancestral acres ; 
 and at the touch of wise laud laws, even an
 
 6 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 Ireland may grow into a happy country, the home 
 of a contented people. Who has not marked the 
 strangely swift decadence of an evicted family of old 
 local standing, from industrious, frugal ways into 
 shiftlessness, and in the end vice, and sometimes 
 the ascension of an idler or vagabond to an out- 
 wardly well-ordered life, all by reason of his being 
 put into some farm or little plot where Le may 
 labour with certainty of gain ? and observing such 
 moral transformations, who could not but feel how 
 potent for good or for evil were the statesmen or 
 legislatures that could determine which of those two 
 highroads to vice or virtue a large part of any 
 nation should pursue ? Everyone's experience will 
 tell him that few things exhaust men's immense 
 capacity for misery more nearly than a bad land 
 law. So much one may say without extolling 
 this or that form of tenure as the best. Na- 
 tional regeneration by spade husbandry is not here 
 advocated, nor are there any covert allusions to the 
 benefits of large forms and large estates. The 
 partisans of both systems will agree in branding each 
 other's nostrum as a canker or poison, and this cir-
 
 THE SUBJECT 7 
 
 cumstance is one of many testimonies to the vast 
 influence of any form of land tenure. Now, on 
 England, in particular, lies the duty of self-examina- 
 tion. If she be right, she is right alone. If she be 
 
 V 
 
 wrong, she errs alone. 
 
 Of course, our subject may be so understood as 
 to comprehend almost every topic connected with 
 the tenure of land. The best modes of rotation, 
 according to soil and climate, drainage, steam cultiva- 
 tion, and tillage, might be so many portions. But 
 these and many other matters lying near the margin 
 are excluded, and a subject at once well demarcated, 
 large, and important is encompassed, when we select 
 for examination the chief peculiarities of the laws 
 affecting laud, their defects, and the best practicable 
 improvements.
 
 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 FREE TRADE IN LAND. 
 
 LET us, m the first place, turn to some defects 
 touching land of all sorts, agricultural and urban ; 
 let us then pass to the consideration of each variety. 
 I begin with what is a little infelicitously called 
 ' Free Trade in Land.' I do so for many reasons. 
 To it Parliament has put its hand. The question 
 demands no preliminary study of the differences 
 between land and other kinds of property. With 
 ' free trade,' according to many, would come all that 
 is needful. 
 
 Now, nominally the last obstacle to the free 
 alienation of the soil was destroyed in the reign of 
 Charles II., when the right to devise by will was 
 completely established. 1 In reality, however, not 
 a little of the soil of England is still extra commer- 
 
 1 12 Car. II. c. 24.
 
 FREE TRADE IN LAND 9 
 
 cium ; a much larger portion of it cannot be easily- 
 sold ; and if we mean by ' free trade in land ' the 
 power of cheap and expeditious selling, it has yet 
 to be created. The existing obstacles are many, 
 a few of them real, no doubt, the majority artificial 
 and needless. The fact that this kind of property 
 is of permanent value, that complicated interests 
 surely gather about it, and that possession is no 
 strong evidence of complete ownership, makes it 
 necessary to inquire more minutely before one buys 
 land than before one buys a bale of goods. Each 
 acre has a history and a character of its own. We 
 cannot measure off' so many roods like so many 
 yards of cloth. Fiscal duties stand in the way ; we 
 pay no duty on the occasion of the transfer of 
 Consols, but the State imposes a heavy tax in the 
 shape of stamp duties on the transfer of land. So 
 far there are genuine difficulties, perhaps not to be 
 removed. But we face a more substantial and less 
 defensible obstacle to the bringing of land into the 
 market, when we say that the destination of much 
 of England perhaps of two-thirds, and certainly 
 not much less than one-half was determined ten,
 
 10 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 twenty, thirty, or even sixty years" ago, and that it 
 will not be free sixty, thirty, twenty, or ten years to 
 come. The present inhabitants of a large area of 
 England own it only in the sense that they may do 
 with it as the past inhabitants, in their wisdom or, 
 it may be, their folly, deemed proper. What 
 portion former generations did not lock up, that we 
 may sell : they might have locked up the whole for 
 a time, for aught the law said to the contrary ; and 
 perhaps we ought to be more grateful than we are 
 that so much has been left at the disposal of this 
 age. This condition of property is commonly but 
 erroneously ascribed to the existence of entails. 
 And, no doubt, there was a time in the history of 
 England when estates were so entailed that the free 
 circulation of property in land was seriously im- 
 peded. After the passing of the statute De Donis 
 Conditionahbus in the reign of Edward I., 1 the grasp 
 of ' the dead hand ' lay heavy on the soil. Previous 
 to the passing of that statute, sales or rather 
 subinfeudations had been common and easy. In 
 spite of the resistance of feudal superiors, anxious 
 1 13 Edw. I. c. 1.
 
 FREE TRADE IN LAND ll 
 
 to retain estates in the same families for the sake 
 of their chance of the reversions, the strict letter 
 of the grantor's deed of gift was disregarded. An 
 estate had been given, let us suppose, to A and 
 the heirs of his body ; the moment a son was 
 bom to A, he was considered free to sell the 
 estate and disappoint the grantor. Seeing their 
 expectations thus undermined, the nobles resolved to 
 make an effort to preserve their imperilled or waning 
 rights over their tenants ; and accordingly there 
 was passed, at the instance of the interested barons, 
 the famous ' De Donis Conditionalibus,' which de- 
 clared that if a gift of ' tenements ' or land were 
 made to A and the heirs of his body, he might not 
 sell or alienate them to a stranger, or anyone not 
 heir of his body. Henceforth the heir was to 
 take everything from the grantor, nothing from 
 the grantee. Disastrous was the result of this 
 attempt to establish perpetual entails, so disas- 
 trous that the judges, not unwilling to weaken a 
 law which was working incalculable mischief in the 
 realm to debtors, parents, children, the Crown, and 
 industry, winked at evasions of the statute, and
 
 12 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 suffered it to be undermined by fictitious suits termed 
 common recoveries. By-and-by Parliament per- 
 mitted the use of fines. Both recoveries and fines 
 were clumsy modes of breaking or barring entails. 
 Yet these processes, with their solemn falsehoods, 
 leading, as Bentham says, to 'the fabrication of 
 pickpocket and mendacious instruments,' were 
 employed until 1833. Only then was the power 
 to bar an entail in a swift arid rational manner 
 created by the ' Abolition of Fines and Recoveries 
 Act.' He who would do so now needs not the aid of 
 Eichard Hoe or John Doe ; a short deed enrolled 
 in the Court of Chancery enables a tenant in tail in 
 possession to bar an entail. It is true that there 
 is wont to be a protector to the settlement, and 
 that without his consent only a base fee or an 
 estate somewhat less than the fee simple can be 
 obtained. But a tenant in tail in possession is usually 
 entirely uncontrolled. With the exception of a few 
 estates, such as a small portion of the Marlborough 
 estates, given on account of public service to some 
 general and his descendants, there are in England no 
 instances of strict entails; and if there were no checks
 
 FREE TRADE IN LAND 13 
 
 on the free circulation of property, except such as 
 . are due to the permission to create estates tail, trivial 
 indeed would be the cause of complaint. 
 
 It is of settlements we complain. It is life 
 tenancies, not entails, which are the chief obstruc- 
 tion to ' free trade,' and the great bane. It is 
 the cunning of conveyancers rather than the errors 
 of the Legislature, which has fenced about so much 
 of the soil of England ; for the law of settlements 
 and the kindred law of perpetuities are judge-made. 
 Nor are they of ancient origin. Mr. Joshua 
 Williams, Q.C., in an elaborate paper on the subject, 
 states that there is to be found before the 3 & 4 
 Philip and Mary no specimen of the present general 
 form of a marriage settlement ; that is to say, 
 tenancies for life with remainders in tail to the first 
 and other sons. 1 
 
 The power of barring, by recoveries and fines, an 
 entail, led to the employment of life tenancies, which 
 were inserted before the estate tail. But even this 
 
 1 See Mr. Lewis' work on the manner in which the law of 
 perpetuities was constructed. I need scarcely say that the 
 necessity of protecting contingent remainders by means of 
 trusts has been removed by the 8 & 9 Vic., c. IOC, s. 8.
 
 14 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 precaution was liable to be defeated, owing to a 
 technical rule relating to merger ; and so the con- 
 veyancer, ever ready with new fetters when they 
 were in demand, invented what were called ' trusts 
 for preserving contingent remainders,' which pre- 
 vented the life tenant from acquiring a larger estate 
 and from selling. The judges had decided in Mary 
 Portington's case that no tenant in tail could be 
 deprived, even by special terms, of the right to bar 
 the entail. But here was their work almost undone. 
 In considering the type of the modern settlement, 
 let us recollect that it does not express the deli- 
 berate resolution of the Legislature. No Parliament 
 ever agreed that a man should grant tenancies for 
 life to any successive number of persons in existence, 
 to the whole human race if he likes, with a re- 
 mainder over to some one unborn. Judges and the 
 labours of a long series of lawyers, from Sir Orlando 
 Bridgman, and including Palmer, Booth, Pigot, and 
 Duval, have made or perfected those chains which 
 enable a landowner to direct the destination of his 
 property in circumstances which he does not know, 
 to shape the fates of people whom he has never
 
 FREE TRADE IN LAND 15 
 
 seen, and, generally, to rule in a world that is 
 not like his own. 
 
 Settlements creating life tenancies, with re- 
 mainder in tail, would be unendurable if men used 
 to the full extent the power which they possess, and 
 if Parliament had not repeatedly applied its cor- 
 recting hand. A tenant for life has no strong 
 motive to improve his estate. Why should he do 
 so ? His interest ends with his life. His improve- 
 ments will enrich his successor, perhaps a stranger. 
 And, then, it is the unfortunate fact that he acts as 
 a lure to ensnare others. Sacrificed himself to the 
 Moloch of family ambition, and a slave to the passion 
 for territorial distinction, which generally recruits its 
 most fanatical adherents among those whom it has 
 undone, the father persuades his son, the remainder 
 man, in return for an allowance during their joint 
 lives, to disentail the estate, and re-execute a new 
 settlement on his reaching the age of twenty-one. 
 And thus, cycle after cycle, in many a family the 
 process is repeated ; there is a perpetuity in fact, if 
 not in name. We have had in mind a very simple 
 form of settlement, one much simpler than that
 
 16 TEE LAND QUESTION 
 
 commonly employed. Generally desirous to recon- 
 cile justice to his wife, younger sons, and daughters, 
 with a thirst for family immortality, the settlor loads 
 his estate with charges, jointures, or portions ; so that 
 it is probable that the tenant for life enters into 
 possession without capital or enough of it. 1 Until 
 Parliament came to the rescue, how impotent for 
 good was the tenant for life ! He could not always 
 grant leases. The presumption was, that he was 
 poor ; and if he were not so, why should he sink his 
 own money, how could he persuade others to sink 
 theirs, in land which passed from his control at death ? 
 Unable to sell, he could not reduce his estate to the 
 measure of his means. Could his position be much 
 worse ? Some of those glaring evils were admitted 
 by the Legislature to be unendurable ; and, while all 
 attempts to destroy life tenancies have been scouted, 
 there has been passed a series of Acts of Parlia- 
 ment which approximate the status of the tenant for 
 life to that of the owner of the fee simple. The 
 
 1 ' La plupart de nos grands proprietaires gagneraient apos- 
 seder moins de terre et plus d'argent.' LE"ONCE DE LAVERQNE, 
 Economic rurale de I' Angletcrre, quoted, by Mr. Fowler.
 
 FREE TRADE IN LAND 17 
 
 Settled Estates Act * authorises the Court of Chan- 
 cery to grant power to permit leases and sales of 
 settled estates when that can be done consistently 
 with a due regard to the interests of all persons 
 entitled under the settlement. The Court also 
 received authority to permit sales of timber and 
 to direct the laying out of estates as streets, 
 roads, squares, or gardens. Lord Cranworth's Act of 
 1860 2 was passed, as the preamble says, on account 
 of the expediency of attaching to settlements certain 
 powers which it is usual to insert therein, but which 
 sometimes are omitted. It attached to every set- 
 tlement a power of sale and exchange, unless the 
 terms of the instrument expressly forbade it. In 
 England various Improvement of Land Acts, and in 
 Scotland the Montgomery, Aberdeen, and Eutherfurd 
 Acts, not to speak of others less important, have 
 been successively passed, with a view to emancipate 
 the life tenant still further, and to make his position 
 in some degree compatible with the performance 
 of the duties of a landowner. 3 In passing these 
 
 1 19 & 20 Vic. c. 120. ' 2 23 & 24 Vic. c. 145. 
 
 The latest is the 33 & 34 Vic. c. 56, which empowers 
 
 C
 
 18 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 Acts, Parliament did indeed bear witness to its 
 consciousness of the evils which flowed from strict 
 settlements. But the remedies were inadequate ; 
 the root of evil [remained in the ground ; and we 
 may doubt whether Mr. McCulloch was right in 
 affirming that 'in its present state the law of en- 
 tail ' he speaks of settlements ' comes very near 
 perfection.' The first of the English Acts which 
 we have mentioned can generally be brought into 
 operation by an applicant only when the assent of 
 the parties beneficially interested in the settlement 
 and of trustees is procured. Then, too, the length 
 of leases which a tenant for life may give may 
 not be sufficient for a tenant desirous to improve 
 and drain wet land with no good fall, and anxious 
 to protect himself against liability to bad seasons. 
 And as to the Act which allows of sales by trustees, 
 its effects are blunted by the necessity of reinvest- 
 ing the proceeds in land. The aggregate quantity 
 of land for sale is not increased. The acres are 
 shuffled, but not released. It is true, too, that 
 
 limited landowners to charge their estates for the erection of 
 suitable mansion-houses.
 
 FREE TRADE IN LAND 19 
 
 Parliament has, by the private and public Drainage 
 Acts, permitted owners of settled estates to lay out 
 their own or Government money for purposes of 
 improvement, and to make such debts preferential 
 charges on their estates. But the conditions 011 
 which the loans are granted do not always suit a life 
 tenant. * Montgomery improvements' have been 
 in Scotland fruitful sources of difficulty. 
 
 It is a curious commentary on the absence of a 
 directing intelligence in legislation, that Parliament 
 was at one and the same time engaged in repelling 
 direct attacks on settlements and destroying their 
 efficacy. Such enactments, tending to invest the 
 tenant for life with the powers of the owner of the 
 fee simple, seem, however, to be -so many steps to- 
 wards an enactment which shall convert the former 
 into the latter. 
 
 It is often said that the charges against settle- 
 ments are pure chimeras or exaggerations, since 
 every well-drawn deed contains powers of sale and 
 leasing. 1 That, however, is not quite correct; a 
 
 1 Free trade in Land. By William Hayes, Barrister-at- 
 Law. 
 
 c2
 
 20 THE LAXD QUESTION 
 
 settlement would never be made if it were true, and 
 the sole circumstance which gives it the colour of 
 truth is, that within limits it is customary to invest 
 the tenant for life with some discretionary power. 
 Yet, in fact, a modern settlement is in some respects 
 more tyrannical than those of the old type. * The 
 tendency of the present generation of conveyancers,' 
 says Mr. Davidson, * is, on the one hand, to shorten 
 assurances by abridging recitals, omitting synonyms 
 and useless expressions, and abbreviating language 
 generally ; and, on the other, to lengthen all instru- 
 ments, except the simplest, by inserting powers and 
 clauses to meet numerous possible events which were 
 not contemplated in former times.' 1 
 
 Now, is this longing to gratify far-stretching 
 ambition which invades the future, this wish for a 
 monument in the shape of many even if barren 
 acres and of pinched but not landless descendants, 
 or the death-bed certainty that one who cannot 
 know the facts is, with a lawyer at his elbow, the 
 best judge of the fitness of family arrangements for 
 1 Davidson, Precedents in Conveyancing.
 
 FREE TRADE IN LAND 21 
 
 the next half-century, a hallowed feeling to be 
 tenderly touched ? I doubt it. It seems needless 
 to go out of the way to satisfy those who would 
 drink to the dregs their powers as landowners. A 
 man's right to dispose of his own does not compre- 
 hend the right to dispose of the time of the courts 
 and judges of the future, and to bind them to 
 enforce, years after he is in dust, the arrangements 
 which were planted by vanity that vanity which, to 
 quote Lord Chancellor Nottingham, 'fights against 
 God, by affecting a stability which human provi- 
 dence can never attain to,' which may work towards 
 the impoverishment of the soil, and which makes 
 children from their cradles independent of their own 
 exertions or their parent's love or esteem. This 
 ugly tenacity to the goods of h'fe, and this want of 
 courage to believe that all will go well when a man 
 dies, are rather poor things ; and probably they 
 would receive meet treatment, all conflicting interests 
 would be reconciled, all just claims appreciating! y 
 dealt with, if it were declared that ' no man ought 
 to be allowed to regulate the succession to anyone
 
 22 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 but himself.' 1 It is far from obvious what in- 
 justice would of necessity be done were the power 
 to create life tenancies annulled. Children might 
 still be provided for. It would still be possible to 
 leave independent those whom the death of a parent 
 or a husband would otherwise leave dependent. 2 
 
 It may be interesting to examine the provisions 
 of the Code Civil on this head. The general 
 principle is :' Substitutions are prohibited.' But in 
 two exceptional instances life tenancies are per- 
 mitted, Book, hi., title ii., q. vi. says that a testator 
 may give whajfc'portk>n of his property is disposable 
 by will to his brothers or sisters, subject to the 
 charge of transmitting the goods to the children born 
 and to be born, to the first degree only, of the said 
 brothers or sisters. The Code also allows fathers and 
 mothers to bestow a certain portion of their property 
 on one or several of their children, subject to the 
 
 1 Lord Advocate Young, Address to Laio Amendment 
 Society, November 30, 1870. 
 
 2 The objection to strict settlements cannot be better put 
 than the following opinion of counsel as quoted in Mr. Hayes's 
 Introduction to Conveyancing, vol. i. p. 558 : ' At best, such a 
 settlement is a speculation ; at worst., it is the occasion of 
 distress and profligacy and domestic discord.'
 
 FREE TRADE IN LAND 23 
 
 duty of restoring the property to their children born 
 and to be born. The Code declares that -these dis- 
 positions will hold good only when the settlement is 
 for the benefit of all children without distinction of 
 age or sex. These regulations do not merit close 
 imitation ; they aim at equality of property a ques- 
 tionable benefit and they do not wholly secure us 
 against land being controlled by ' a blind instrument ' 
 instead of a living deeply interested intelligence. It 
 is observable also that the Code treats personal and 
 real property alike ; and it has been contended by 
 many, that if we restrict the power of settlement 
 with respect to the latter, the principle of the Code 
 must be followed, and that we must do the same 
 with respect to the former also. Now, there is 
 personal property (a lease of 99 or 999 years, for 
 instance) possessed of all the essential incidents 
 of realty, and the grounds for objecting to the 
 settlement of land may be used against the settle- 
 ment of long leasehold property ; in logic and fact, 
 though rarely in law, the)'- are classed together. 
 But I think that if we put them into one category 
 we shall have before us a species of property the
 
 24 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 tying up of which is particularly objectionable and 
 prejudicial to the common weal. How far it is 
 proper to gratify family pride and presumptuous 
 confidence in one's foresight by the aid of law is n 
 problem which every settlement of property, per- 
 sonal or real, must moot ; but, without here dis- 
 cussing all the great distinctions between land and 
 goods and chattels and shares, it is admissible to say 
 that on the surface there lies one clear demarcation 
 between land destined to produce wealth, the prime 
 source of revenue, the great capital of society, and 
 debenture bonds or bank stock, say, the ownership 
 of which merely determines how wealth actually 
 made shall be distributed. And I may add also that 
 a good deal of money actually settled is so with 
 reference to land ; it is intended to be turned into 
 land which will be settled. 
 
 Of the soil of England we may say that nobody 
 knows who own it. Possession, a fair indication of 
 title to a horse or a piece of goods, does not assure 
 us that the estate of the possessor of Blackacre or 
 Whiteacre is not a life tenancy, that it is not encum- 
 bered with mortgages and subjected to annuities,
 
 FREE TRADE IN LAND 25 
 
 and that a remainder man will not come on the 
 field when the possessor dies. No complete, acces- 
 sible register of all these facts exists. They can 
 be discovered only after a protracted search in what 
 Cromwell termed ' a godless and tortuous jungle.' 
 Of registered charges affecting land there are six- 
 teen kept in some half-dozen different places, and in 
 more than a dozen different books. 1 To ensure what 
 the Court of Chancery will regard as a marketable 
 title not an absolute title one must trace 
 every step in the history of the estate for the last 
 sixty years ; and as the nominal and beneficial 
 owners are often different persons, it is necessary to 
 follow the history of both the legal and equitable 
 estates. A bought-and-sold note signed by a 
 broker, disposes of the ownership of a cargo of tea ; 
 a transfer on the shipping register, with a statutory 
 declaration appended an operation perhaps costing 
 bs. or a substitution in a bank's books or in a 
 company's register, may suffice to change the owner- 
 ship of the value of thousands of pounds. But when 
 
 1 Report of Royal Commission on Land Transfer Act, 
 p. 113.
 
 26 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 you purchase realty you must be prepared for delay, 
 cost, and perplexity. An offer is made in the auc- 
 tion room on the strength of personal inspection, or 
 of the conditions of sale and printed description. A 
 deposit is paid ; the vendor's solicitor sets to work 
 to prepare an abstract of title, carrying his re- 
 searches back as far as sixty years if there be no 
 stipulation to the contrary; the purchaser's solicitor, 
 aided by counsel it may be, goes over the same 
 ground, and compares the abstract with the original 
 documents ; then come objections and requisitions ; 
 and before a title is made out, it may be necessaiy 
 to carry the inquiry into many collateral matters, 
 and six months may have elapsed before a convey- 
 ance is effected. When a second sale takes place, 
 there is a repetition of this trouble and expenditure. 
 When a mortgage is contracted, there is another search 
 into the same facts. In short, to guard against the 
 contingency of the concealment of a settlement in- 
 vesting some one with rights as remainder man, it is 
 necessary, if a title such as the Court of Chancery will 
 approve, be desiderated, and if there be no stipu- 
 lation releasing the bargain from this condition,
 
 FREE TRADE IN LAND 27 
 
 that the search be conducted sixty years back ; and 
 the same process must be repeated each time the 
 estate is disposed of. The cost of transferring land, 
 particularly when all of it is not held on the same 
 title, is consequently enormous. If the estate is 
 small, the costs may equal the purchase-money ; l 
 and in order to spare themselves the cost of a sixty 
 years' search persons are often content to take a 
 twenty-five to thirty years' title. Much of this 
 secrecy concerning the transfer of land and trans- 
 actions affecting it is of modern origin. The old 
 symbolic mode of conveyance imperfectly served an 
 end which is now best effected by a register. It was 
 necessary to give livery of seisin in order to convey 
 an estate. Openly, and in the presence of your 
 neighbours, you, the feudal vendor, gave to the 
 purchaser a clod or piece of turf taken from the 
 
 1 In Menzies' Scotch Conveyancing will bo found a curious 
 list of the symbols of seisin. For mills, ' clapper and hopper ; ' 
 for teinds, a sheaf of corn ; for patronage, a psalm-book and 
 key of church ; for houses, hasp and staple. Menzies mentions 
 that in the case of the Toiun Council of Brechin v. Arbutlmot, 
 the Court of Session held a seisin of land void ' because it did 
 not mention delivery of earth and stone, but of stone only.' 
 This was in 1840.
 
 28 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 land you sold. It was the symbol that you publicly 
 delivered to him the land. 1 
 
 Now, livery of seisin, says Sheppard's ' Touch- 
 stone,' * was first invented as an open and notorious 
 act to this end, and that by this means the country 
 might take notice how lands do pass from man to 
 man and who is owner thereof, that such as have 
 title thereunto may know against whom to bring 
 their actions, and that others may know that have 
 cause of whom to take leases, and of whom to 
 require wardship.' There was, therefore, once an 
 open mode of conveying freehold land ; and the 
 same may be said of copyhold land, which was, and 
 is, openly transferred in the Customary Courts of 
 Manors by surrender, as the process is termed. 2 
 
 1 Mr. Hughes, in his Practice of Sale of Real Property, vol. i. 
 p. 6, mentions the case of an estate which was sold in 200 
 lots, and the vendor of which expended 2,0001. in furnishing 
 the purchasers with attested copies of the title-deeds. One 
 may here express an opinion that the forms of certain com- 
 mercial instruments might with advantage be changed. An 
 ordinary marine insurance policy or a charter-party is drawn 
 with pious but embarrassing grotesqueness. 
 
 2 It may, perhaps, be generally forgotten that Lord 
 Brougham's solution of the question of the easy transfer of 
 land was the application to freehold land of the mode used 
 with respect to copyholds. 

 
 FREE TRADE IN LAND 29 
 
 That a register should be established, and that it 
 should be something better than what often is now 
 its substitute, the valuation book, is a point on which 
 almost all thoughtful men are agreed ; and though it 
 is two hundred and twelve years since a committee 
 of the House of Commons first gave their assent to 
 the principle, the delay in creating an efficient 
 system cannot last much longer. 
 
 We all know that the Act of 1862 has failed. 
 Lord Westbury, its promoter, wished to effect two 
 or three objects, one of which was to give indefeasi- 
 bility of title to all landowners whose titles would 
 bear scrutiny for sixty years back. This circum- 
 stance of itself was sufficient to damn the Act ; for 
 purchasers generally, and mortgagees often, are con- 
 tent to take a title of thirty or forty years' standing, 
 and the difference in value of an estate, owing to 
 the possession of a Parliamentary title, does not re- 
 compense the cost of registration. The obstacles, 
 too, in the way of registering any but indefeasible 
 titles were a wilful sacrifice of possible benefits. 
 Obviously, every system of registration should 
 be readily open to imperfect titles, so that
 
 30 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 they should ripen into perfect titles. In course 
 of time all titles would be perfected by this 
 process, recommended by at least two Boyal 
 Commissions ; and if it were made compulsory to 
 register on every occasion of sale, there would be 
 perfected, at no distant date, the titles of almost all 
 estates in England. The next desideratum seems 
 to be that there should be on the register an ab- 
 solute owner for each parcel of land, and that all 
 conflicting interests should be guarded by a system 
 of notices. In this respect Lord Cairns's bills of 
 1859 come much nearer to what is wanted than 
 Lord Westbury's Act. The former proposed to 
 establish a Landed Estates Court similar to that 
 existing in Ireland. That Court was to be em- 
 powered to give to proprietors a title which should 
 be good against the world. As in the case of 
 stock or ships, there was to be one ownership re- 
 gistered, and other interests were to be protected 
 by caveats or inhibitions. To the principle that 
 there should be some person registered as absolute 
 owner, as in the case of stock, Lord Westbury and 
 Lord Selborne have objected that, this would mean
 
 FREE TRADE IN LAND 31 
 
 the registration of ' a fictitious ownership/ and that 
 it would be essential to make an arduous search 
 into the caveats. But this objection does not seem 
 quite conclusive. If a purchaser only knew that 
 all the parties concerned were on the register, and 
 that when the { land stops,' and ' money stops,' to 
 use the nomenclature of the Land Transfer Commis- 
 sion, were removed, the concurrence of all parties 
 had been obtained, there would be no small gain. 
 Perhaps we may say that, if the vendor made an 
 unimpeachable title when he cleared the register, 
 there would be an enormous saving of time and 
 money. For what is wanted does not so much 
 appear to be a perfect register of assurances such as 
 exists in Scotland, or an imperfect register of as- 
 surances such as Lord Westbury established ; at 
 present, we chiefly want the register to give notice of 
 all claims affecting land such as a personal in- 
 spection of it might not disclose, and all that may 
 be accomplished by a judicious use of caveats, 
 cautions, and stops. Leases, mortgages, sales in 
 short, the whole history of the estate ought to be 
 indicated, if not written in full, on the face of the
 
 32 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 register. 1 A register of assurances may be advanta- 
 geous ; in the meantime, let us have a registry of titles. 
 It seems desirable also that the registers should 
 be local and, if I may use the term, self-contained. 
 Such is the character of the admirable registers of 
 Denmark and the Grand Duchy of Hesse, where, to 
 quote Mr. Morier, * there is, as it were, a convey- 
 ancer's office established at every proprietor's door, 
 doing business according to a minimum scale of fees, 
 to express which in English coin we must have 
 ecourse to farthings.' Much of the benefits of 
 registration would be lost, particularly with refer- 
 ence to mortgaging, were the system centralised ; 
 and it is a marked defect in some of the various 
 Government bills which have been introduced into 
 
 1 The instances are rare in which settlements are con- 
 cealed, and yet, to guard against the possibility, the public 
 needlessly expend hundreds of thousands of pounds. It is 
 generally ]a too sure sign of sloth or defective civil law 
 when the criminal law must be intensified. Manufacturing a 
 
 O 
 
 misdemeanour is a lame substitute for a register such as almost 
 all countries but England have long possessed ; and yet this 
 device has been employed by Parliament, which, while 
 declining to create an effective system of registration, has made 
 the concealment of any incumbrance or instrument material 
 to the title a misdemeanour.
 
 FREE TRADE IN LAND 33 
 
 Parliament, that they disregard the high advantage 
 of localising the registers. Probably for London 
 not one, but several would be needed. Lastly, 
 if defeasible titles, as well as indefeasible, are freely 
 allowed to be placed on the register, there seems to 
 be no good reason why registration should not be 
 made compulsory, at all events on sale, or within a 
 certain period. It is not sellers or purchasers alone 
 that are interested in the free circulation of pro- 
 perty in land; it is the concern of the whole 
 community. If we insist upon the registration of 
 the ownership of all ships and of mortgages affect- 
 ing them, notwithstanding the repeal of the 'Navi- 
 gation Laws,' the original cause of the use of marine 
 registration, a fortiori is it expedient in regard to 
 land. 1 
 
 Probably, however, if we desire to facilitate the 
 sale of land very much, it will be necessary to do 
 more than create a system of registration. It was 
 the boast of Lord Westbury that his Act left the law 
 of real property intact. That circumstance was 
 rather a weakness than an excellence ; and we shall 
 
 1 Abbott on Merchant Shipping, 11 th edit. p. 44. 
 D
 
 34 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 never see land circulate with that freedom which is 
 desirable if it is to be a ready instrument of com- 
 merce, unless the number of interests, which it is 
 permissible to create, are diminished, and unless the 
 period of prescription necessary to bar claims, is 
 shortened. Stops and caveats on the register will 
 be of great service as indicating the number of n - 
 quiries to be made, and as a correct index of the in- 
 terests concerned ; perhaps they will not diminish the 
 size and intricacy of the volume to which they are 
 the index. 1 That must be done by legislation of a 
 very delicate character. Let us look at the cases in 
 which it might be proper and expedient to permit 
 the creation of interests less than the fee simple. I 
 do not now speak of short leases or those interests 
 for which money would be an adequate equivalent, 
 
 1 ' The question then is : Are. or are you not willing to 
 give up your plan of settlements ? ' Joshua Williams, Q.C. 
 ' So long as the law permitted, as it did, greatly to the public 
 advantage, a system of estates for life with remainder in tail, 
 and portions for younger children, with other complicated 
 arrangements, the House might continue to have glittering 
 pictures of simplicity to titles, which would, however, last 
 only for a time.' Mr. (now Vice- Chancellor) Malms. JTa?i- 
 sard } February 14, 1859.
 
 FREE TRADE IN LASH 35 
 
 but of those which ought to remain as interests 
 in land. Clearly infants and posthumous children 
 must be provided for. It might be fairly demanded 
 that there should be power to create estates ter-> 
 Urinating on their attaining majority. Perhaps, 
 also, the capacity to give a life estate to one's widow 
 ought to remain. In such circumstances the land 
 might be locked up, and a distringas might pre- 
 vent a fraudulent transfer. So far the cases in which 
 the proprietor naturally desires the fee simple of his 
 estate to go to some one, subject to a life or other 
 partial prior interest. But he may desire and in 
 almost every settlement there is shown a desire to 
 split up an estate into several portions, and to bur- 
 then it with certain charges rent-charges, portions 
 for children, &c. Xow, applying to his wishes the 
 rule that there should always be some one capable 
 of selling, I think that the proprietor might be called 
 upon to elect between converting all or part of his 
 land into money or giving to his heir the estate, 
 subject, indeed, to charges for certain persons, but 
 with the right to pay them off whenever the latter 
 pleased, and under a corresponding obligation to pay 
 
 7) 2
 
 3G THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 them off whenever they gave due notice. Instead of 
 loading the land with permanent charges, it would be 
 expedient to make all such charges convertible into 
 money at the will of the owner or the persons in 
 whose favour they are made. Let there be a thou- 
 sand money interests in land and but one interest of 
 ownership ; let there be no life tenancies, unless, 
 indeed, the case of widows ought to be an exception ; 
 let trustees protect the interests of those incapa- 
 citated by tender age or insanity ; let other in- 
 terests be convertible into money ; let caveats on 
 the register indicate their existence ; let property 
 pass by registration and let deeds be the authority 
 to register such seems the path of reform. And 
 there is not, I believe, to be found in the many 
 and various precedents in Davidson's ' Conveyanc- 
 ing ' one legitimate object to which the conveyancer 
 lends his skill inconsistent with the changes here 
 suggested. Helpless children and widows would 
 be seen to. Families could still be founded. It 
 is, of course, true that any serious restriction on 
 the power of settlement might be inconvenient 
 were it not for the multiplication of safe channels
 
 FREE TRADE IN LAND 37 
 
 of investment. But while the public funds amount 
 to nearly eight hundred millions, and the railway 
 debenture stock of the United Kingdom to more 
 than sixty-seven millions, there will probably be ex- 
 perienced no great inconvenience. 
 
 A good system of registration would, of course, 
 increase the facility of borrowing. It would be 
 unnecessary, as now, to transfer the fee simple to 
 the mortgagee a process almost rendered essential 
 for safety so long as there is no register. A stop 
 placed thereon would suffice to protect him. It 
 has been proposed to enter all mortgages, as in the 
 case of the register of ships. But that, at the 
 outset, seems needless ; notices would suffice. No 
 doubt, to be complete, it would be necessary to 
 have registers of all interests not palpable ; but as a 
 beginning a complete register of the ownership, with 
 an apparatus of notices and stops, would probably 
 suffice. In course of time we may hope to see 
 subsidiary registers of all charges, of all leases of 
 twenty-one years' duration and upwards, and, in fact, 
 of all estates and interests not visible. Then would 
 there be ' free trade,' not only in land, but in all
 
 33 THE LAXD QUESTION 
 
 interests therein. In order to make land a com- 
 modious article of commerce, there are needed other 
 minor and auxiliary changes. A more rational 
 and fair system of remunerating solicitors, so that 
 it should be unnecessary to employ tautological 
 forms, wherein ' feeble expletives their aid do lend,' 
 to obtain the just reward of highly-skilled labour, 1 and 
 the printing of all deeds bookwise, are two mechani- 
 cal reforms of no mean consequence. I would also 
 express a doubt whether the period of prescription 
 might not, in the altered conditions of society, with 
 facilities for communication so much increased, be 
 shortened. It is a fair question whether, in guarding 
 in every case against the contingency of being un- 
 fairly dispossessed, which scarcely ever occurs, we 
 do not purchase immunity too dearly. The cases 
 in which any moral claim would be frustrated by 
 reducing the period to ten years, and to twenty in 
 the event of there being disabilities, would probably 
 be rare. The few instances in which railways 
 
 1 * You do not pay them properly for what they do, and you 
 seek to make up for this by paying them for Trhatthey do not.' 
 Joshua TVilliamp, Q.C.
 
 FREE TRADE IN LAND 39 
 
 taking land under parliamentary powers have had 
 to pay compensation, seem to show this. Of course, 
 with these reductions there would come a reduc- 
 tion of the period required by the Court of Chan- 
 cery to be investigated before declaring a title 
 ' marketable/ and such as a purchaser can be 
 compelled to take. And here I would mention 
 the expediency of all the effects of the deceased, 
 whether they be land or not, passing into the 
 hands of one official, executor or administrator, 
 bound to administer them for the benefit of all 
 creditors. 1 
 
 Nothing has been said about the right of primo- 
 geniture, not because there is any desire to defend 
 it, but because its abolition would not effect very 
 much good. That the State should do in the case 
 of intestacy what a man who makes his will rarely 
 does for the admirers of that right take care to 
 leave their estates charged for the benefit of their 
 younger sons and daughters seems wrong. But 
 were the right of primogeniture abolished, wills 
 
 1 On this head, see the concluding chapter of Joshua 
 Williams' Essay on Heal Assets.
 
 40 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 would still transmit the bulk of landed property to 
 eldest sons; and, indeed, while the present dis*- 
 tinction between beneficial and equitable estates is 
 preserved, there would arise inconvenience in con- 
 veyancing from the abolition of the right of primo- 
 geniture. Last, but not least in importance, among 
 reforms, would be the obliteration of the present 
 distinction in point of priority between crown and 
 judgment debts and ordinary debts. If they ever 
 existed, sound reasons for the distinction are gone ; 
 and with its disappearance would vanish all ground 
 for keeping the separate registers which are now 
 scattered about. What a cause for satisfaction 
 when crown debts, judgments, lites pendentes, and 
 bankruptcies affecting an estate, shall be indicated 
 by notices or otherwise in one page of one book kept 
 at one office ! 
 
 Most of the above arguments against settlements 
 are more or less applicable to the holding of land by 
 corporations not empowered to sell ; and the un- 
 locking of the manacles of settlement would only 
 accomplish a small portion of the work which is 
 needful were all the existing trammels on the sale of
 
 FREE TRADE IN LAND 41 
 
 corporate property suffered to remain. Though it 
 may not be always worse managed than private 
 property which is settled, there is no security that 
 it will be better managed than land which may be 
 sold at any time ; and it seems mistaken policy to 
 tie the hands of corporations, and prevent them from 
 honestly disposing of their property. This error, it 
 is submitted, is perpetrated by the ' Municipal 
 Corporation Act,' which forbids the sale of land 
 unless with the approbation of the Lords of the 
 Treasury l ; and a like mistake pervades the ar- 
 rangements with respect to not a few other corpora- 
 tions for example, with respect to the University of 
 Cambridge, the colleges of which are, indeed, per- 
 mitted to sell their lands with the consent of the 
 Church Estates Commissioners, but are compelled 
 to devote the proceeds thereof to the purchase of 
 other land. 2 In the officers of corporations, there 
 is always a disposition to manage expensively, and 
 not to sell ; and the legislator goes out of his way 
 gratuitously and unnecessarily when he seeks to 
 encourage this disposition. That public bodies 
 
 i 5 & 6 Wil. IV. c. 76, s. 94. 2 19 & 20 Vic. c. 88, s. 48.
 
 42 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 should be compelled to sell their laud when uo 
 substantial charge of inefficiency against them lias 
 been made good* seems superfluous ; but it is right 
 that they should be allowed to sell freely. How far 
 the real abuses connected with corporate property 
 are due to inability to do so, is a question too rarely 
 asked and answered. Let us condemn the manage- 
 ment of public bodies only after they have received 
 the powers of private individuals. 
 
 Thus far have we gone without being obliged to 
 confront the revolutionary projects now rife for 
 alteration in the tenure of laud. So far, we do 
 little more than seek to make the law of realty the 
 same as, or similar to, that of personalty. Arid here, 
 with many, ends the Land Question. But here, to 
 my mind, the true problem only begins ; and those 
 who hope to appease discontent with plans, however 
 well devised, for making it easy to sell, and to buy, 
 and mortgage, and lease, will perhaps be signally 
 disappointed. There may have been a time when 
 reforms such as have been here outlined would 
 have given peace. Never naturally in England 
 do men favour thoroughgoing changes, or care
 
 FREE TE-ADE IX LAND 43 
 
 to alter the alphabet of our institutions. But the 
 maintenance of minor abuses has more or less edu- 
 cated all classes in the knowledge of the principles 
 of the subject, and they will apply them, be sure 
 of it, to fundamentals as well as details. So to 
 greater changes we must reconcile ourselves, sadly 
 or joyously. Political discontent oftentimes another 
 name for the possession of an unsatisfied and lofty 
 ideal of political excellence will probably not be 
 quenched by any bill yet draughted, or by legislation 
 in accordance with any report yet adopted by a 
 lloyal Commission. The vast circumference of the 
 hopes and plans now abroad compass much more 
 than free trade in land. 1 
 
 1 See Appendix A.
 
 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE riUNCjrLES OP THE QUESTION. 
 
 Disc'ussioxs on revenue reform, or the best modes of 
 devising ' ways and means ' for the government of 
 the country, are wont to be nothing but discussions 
 on the merits of direct or indirect taxation. This 
 ancient controversy, which moves, but does not 
 advance, has submerged certain preliminary pro- 
 blems which it will be well to ventilate at this 
 point. This is the first question : Is direct or 
 indirect taxation always requisite for procuring a 
 revenue ? The second question is : Does either of 
 these form the ideally perfect mode of providing 
 for the wants of governments? Is there another 
 source from which they do not draw as they ought, 
 and, if it exists, can it still be made to flow ? In 
 answering these problems, we touch, it appears 
 to me, the kernel of the Land Question, which
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE QUESTION 45 
 
 seems to be only a part of a still larger topic, and 
 which cannot be rightly discussed without the partial 
 consideration of a wider theme. Such are a few 
 of the questions which, to a certainty, sometimes 
 come to one who meditates on the fiscal aspects of 
 politics, who seeks for light from the accredited 
 teachers thereof, and who is wearied and disap- 
 pointed by this interminable battling round one, and 
 that not the chief, fiscal problems. Such are the 
 questions which this chapter essays to answer in a 
 certain fashion assuredly not in the hope of strik- 
 ing out some idea wholly new, and consequently 
 suspicious or self-condemned, but rather in the 
 belief that the answers to be submitted will appear 
 truisms which people never, or rarely, think of, and 
 axioms which they do not act upon. 
 
 Monopoly is a word coated with one knows not 
 how many ancient evil associations. It recalls so 
 much of all that is wicked and foolish in the history 
 of our own country and that of others the Tudor 
 monarchs throwing as largesses to their courtiers 
 offices and franchises which gave them the control 
 of the lives and property of subjects ; mischievous
 
 4-G TIIK LASJ> QUEST10X 
 
 trammels on industry, some of them loosened by the 
 Statute of Monopolies, others remaining to trouble 
 this generation ; the trading privileges of the East 
 Indian and Russian Companies ; our colonial system 
 with its foolish exclusiveness ; the protection of our 
 home industries a long history of place-installed 
 selfishness and error. And that name also brings 
 up somewhat different, but also unpleasant, memories 
 the State trying to conduct trades for which it 
 was essentially unsuited, and, in its desire to suc- 
 ceed, converting them into monopolies, to the 
 grievous loss of the community ; the State alone, for 
 instance, growing or selling tobacco, and punishing 
 all trespassers within its artificial domain. So dis- 
 reputable and odious are the associations clustering 
 round the word, that I hesitate to attach it to limi- 
 tations of a very different character and altogether 
 innocent. Monopolies they, indeed, all are ; but 
 some, if not all of them, are natural, spontaneous, 
 and inevitable. They may be used well or ill, but 
 monopolies they will remain. They do not arise 
 out of the mandate of Parliament ; and I may speak 
 of them as natural monopolies. One class of them,
 
 T1IE PRINCIPLES OF THE QUESTION 47 
 
 such as land and mines, are monopolies because 
 they, like other natural agents of production, arc 
 limited. They yield rent in the ^economist's mean- 
 ing of the term. Another class are less rigorously 
 of the nature of monopolies. It is theoretically 
 possible that the tariffs of docks, canals, railways, 
 the post office, and the telegraph service, and the 
 rates of gas and water companies, should be regu- 
 lated by the fiercest competition. For a time that 
 is sometimes the case. But, in the long run, the 
 fact is not so. ' Where combination is possible,' 
 said George Stephenson, ' competition is impossible ' ; 
 and in conformity to this principle, railway com- 
 panies amalgamate, or c divide the monopoly ; ' canals 
 fall into the hands of railways ; and gas companies, 
 ceasing to lay rival parallel mains, give up fighting, 
 and confine themselves, as in London, to different 
 districts. Forbid open amalgamations, and sooner 
 or later there will be secret evasions in the form 
 of clandestine agreements to impose equal rates. 
 By-and-by the customer will discover that he has 
 not to deal with two vendors. Such is the second 
 class of monopolies. I take as the type of the third
 
 48 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 class the issue of bank notes. It is generally be- 
 lieved, rightly or wrongly, that the emission of 
 notes, if their convertibility is to be insured, ought 
 not to be left to the discretion of private persons. 
 It is the common notion that both the paper and 
 the metallic currency should be under the control 
 of the State. Notes payable on demand are, there- 
 fore, usually not left to the free action of supply 
 and demand. In this, as in one and all of these 
 monopolies, we witness the appearance of abnormal 
 profits, and the existence of what may be called 
 rent. 1 
 
 1 Perhaps here one may be allowed to advert to the loose 
 and irregular way in which English statesmen have dealt 
 with those natural monopolies. The State has taken over the 
 postal and telegraph services. A promise has been given that 
 the Irish railways will be purchased by Government if 
 a reasonable price be charged. Our gas and water companies 
 forfeit profits above 10 per cent. Our railway companies 
 are bound by the maximum charge prescribed by Parliament, 
 and are required under the Canal and Railway Traffic Act to 
 furnish ' due facilities.' Oddly enough the natural mono- 
 polies, land and mines, the value of which depends so much on 
 mere situation or some other accidental circumstance, and the 
 banking monopolies created by the Acts of 1844 and 1845, are 
 allowed to be enjoyed by private persons almost without check 
 or hindrance. In the country districts of England we give 
 to a few hundred banks, chosen according to no rational
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE QUESTION 49 
 
 With only one of these classes of monopolies 
 have we here specially to do ; but the above 
 remarks help, perhaps, to show the true position of 
 land. Economists have been at great pains to 
 explain the nature of rent. Starting from the fact 
 that the soil of a country is limited in extent, they 
 have pointed out that even were it homogeneous, 
 of uniform fertility, and equally commodious in all 
 parts, the right to possess it would draw with it the 
 power to exact rent as population expanded. The 
 monopoly of a necessity of existence must create one 
 kind of rent. Economists have also explained that, 
 even if the soil of a country be practically unlimited, 
 differences in fertility and situation will originate 
 another kind of rent, that kind which Eicardo has 
 called, not very happily, perhaps, the price paid for 
 ' the original and indestructible powers of the soil.' 
 We shall describe both kinds, if we speak of the one 
 
 rule, the authority to issue, for their own profit, notes to the 
 value of some three million nine hundred thousand pounds ; 
 and in Scotland eleven companies, chosen owing to the mere 
 accidental circumstance that they existed in 1845, have been 
 invested with similar powers worth, directly and indirectly, 
 thousands of pounds. 
 
 E
 
 50 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 as rent originating in limitation of quantity, and of 
 the other as rent due to differences in quality. We 
 need not accept Eicardo's own account of rent as 
 perfectly accurate. It may be true, as his critics 
 have pointed out, that he substitutes cause for 
 effect, when he ascribes the origin of rent to the 
 necessity of resorting to a soil of greater poverty ; 
 that the growth of rent is really attributable not 
 more to the enforced use of soils of lessening fer- 
 tility than to the greater demand for certain parts 
 of the soil actually cultivated ; and that his theory 
 oscillates between falsehood and unmeaningness. To 
 Bicardo's theory it is often objected that much so- 
 called rent, and in certain circumstances by far the 
 most of what is called rent, is nothing but the return 
 on capital and labour sunk in the soil. One could 
 point to acres which ten years ago did not let for 
 sixpence a-piece, and which now yield 10 per cent. 
 on the outlay of their owner. The revenue drawn 
 from a field once moss or heavy clay, but made 
 worth 25s. an acre by drainage and deep ploughing, 
 may be simply return on the capital. Another set 
 of objections to Eicardo's account of rent arise out
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE QUESTION 51 
 
 of the fact that there must be labour and capital 
 expended somewhere before land is worth anything. 
 I admit it ; but the requisite expenditure need not 
 be on the particular piece of land ; the labour of 
 landless people, say the making of a road or a rail- 
 way, may give value to the property of the land- 
 owner. A third set of objections are drawn from 
 the further fact that the return on landed property 
 rarely exceeds three per cent, on the purchase 
 money. That also is true, but not inconsistent 
 with the above account; it only comes to saying 
 that where no risk is run profits are small, or that 
 a man may pay so much for getting the privilege 
 of drawing surplus profit that his estate brings 
 to him only the average, or less than the average, 
 return on other investments of capital. 1 Be these 
 objections right or wrong, it remains true that 
 
 t/ O D 7 
 
 some land, if not all, differs economically from most 
 
 1 There is, however, no denying the low rate of interest 
 yielded by land. Though this is partially attributable to the 
 perfection of the security, it is also due to other circumstances, 
 one of which is that personal privileges are thrown as 
 perquisites. While land is bought to fetch 3 to 3| per 
 cent., land tax and rent charges of equal security are bought 
 to pay 5 per cent. See Biden'a Rules for Valuers. 10. 
 
 E 2
 
 52 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 other kinds of property, and that it produces by 
 no corresponding labour or outlay of the owner 
 a surplus profit, which may be called * economic 
 rent.' I cannot conceive the distinction between 
 land, or natural monopolies, and other kinds of 
 property being put more clearly and forcibly 
 than in the following passage which I take from 
 an essay by Professor Cairnes. ' A bale of cloth, 
 a machine, a house, owes its value to the labour 
 expended upon it, and belongs to the person who 
 expends or employs the labour : a piece of land 
 owes its value so far as its value is affected 
 by the causes I am now considering not to the 
 labour expended upon it, but to that expended 
 upon something else to the labour expended in 
 making a railroad, or in building houses in an 
 adjacent town ; and the value thus added to the 
 land belongs, not to the persons who have made 
 the railway or built the houses, but to some one 
 who may not even be aware that these operations 
 are being carried on nay, who perhaps has exerted 
 all his efforts to prevent their being carried on.' 
 Of the total proceeds of any acre of ordinary land,
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE QUESTION 53 
 
 so much is the return on the permanent or durable 
 capital drains, fences, &c. invested therein ; so 
 much is the return on the circulating capital re- 
 newed annually, or at short intervals ; and the 
 residue is ascribable to permanent and inherent 
 attributes of soil, situation, proximity to markets, 
 roads, railways, &c., and to what I may term the 
 general state of society. That the first part should 
 accrue to the landowner if, as not unfrequently 
 happens, he furnishes the capital for permanent 
 improvements, is right ; that the second should 
 go to the usufructuary or farmer is also clear ; and 
 what seems equally indisputable is that the last, 
 consisting of economical rent, should go to the 
 general body of society. It having been shown that 
 ' economical rent ' is paid for differences in quality 
 and situation of land, created by no man, or that it 
 originates in circumstances not to be credited to the 
 landowner, it would naturally have been expected 
 that from Eicardo's principles would have been 
 unanimously and instantly deduced the conclusion 
 that economical rent should not become the subject 
 of private property, that no private individual should
 
 54 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 be permitted to monopolise ' the original and inde- 
 structible properties of the soil,' and what no man 
 had created or earned by labour of his no man 
 should own. It would have been only natural for 
 all who accepted the preceding account of rent to 
 hold that rent which proceeded from the common 
 labours of the community should belong to it, 
 that wages were not more fitly the reward of the 
 labourer, or profits the reward of the capitalist, 
 than was rent, as Eicardo understood it, the ap- 
 panage of the community or State, and that, to 
 quote the popular phrase, 'the land was the pro- 
 perty of the people.' For these reasons, absolute 
 property in land would appear to be theoretically 
 unjust whenever economical rent appears. Of 
 course, there might be cited other reasons why this 
 should be so ; and, to name only one, land is a 
 necessity of existence, and society might not sub- 
 sist were men free to employ it as they pleased. 
 We could not tolerate a race of proprietors of the 
 stamp of the notorious Lucas, who wished to let 
 his fields run to waste. We should be sacrificing 
 the end to the means were we to suffer the land-
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE QUESTION 55 
 
 owner's rights to make the existence of society im- 
 possible, uncertain, or difficult. But one sufficient 
 reason for denying absolute property in land, 
 springs from the fact that its proprietor becomes, 
 in the natural course of things, the recipient of 
 an unearned residuum. 
 
 We shall, perhaps, be told that there is a great 
 objection in principle to the conclusion here arrived 
 at : it would bring the State into a region from 
 which it should be excluded. Now, laissez faire is 
 a good rule when the meddler is antagonistic to 
 the meddled with ; but he seems to violate laissez 
 faire most deeply who lets value which the com- 
 munity, or assuredly no single individual, has created 
 be taken from it by private persons. And if it 
 be possible for the State, or for municipalities, 
 to manage any or all of these monopolies, there 
 seems little standing in the way of the assertion 
 that they are the primary resources of Govern- 
 ment. Since there are many things from which 
 their owners may, with ordinary exertion or no 
 exertion at all, draw rent, or something above the 
 usual profits on capital, if too much has not been
 
 56 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 expended in the purchase, and since the State, ever 
 needy, is compelled at present to draw its revenue 
 from taxes which are a hardship to all, and a 
 grievous burthen to the poor, it is no paradox to 
 affirm that the maintenance of the State should be 
 provided, as far as may be, out of those funds 
 which Nature herself seems to have appropriated 
 to public purposes, arising as they do out of com- 
 mon or public exertions. The onus of proving 
 the expediency of letting even one of those funds 
 fall into the private domain rests on those who 
 propose it. In one point of view, it matters little 
 perhaps whether the public or private persons own 
 the sites of cities. But if one mode of tenure 
 brings vast wealth or competence to a few, and 
 releases so many from the wholesome bondage of 
 labour, and if the other relieves the whole com- 
 munity from burthensome taxes or rates, and eases 
 all a little without giving idleness to any, need we 
 hesitate or doubt as to which is preferable ? Such 
 being the alternatives, do we not squander or pawn 
 the natural and primary resources of the State when 
 we suffer private hands to monopolise them? That
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE QUESTION 57 
 
 which presses on no man yet benefits all, is on the 
 face of it a better mode of obtaining a revenue than 
 that which mulcts all, it may be, unequally, and 
 perhaps to the grievous injury of some. That 
 which, taking from no man's just earnings, yet pro- 
 vides for the just common wants, is conspicuously 
 superior to a system of which the true principle, 
 according to Mr. Lowe, is that you must pinch 
 every class until it cries out. An offer is made of a 
 mode of raising revenue, which takes from none 
 what they have rightly earned, which need rob no 
 man of what he has rightly bought, and which will 
 replenish the Treasury, no man being mulcted, no 
 man wronged ; and are we to reject this offer, and 
 for ever allow so many private interests to gather 
 round this public domain that it shall be useless and 
 perverted? To a like question the answer once 
 made was decidedly negative. For a time the 
 revenue of this, as of every other State of Europe, 
 came from rent. But the answer was revoked : the 
 feudal duties incident to property fell into desuetude, 
 and ultimately they were abolished ; much of the 
 Crown land, was squandered ; and for centuries the
 
 58 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 nation has been reaping the harvest of its errors, each 
 sheaf whereof has been some tax, often vexatious and 
 cruel. Ministers cannot govern the country for less 
 than 70,000,OOOZ. We vex the poor with indirect 
 taxes, we squeeze the rich, we ransack heaven and 
 earth to find some new impost palatable or toler- 
 able, and all the time, these hardships going on, 
 neglected or misapplied, there have lain at our feet 
 a multitude of resources ample enough for all just 
 common wants, growing as they grow, and so 
 marked out that one may say they form Nature's 
 budget. Such seems the rationale of the subject of 
 which the land question forms a part. And so we 
 may say that, if property in land be ever placed on a 
 theoretically perfect basis, no private individual will 
 be the recipient of economical rent. Bastiat, it 
 may be mentioned, saw that logic and justice de- 
 manded no less ; and anxious to escape from such a 
 conclusion, and to buttress the fabric of society as 
 he found it, he sought to undermine Eicardo's 
 theory, and to prove, in the face of familiar facts, 
 that all rent was the return on the landowner's 
 capital. Less logical economists in this country
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE QUESTION 59 
 
 have at once expounded Eicardo's theory, and 
 defended the position of the English landowner. 
 How few have seen and owned the simple truth 
 which follows from his doctrine is somewhat amaz- 
 ing, and equally strange is the small number of 
 those who, having seen the truth, were courageous 
 enough to utter it. Though the French physiocrats 
 mixed their speculations on this subject with much 
 dubious and even manifestly erroneous matter, to 
 them belongs the merit of first directing attention 
 to the propriety of drawing the revenue of the State 
 from economical rent, or the produit net of Ques- 
 nay. Turgot, one of that school, says, ' the farmer 
 has made this calculation (as to his outlay and re- 
 muneration) ; it is the surplus given to the land- 
 owner that forms revenue, and it is only on this 
 that taxation ought to fall.' 1 The error of Turgot 
 and the physiocrats was maintaining paradoxically 
 that the State could, and ought to, touch this species 
 of revenue alone, that they would not allow that 
 several branches of industry also yielded a revenue 
 
 1 ' Plan d'un Memoire sur les Impositions.' CEuvres de M. 
 Turgot, tome iv. p. 220.
 
 60 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 which might be as fairly taxed or absorbed as the 
 rent of the soil, and that rent betokened no pecu- 
 liar virtue in land. 
 
 Waiving, at present, the numerous practical diffi- 
 culties in the way of the realisation of the above 
 principles in all their fulness, let us consider a few 
 of the consequences which come to pass if the above 
 be the true and ideal mode of raising a revenue. It 
 follows that Adam Smith's famous canons of tax- 
 ation, though excellent rules, to which all taxes 
 should conform, are rules framed for somewhat ab- 
 normal times and circumstances, the canons, to put 
 it strongly, of financial desperation, the maxims for 
 the guidance of those who would follow not the 
 best, but the next best course. Direct and indirect 
 taxes imposed and collected according to those 
 admirable rules may be necessary so may loans. 
 We know that at present the former are neces- 
 sary so, too, in certain circumstances are the 
 latter. But, granting the above to be the ideal 
 mode of obtaining revenue, it would follow, that 
 just as we should seek to replace loans by taxes, so 
 should we seek to substitute for the latter rent
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE QUESTION 61 
 
 drawn from natural monopolies ; and it would seem 
 not unreasonable to hope, that as loans have ceased 
 to be the regular resources of all solvent govern- 
 ments, so may taxes. Thus only shall we have 
 the benefits of government without the burthens. 
 
 It follows, in the second place, that the fiscal 
 system of England, far from being the best in 
 existence, as is fondly assumed by those who know 
 no other, is in reality one of the worst. Most other 
 States have kept hold of some of these natural 
 monopolies. Prussia draws not a little from mono- 
 polies. 1 At the end of this century France will 
 be heir to railway property more than sufficient to 
 cover the German indemnity. So far she has 
 been wiser than we. In Belgium M. Eogier had the 
 courage and wisdom to do with respect to railways 
 what Sir Eobert Peel and Mr. Gladstone failed to 
 do. In Germany and France the canals are in the 
 hands of the government. India annually raises 
 
 1 ' As to the relative financial position of Prussia, the first 
 noteworthy fact is, that she alone of the great States needs 
 only to levy in taxation a little more than one-half of her 
 nominal expenditure.' Mr. Harris Gastrell's Report on the 
 Tenure of Land in Prwsia. 220.
 
 62 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 some sixteen millions by the State being the land- 
 owner ; and but for this fact, our expensive form of 
 government would be an impossibility in that poor 
 country. It is we, in particular, who have suffered 
 these primary resources to slip through our fingers. 
 Or if there be one State which is showing as 
 much folly as we have at divers times shown, it is 
 America, which, undeterred by our example, is now 
 flinging to the winds its splendid patrimony, and 
 recklessly selling and allotting to railway com- 
 panies or land jobbers what might be the national 
 revenues of the future. What repentance awaits 
 that country for having given to some of the 
 former, grants of 25,600 acres per mile of road, 
 and for assigning to the Northern Pacific Railway 
 Company alone, 58,000,000 acres ! 1 
 
 And, granting the above theory to be true, does 
 there not arise a conception of a beautiful, simple, 
 and useful law, providing for the expenditure of the 
 State, without the aid of statesmen's ingenuity, and 
 with all the certainty of a physical law? We 
 recognise the possibility of the normal revenue con- 
 
 1 Our Land. By Henry George. San Francisco.
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE QUESTION 63 
 
 stantly keeping pace with the normal expenditure. 
 Note the simultaneous movements in both the social 
 wants, and the social resources and means. A coun- 
 try, let us suppose, is barbarous and sparsely peopled ; 
 we contemplate Persia, or the India of pre- Anglican 
 times. In that low state of civilisation the acknow- 
 ledged common interests are few, and a land 
 revenue, or the rent of the soil, will suffice to cover 
 the common expenses. Then comes a denser state 
 of population: we contemplate modern European 
 countries ; the general expenses of society have 
 grown. But, simultaneously with their growth, 
 grows also the needed nutriment, and wherever the 
 common expenses are, of necessity, heaviest, that is, 
 in great towns and cities, there do these monopolies, 
 of which we have spoken, multiply and wax in 
 remunerativeness. There flourish pauperism and 
 crime, costliest scourges, and there also does the 
 value of land rise highest, and there, too, appear 
 docks, telegraphs, &c., and other natural mono- 
 polies, in the most lucrative form. The wants 
 come, and their causes bring also the wherewithal 
 to satisfy them. Sheer pedantry it would be to
 
 64 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 limit the expenditure of any State in all circum- 
 stances and however trying the emergencies, to 
 the resources provided by these funds. So long as 
 there exist pauperism and a permanent criminal 
 population, so long as there are wars to be waged, 
 and indemnities to be paid, so long certainly must 
 we resort to taxes or loans. In times of transition, 
 too, such as 1859, for instance, was to India, there 
 may be experienced difficulty in making the 
 expenditure and revenue of ah 1 sorts balance. But 
 the ideal to which we should strive to attain, and 
 which may be open to other States less compromised 
 than England by a long history, seems to be that 
 which I have described. Though that harmony can- 
 not be practically illustrated here, it may be so 
 where there is no call to meet emergencies. 
 
 De Tocqueville has told us and it scarcely 
 needed a De Tocqueville to tell us that a danger 
 ahead in democratic times is the danger lest the 
 power of the government should be employed by 
 ' our masters ' in bleeding the rich, and absorbing 
 the earnings of all those whose means tower above 
 their neighbours. Communism, or some of its evils,
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE QUESTION 65 
 
 may invade us under the guise of improve 1 taxation 
 or a democratic budget. Graduated income taxes 
 may be gradients to it. And truly, whe:i no prin- 
 ciple governs the selection of taxes, or the amount 
 to be taken by means of them, it is hard to convince 
 the interested that they are pushing taxation to 
 extremity. Let those, therefore, who regard the 
 advent of democracy as inevitable, and who do not 
 desire to sac governments ruling by largesses 
 extorted from the wealthy by the proletariat, 
 welcome a revenue system which seems to set 
 natural limits and barriers to the demands of potent 
 and rapacious poverty. Let them recollect that 
 there is a peril lest future revenue come from the 
 income tax ; that the majority of the electors are 
 not subject to it ; that they may encourage resort to 
 it ; and that, indeed, this danger almost approaches 
 a certainty, unless we manage to dispense with an 
 income tax. Let them embrace with gladness a 
 system which enlists justice on their side, or rather, 
 what is different, a consciousness on the part of the 
 rapacious that justice is against them. It may 
 prove well hereafter if the share of the State is 
 
 p
 
 G6 
 
 defined almost as sharply as the portion of the capi- 
 talist or the labourer. 
 
 We see, then, the possibility of government, 
 local and imperial, without taxation. To no tran- 
 scendental motives does the project appeal. It 
 demands no miraculous draught of administrative 
 talents or public virtues. It is simple and intelligible. 
 It is nothing but giving the body politic the blood 
 which it has secreted. And even those who say 
 that the principle is a barren theory, or that we 
 invoke it too late to apply it, will own that it is in 
 unison with much that goes on around us with 
 the growing disbelief in laissez-faire as sterilely 
 taught of old, the taking over so many branches of 
 industry by the State, the perplexity, strikingly 
 revealed in the report of more than one committee, 
 of how to regulate railways without owning them, the 
 growth of companies of almost State dimensions, 
 and the necessity of investing them with State 
 privileges. Those, too, will admit that revenue reform 
 would become clear, that all scrappy suggestions 
 would be welded into one principle which a child 
 might understand, and that the march of the
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE QUESTION 67 
 
 financier would be certain, if not easy, were there 
 truth and value in this principle, the departure 
 from which has perhaps been not the least of un- 
 recorded errors. I know how far out of the path 
 we and others have strayed, how hard it is to hark 
 back, and how easy it is to speak in three words 
 that which generations of strong minds will not 
 accomplish. We have been putting hills and seas 
 between us and this principle. Not in our time, 
 perhaps never, will they be wholly cast down 
 and utterly dried up. But I still presume to think 
 that it is good to contemplate a splendid possibility, 
 some dim similitude of which may one day be 
 realised, to the unspeakable benefit of society. 
 
 I have written the above in deference to the 
 observation of Turgot : ' It is always the bett 
 with which one ought to be occupied in theory. 
 To neglect this search under the pretext that this 
 best is not practicable in the actual circumstances, 
 is to wish to solve two questions at once ; it is to 
 renounce the advantage of placing the questions in 
 that simplicity which can alone render them suscep- 
 
 F2
 
 G8 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 tible of demonstration ; it is to plunge without a 
 clue into an inextricable labyrinth and to wish to 
 investigate all the routes at once, or rather it is 
 voluntarily to shut one's eyes to the light by putting 
 oneself in the impossibility of finding it.' It will be 
 well, as he advises, to separate the two questions, 
 ' What should be done ? ' and ' What can be done ? ' 
 Now, if theorists have been prone to exaggerate the 
 ease with which principles of the above character 
 could be carried into effect, there has been another 
 error of an opposite kind. It has been Englishmen's 
 pride to curtail the interference of the State. We 
 have been prone to speak of governments as if their 
 members were not made of flesh and blood, but 
 were some evil agencies. That State management 
 must be costly, inefficient, and cumbrous, has been 
 an axiom with some generations of English poli- 
 ticians. Now, this assumption, drawn from the 
 records of Crimea blunders, Admiralty mistakes, and 
 Ordnance contracts, may have been sound so long 
 as the choice lay between the State, more or less 
 lethargic, and private individuals, active and zealous 
 with the activity and zeal of private interest ; it is
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE QUESTION 69 
 
 not so strong it is, indeed, of dubious worth when 
 the choice lies between the State or a municipality 
 and a vast joint-stock company possessed of next to 
 none of the administrative virtues of individuals. 
 Wherein the Erie management excelled the manage- 
 ment of the gas-works of Manchester by the cor- 
 poration, or, to take an instance nearer home and 
 more recent, wherein was the superiority of the 
 management of the Metropolitan Eailway over that 
 of the Pest Office, is not clear. The excellence of 
 private control is a powerful argument when 
 turned against proposals to make the central govern- 
 ment the immediate director of any large and 
 complicated branch of industry say, to govern all 
 the railways from Downing Street or Whitehall by 
 a department changing with every turn of politics ; 
 it loses much of its force when it is directed against 
 proposals to hand over to municipalities the control 
 of such natural or practical monopolies as gas and 
 water works or docks ; it is wholly shorn of its 
 strength when it is used against proposals to lease 
 the railways to private individuals or companies, or 
 to grant, as in France, concessions terminable at
 
 70 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 the expiration of so many years, or against any 
 scheme which would leave the cultivators with 
 almost all their present rights, and which would 
 substitute for private landowners the State. The 
 tenants on the existing Crown domains do not 
 complain of cramping interference ; they enjoy 
 at least as much liberty as that accorded by the 
 average English landowner perhaps, as a rule, 
 they enjoy more ; and were the Crown domains 
 ten times as large as they are, there need be no 
 change for the worse. 
 
 There are another class of objectors who ex- 
 aggerate the difficulties in the way of realising the 
 principles which have been stated. It has, for ex- 
 ample, been alleged that the nationalisation of the 
 land, to which all that has preceded leads up, 
 would involve an expenditure of 4,500,000,000/., 
 a sum equal to more than seventy years' purchase 
 of the present annual value of the soil. Now, 
 the real obstacles are great enough without 
 clothing them in any such dubious form as the 
 above. Of course, the mere circumstance that the 
 cultivated land in the United Kingdom amounts to
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE QUESTION 71 
 
 47,000,000 acres 1 puts the acquisition of the 
 whole soil by the State into the far future, even 
 if it do not actually render the task impracticable 
 for ever. So long as it rests with Parliament, 
 chiefly composed of landowners, to determine 
 what shall be the terms on which the purchase 
 shall be completed, only hard terms for the State 
 can be anticipated. Only let us not fall into an 
 error quite as great as that of those who speak 
 of the nationalisation of the soil as a matter of no 
 magnitude, and let us not confound difficulty with 
 sheer, palpable impossibility. The annual value of 
 the land in the United Kingdom assessed to Schedule 
 A was, in 1870, 56,540,t)00/. A perpetual annuity 
 of this amount is equal to a terminable annuity 
 varying in amount with its duration. I apprehend 
 that thinkers such as Mr. Mill would argue that 
 the latter would be a full equivalent of all the 
 landowners' just claims. If he and those of his 
 way of thinking are right, then all which it would 
 be essential to raise would be the difference be- 
 tween the perpetual and the terminable annuity 
 
 1 Agricultural Returns for 1872.
 
 72 TEE LAND QUESTION 
 
 for a certain number of year?. Those, again, who 
 allege that such a mode of treatment would be 
 unfair, inasmuch as it would ignore the reasonable 
 prospects of a rise in value, would admit that the 
 value of the fee-simple of an estate at any moment 
 consists of the value of the life interest together 
 with that of the reversion, and that if both interests, 
 or their equivalents, were enjoyed, full compensation 
 would be given. If then all proprietors received at 
 the present time the value of the reversions of their 
 land, and if they were allowed to enjoy their estates 
 for the period of their lives, they would be compen- 
 sated. The reversionary value of 11. in perpetuity, 
 one hundred years hence, at 3 per cent., is 1'7344/. ; 
 and assuming that the annual value of land were 
 reckoned, not at 56,000,000/., but G0,000,000/., 
 it would follow that the present payment of 
 104,064,000^. would entitle the State to the owner- 
 ship a century hence. In other words, an addi- 
 tion of less than one-seventh to the national debt 
 would suffice to purchase the land as valued under 
 Schedule A. Of course, if we assume a higher rate 
 of interest, the outlay would be correspondingly
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE QUESTION 73 
 
 diminished ; assuming 3]> per cent., the sum neces- 
 sary would be 54,960, OOO/. ; assuming 4 per cent., 
 it would be 29,700,000/. In strict accuracy we 
 ought, perhaps, to make some subtractions from 
 the present annual value assigned to the total 
 landed property. We may have included lands some 
 of which are of a quasi-public character, and 
 which need not be bought; and as regards other 
 portions, so far as they are not vendible and, in 
 spite of the new freedom with respect to not 
 a little land held in mortmain, much is in that 
 condition it ^may be contended that the com- 
 pensation accorded should be with justice in- 
 ferior to that accorded to the proprietors of land 
 which can at any moment be brought into the 
 market. Nor does the principle stop here. In 
 proportion to the remoteness of the reversionary 
 interest does its present value diminish until it 
 dwindles into an infinitesimally small sum. Mathe- 
 matically, the reversion of property one hundred and 
 fifty years hence is worth something ; but practically 
 it is not. Such an interest is not vendible ; and the 
 law would no doubt disregard any arrangement
 
 74 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 made with respect to it, for inevitably there would 
 be some violation of the rules against perpetuities. 
 It may, then, be submitted that no existing right 
 meriting compensation would be injured, were this 
 reversion, of no pecuniary value to the present 
 owner, but valuable to the State, which is immortal, 
 appropriated by the latter, and that ample justice 
 would be done by the present payment of a sum 
 which would, one hundred and fifty years hence, 
 yield a perpetual annuity equal to, or slightly in 
 excess of, the present annual value of the soil. 
 
 There is another mode which, only give time, 
 would facilitate the same work. It may be shown 
 that if a special tax be imposed upon land, and if it 
 be suffered to subsist, it will, in course of time, 
 cease to be felt as a tax. Land will be bought and 
 sold subject to it ; offers will be made, and prices 
 will be settled, with a reference to it ; and each pur- 
 chaser who buys for the purpose of earning the 
 average rate of profit will reduce the purchase 
 money, owing to the existence of the tax. If he 
 does not, it will be because he prefers something to 
 profits. Hence the land tax imposed in 1693
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE QUESTION 75 
 
 so far as it is not redeemed, has probably ceased to 
 be felt as a tax. ' It is no more a burden on the 
 landlord than the share of one landlord is a bur- 
 den on the other. The landowners are entitled to 
 no compensation for it, nor have they any claim to 
 its being allowed for, as part of their taxes.' J 
 Hence, too, it follows that if it was originally fair to 
 impose a land tax of 4s., it is now fair to add a tax 
 of the same amount ; or, in other words, if the land- 
 owner of the reign of Victoria may be justly called 
 upon to bear as heavy a burden as that borne by 
 his forefather, the land tax must be raised to 8s., 
 of which 4s. will be a rent-charge or the share of 
 a joint tenant, and only the remainder will be of the 
 nature of a tax. Cceteris paribus, the landowner's 
 profits will be as high under the 8s. land tax as 
 were those of his predecessor under the 4s. No 
 doubt it may be said that the landlord's return on 
 his capital is constantly diminishing. 2 But this 
 decline is simultaneous with a general lowering of 
 the rate of profits derivable from all branches 
 
 1 J. S. Mill's Political Economy, 'People's' Edition, 494. 
 a Thiers, De la Propriety 153.
 
 7G THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 of industry; and, admitting the facts to be as 
 alleged, it still would be true that the relative 
 subtraction from the landowners' incomes owing 
 to the 4s. and the 8s. taxes would be the same. 
 In course of time the same causes which effaced 
 the first four shillings would remove the weight 
 of the 8s. : whenever land is sold, it will be so with 
 an eye to the existence of the latter tax. The pro- 
 cess will not stop here ; assuming that rents do 
 not fall, that land is freely sold, that no equivalent 
 tax is levied upon personalty, and that the incre- 
 ments of taxation are imposed at very distant inter- 
 vals, in the lapse of time each addition to the land 
 tax will be shifted from the landowners. Thus it 
 would seem that there is no taxing them always, 
 unless the land tax be repeatedly raised, and that, if 
 such an impost is just at all, the State must in fair- 
 ness keep whittling at the portion of the landowner 
 until, at some distant period, it is absorbed by 
 taxation. It ma} r , indeed, be contended that a 
 special land tax is always unfair. On the other 
 hand, it is submitted that, up to the point at 
 which rent is ' economical,' it may fairly be sub-
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE QUESTION 77 
 
 jected to special charges. But, whether this state- 
 ment is right or wrong, it will, we suppose, be 
 admitted that all taxes on realty which have existed 
 for many years could not be removed without 
 bestowing upon the present race of landowners a 
 large gratuity ; and should pauperism ba gre.itly 
 reduced, and should the imperial and local expandi- 
 ture be considerably curtailed, this fact may be of 
 moment with respect to the procuring of funds for 
 the nationalisation of land. 
 
 I presume to think that the acquisition of the soil 
 by the State seems easier in the light of these simple 
 truths. Time rather than huge votes of money, 
 judicious and temperate taxation rather than pur- 
 chase, may help very much to nationalise the land. 
 
 The purchase of reversions, so far as expedient, 
 and the special taxation of land, seem to be 
 the chief processes by which the work is to be 
 accomplished, so far as it is now practicable. To 
 the latter process there is the objection that it must 
 operate slowly. Not in much less than sixty years 
 could it be assumed that the incidence of a tax of 
 4.. would be removed, owing to buying and selling;
 
 78 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 and to absorb a large part of the whole would 
 require, perhaps, the next centuiy. Purchase of 
 reversions would be an admirable auxiliary but for 
 two circumstances, one of which is the uncertainty 
 of the future value of land. It is too generally 
 assumed that in England rent has always been 
 growing in amount. No doubt there may be cited 
 surprising evidence of the development of the value 
 of landed property. To judge by Gregory King's 
 estimate of the annual value of land in England and 
 Wales in 1688, it has risen six times since that date, 
 and the rise has gone on of late ; for when one looks 
 into the returns of the property tax, one discerns 
 an increase not wholly attributable to the additional 
 breadth under cultivation. Thus, between 1853 and 
 1870, the annual value of the rent-bearing area of 
 the United Kingdom increased from 47,559,474/. to 
 56,540,000?. an increase considerable, but not at 
 all equal to that which houses and mines exhibited 
 in the same period. 1 At the same time, there have 
 been, even during the present century, great fluctua- 
 
 1 The annual value of houses in the United Kingdom in 
 1853 was 46,959,338?., and in 1870 82,732,OOOZ. The value of 
 mines in the former year was 2,809,733?., and in the latter 
 5,840,410?.
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE QUESTION 79 
 
 tions in rents. During the French wars they rose 
 enormously. After the peace they fell 10 to 33 per 
 cent. Under the influence of the Corn Laws, they 
 again rose, to decline, however, for a few years after 
 the markets of England were thrown open to the 
 world. From 1852 to the present time they have 
 steadily risen. 1 But their course hereafter is neces- 
 sarily uncertain. No one can predict whether or 
 not land has attained its highest point of value, or, 
 in other words, whether our population and wealth 
 will increase, or whether we shall draw more and 
 more of our food from abroad. So much uncer- 
 tainty exists, that purchase by the State on the basis 
 of the present value might prove highly inexpedient, 
 and it would not be advisable unless there was the 
 prospect of an advance. The second impediment 
 to any scheme for acquiring the soil by pur- 
 chasing the reversions is the fact that it must 
 operate too slowly, and too clearly demand self- 
 sacrifice, to be generally interesting or captivating. 
 Even people who are self-denying for their most 
 
 1 For data respecting alterations in the price of land, see 
 notes to Roscher's Principles of Political Economy, vol. ii. 
 Rent.' Also Eden's State of tlie Poor, vol. iii.
 
 80 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 remote and alien contemporaries have no idea of 
 serving posterity. It is an unborn virtue. But, 
 whatever mode is employed, the interests of those 
 concerned will no doubt be remunerated, now that 
 we have agreed to substitute compensation for revo- 
 lution. In any event they deserve the treatment 
 of those who have bought that which ought not to 
 have been sold. 
 
 We have already stated that most countries have 
 come nearer to realising the above ideal than 
 England. In India the ownership of the soil resides 
 in the State. Not a few other countries have 
 approximated to the same ideal by means of the 
 creation of peasant proprietors, or, in other words, 
 by diffusing the soil as much as possible among 
 the people. In the United Kingdom alone do we 
 see the prevalence of a land system unlike those 
 two : here the State gets little of the rent, and the 
 people at large get little of the land. I venture to 
 think that a closer approximation to both those con- 
 ditions seen abroad is desirable in England to the 
 former because it is theoretically just, to the latter 
 because in the interests of order it is expedient that
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE QUESTION 81 
 
 the people should not be severed from the soil. 1 Yet 
 we need not force on the latter state of things ; we 
 may leave events to bring it naturally to pass. 
 Those indeed who would force a system of pea- 
 sant proprietors upon any country, seem to commit 
 the same mistake as that which ensnares Protec- 
 tionists, who would foist upon some nation an 
 unsuitable branch of industry. Oftentimes, if 
 successful, they would divert a country from oc- 
 cupations relatively most advantageous ; and to 
 do so is to go against the first principles of Free 
 Trade. There are economists who, one cannot 
 doubt, would be disposed to agree with Lord Kames 
 in suggesting the establishment of a tax on all farms 
 requiring three ploughs. 2 There are others who 
 would foster the creation of small farms or peasant 
 properties by lavish public grants. What are they 
 
 1 '.It is better that half the community should, as in 
 Prussia, share even inequitably the theoretical rent, than 
 that only a tenth of the community should, as is probably the 
 case in Great Britain, share inequitably that theoretical rent.' 
 Mr. Harris- Gastrell's ' Report on Tenure of Land in 
 Prussia.' Reports Respecting the Tenure of Land Abroad, 
 part i. p. 444. 
 
 2 The Gentleman Farmer, Gth ed. p. 307.
 
 82 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 but Protectionists? To me it seems that people 
 must, in the long run, judge rightly as to the pro- 
 priety of converting their country into a series of 
 peasant properties or small farms. Their judgment, 
 perhaps, will not proceed on the mere fact that the 
 yield per acre of wheat, say in Guernsey, where small 
 farming is carried to perfection, may be fifty-five 
 bushels, 1 while in England, the average return is 
 only about twenty-eight ; it will also turn on the 
 question whether the given amount of labour at the 
 disposal of the country might be employed more 
 profitably than in wholly devoting it to agriculture. 
 When pronounced decisively, their judgment will 
 be interfered with only by rash legislators. 
 
 1 Duncan's History of Guernsey, p. 294.
 
 83 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 URBAN LAND. 
 
 So FAR the principles which ought to govern pro- 
 perty in land. Let us proceed to apply them with 
 an eye to the special circumstances of the various 
 kinds. There are many reasons why we should 
 begin with urban land. With respect to it, there is 
 ample scope and most pressing urgency for the appli- 
 cation of the principles which we have stated. In the 
 ground-rents of cities are to be seen perfect samples 
 of ' economical rent,' due to monopoly, produced by 
 no man's labour, assuredly not always by the labour 
 of the owner of the soil. The rents of houses, so 
 far as ground-rent is an element therein, are solely 
 the prices paid for situation, or ' the original and 
 indestructible properties of the soil.' Thus the 
 Duke of Bedford and the Marquis of Westminster 
 exact some hundreds of thousands of pounds 
 
 2
 
 84 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 annually from those who enrich their property. 
 They are remunerated because certain land is 
 situated in Middlesex a circumstance in which one 
 may be pardoned for failing to recognise the 
 beneficent hand of the owner. Of the annual 
 rateable value of London, for instance, computed 
 at ^3,000,000/., an increasingly large portion is 
 the value of ground-rents. When a square foot 
 of land in Victoria Street lets for , one pound 
 sterling, we may judge of the immeBse revenue 
 flowing from this source into private purses. Those 
 increments scarcely ever proceed solely from the 
 diligent exertions of the proprietors. Were they 
 imbeciles instead of good men of business, they 
 must earn more than thousands of toiling artisans ; 
 were they Solons or Solomons, it would not make 
 much difference. Their position of affluence is 
 independent of virtue or vice, prudence or folly. 
 They exist ; that is their service. It was the sole 
 service of most of their ancestors. In the prices paid 
 for sites in cities, we see the most surprising instances 
 of rises in value of that character which Mr. Mill 
 terms the ' unearned increment.' A few examples 
 occur to me. Somewhat marvellous though they
 
 URBAN LAND 85 
 
 may seem, they cannot be scouted as exceptional.^^ 
 A piece of land in Holborn, purchased in 1552 for* 71 7*S~* 
 160/., now yields 5,000/. a year ; a wharf in Castle 
 Baynard, bought for 2,00(U. in 1670, lately realised 
 
 C"* 
 
 110,000/. ; J and an acre of land at South Kensing- 
 ton, which was sold for 3,2 OO/. in 1852, fetched 
 23,250Z. in 1860. We are told that the price of an 
 acre of the most valuable uncovered land in the city 
 of London after the Great Fire of 1660 ' was 
 30,000/., or about one-third of the value of the land 
 when built upon. At the present time the highest 
 rate for unbuilt land may be taken at 1,000,OOOZ. 
 an acre, and such value constitutes fully three- 
 fourths of the value of the property after it has 
 buildings upon it.' 2 
 
 Into a very distinct category, meriting special 
 and primary consideration, the sites of cities are 
 perhaps placed by reason of another circumstance. 
 That the local community should acquire them, 
 is a proposition free from many of the objections 
 taken to any scheme for the nationalisation of the 
 
 1 Sir Charles Trevelyan on ' The City Parochial Endow- 
 ments.' 
 
 2 Paper read by Mr. Edmund James Smith, at Institution of 
 Surveyors, January 20, 1872.
 
 86 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 whole land of the kingdom. To propose to buy 
 in and to govern property, the annual value of 
 which, as assessed to Schedule A, is 56,000,000/., 
 may well cause the timid, and even the stouthearted 
 to recoil. But to endow municipalities with the 
 power of compulsorily acquiring the dominion of 
 the soil on which they are established to permit 
 them to avail themselves of those vast increments of 
 purely ' economical rent,' created by their industry 
 if by anybody's is a step perhaps unassailable on 
 the grounds of prudence as well as of justice. It is 
 not novel or audacious. It has precedents without 
 number in its favour. And, moreover, were the 
 rent fund issuing from the soil to be used as a sup- 
 plement of, or a substitution for, rates, it would be 
 particularly beneficial to our great towns, which feel 
 more than country districts, the burden of local 
 taxes. Their ' increase,' says Mr. Goschen, ' has 
 approached more nearly to the increase in the rate- 
 able value in the four counties, Middlesex, Surrey, 
 Lancashire, and West Eiding, taken together, than 
 in the remaining counties of England.' 1 It is the 
 1 Mr. Goschen's Report on Local Taxation, p. 41.
 
 URBAN LAND 87 
 
 towns which may with most justice complain of the 
 pressure of taxation ; it is the towns which, fortun- 
 ately, possess the remedy. And for all these reasons, 
 it seems right that we should speak first of the 
 ground-rent of cities. 
 
 Perhaps the best way of demonstrating the 
 importance and practical value of the principle is 
 to take a great city, such as London, and to show 
 what advantages would have accrued from the 
 acquisition of the natural monopolies connected 
 therewith. Even if the time has gone by for 
 London to put in operation the principle, other 
 cities may take warning before it is too late. 
 Complaints of the growth of local taxation in 
 London have been loud and frequent, particularly 
 since the establishment of the Metropolitan Board of 
 Works in 1855. Some years ago Sir William Tite 
 declared that the limit of local taxation had been 
 reached. More than one parliamentary committee 
 have borne testimony to the same fact. Impressed 
 with a sense of the onerous weight of the present 
 system of local taxation, and conscious that plans for 
 equalising the rates throughout London were inade-
 
 88 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 quate remedies, Mr. Goschen proposed in 1868 to 
 institute a municipal income-tax, so that the dwellers 
 in the West End parishes might be compelled to 
 furnish their equitable quota ; and, though in 1871 
 he publicly condemned a local income-tax as 
 necessarily unfair in its incidence, we do not sup- 
 pose that he has retracted his opinion that the rates 
 fall heavily, and even most heavily, on needy 
 householders. After all that has been done to 
 introduce a uniform mode of assessing, and not- 
 withstanding the Act which puts on the whole 
 metropolis certain charges on account of the 
 poor, it is still true that the inhabitant of one 
 parish in London, may contribute one-tenth of his 
 income to the support of paupers, while the tenant 
 of a town mansion in St. James's Square may not 
 contribute more than one-hundredth. It is still the 
 case that the weight of the rates impoverishes the 
 poor, and helps to drive them into miserable and 
 degrading dwellings. Sir Sydney Waterlow, chairman 
 of a company started for the purpose of building 
 houses in the East End for the working classes, 
 gave evidence before a parliamentary committee that
 
 89 
 
 
 
 inquired into local taxation of the serious impedi- 
 ments which the height of the rates placed in the 
 way of the company's labours. And, in order to 
 raise an income of half-a-dozen millions, it is found 
 necessary to continue, simultaneously with these 
 rates, certain taxes of a most questionable character. 
 Octroi duties, scouted almost everywhere else, are 
 levied in London. There is a coal duty which 
 mulcts London and the neighbourhood for twenty 
 miles around. There is a wine duty ; and a portion 
 of the revenue is derived from brokers' rents, fines, 
 and fees, and the metage of corn and fruit. So much 
 for the hardships of those who pay : let us now look 
 to the indulgence accorded to those who enjoy partial 
 or total exemption. Of the 75,000 acres covered 
 by London no small portion is, as every one knows, 
 let on leases of sixty, eighty, and ninety-nine years. 
 This form of tenure, to be found on the great 
 urban estates of the Duke of Bedford, the Duke of 
 Portland, the Marquis of Westminster, Lord Port- 
 man, Lord Carnarvon, Lord Holland, Lord South- 
 ampton, the Foundling Hospital, &c., has en- 
 gendered many evil effects, not the least of which
 
 90 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 has been to cover so large a space with mean 
 mansions and stucco palaces, and brick and mortar 
 sheds, and paltry houses, which age invests with 
 dirt and dinginess, but hardly with venerableness. 
 But its chief pernicious effect has been to give to 
 those proprietors fiscal exemptions which need only 
 to be universally known in order to be universally 
 condemned. 
 
 What contribution do those proprietors make to 
 local taxation? It may be asserted that some of 
 their property contributes absolutely nothing to the 
 newly-imposed rates and inadequately to the older 
 rates. The assertion may be proved. At the time 
 when many of the now running leases of ninety-nine 
 years were entered into, there could have been no 
 anticipation of the outlay caused by, and the rates 
 imposed in consequence of, the Thames Embankment 
 and the Main Drainage Scheme. These items could 
 not have formed a factor in old bargains ; and such 
 rates imposed, let us bear in mind, for purposes of 
 permanent improvement, must have fallen wholly on 
 those possessing temporary interests the owners of 
 houses and the occupiers. It is no doubt true that
 
 URBAN LAND 91 
 
 at certain periods in the first half of this century, 
 the poor and county-rates were high in Middlesex. 
 Thus, in -1803, the poor and county-rate, with a 
 portion of the church-rate, amounted to 3s. 5Jc?., and 
 in 1868 rates of all kinds to 3<s. lljd. But the 
 general tendency has been towards a steady increase 
 of the rates. Nor did those exemptions begin with 
 the imposing of the Metropolitan Consolidated Rate 
 to meet the wants of the Metropolitan Board of 
 Works. One who examines the local or private 
 measures, passed for the most part in the reigns of 
 George III. and George IV., in order to 'pave, 
 cleanse, light, water, and embellish ' various squares 
 in London, will find them studded with acts of 
 favouritism to landlords. Looking, for instance, 
 into 7 Geo. IV. c. 58, relating to Grosvenor Place 
 and other lanes and streets adjoining, I find among 
 its 140 clauses, one giving powers to commissioners 
 to compel owners and builders of houses where 
 there ought to be streets to pave, level, or gravel 
 them. But the Act specially exempted Eobert, 
 Earl of Grosvenor, from paying for the improvement 
 of his own property. It also empowered him to
 
 92 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 put whatever fences or gates lie was pleased to 
 erect on streets which others maintained. A similar 
 provision appears in many of the Acts passed in 
 the last century for the purpose of paving or embel- 
 lishing the various estates on which much of the 
 west of London is built. Some of the Acts for 
 instance, that relating to the Calthorpe estate 
 practically absolve the owner of the freehold from 
 all charges. The ratepayers, in short, were mulcted 
 in order to improve and ' embellish ' the landowners' 
 estates. It is true that they may occasionally have 
 done a little paving. Thus, the Duke of Bedford 
 went to some expense with respect to Oakley Square. 
 But I find that the Vestry of St. Pancras repaid him. 
 The facts remain as they are here stated, somewhat 
 shabby and incredible though they may seem. 
 
 Here seems the fit place for adverting to a 
 circumstance which relates to this part of our theme, 
 and which will also fall to be noticed in connection 
 with agricultural land. There is such a thing as the 
 owner of the ground-rent getting more than ' the 
 economical rent,' and that, too, permanently. To 
 suppose otherwise is to suppose what is not always
 
 URBAN LAND 93 
 
 the fact, that tenants either can, or choose to, bar- 
 gain at arm's length with their landowners. One 
 must note a distinction which clearly exists between 
 letting agricultural land and the sites of cities, 
 and which it is opportune to mention here. 
 To the farmer, farming for profit's sake, all 
 localities may be alike if all are equally cheap ; 
 but to the" occupier of a house, oft-times locality 
 is all-important, and rather than sacrifice a certain 
 place of abode, he will pay such a rent as virtually 
 to take on himself the rates. His dearest pleasures 
 may hang on the situation of his house. And I 
 think that there is another clear distinction to be 
 taken on this occasion. The builder and the 
 owner of the ground will try to make each bar- 
 gain relative to a house individually remunerative. 
 To them each sale or leasing is a purely com- 
 mercial transaction. But the occupier will not 
 always give so much less rent because the rates 
 are so much. He will economise, no doubt, 
 but it may be in regard to railway travelling, or 
 dress, or dinners, and not necessarily, as is too 
 frequently assumed, in regard to house rent. Most
 
 94 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 men will set a certain limit to their household 
 expenses ; but they will not necessarily rigidly 
 define what portion of it will be rent. Further, 
 competition as to the incidence of rates is often com- 
 petition between those who desire to earn 10 per 
 cent, and those who, having earned 10 per cent., 
 desire to spend it comfortably. And even when 
 it is with some truth alleged that the rates ultimately 
 fall on the landowner, what more in the case of 
 cities does it generally mean than that his 'unearned 
 increment ' is slightly diminished, and not that the 
 earned increment is touched? Nor need we stop 
 short at local rates. Of course, in the first instance 
 the occupier pays the income-tax on house property, 
 and the owner is obliged to refund it under a penalty 
 of 50/. But that obligation may be nominally kept 
 while it is broken in spirit and effect by raising the 
 rent so as to include the tax, a rent of 105/. with 
 the condition of returning 5/. being the same to a 
 landlord as a rent of 100/. without that condition ; 
 and so keen is the competition for houses along the 
 busy thoroughfares or in fashionable quarters that 
 the above contingency is doubtless frequentlyrealised.
 
 URBAN LAND 95 
 
 To complete the story, let us advert to some 
 more direct benefits, of which those persons thus 
 specially exempted are the recipients. It is well 
 known that there are many streets in London, 
 particularly in Marylebone, St. Pancras, and Chel- 
 sea, over which the public possess no complete 
 rights, and to which they are admitted only on 
 sufferance. In the urban domains of the Duke of 
 Bedford, the Marquis of Westminster, and Lord 
 Portman, there are erected gates which are closed 
 at odd, early, and inconvenient hours, and which 
 vindicate the seignorial right to treat some of 
 the most populous districts of London as if they 
 were private gardens. Curious and absurd are 
 some of the prohibitions contained in the Bedford 
 ukases. For instance, no hearse or funeral proces- 
 sion may pass through Gordon Square a fact 
 which the friends of a deceased tenant of the Bed- 
 ford estate discovered on the day of the funeral 
 to their chagrin. At not a few turnings stand 
 ducal beadles ready to turn back plebeian vehicles, 
 and to bar the way against short-cuts at late or 
 early hours. A recent Parliamentary return
 
 9G THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 showed the number of these gates to be still very 
 great, particularly on the Bedford estate. They 
 are, as a rule, due to private Acts of Parliament 
 which I have already referred to, passed in the 
 reigns of George III. and George IV., for the 
 purpose of paving, cleansing, and lighting streets 
 laid out on private estates. It was by the same 
 legislation that it came to pass that St. Pancras 
 alone had sixteen paving boards, eleven of which, 
 filled with nominees of the freeholder, were self- 
 elected. The Metropolitan Local Management Act, 
 which committed the office of paving to the vestries, 
 swept these boards away, and the sole reminiscence 
 of the extinct bodies consists of the bond debts 
 which they incurred, and which still remain to 
 burden certain districts. In the above Act, the 
 influence of the landlords was powerful enough to 
 insert a clause reserving their right to maintain 
 gates. What is the net result of the history? 
 This : by private Acts the proprietors originally got 
 their estates paved by the occupiers : the mainten- 
 ance and repair of the streets from which the public 
 are partially excluded, is and was the work of the
 
 URBAN LAND 97 
 
 public, eacli district receiving the benefit of the 
 general rate levied over the whole of the metropolis ; 
 and, to complete the job, the value of the sites 
 along the streets is artificially enhanced by the 
 maintenance of gates, which, giving privacy, and 
 creating a nis in urbe, enable the freeholder to 
 exact a higher rent. In the face of all this, which is 
 more marvellous, the patience of those who tolerate 
 it, or the effrontery of those who flaunt their tyran 
 nical placards before passers-by ? x 
 
 Much of the increase in the rates of London is 
 attributable to the Main Drainage Scheme and the 
 Thames Embankment. Of the latter it cannot be said 
 that even temporarily it benefited the dwellers in 
 the East-end, certainly not in any other sense than 
 that in which it was for the advantage of the inhabi- 
 tants of Heading or Exeter : all London occupiers, 
 
 1 Of course, at the expiration of the leases, the houses fall to 
 the owner of the soil ; and I may here mention that this power 
 has been too frequently grossly abused. There is recorded the 
 case of a noble lord some former Lord Somers, I believe 
 who first of all threatened to claim a forfeiture a few years 
 before the end of the leases, unless certain important repairs 
 were effected, and who, at the close of the lease, coolly and 
 rapaciously appropriated houses and repairs. 
 
 II
 
 98 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 however, furnished their quota, while many of the 
 owners, whose property will be permanently and 
 enormously enhanced in value, contributed nothing. 
 This fact, which a Parliamentary Committee some 
 years ago mildly characterised as ' contrary to sound 
 policy,' is sad enough, but worse has yet to be told. 
 The Marquis of Salisbury and the other proprietors 
 of the land along the line of the Embankment 
 received from the Metropolitan Board of Works 
 ample compensation for the W 7 harves and buildings 
 which were destroyed or appropriated in the course 
 of the work. But subsequent events have brought 
 them compensation of an indirect but very substan- 
 tial character. No sooner was the Embankment 
 formed than the remainder of their property, 
 opened up for building purposes, was vastly 
 increased in value. 
 
 Instead of spending time in depreciating a 
 system of privileges with which there is mixed up so 
 much injustice, though no one concerned, perhaps, 
 is acting with conscious unfairness, let us turn to 
 the remedies. The Parliamentary Committee that 
 admitted these flagrant facts to be 'contrary to
 
 URBAN LAND 99 
 
 sound policy,' proposed that the rates should be, as 
 in Scotland, paid, half by the owner and half by the 
 occupier. Such a scheme would alleviate many of 
 the evils complained of. But it would be far from 
 doing all that is needful. It would not undo the 
 past. Private individuals would still absorb ground, 
 or purely economical, rent. The poor would still 
 be driven into miserable dwellings by the pressure 
 of taxation ; still would the lords of the soil es- 
 cape their fair burthen ; and still to him that hath 
 would be given in most unscriptural abundance. 
 More seems necessary ; and were we living in 
 1800, and not in 1873, the right course would 
 have been plain and rather easy. Had the wants 
 of the future, and the growth of London, been 
 foreseen, and had it not then, as now, been * a 
 province covered with houses,' with no govern- 
 ment extending over the whole area, it might have 
 been for the interest of the community to take 
 over at valuation large tracts which have since 
 been built upon. We have stirred late, and we 
 cannot now move with ease. But something may 
 yet be done in the right direction ; and when 
 
 H2
 
 100 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 London possesses a local government superior to 
 that formed by the Local Management Acts, and 
 similar to that which Mr. Mill has proposed, we 
 may take the first great step. Here, if anywhere, 
 there is a sphere and an occasion for the application of 
 Mr. Mill's theory of the unearned increment. Here, 
 in the most flagrant form, is that divorce between 
 industry and earnings which breeds communism ; 
 and those who hesitate to urge the acquisition 
 of the entire soil by the State, may fearlessly put 
 in operation their principles with respect to Lon- 
 don and other great cities. For we are not quite 
 too late. Justice may be done, and even gene- 
 rosity accorded, to all concerned, and yet we may 
 be drawing near, at no mean speed, to that ideal 
 time in which the soil shall belong to the com- 
 munity. To those whose land is let on leases 
 which have twenty years or more to run, we might 
 give a promise that they should not be touched 
 during that period, and at the close of it we might 
 come to them and say, ' The present value shall be 
 yours, any additional value shall belong to the com- 
 munity. You have had your time ; it is the rate-
 
 URBAN LAND 101 
 
 payers' turn to have theirs.' To those, on the other 
 hand, whose leases had less than twenty years to 
 run, and whose calculations and reasonable pros- 
 pects might be obscured by the earlier application 
 of the principle, we might grant a respite. To all, 
 however, sooner or later, we should mete out the 
 same justice : future increments should be the com- 
 munity's. This would be the first application 
 of the process of absorption. But in order to ensure 
 that no hardship be inflicted, let a period of reprieve 
 be given. 
 
 In the second place, it might be expedient to 
 invest cities with the power of acquiring the land 
 on which they are situated, without being obliged 
 to resort to Parliament. And, no doubt, it would 
 sometimes appear expedient, as already suggested, 
 to purchase the reversion rather than the fee simple. 
 It need not be said that the acquiring of a muni- 
 cipal revenue from rent is no novelty. The city of 
 London, in this respect like Liverpool, the borough 
 fund of which is large, obtains much of its re- 
 ceipts from that source. Madox, in his 'Firmd 
 Burgij gives many instances of cities that dispensed
 
 102 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 more or less with rates, by acquiring from the 
 Crown rights over the soil. 1 
 
 Even before cities, as such, possess the right to 
 acquire their sites by compulsory purchase, they 
 may do much to become the proprietors thereof by 
 certain auxiliary means. The formation of a great 
 public work, such as the Victoria Embankment, 
 necessarily enhances the value of the adjacent 
 property, and it seems strange that Parliamentary 
 powers should not be regularly taken to obtain the 
 adjacent plots opened up by public works at prices 
 to be governed by the value before the improve- 
 ments. It is stated by Mr. Frederic Hill that by 
 the adoption of this expedient the municipality of 
 Hamburg managed to rebuild the city destroyed 
 by fire, on a plan far superior to the former, at a 
 cost of ' about a thousand pounds.' 3 It was applied 
 to Victoria Street with great advantage. If only 
 
 1 ' Towns, like communes or parishes, are corporative 
 associations in Germany, that hold property, frequently in 
 land and houses, often in mills and other possessions.' ' This 
 wise system of co-operative association,' 'is the oldest of 
 which we have any record.' Banfield on The Manufactures 
 of the Rhine, p. 132. 
 
 2 The Land Question, by Frederic Hill,
 
 URBAN LAND 103 
 
 the ratepayers of London be alert, there is still 
 another device open to them, and useful in co- 
 operating with the expedients already named. On 
 certain of the great estates in London, the occupiers 
 pay, in addition to the general rate, devoted to 
 paving, lighting, &c., an exceptional impost, for the 
 purpose of meeting the interest and clearing off the 
 principal of the bonds issued by the defunct Paving 
 Commissioners. On some estates the debt is wiped 
 out ; on others it is still large. At intervals the 
 bonds are paid off, and the special rate wholly or 
 partially drops. Of course, the frequent, though 
 not the universal, result is that rent rises, and that 
 at the end of the lease the freeholder is empowered 
 to exact a larger ground rent. As these debts are 
 of old standing, the mere removal of them would be 
 tantamount to vast gifts to the freeholders. Now, 
 if that be true, perhaps it would be right to main- 
 tain those special rates as so many great deductions 
 from rent, and credit their proceeds to the local 
 treasuries. I observe that on the Duke of Bedford's 
 estate, within the jurisdiction of St. Pancras Vestry, 
 there is a debt of 2 6,3 74 , and that there is a rate of
 
 104 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 3d. in the pound, designed to act as a sinking fund. 1 
 If rents on the Bedford estate have been levied 
 with an eye to the existence of this tax, the result 
 may be, when the bonds are liquidated, and this 
 rate lapses, an increase in the total rental of the 
 Bedford estate to the amount of that sum ; and I 
 submit that the parish might reasonably be per- 
 mitted by Parliament to maintain these charges, 
 even after the purposes for which they were ori- 
 ginally imposed have been satisfied. At all events, 
 let us consider whether we are prepared to make a 
 fresh gift to that * leviathan among all the creatures 
 of the Crown,' the House of Bedford. This matter 
 is too important to be discussed on personal 
 grounds, but it is fair to ask what has been effected 
 by recent owners to justify another subsidy. ' Who 
 ever saw the Duke of Bedford ? ' used to be asked 
 by the tenants of a former Duke, and the question is 
 still pertinent. 
 
 So far the land on which our great cities are 
 built. But land is not the only monopoly available 
 
 1 Abstract of cash received and expended by the Vestry of 
 St. Pancras, Middlesex.
 
 URBAN LAND 105 
 
 for their use. And I may be permitted to refer 
 here, for the sake of completeness, to a few others. 
 The docks of London are owned by private com- 
 panies. Yet, at their outset, the East India and the 
 West India Docks received at the hands of Parlia- 
 ment monopolies of the trade with the East and 
 West Indies. These companies have at various 
 times amalgamated after severe struggles, which have 
 not always left them in a very flourishing condition. 
 The example of the Liverpool Dock Trust shows 
 the possibility of a public body managing such 
 concerns ; and there can be little doubt that if the 
 London docks had been built by the municipality, 
 if there had been no wasteful war of competition, 
 and if they had never been saddled with the expense 
 of some eighty-six directors, they would have yielded 
 a revenue of fully a million. Certainly that sum 
 might have been derived from them and the 
 private wharves. At various times it has been pro- 
 posed that the Metropolitan Board of Works, or 
 some other representative of the ratepayers, should 
 acquire the gas-works, another species of mono- 
 poly. I may speak of them as such, because,
 
 106 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 though from 1842 down to 1860 the Legisla- 
 ture permitted competition four companies, for in- 
 stance, competing in Eegent Street the principle 
 of ' districting ' the companies has been faithfully 
 observed since the latter year ; and within its own 
 area, each of the thirteen gas companies enjoys an 
 undisturbed monopoly, and earns a large dividend 
 with regularity. The idea of the municipality 
 supplying gas an idea long ago and most success- 
 fully carried out in Manchester was contemplated 
 when Lord Llanover was First Commissioner of 
 Works ; in 1867 a Select Committee reported in 
 favour of the principle of the project ; and the day 
 of its realisation does not seem, in view of the pre- 
 sent dissatisfaction with the gas companies of Lon- 
 don, so very distant. Considerations even more vital 
 and pressing than any which finance can prompt, 
 urge the adoption of the same policy with respect to 
 the water supply. In this department, says a recent 
 Eoyal Commission, ' the supercession of the munici- 
 palities by joint-stock companies is a comparatively 
 modern innovation.' On many grounds, sanitary ones 
 in particular, that Commission urged the restoration
 
 URBAN LAND 107 
 
 of the ' ancient practice ; ' and we may add that the 
 Public Health Act of 1848, and the Local Govern- 
 ment Act of 1858, give facilities to public bodies to 
 acquire water-works. Now that it is known how 
 much the propagation of disease depends on the 
 character of the water supply, we may be sure that, 
 urged by the strongest of motives, communities will. 
 take into their own custody these gates of life and 
 death ; and many who will never think of the 
 principle here submitted, will unwittingly, but 
 zealously, co-operate in bringing about its consum- 
 mation.
 
 108 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND. 1 
 
 WHY do the landlords of this country enjoy 
 its soil, to the exclusion of the rest of the com- 
 munity? Why can a stranger to the land, a 
 resident, it may be, in London or Paris, legally and 
 morally, exact one pound or two pounds an acre 
 from all who would cultivate a certain farm .in 
 Yorkshire or Ulster? Nine out of ten persons to 
 whom these elementary questions are addressed will 
 answer that the landlord or his representatives, in 
 point both of law and equity some vendor fairly 
 paid or some ancestor of the present owner making 
 a valid devise brought the land to its present state 
 of cultivation. He drained the land, once a swamp 
 or morass ; he fenced the open wold or moor, once 
 
 1 The substance of a part of the following chapter appeared 
 in the Fortnightly Review for May 1872.
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 100 
 
 free to all comers to roam over ; often it was he who 
 erected the barns, stables, and farm-steading in 
 general, and out of the rent of one or two pounds, 
 well scrutinised, there is, perhaps, not one farthing 
 which is other than the interest on the capital or 
 labour of the landlord, his ancestor, or a vendor of 
 the estate. This is the popular philosophy of the 
 rights of landowners ; it is also, by the way, sub- 
 stantially the reasoning of Locke and not a few 
 philosophers. 1 
 
 Let us examine it in the light of the history of 
 English agriculture. I think that those who repeat 
 the above theory, and who regard the existing rights 
 of the landowner as all based on the same simple 
 and sacred principle as that which consecrates the 
 right to a chattel, the product of a man's own skill 
 or labour, cannot be aware of the presence in the 
 
 1 It is also the philosophy popular with the landowners. 
 ' In England, the landlord, as a rule, did all permanent im- 
 provements ; the exception was when they were done by the 
 tenant.' Sir Massy Lopes, in the Devon and Cornwall 
 Chamber of Agriculture. Marie Lane Express, January 30, 
 1871. ' In Scotland all permanent improvements are done by 
 the landlords.' Duke of Argyll, House of Lords, June 14, 
 1870.
 
 110 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 statutes, the Common Law, and in English history, 
 of a mass of evidence at variance with this popular 
 compendium of the origin and justification of the 
 landlord's prerogative. It is curious indeed that 
 this theory should still be repeated, when there lie 
 spread out to the view of all numerous facts irrecon- 
 cilable with it. Apart altogether from remote 
 considerations touching the manner in which the 
 landowners became possessed of their functions, 
 dismissing as too alien from modern times the 
 question of the propriety of any original grant and 
 appropriation, it can be shown that neither they nor 
 their representatives in the past have been the 
 exclusive improvers and fertilisers of the soil. It is 
 dubious, in truth, whether they have been the chief 
 improvers. Others have laboured, and often they 
 have entered into the fruits of that labour. Many 
 of the improvements which do not bring immediate 
 returns, his alleged peculiar fitness for executing 
 which is the popular apology for the breadth and 
 extent of the rights of the landlord, perhaps would 
 not have been now accomplished, and might have 
 been indefinitely delayed, but for the State's assistance,
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 111 
 
 or, in other words, but for subsidies to the land- 
 owners coming from the taxpayers. As to less 
 arduous works, exacting a small outlay of capital, 
 and bringing compensation quickly, many of these 
 have been executed by leaseholders, or even tenants- 
 at-will. Such is still often the case. Often when 
 the landowner seems to be the improver, and to 
 bear the costs, appearances are deceptive, for the 
 tenant's rent is augmented, and it is he who in 
 reality bears the burden. 
 
 To prove and illustrate these assertions, let me, 
 in the first place, recall some evidence that the 
 drainage of the country, both arterial and surface, 
 is due in a very great degree, directly or indi- 
 rectly, to the State. From well-nigh the earliest 
 times of which ' we have record, the draining or 
 managing of the sewers (sea-weirs) of the country 
 has been regarded as a portion of the business of 
 the Government. One not familiar with the eastern 
 counties of England can scarcely realise the impor- 
 tance of this agency in some young countries. With 
 a humid climate, and a low water-shed, and dull 
 rivers trailing their slow, ill-defined way to the
 
 112 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 sea, and steeping the meadows so as to make them 
 resemble the Dutch polders, there is no possibility 
 of effective tillage unless arduous preliminary works 
 are effected, and unless it is somebody's business to 
 maintain these works when once executed. We 
 are apt, too, to be unmindful of the extent to which 
 embankments against the sea were needed, especially 
 along the east coast. Some parts of these counties, 
 such as the Great Level of the Fens, have been 
 pulled ashore. It has been hard work to keep 
 others from going out to sea. Eomney Marsh has 
 really been as much made as the Great Eastern, or 
 the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway. 'It 
 was not only the custom,' says Mr. Woolrych, in 
 his work on sewers, ' but their (the Government's) 
 duty also, to save and defend the realm against the 
 sea, as well as against enemies, so that it should be 
 neither drowned nor wasted.' For the supervision 
 of this department of drainage, there was no need of 
 special enactments. It was part of the Common 
 Law that the Crown should undertake its supervision, 
 and when the embankments gave way, the sheriff 
 could impress the labour of the county. -In fact,
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 113 
 
 there naturally grew up in Romney Marsh a code of 
 customs subsequently made binding elsewhere. For 
 the formation of inland sewers, on the other hand, 
 it was necessary to resort to Parliament. * Sewers 
 for the melioration of land,' observes Lord Hale on 
 this head, ' were by act of parliament/ The first 
 important enactment relative to inland drainage is 
 the 6 Henry VI. c. 5. It empowered the Lord 
 Chancellor to grant Commissions of Sewers, with 
 authority to impose rates. The bulk of the provisions 
 of this act were incorporated in the 23 Henry VIII. 
 c. 5, the act which, somewhat amended, is the 
 basis of the authority of the existing Sewer Com- 
 missioners. The preamble of this statute promises 
 enormous ameliorations. The draughtsman rises 
 into eloquence, and almost poetry, while he descants 
 on the losses and damages inflicted by the 4 out- 
 rageous surges ' and the ' outrageous springs.' 
 Eobert Callis, a learned lawyer, who prelected on 
 this statute at Gray's Inn, loses his head in contem- 
 plating the benefits wrapped up in the folds of this 
 statute. It was, indeed, the fashion for ancient 
 writers of legal text-books, such as Coke or Littleton, 
 
 I
 
 114 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 to put a few sprigs of rhetoric and philosophy in 
 their works, just as it is for many a modern professor 
 to put a flower on his desk ; but Callis, in defiance 
 of the nature of his subject, and far in excess 
 of the fashion of his time, swathes himself in 
 rhetorical foliage. Nevertheless, we are assured that 
 the act produced by no means great results. Its 
 scope was much restricted by the action of the courts 
 of law, which chose to construe it as having reference 
 only to improvements of the channels of navigable 
 rivers, and which declined to sanction charges imposed 
 with a view to carry out drainage of a novel cha- 
 racter. If this paper were designed to be a history of 
 drainage in England, it would be necessary to speak 
 of the services rendered by James I. and Charles I., 
 the former of whom brought over and employed 
 Cornelius Vermuyden, a skilful Dutch engineer. It 
 would also be essential to dwell upon the 13 Eliza- 
 beth, c. 9. In this brief narrative I may, however, 
 pass by these details ; and of the numerous acts 
 continuing or amending the above named, I need 
 mention only one, the 3 & 4 William IV. c. 22, 
 which empowered the Commissioners, with the con-
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 115 
 
 sent of the owners and occupiers of three-fourths of 
 the land affected, to raise rates for certain agricul- 
 tural and other purposes. By whom were the rates, 
 raised under the above statutes, paid ? That is the 
 point most material to this inquiry. Under the 
 statute of Henry VIII. the rates were contributed by 
 tenants as well as by the owners. The expressions 
 employed in the act are very general : ' He which 
 hath tenements, profits, rents, common of pasture, 
 profits of fishery, or other commodities ; or such as 
 have safety, profit, defence, or other commodity.' 
 Indeed, the owners were rated only exceptionally. 
 It may be contended that the ultimate incidence of 
 the taxes was on the owners, an abatement in rent 
 ensuing whenever the occupier was assessed. But 
 this tendency, if operative at all, was neutralised by 
 at least two circumstances : the rates were uncertain, 
 and they could not be foreseen when the landlord 
 and tenant bargained, if bargain they did ; and the 
 Commissioners were appointed from among the 
 landowners. 
 
 While thus helping to augment the value of 
 land, the State had up to this period been content 
 
 i 2
 
 116 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 to empower landowners to rate recalcitrant members 
 of their own class or their tenants. In tracing 
 briefly the history of subsequent legislation, it is 
 unnecessary to do more than refer to the fact that 
 there were passed various acts for the formation of 
 companies, furnished with power to issue debentures, 
 in order to drain such tracts as Cambridge Fens. 
 Private drainage companies still exist. In virtue of 
 special acts owners with limited interests are per- 
 mitted to charge their estates with loans from these 
 companies for the purpose of improvements, and 
 such charges take priority. In the beginning of 
 this reign the Legislature began two kinds of novel 
 operations. The wonderful results accomplished by 
 Mr. Smith of Deanstoun's method of draining were 
 then exciting much attention. Sir Eobert Peel 
 preached the advantages of draining, and practised 
 his teaching. On his own estate he drained two 
 thousand nine hundred acres, and to all his tenants 
 he offered to drain their farms at his own expense 
 on condition that they paid four per cent, on the 
 outlay. The distress of Ireland being then sore and 
 grievous, the necessity of exceptional intervention on
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 117 
 
 the part of the Legislature being then generally 
 admitted, philanthropy came to swell the existing 
 eagerness to drain. It was argued that the bogs 
 of Ireland were the great source of her poverty. 
 A select committee of the House of Lords in 1830 
 recommended drainage at the public expense as 
 highly expedient. One way in which this eagerness 
 showed itself was, as we have seen, in interference with 
 entails. By the 3 & 4 Vic. c. 55, and the 8 & 9 Vic. 
 c. 56, as well as by the acts applying to Scotland, 
 landlords who were only tenants for life were per- 
 mitted to charge their estates with money to be ex- 
 pended in drainage. As the State did not furnish 
 the money, there was no clear objection to be taken 
 to the principle of this proposal. The chief flaws in 
 these acts were of a very different character ; they did 
 not enable the tenant for life to charge the land for 
 a sufficiently long period. A term of eighteen years 
 for the repayment of all instalments was too short. 
 But in principle these acts were perhaps expedient. 
 The Legislature had allowed entails to be created. 
 Too many of the landlords, being tenants for life, 
 found themselves debarred from either charging
 
 118 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 their land or selling any portion in order to raise 
 money to be expended on improvements, and as 
 selling was naturally unpalatable to a parliament 
 of landowners, the only alternative was permis- 
 sion to charge one's land. By the 9 & 10 Vic. 
 c. 101, however, a new era was opened for the 
 English landowner. ' Whereas,' says the preamble 
 of this act, the first of a series of eleemosynary 
 statutes, known as the Public Money Drainage Acts, 
 which absolved the English landlords from a not 
 unimportant portion of their duties, * it is desirable 
 that works of drainage should be encouraged, in 
 order to promote the increased productiveness of the 
 land and the healthiness of the districts where it is 
 required, and to supply the demand for agricultural 
 labour, especially at that season of the year when 
 other sources are expended, &c.' This preamble, so 
 redolent of an old-world Political Economy, was the 
 strange language used by a parliament of which 
 Cobden and Joseph Hume were members. Clearly 
 the landlords were not to surrender the Corn Laws 
 without some solid equivalent. The fear that under 
 a regime of free trade the farmers of England would
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 119 
 
 be unable to endure foreign competition a fear 
 which induced Peel generously to offer to his tenants 
 a reduction of rent in some cases weighed with 
 Parliament, and quieted its scruples against granting 
 this measure of relief to the landowners, and the 
 result was that 2,000,000/. were allotted to the 
 landowners of Great Britain and 1,000, OOO/. to 
 those of Ireland. It was decided that the rate of 
 interest under this act should not exceed six and a 
 half per cent. ; this also constituted a sinking fund, 
 which would wipe out the debt to the State in 
 twenty-two years. Then came the acts of 1856 and 
 1861, the latter of which empowered the Treasury 
 to advance sums in aid of improvements certified to 
 be permanent. Let me mention, in conclusion, as 
 belonging to the category of private drainage 
 measures, the act of 1864, which considerably 
 augmented the number of objects for which a land- 
 owner could charge his estates. Such, in brief, is 
 the history of legislation with respect to drainage in 
 England. 
 
 As to the terms on which advances were made, 
 I need scarcely say they were below the market rate.
 
 120 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 That they were ever accepted, trammelled as they 
 were by numerous conditions respecting the time 
 within which the work was to be completed, and as to 
 the depth of drains, a depth not universally approved 
 the four-feet drains being often thought unsuitable 
 in certain situations proves so much of the asser- 
 tion. But in further corroboration of the statement 
 that the landlords really got gratuities, let me recall 
 the fact that the rate for advances in England under 
 the 9 and 10 Vic. c. 101, was confessedly chosen 
 with an eye to the necessities and poverty of Irish 
 landlords, and that advances were made on the same 
 terms in England and Scotland, where the same 
 degree of distress did not exist. As Lord JoBn 
 Eussell observed, in the course of his explanation of 
 the proposal, the rate of advances from the Treasury 
 had, until the passing of the act, been five per 
 cent, ; it was reduced to about three and a half 
 per cent. And what, of course, added to the ease 
 of the terms was the facility with which remissions 
 were granted. Of the 10,7 32,380 J. Is. bd. actually 
 advanced for purposes more or less connected with 
 Irish agriculture, 5,719,757/. 6s. were remitted-
 
 'AGRICULTURAL LAND 121 
 
 and though the major part of the sum was 
 expended on the county relief works, there can be 
 no doubt that these works to some extent absolved 
 the owners of the soil from burdens elsewhere 
 ultimately borne by them. 
 
 Under various acts the Enclosure Commissioners 
 in England, and the Commissioners of Public 
 Works in Ireland, were permitted to dole out 
 bounties ; and since the unavailing protests of 
 Mr. Eoebuck and Mr. Joseph Hume there has 
 been lifted up against them scarcely a voice. It is a 
 rarity to hear a statesman of eminence like Lord 
 Derby expressing a doubt whether they have been 
 beneficial. Nobles and wealthy men took advan- 
 tage of those State-given facilities, to be paralleled 
 only in Prussia, another country in which the land- 
 owners have had a large share in the making of 
 laws. In the reports of the Irish Public Work 
 Commissions, you find the Marquis of Waterford 
 among the borrowers and subsidized agriculturists. 
 I shall use no harsh terms ; I shall not call these 
 grants measures of outdoor relief to the landowners ; 
 but it may be permitted to one to say without
 
 122 TEE LAND QUESTION 
 
 offence that it is curious to observe that, in times 
 when the doctrines of free trade have become 
 household truths, and in a country where the 
 aspirations of Socialism are most emphatically 
 disowned, the one occupation to which the State 
 has freely and almost without cavil or challenge 
 granted subventions, for which the State has per- 
 formed that which Socialists have in vain demanded 
 for other trades, and that the occupation thus 
 singled out for distinction is one which less than all 
 others requires State aid. Bounties to new manu- 
 factures are ever questionable ; but bounties to the 
 oldest of trades, and the only indigenous one I 
 Again and again artizans or their friends have 
 requested loans to be made to them on easy terms 
 in order to aid them in founding co-operative 
 institutions. Almost uniformly have their requests 
 been rejected and derided. Political Economy was 
 against them, as in its time, and in the mouths of 
 some expositors, it has been against most things : 
 their requests were the rank, noisome weeds of 
 Socialism. In France the friends of co-operation 
 did indeed obtain a meagre grant in 1848, and no
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 123 
 
 reproaches have been spared the National Assembly 
 for voting 120,000/. to needy artizans who sought 
 to redeem themselves from the uncertainties of the 
 condition of wage-receivers reproaches not always 
 founded on the imperfect security which they could 
 furnish to the lenders, or on the alleged superfluous 
 character of the occupations, but on some supposed 
 mysterious breach of the principle of justice. I, for 
 one, fail to perceive the existence of any distinction 
 in point of principle, between building barns for a 
 nobleman and warehouses for a group of artizans, 
 or, at all events, it is not clear that those who cut 
 in with a stingy distinguo can make out that the 
 difference redounds, to the credit of the landlords 
 possessed of property always more or less con- 
 vertible, and therefore with some capital always at 
 their disposal. Granted that the community is 
 peculiarly interested in the cultivation of the soil ; 
 are the landlords, sitting rent-free for ever, inca- 
 pable of performing work which tenants will often 
 execute for themselves if allowed a lease of nine- 
 teen or twenty-one years wherein to reimburse them- 
 selves ? and could not a loan, if loan were necessary,
 
 124 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 go directly into the pockets of the farmer ? In order 
 to disarm the above facts it will, no doubt, be con- 
 tended that, after all, such contributions were small 
 in amount in comparison with what was actually 
 paid out of the private pockets of the landowners. 
 But a detailed examination of both England and 
 Scotland will, it is submitted, fail to justify the 
 contention ; and so far as Ireland is concerned that 
 assertion will probably not be made by those con- 
 versant with the country or the authoritative reports 
 of Lord Devon's Commission or Dr. Hancock. So 
 far as drainage has been executed by private funds, 
 the tenants, not the owners, have been the chief 
 contributors. Much land has been drained by 
 farmers unaided. Often they are grateful if, at the 
 termination of leases of nineteen years, if lease of 
 that length there be, a revaluation and a rise of rent 
 do not occur. A very common arrangement is 
 that in virtue of which the owner gives the tiles or 
 pipes, and the tenant furnishes the necessary labour. 
 Even when the landlord bore the whole expenses 
 he obtained two advantages first, money at a low 
 rate ; secondly, if a tenant for life, liberty to charge
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 125 
 
 what was not his own. But usually he obtained a 
 third advantage he threw the incidence of the 
 loan, either wholly or partially, on his tenant. 
 Sometimes he made a profit by certain sharp prac- 
 tices. Mr. Caird, in his work on English agricul- 
 ture, speaks of Yorkshire landlords who borrowed at 
 six and a half per cent, from the Government, and 
 lent at seven and a half per cent, to their farmers. 
 Take the county of Elgin and the adjacent counties 
 as illustration. While the Government loan lasted, 
 the following, as I am kindly informed by one 
 well qualified to speak, was the rule : ' Some pro- 
 prietors charged their tenants six per cent., but the 
 great majority charged only five. The tenants paid 
 this to the end of their lease, and then their farms 
 were revalued for the coming lease.' Another 
 informant, speaking of the same district and same 
 subject, says the custom was ' to charge the tenant a 
 yearly percentage of about one or one and a half 
 per cent, in excess of the Government rate.' In 
 fact, in a great many instances in which apparently 
 the landlord, or the landlord aided by the State, is 
 the improver, the burden of the work is really
 
 
 126 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 borne by the tenant." The latter, too, frequently 
 openly performs the whole work. The authority 
 whom I first quoted adds, ' the tenants have drained 
 a great deal themselves without any help from the 
 proprietors or any one else perhaps a third, if not 
 a half, of all that has been done. They have 
 expended an equally large portion, too, on build- 
 ings, trenching, &c.' One of the greatest works of 
 drainage ever accomplished in the north of Scotland 
 has been accomplished solely by a tenant farmer. 
 The loch of Auchlossan, situated about thirty-five 
 miles west of Aberdeen, was, I recollect, ten years 
 ago a sheet of water two to five feet deep and 
 covering one hundred and eighty acres. There was 
 a margin of sixty acres composed of bog and 
 swamp. It was not the three proprietors of this 
 worthless tract who drained it. A tenant farmer, 
 Mr. James Barclay, 1 undertook and accomplished 
 the task. The feeders of the loch were cut off, a 
 tunnel of three quarters of a mile was excavated to 
 carry off the water, open ditches were dug across 
 
 1 Now M.P. for Forfarshire.
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 127 
 
 the surface of the loch, furrow drains were then 
 made, and for the first two years the whole surface 
 was turned over with the spade at a cost of twenty 
 shillings to sixty shillings an acre. In considera- 
 tion of this enormous outlay it was stipulated that 
 the tenant should hold this useless piece of land 
 rent-free for twenty years, and should pay one 
 hundred pounds for each of five subsequent years. 
 The proprietors have, however, I understand, ex- 
 tended the period to twenty-seven years. A some- 
 what similar arrangement exists, I believe, on some 
 of the estates of the Marquis of Huntly. A lease of 
 thirty years is given to the tenant ; during the first 
 part of the lease he may pay two shillings and 
 sixpence, then five shillings, and finally a much larger 
 sum. 1 
 
 A second modification of the popular theory of 
 landowning is necessary. This second deduction is 
 as important as the first. It has always been a 
 
 1 The Duke of Richmond stated in the House of Lords 
 (June 14, 1870), that a twenty-one years' lease gave sufficient 
 time to obtain compensation for all improvements. His tenants, 
 I can testify, will tell a different tale.
 
 128 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 part of the Common Law that improvements, 
 whether in the shape of tillage or manures, build- 
 ings or fences erected by the tenant, and, in fact, 
 fixtures generally, become the property of the 
 owner of the soil, in virtue of the maxim, Quidquid 
 plantatur solo cedit solo. Though somewhat altered 
 from its old harshness to the advantage of the 
 tenant, that rule, the fit appendage of a land system 
 dependent on slaves or villeins, still subsists. Of 
 course, a custom to the contrary will overrule the 
 doctrine ; and, fortunately, in several of the counties 
 of England, such as Sussex, Surrey, Lincoln, and 
 parts of Kent and Nottinghamshire, there do exist 
 tolerably well-defined customs, in virtue of which 
 the tenant obtains compensation for the unexhausted 
 improvement which he has effected. The doctrine 
 of the Common Law relative to emblements, or 
 growing crops, is another rude and inadequate 
 attempt to mitigate the rigour and injustice of the 
 principle. As a matter of fact, too, landlords dare 
 not use all the power with which the law invests 
 them ; public opinion would be shocked were they 
 to do all that which they may do, for here most
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 129 
 
 conspicuously the law, which ought to be abreast if 
 not ahead of the popular morality, lags behind. 
 But not only are these controlling customs far from 
 general in England, and almost unknown in Scot- 
 land their codification, or even the cataloguing of 
 them, would be of great service to landlords and 
 outgoing or ingoing tenants but it is rare that they 
 meet all causes of complaint. 
 
 Though the act of 1851, relative to agricultural 
 fixtures, has to some extent alleviated certain 
 grievances, it is still the case that the tenant who may 
 ' erect any farm building, either detached or other- 
 wise, engine or machinery, either for agricultural 
 purposes or trade and agriculture, without having 
 first obtained the consent of the landlord in writing, 
 does so at the peril of confiscation.' Even if consent 
 is granted, the landlord has a prior right to purchase 
 the machinery and engine at a valuation. Nor are 
 there wanting some signal instances of wrong coming 
 to pass, in consequence of this doctrine. In proof 
 I may refer to the treatment of Dr. O'Fay, parish 
 priest of Craughwell, in the county of Galway, who 
 
 expended 400/. in the erection of buildings, on the 
 
 K
 
 130 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 strength of a promise given by the father of his 
 landlord that a lease should be granted. He was 
 evicted. His claims were disregarded. He appealed 
 to no purpose ; the Irish Lord Chancellor, the Lord 
 Justice of Appeal, and the Master of the Eolls, con- 
 demning severely the injustice of the law which they 
 were forced to administer. It is not long since the 
 Duke of Buccleuch endeavoured in a Scotch court 
 to appropriate a wire fence erected by a tenant. It 
 is, however, unnecessary at this point to discuss the 
 justice or policy of the law relative to fixtures and im- 
 provements. It is enough for my present purpose to 
 draw attention to the operation of this agency in 
 English agriculture, and to maintain that in the case 
 of tenants, often compelled to find their sustenance in 
 farming, without chaffering about terms, and often 
 unprovided with the security of leases, or, at all 
 events, leases fortified by tenant-right, 1 the operation 
 
 1 For some valuable information respecting leases, see Mr. 
 Clement Cadle's essay on the Farming Customs and Covenants 
 of England in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, 
 vol. iii. ; and Mr. Wingrove Cook on Agricultural Tenancies. 
 I may also refer to Mr. McNeil Caird's admirable pamphlet on 
 The Land Tenancy Laws.
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 131 
 
 of this rule must have been, and always must be, to 
 transfer to the owner of the soil value which was in 
 reality the product of the labour and capital of the 
 tenant. There being too often no freedom of con- 
 tract between the two parties, in any other sense 
 than there is between the man who must buy and 
 the man who need not sell, there has not always 
 been the ability to stipulate for compensation for 
 improvements. With more people seeking farms 
 than farmers, and power to evict existing without 
 corresponding ability to stand out for better terms, 
 with needy tenants whom the law of distress in 
 England, and that of hypothec in Scotland, make it 
 safe to accept there has been a steady flow of the 
 outlay of tenants into the purses of the landowners. 
 The many generous members of this class, who 
 would scorn to take advantage of the injustice of the 
 law, must not hide from us the few who, give them 
 a chance, would exact the last farthing on the plea 
 that ' business is business.' About the extent of this 
 transference, it is difficult to speak precisely. Sur- 
 mise must here eke out information. Mr. Caird 
 speaks of the value of the unexhausted improvements 
 
 K 2
 
 132 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 as being, in some English counties, 3/. to 5. an acre. 
 The experience of Ireland throws some dim light on 
 the problem. 1 There an outgoing tenant has been 
 known to sell his right in thirty acres indifferently 
 tilled for 300/. The total value of the tenant-right 
 in Ulster has been computed at many millions ; and, 
 after making allowance for the fact that of the price 
 paid a part was given for good-will, and taking into 
 account the well-known truth, mentioned by the 
 Devon Commission, that in Ireland the tenant has 
 long been accustomed to execute work elsewhere exe- 
 cuted by the landlord, we shall nevertheless arrive at 
 the conclusion that the sum at stake must be consider- 
 able. Let us here briefly consider two questions. 
 First : What are the varieties of agricultural capital 
 which it takes the longest time to replace ? Apart 
 from drains and buildings, both of which are often 
 the work of the tenant, probably the articles which 
 will be longest in recouping themselves will be 
 threshing machines, or other expensive agricultural 
 
 1 The summary of the evidence taken before the Devon 
 Commission states that ' the price of a tenant-right frequently 
 amounts to 10Z., 12Z., 20Z., or 25Z. per acre.'
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 133 
 
 instruments. The second question is this : Of the 
 entire capital sunk in a well-tilled farm, at any 
 moment, what constitutes the greater part? Ma- 
 nures, stock, implements, &c. in other words, all 
 which it is customary for the tenant to contribute. 
 So much is the tenant expected to do that Lord 
 Derby has stated, perhaps a little incautiously, and 
 with a candour which all his friends will not laud, 
 that the chief duty of the landlord is, not to hinder 
 the investment of capital in the land by his tenant. 
 Without criticising this doctrine that it is the chief 
 duty of the landowner to keep his hands off his 
 tenants, I may here cite, with relevancy and pro- 
 priety, an observation of Mr. J. J. Mechi, of Tiptree 
 Farm. ' On my farm,' and, of course, his is 
 somewhat exceptional experience ' which requires 
 plenty of manure and deep cultivation, I cannot 
 prosper with less than 16/. per acre.' I understand 
 that in Aberdeenshire the tenant should have 61. to 
 8/. per acre, in order to cultivate his farm with 
 success. If the facts be so, and if our answers to 
 the above questions be correct, this, then, is the 
 paradox which we find : for the exercise of his
 
 134 .. . THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 vocation the tenant must have some, nay much, 
 capital, while the landlord need have none, and the 
 law is so framed that the more the former invests 
 the better is the position of the latter. 
 
 The numerous modifications which it is impera- 
 tive to make in the popular theory of property in land 
 have brought one face to face with the conclusion that 
 much of the rent of agricultural land proceeds from 
 the exertions of others than the landowners. But I 
 desire particularly to press home another truth, and 
 that is, that agricultural rent tends more and more to 
 approximate to the condition of ground-rent, or, in 
 other words, to become rent strictly so called. In 
 many of the older counties, and on the estates of 
 landowners who do not improve, it has reached that 
 state. When drainage ceases to be necessary ; 
 when the chief advances essential to be made are 
 such as will -be returned within a lease of seven to 
 twenty-one years ; when the tenant-farmers are a 
 class possessed of capital, and doing the work 
 formerly and properly discharged by the landowners ; 
 or when the State or a tenant executes permanent 
 and tardily remunerating improvements, rent,
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 135 
 
 ceasing to be the interest on the capital of the 
 owner, becomes that produit net which, we have 
 seen, in equity belongs to the community. When 
 Lord Derby tells his class that its prime duty is to 
 grant leases and let the farmers alone, and when we 
 are assured by the friends of the landowners that the 
 sole reforms necessary are tenant-right and leases, 
 there unwittingly escapes an acknowledgment that 
 agricultural rent is becoming more and more the price 
 charged for a natural monopoly and not a service. It 
 may be true that the benefit of original advances re- 
 mains ; but if the benefactors have been the landlord's 
 ancestors, that does not prove his present utility, 
 The good work of the grandfather is an inadequate 
 apology for the uselessness of the grandson. 
 
 Here we touch the prime grievance and kernel 
 of the land question of England, so far as agricul- 
 ture is concerned. It is felt that the State or com- 
 munity possesses rights with respect to ' economical 
 rent,' and that due satisfaction of these must be 
 reconciled with the proper encouragement and 
 reward of the actual cultivator. Let us first finish 
 considering the claims of the latter.
 
 136 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 Can we not effect much which is desirable, and 
 correct not a few anomalies, without breaking with 
 our past and by continuing the ' idea,' to use a 
 Coleridgian expression, of our institutions by 
 carrying out, not reversing, the history of the tenure 
 of land in England ? We can ; and, by studying 
 that past, we shall be encouraged to think that, far 
 from portending solne monstrous birth, the throes 
 of agitation touching the land may be the sign of 
 the fulness of time, and that the nation is about to 
 bring forth that which will be neither novel nor 
 appalling. If the student of the history of English 
 land tenures were asked to compress the substance 
 of his researches into small space, doubtless he would 
 reply that from early times until now there has been 
 going on, slowly, with long halts, and some retro- 
 gression, a process tending to reduce the number 
 of persons exercising privileges over, and draining 
 revenues from, the soil without discharging functions 
 of commensurate value. The usufructuary and the 
 fructiner tend to be the same ; and the purport of 
 all my past remarks is to prompt the reflection 
 that, if this tendency be continued, there must be
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 137 
 
 great changes, and the purport of all my 
 future remarks is to show in what direction 
 those changes will naturally be. Very many, 
 curious, complicated and onerous, are the tenures 
 which we find in old English law; and their 
 conversion into common socage tenures produced 
 great good to the realm. Blackstone puts the 
 effects before those of Magna Charta itself. So 
 much was then done to strip the tree of the para- 
 sitical growth around it. In the history of villein- 
 age, we have, perhaps, a chapter of the same tale. 
 In the villein, it is commonly alleged, though with 
 doubtful accuracy, that we have the predecessor of 
 the copyholder, whose tenure, originally ' base,' arid 
 with all the incidents of baseness attaching to it, was 
 in course of time transformed into a tenure differing 
 little in point of value from that of the freeholder. 
 We know that all of these villeins were not manu- 
 mitted without a struggle. ' We will that ye make 
 us free for ever ; ourselves, our heirs, and our 
 lands ; and that we be called no more bond, or so 
 reputed. These were the dignified terms in which 
 the peasants, in 1382, made their demands. They
 
 138 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 were cajoled by empty, false promises. No sooner 
 were they rendered impotent by deceit than the 
 promises which they had received were recalled. 
 There was another chapter of this history completed 
 when tithes were commuted. Though these still 
 remain as a charge on the land, they do not any 
 longer directly touch the cultivator. He no longer 
 only partially gathers the fruits of his labour. 
 Paley, no mean judge, enumerated among the agri- 
 cultural improvements to be desired in his day, 
 the commutation of tithes, and the enfranchisement 
 of copyholds. The first was accomplished by the 
 act of 1836, and the second is in a fair way to be 
 so. I might also include in the list of such en- 
 franchisements the compulsory sales effected in 
 Ireland, under the Encumbered Estates Act, which 
 relieved Ireland from not a few landlords of the 
 leech species, as well as the more gradual enfran- 
 chisement effected by changes in prices, which have 
 often, in process of time, made quit rents insignifi- 
 cant. I might further support the above contention 
 by instances taken from the history of countries such
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 139 
 
 as Prussia and Wurtemburg. 1 But, perhaps, enough 
 of evidence has been collected to corroborate the as- 
 sertion that the varieties of tenures tend to diminish, 
 and that the faineant landlord tends to disappear. 
 
 What, then, is naturally the next phase of this 
 evolution? It appears to me to be this the en- 
 franchisement of leaseholders ; not turning all 
 farmers at one stroke into landlords, regardless of 
 the rights of the present owners, but the granting of 
 facilities for enfranchisement somewhat similar to 
 those accorded to copyholders. Let all those who 
 are leaseholders 2 be enabled to claim enfranchise- 
 ment on payment of a sum calculated on the average 
 rent of the last four or five years. Such in substance 
 is one suggestion which I make as a mode of 
 bringing ownership in land more nearly in accord- 
 ance with the true theory, and as a cure for certain 
 
 1 I might here have referred to the Church Estates Act, 
 facilitating the commutation of leases of twenty-one years into 
 estates of fee simple, and the enfranchisement of the tenants 
 of Prince Edward's Island the former a measure due to Earl 
 Derby, the latter to the late Lord Lytton. The edicts of 
 Stein and Hardenberg in 1807 and 1811 are cases in point. 
 
 2 Or rather, ' all those who are leaseholders or tenants 
 from year to year.'
 
 140 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 of the evils which I have catalogued I shall not 
 answer those who object that this would be a 
 measure of spoliation : a price is to be paid. 
 Neither need I reply to those who say that the 
 above suggestion is Socialism ; for, after all, Social- 
 ism is nothing other than what the majority of the 
 moment think society should not do, and what the 
 minority of the moment think society should do. 
 But in reply to those who take the more reasonable 
 objection, that there was peculiar ease in commuting 
 copyhold into freehold property, owing to the fact 
 that the dues were determined by custom, it may be 
 stated that the Copyhold Commissioners, in their 
 very first report, complain that they were confronted 
 by the difficulty of determining the value of the 
 incidents of copyholds. Not much greater diffi- 
 culty, it is submitted, would be encountered in 
 valuing accurately the conflicting claims of lords of 
 the soil and leaseholders. So many years' pur- 
 chase of the rack-rent would be the natural basis. 
 No doubt, it will be said, ' If the price is above that 
 which the landlord would obtain in the open market, 
 the suggestion is valueless ; if below it, the suggestion
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 141 
 
 is a form of confiscation.' Which is true, if by 
 confiscation is to be understood appropriating all 
 above the average rate of profits in other words, 
 treating a man no worse than his neighbours. It 
 may be said, too, that the scheme would be practi- 
 cally inoperative. Now, such an assertion conflicts 
 with the experience which we have obtained as to 
 the Irish Land Act. In the working of that act, 
 and particularly in the case of the Marquis of 
 Waterford's estates, we have seen tenants come 
 forward and offer twenty, thirty, and even fifty 
 years' purchase. If such things are done in Ireland, 
 may we not anticipate that more would be done in 
 England, far the wealthier country? Companies 
 would, no doubt, be created to assist in such en- 
 franchisement, even as there have been created 
 companies to assist in enfranchising copyholds ; and 
 some might think it worth while to grant to tenants 
 facilities similar to those which are accorded under 
 Bright's clauses. If it be asked what would be the 
 special benefit which would come to pass from such 
 a change, it may be answered that to create, not by 
 violence, but by natural means, not per saltum, but
 
 142 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 gradually, and so much in deference to an ancient 
 tendency as almost plainly to stand justified, a race 
 of proprietors whose domains shall not be so vast 
 as to allow of idleness or indifference to perfect 
 culture, nor so small as to doom them to penury and 
 the necessity of foregoing enterprise or improve- 
 ments, would not only be the destruction of some of 
 the anomalies which have been mentioned in the 
 early pages of this chapter, but would also establish 
 that state which economists, with few exceptions, 
 have pronounced the most desirable. With large 
 farms and small properties there would be a con- 
 junction of capital with the 'magic of property.' 
 There would be no flagrant instance of the farmer 
 being the sole improver, without sharing in the 
 profits. There would be a splendid object of 
 ambition before the frugal and industrious farmer. 
 The broken rounds in the social ladder which enable 
 one to climb from the lot of the labourer would be 
 mended. The land would, in the language of 
 Wendel Phillips, ' float back into the nation,' and 
 not a little of the dangerous disaffection now rife 
 would vanish.
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 143 
 
 Meantime, farmers ask for a much smaller boon 
 than the right to become the owners of the soil 
 which they cultivate. They are content to claim 
 greater security of tenure and certain alterations in 
 the law relating to unexhausted improvements, so 
 that they shall not till in peril of their capital or the 
 fruits of their industry being confiscated, and that 
 they may be protected against the risk of being 
 evicted at a six months' notice. Let us consider 
 the condition of the great majority of the farmers of 
 England. It will be seen to be almost incompatible 
 with general high farming. Perhaps, also, it will be 
 held to be at variance with justice. In England 
 leases are rather the exception, 1 and most farms are 
 held on that truly base or servile tenure, a yearly 
 tenancy, terminable on six months' notice a tenure 
 which, I may say, revolts good conscience, and the 
 terms of which most men dare not freely act upon 
 in their dealings with their tenants. ' What is a 
 yearly tenancy ? ' asks a landlord and the apologist 
 
 1 ' An eminent land agent assures me that, out of 1,500 
 farms which he has let, only one-fourth were on lease.' Mr. 
 Mechi, May 8, 1871.
 
 144 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 of landlords. * Why, it is an impossible tenure a 
 tenure which, if its terms were literally interpreted, 
 no Christian man would offer, and none but a mad- 
 man would accept.' 1 Lord Dufferin has, perhaps, 
 ample warrant for these words. If custom and 
 public opinion, which frowns on the ruthless exer- 
 cise of the right to evict, did not, so far as it can, 
 punish evictions and mollify this form of tenancy, it 
 might be, as he says, impossible. These checks 
 notwithstanding, the lot of the tenant from year to 
 year is lamentably precarious. At six months' 
 notice he may be turned out of a farm which he 
 and his have cultivated for ages ; not in sixteen 
 months, if he be farming well, can he take up all 
 his goods and chattels and effects and depart with- 
 out loss. If he has put marl or clay upon his farm, 
 the benefits may not be exhausted for fully half a 
 dozen years ; the effects of oil- cake, lime, guano, 
 may last for nearly the same period ; and if the 
 tenant has erected stone fences, or has drained, it 
 may be a dozen years and more before he is reim- 
 bursed. A six months' notice, good enough, 
 
 1 Lord Dufferin, House of Lords, January 14, 1870.
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 145 
 
 perhaps, when the three-field course of agriculture 
 was general, is somewhat barbarous in these days of 
 high farming. 
 
 ' Mr. Mechi,' said a sensible farmer, ' has told us 
 to expend 1,000/. on every fifty acres. Fancy a 
 man doing this and then being liable to be sent to 
 the right-about by a six months' notice to quit ! ' 
 He would be a fool or an angel who would farm 
 high in such precarious circumstances. Nor will 
 leases, even of considerable length, secure good farm- 
 ing and the tenant's investments. It is well known 
 that under a nineteen years' lease, such as is the rule 
 in Scotland, a farm is often producing the utmost 
 only for about half the lease. Unless restrained by 
 covenants, an outgoing tenant may ' scourge,' or 
 * physic ' his farm ; if he is bound to pursue a 
 certain course of husbandry, he may extract the 
 very utmost consistently with the observance of the 
 letter of the cropping covenants of the lease and 
 immunity from an action for ' waste ; ' and it may be 
 that he, on entering into possession, found the soil 
 exhausted by his predecessor, tempted like himself to 
 strain the land too much. And so only for a half of 
 
 L
 
 146 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 the lease may a farm be in good condition. To pro- 
 vide against such contingencies, landowners are wont 
 to append to leases elaborate covenants, binding 
 tenants to follow certain rules of husbandry, e.g., 
 not to take two white grain crops consecutively, not 
 to sell straw, hay, and fodder off a farm, to work it 
 on a three, four, six, or seven years' rotation, to cul- 
 tivate according to the custom of the country, and 
 to observe it under penalties. When there is no 
 express covenant, it is always assumed that the 
 tenant agrees to follow the custom of the country. 1 
 But all these precautions shut out one form of 
 evil only to admit another. Men who know their 
 business are told how to do it by men who don't 
 know ; or if the cropping covenants are prepared 
 with judgment, they may not, and indeed they 
 
 1 ' In the absence of any express covenant on the subject, a 
 covenant or promise is implied on the part of the lessee, that 
 he will use the buildings in a tenantable and proper manner, 
 as that he will manage and cultivate the lands in a good and 
 husbandlike manner, according to the custom of the country ; 
 but not that he will make a certain quantity of fallow and 
 spend a certain quantity of manure thereon, and keep the 
 buildings in repair, or any other stipulation not arising out 
 of the bare relation of landlord and tenant.' "Woodfall, Land- 
 lord and Tenant, p. 123.
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 147 
 
 cannot, take cognizance of fluctuating circumstances, 
 or favour new scientific methods which it behoves 
 a farmer to watch. Prices may justify his putting 
 a larger stretch under cereals than was contemplated 
 by the framer of the leases. He may see good 
 reason to deviate from ' the custom of the country.' 
 The Leicestershire farmer may desire to abandon 
 the six shift, or ' sair sax,' as it is termed in Scotland, 
 or the five years' course of rotation, the effect of 
 which, to quote the words of a competent authority, 
 resembles * overdriving a weak horse.' 1 It may 
 happen, too, that the covenants of a lease prevent 
 the sale of straw or stable manures under a heavy 
 penalty, when it would be expedient to purchase 
 more powerful fertilisers. Even when a lease is 
 wisely drawn, and when it is not cunningly framed 
 with an eye to tripping up any tenant who happens 
 to make himself obnoxious, it cannot meet all con- 
 tingencies ; almost inevitably it cramps skill and 
 enterprise ; and bound by the covenants of an 
 
 1 A writer in Morton's Cyclopedia of Agriculture aptly 
 observes that ' the longest lease passes, during its effluxion, 
 through every variety of short lease, till, at last, it is tanta- 
 mount to no lease at all.'
 
 148 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 ordinary English lease, bristling with minute instruc- 
 tions and penalties, a Jethro Tull or an Albert Thaer 
 might be heavily cast in damages. I may here 
 mention an instance of the mischief which such 
 covenants produce. The scene of the events was 
 the parish of Bourtie in Aberdeenshire. A certain 
 farmer w r as bound to cultivate according to a seven 
 years' course. Finding that he could not keep a 
 portion of his land clean, he farmed one half un- 
 der the six years' course and the other under the 
 five years' course. At the end of the lease the 
 farm had been enhanced in value ; valuators sent 
 by the owner reported that it had not suffered 
 by the change in cropping. Nevertheless the 
 owner claimed, and claimed with success, a penalty 
 of 30J. for a breach of covenant. I shall narrate the 
 upshot in the words of my informant. ' The out- 
 going tenant was mulcted of his 30/., and had to 
 leave all his improvements, which he had effected by 
 trenching, draining, and making roads and ditches, 
 and the proprietor received about a third more 
 rent from the form.' I cannot believe that the 
 universal verdict upon this stoiy will be that
 
 L LAND 149 
 
 the tenant quite merited the punishment which he 
 received. There is another evil connected with 
 leases and familiar to all agriculturists. A tenant 
 may farm so well as to farm himself out of his 
 holding. If he has greatly enhanced the letting 
 value of his land, the expiration of his lease may 
 be the signal for a new valuation and a rise in rent. 
 Farming moderately well is safest. The Egyptian 
 fellah tries to look poor to protect himself against 
 the tax-gatherer, and English tenant-farmers are 
 sometimes tempted to take similar precautions 
 against rises of rent. As Allingham in his homely 
 verse says : 
 
 ' To cut a drain might dig their own pitfall ; 
 'Twere ostentation to rebuild a wall ; 
 And did they further dare to stub the whins, 
 The great folks soon would visit all their sins.' 
 
 Allingham writes of Ireland ; but the same is 
 true of many an English estate. May we not, then, 
 in the light of the absence of leases, of antiquated 
 covenants, or of the danger of an energetic culti- 
 vator being rewarded by a rise of rent, say of 
 England, as a whole, that one part of it is farmed by 
 men who dare not improve, owing to insecurity of
 
 150 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 tenure, and that much of the residue is in the 
 custody of men who are forbidden to farm as well as 
 they could ? 
 
 In some degree these defects are inseparable 
 from leases ; and one cannot regard Scotch agri- 
 culturists have long ceased to regard long leases 
 as the dernier mot of agriculture. The same ob- 
 jections which have already been taken to life 
 estates are applicable a fortiori to tenancies for a 
 brief term of years. We have seen that the Legis- 
 lature has been obliged to come to the rescue of the 
 tenant for life, and to bestow upon him not a few of 
 the powers of the owner of the fee simple. And if 
 this step became necessary, notwithstanding the 
 fact that the Common Law gave the tenant for life 
 rights of ownership with respect to emblements, we 
 may ask the Legislature to do as much on behalf of 
 the tenant for a term of years, destitute of any such 
 protection, or, in other words, grant tenant right of 
 some kind to the lessee as well as to the tenant for 
 life. Leases, even if for considerable periods, will 
 not effect the objects enlightened agriculturists have 
 at heart. The greatest of English writers on agri-
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 151 
 
 culture has emphatically said, 'I have in different 
 parts of the kingdom seen farms fall in after leases 
 of three lives of the duration of fifty, sixty, and 
 even seventy years, in which the residence of the 
 principal tenant was not to be distinguished from 
 the cottared fields surrounding it.' 1 We want 
 some mode of tenure which will at once keep 
 the tenant in a position of security, which will 
 interest all concerned in the work of reclamation or 
 improvement, and which will prevent those evils 
 incidental to long leases of which Arthur Young 
 speaks. 
 
 In his Gentleman Farmer a work which, by 
 the way, contains one of the first rational explana- 
 tions of the rotation of crops Lord Kames, struck 
 with the evils incident to leases, and especially with 
 the tenant's temptation to farm badly and ' run out 
 ground ' in the last years of his term, proposed that 
 each tenant should receive a lease of nineteen years, 
 with the right of renewal on condition that he paid 
 
 1 See Lord Dufferin on Irish Emigration and the Tenure of 
 Land in Ireland, and the extracts from the Devon Commission 
 there collected, p. 114.
 
 152 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 one-fifth more rent. The landlord was to be 
 empowered to buy out the occupier on paying ten 
 years' purchase of the fifth part, or two years' rent. 
 Lord Kames w r as before his time : he anticipated the 
 principle of the Irish Land Act of 1870. Much 
 less, however, is necessary, it may be thought. 
 Long leases, with a liberal scale of allowances on 
 the terms of the Lincolnshire custom, would, it is 
 said, encourage the tenant to keep his farm in 
 good condition until the arrival of Lady Day or 
 Michaelmas on which he was bound to quit, and 
 would ensure to him remuneration for the marling 
 of light or fen land, and subsoil draining, or for 
 improvements which do not yield profit for some 
 years. At this point, no doubt, many agricultu- 
 rists stop in their demands for reform. They do 
 not ask compensation for disturbance or eviction. 
 We cannot, however, be confident that they will 
 always be so moderate as they are. A demand 
 for security, if not absolute fixity, of tenure, would 
 come with force from the mouths of those who 
 had lived, they and their fathers, on the same 
 spots time out of mind, who had fertilised the
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 153 
 
 fields which others may call theirs, and who have 
 formed indestructible and hallowed associations 
 therewith. It would be hard to gainsay were 
 it addressed by farmers of older local standing 
 than the Hall or Manor family to men whose 
 rights to rent sprang from mere prescription and 
 usage, and not from their having mixed their 
 sweat with the soil. And one hardly knows what 
 answer could be made to some of those old War- 
 wickshire, Suffolk, or Westmoreland farmers, who 
 have dwelt for centuries, generation after generation, 
 in the snug grange; who have seen the lands pass 
 by accident through a dozen slippery hands; and 
 who should tell the bailiff of some evictor, the 
 upstart creature of royal bounty, ' We are the old 
 family ; we are the persons for whom time has made 
 a title ; we are those who should eject if any 
 should.' What would have been in substance 
 wrong in the complaints of some of the peasants 
 whom the Leveson Gowers drove from Sutherland, 
 or of those who were driven in crowds from 
 Barra to beg and steal in the streets of Glasgow 
 and Inverness, had they told their evictors that
 
 154 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 they made themselves as good a title as any birth 
 could give? The landlord who has not bought 
 has, at best, but the rights of the oldest tenant. 
 For, in truth, the same causes formed expecta- 
 tions, associations deeply planted, habits, or, in 
 other words, the fact that the landlord is the oldest 
 tenant which forbid the confiscation of his estate, 
 even when its genesis was questionable, or openly 
 wicked, sometimes, with almost equal emphasis, 
 condemn evictions. The peasantry or farmers of 
 a district may be the true old county families. 
 Oftentimes they feel towards their cherished farms 
 as an aristocrat does towards the hall of his fore- 
 fathers. Most of us have known instances in which 
 morally the tenant might turn off' the landlord, 
 rather than the landlord the tenant. The long 
 desuetude of a right had created prescription in 
 favour of the latter. England, let us recollect, too, 
 is one of the few countries in which the right to 
 evict freely is claimed. Almost everywhere else 
 there is ' a permanent settlement ' of some sort. We 
 give fixity of tenure to the Bengal ryot, under the 
 permanent settlement of 1793. We have given it
 
 to the Irish peasantry. Perhaps one day we shall 
 give some such equivalent to the English farmers. 
 Too much seems in the power of one man when he 
 can expel at pleasure those who have dwelt for 
 centuries in the same farm, and who have, really, 
 fertilised it. 
 
 Whether there be fixity of tenure or not, some 
 amendment seems necessary in the law relating to 
 fixtures and unexhausted improvements. We have 
 already stated that the legal presumption is that all 
 improvements belong to the landlord. The general 
 rule of law is that ' whenever the tenant has affixed 
 anything to the demised premises, he can never 
 again sever it, without the consent of his landlord.' l 
 This rule has been broken down to the advantage of 
 the tenant who erects fixtures for the purpose of 
 trade. In the words of Lord Kenyon, * In modern 
 times the leaning has been in favour of the tenant, 
 in support of the interests of trade, which has 
 become the pillar of the State. 3 For reasons barely 
 intelligible, agriculture has not received the full benefit 
 
 1 Woodfall on Landlord and Tenant, p. 519. 
 
 2 Penton v. Robsart, 2 East. 90.
 
 156 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 of this relaxation. An attempt was indeed made to 
 bestow upon the farmer the right already granted to 
 the merchant and trader. But the famous case of 
 Elwes v. Maw put an end to the attempt. ' To give 
 to the farmer the same facilities which traders had 
 obtained,' said Lord Ellenborough, 'would intro- 
 duce a dangerous innovation into the relative state 
 of rights and interests holden to subsist between 
 landlord and tenants.' T By statute, indeed, the 
 tenant is, as we have seen, now at liberty to remove 
 engines, buildings, &c., erected with the land- 
 lord's consent in writing ; 2 custom modifies the 
 Common Law in some half-dozen English counties ; 
 and it is habitual for the in-coming tenant rarely 
 the landlord to pay the out-going tenant for 
 standing crops, tillage, &c. But it is still the case 
 that there exists a legal presumption which does not 
 lean to the most probable opinion, or in favour of 
 the weaker party, and that hundreds of thousands 
 of capital are invested in a manner as unsafe as if 
 they were vested in the bonds of the craziest ot 
 
 1 Smith, L.C., Vol. II. 
 
 2 14 & 15 Vic, c. 25.
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 157 
 
 foreign States. 1 Here, too, I must advert to another 
 somewhat questionable privilege which few persons 
 would use for evil purposes, but which have sometimes 
 been employed to the grievous loss of the unwary. 
 If the tenant of the lord of the manor encroaches 
 upon and reclaims a piece of a common or waste, 
 the addition becomes the property of his landlord. 
 For this there is, of course, some manifest reason ; 
 but what are we to say to the additional circumstance 
 that, even if the laud reclaimed does not belong to 
 the lord of the manor, it is presumed at the end of 
 the tenancy that it is the property of the lessor, and 
 
 1 The difference between agriculture and trade in this 
 respect is startling. Mr. Wingrove Cook, in his Agricultural 
 Tenancies, cites two surprising cases, Wyndliam v. Way, and 
 Wordell v. Usher (4- Taunt. 31G and 3 Sco. N. R. 508). ' In the 
 first it was held that a farmer who raises young fruit trees on 
 his farm for the purpose of filling up the orchards is not 
 entitled to sell them. In the second case it was held that a 
 nurseryman who had planted trees in the way of his trade, 
 may remove them, if not of larger growth than could be dealt 
 with in his trade, even though they are producing fruit' (p. 41). 
 Most persons, we presume, will agree with the opinion of Mr. 
 Pusey's Committee, that ' this distinction does not appear to 
 be supported by any sound reason,' and that ' the tenant's 
 privilege of removal with respect to fixtures set up for trading 
 purposes, should be extended to those erected for agricultural 
 purposes.'
 
 158 THE LAND. QUESTION 
 
 that in the absence of proof that the new field was 
 not included in the lease, the landlord may take it 
 and all that has been expended upon it ? ' The 
 tenant steals for the benefit of the landlord ' such 
 seems substantially the Common Law, Lord Camp- 
 bell's protest against this pithy maxim to the con- 
 trary notwithstanding. We need scarcely observe 
 that an exasperated lord of the manor might turn 
 this presumption into an engine of cruelty towards 
 the labourers who have been suffered to squat on 
 the edges of many an English common. An actual 
 instance will reveal many disagreeable possibilities. 
 A labourer in Cardiganshire reclaimed a piece of 
 land from the common of Penarth. He then sold 
 it for 4/. 10s. to a kinsman, Davies, a neighbouring 
 farmer. But by-and-by the Earl of Lisburne, lord 
 of the manor, came on the scene ; the purchaser was 
 turned out ; and the Earl, we presume, still enjoys 
 the field of Cae Ehos, 1 to which another had 
 imparted all its value. 
 
 Modus et conventio vincunt leg em, it will be said ; 
 
 1 Earl of Lisburne v. Davies, I. L.R.C.P., 259. See also 
 Andrew v. Hailes, 2 E. & B. 353.
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 159 
 
 and it may be alleged that farmers have it in their 
 power to obtain security by bargaining for it and by 
 declining to accept leases from which covenants for 
 compensation for unexhausted improvements are 
 absent. But this blinks the fact that the majority of 
 farmers are refused leases, and that they must, up to 
 certain limits, assent to the terms which the land- 
 owner proposes. The notion that they are a class 
 possessed of capital which they can or will employ 
 elsewhere the moment their gains in agriculture 
 fall below the average current return on capital, 
 is a favourite fiction with those who have studied 
 and have not too well understood the writings of 
 economists. The ordinary tenant-farmer must get 
 a holding, if for no other reason than that he 
 would sacrifice his skill were he to quit his voca- 
 tion. He does not bargain at arm's length with 
 his landlord. How, too, could it be otherwise 
 considering the power of the latter to accept with 
 comparative safety tenants destitute of means, and 
 thus to create a fictitious competition for farms ? 
 The law of distraint in England, and that of hypo- 
 thec in Scotland, give the landlord a preference over
 
 160 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 all other creditors, and enable him to admit a class 
 of persons who are prepared to submit to any 
 conditions however rigorous. In such circumstances 
 the landowner may receive more than ' economical 
 rent.' l 
 
 To alter the legal presumption with respect to 
 fixtures and unexhausted improvements, or to de- 
 clare that the custom say of Lincolnshire should 
 be legalised and should be in force, whenever the 
 contrary is not agreed upon, would probably be 
 found insufficient, though one cannot forget that the 
 custom made the ungenial Lincoln soil, in Arthur 
 Young's opinion, ' the garden of England.' If 
 landowners were disposed to suffer their tenants to 
 improve freely, and to ensure compensation, it would 
 be unnecessary to alter the existing law ; if the law 
 were altered, there is no reason to believe that their 
 present disposition would change. ' Can we expect 
 
 1 ' Continued enactments were passed up to 1 & 2 Philip 
 and Mary, c. 12, for the protection of tenants ; but as the in- 
 dependence and power of tenants in opposition to their land- 
 lords increased, the current of legislative enactments took a 
 turn and has ever since been for the benefit and advantage of 
 landlords.' Woodfall's Landlord and Tenant, p. 374.
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 161 
 
 the very men who now refuse to give their tenants 
 the shortest lease, to be found cheerfully to assent 
 to their acquiring something like a permanent 
 interest by the improvement of their farms ? ' 1 
 Would not the insertion of a few more words in 
 every lease be the net result of the change? At 
 most, would not the benefit produced by legalising 
 the tenant-right customs of the .country be confined 
 to the general introduction of leases and of a power 
 to bind the remainder man to remunerate a tenant 
 for bond fide improvements ? Failing to discern 
 any very good reason for endowing the owner with 
 a patent to repress improvements, I humbly sub- 
 mit that the Legislature cannot well stop short of 
 endowing the tenant with certainty that if he add 
 to the value of his holding in any appreciable 
 degree he will be sure to acquire a lien over, or in- 
 terest in, the land to that amount. If he injures 
 his farm if, to quote the expressive phrase of the 
 Code Napoleon, 2 he fails to cultivate it en bon pere 
 
 1 The Irish People and the Irish Land. By Isaac Butt, 
 p. 227. 
 
 2 Code civil, liv. iii. 1766. 
 
 M
 
 162 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 de famille let him make good the damage, dila- 
 pidation, or waste ; if, on the other hand, he 
 enhances the value, let his be all the gain. If the 
 value which he adds to the estate be 5s. an acre, 
 let him rank as a creditor against the estate to that 
 amount. The landlord would receive back his land 
 as valuable as when he leased it, and the farmer 
 would be encouraged to treat his farm as tenderly 
 and wisely as if it were his own. Such seems the 
 simple mode in which men of wealth would be 
 induced to cultivate scientifically, and in which 
 dependent tenants would be protected ; and such 
 also seems to me the simple mode in which the 
 tenant farmers might work out the enfranchisement 
 of which we have spoken. Not so much leases, as 
 the power to realise whatever value one has added 
 to the soil, and the liability to make good what one 
 has subtracted, speaking generally, ' the tenant's 
 license to improve,' with the landlord's right of set 
 off such seem, then, the lines of reform ; and 
 though there is obviously much practical friction 
 to be overcome in executing such a reform though 
 the employment of valuators, or a "court, opens a
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 163 
 
 wide door for dissatisfaction it might not be found 
 to be incapable of realisation. The proposal is 
 made with a profound sense of the impotence of 
 valuators. 1 But permissive registration of improve- 
 ments might facilitate the task ; and, failing all other 
 machinery, the valuation might be the rent which 
 the farm fetched in market overt not, indeed, a 
 perfect test of the monetary worth of the unex- 
 hausted improvements, but one not necessarily more 
 favourable to the tenant than to the landlord. As 
 to the objection that any fine to be paid by the in- 
 coming tenant is a serious hindrance to him, and 
 an onerous subtraction from his capital, it is, after 
 all, a portion of the rent : and it seems highly un- 
 necessary, and even inexpedient, that the whole fine 
 should be paid at once. True, in Ulster, where 
 these recommendations are practically in force, not 
 unfrequently, the tenant enters into possession after 
 having paid a sum. which makes him poor and inca- 
 pable of working his farm ; but it does not appear 
 why the fine or grassum should be forthcoming 
 
 1 Lord Dufferin on Emigration and the Tenure of Land in 
 Ireland, p. 241.
 
 164 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 at once any more than are all the instalments of 
 rent. 1 Only, then, give the tenant power to add to 
 the value of the soil by his own skill as much as he 
 chooses, and one will in course of time behold an 
 easily and admirably working system the tenant 
 obtaining the position of a proprietor, provided he 
 be industrious and skilful ; the tenant for all good 
 work recouped either by the landlord, or by the in- 
 coming tenant. Only let that system be in operation 
 for some time, and the enfranchisement of the soil, 
 a matter of difficulty when regarded as a bargain 
 with money paid down, seems more easy and prac- 
 ticable, for it is seen that the tenant may work out 
 his freedom. 2 
 
 To show how the existing law relative to 
 improvements operates for evil, let me narrate one 
 or two plain tales. The first relates to the transac- 
 tions of a leading evangelical nobleman, whose 
 
 1 In Guernsey it is very common for the purchaser of an 
 estate to pay for it by perpetual corn rents, or by a payment 
 of one-fourth in money and a conversion of the remainder into 
 corn rents. Duncan's History of Guernsey, p. 286. 
 
 2 What is above suggested is, substantially, the law of 
 Denmark. Reports on Tenure of Land Abroad, Part i. p. 192.
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 1G5 
 
 estates lie in a northern county. About the year 
 1848 a farm labourer was allowed by ' the ground 
 officer ' or steward, to build a house and improve a 
 barren piece of land. With the aid of his neigh- 
 bours, he brought under cultivation about ten acres. 
 No lease was stipulated for ; no rent was charged ; 
 the land was loosely connected with an adjoining 
 farm ; and it is believed that no entry of this ' croft ' 
 was made in the books of the estate. By-and-by> it 
 was sold to a nobleman whom I need not name. 
 His commissioner, in course of time, discovered 
 this unnoted plot ; and the ' crofter ' received notice 
 that he must immediately pay * 10/. for the bygone 
 crop, 10/. for the crop in the stackyard, 10/. for the 
 crop about to be laid down, and 10/. annually for a 
 nineteen years' lease of the croft.' The labourer 
 could not accede to these terms ; he was turned 
 out ; the vacant land was advertised and let for 14/. 
 a year ; and, to use my informant's blunt words, 
 ' the Earl pockets this sum, and the crofter lives 
 again on his days' wages.' In the district where 
 these events took place, land sells for thirty years' 
 purchase, and is bought to yield about 3 per cent.
 
 166 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 Assuming that the value of this croft did not enter 
 into the price of the estate, we find that the Earl 
 appropriated 4201. morally earned by a labourer. 
 The second instance of legal spoliation which I shall 
 mention relates to estates situated at no great dis- 
 tance from the scene of the former tale. A tenant 
 entered into possession of a small farm of fifty to 
 sixty acres. He died before he obtained a lease, 
 leaving a widow and a young son. Not being 
 able to furnish due security, she was refused a 
 lease ; but on the faith of a verbal promise from 
 the trustees of the estate, she and her son reclaimed 
 about thirty acres of barren land in the course 
 of fifteen years, and during that time obtained 
 no profit. But two neighbouring farmers coveted 
 the little spot won from the wilderness, and she 
 was informed that she must quit her holding. 
 She presented vouchers showing that she had ex- 
 pended 96/. on manures during the four pre- 
 ceding years, and 32/. for trenching and draining 
 during the two preceding years ; for these items, at 
 all events, she pleaded for compensation; the out- 
 lay of the past years might go for nothing, but
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 167 
 
 these expenses were of recent date. She was denied 
 all compensation ; she had presumed to take legal 
 advice on the subject ; she must suffer. So ' the 
 widow and her son were turned adrift, and found 
 another farm on the banks of the Waitna, in New 
 Zealand.' A third instance occurs to me : the par- 
 ticulars are derived from the lips of the chief sufferer. 
 
 E E became the tenant of the farm of 
 
 T , at Whitsunday in the year 1853. The farm 
 
 consisted of 150 acres of arable land, together with 
 a considerable amount of improvable land. The 
 rent was 150/. ; and to the outgoing tenant, ten 
 years of whose lease were unexpired, he paid a 
 grassum or fine of TOO/. Shortly after entering 
 the farm, he obtained a new lease of nineteen years, 
 and he covenanted to improve thirty acres of bog, 
 and five acres of woodland, as well as to drain a 
 certain portion. In 1862 he died. His widow, 
 Mrs. E , was not heir-at-law, and the heir-at- 
 law was too poor to step into his shoes. Accord- 
 ingly the farm, thus enormously enhanced in 
 
 value, fell into the hands of the landlord. E 
 
 E had entered into the farm with a capital
 
 168 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 of 2,000/., and he had expended 1,000/. on its im- 
 provement. When the estate was wound up, there 
 remained to the widow a balance of 63/. The next 
 instance which I shall cite is taken from the annals 
 of the same parish, and a widow was again the 
 
 sufferer. M , tenant of the farm of K , 
 
 expended upwards of 12,000/, in building houses, 
 draining, fencing, and in conducting water from 
 some distance to drive a threshing mill. It appears 
 that he was warned by his friends of the impru- 
 dent nature of his investment ; but the warm assur- 
 ance of the proprietor encouraged the tenant, who 
 could not believe that he would ever be evicted 
 from a farm where he and his ancestors had lived 
 
 for nearly a century. When M died, his 
 
 widow requested a renewal of the tenancy from the 
 new proprietor, a tenant for life. She was told 
 that no offer from her would be received ; and she 
 was ousted from the farm. Let me mention one 
 more simple tale of many which I have heard, 
 
 and again I take it from the same district. J 
 
 M , an old man in needy circumstances, was 
 
 in danger of being cast on the parish. Some kind
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 169 
 
 friends came to his aid. A proprietor gave a 
 ' stance ' or site, the old man's neighbours carted 
 the requisite stones, and the Kirk Session furnished 
 so much money. A few years after the house was 
 
 built, M 's eldest son obtained a lease of ten 
 
 acres of hill side on condition that he should bring 
 them under cultivation, and he should pay a mode- 
 rate increase of rent at the expiration of the lease. 
 On the strength of this bargain, he worked indus- 
 triously ; he built a barn and a byre ; and he looked 
 forward, no doubt, to spending his days on the little 
 farm which he had reclaimed. A new proprietor 
 had succeeded to the estate before the lease ex- 
 pired, and on its running out notice was given that 
 the rent would be raised from 30s. to 8/. Such a 
 rent he could not pay ; and so he departed, leaving 
 the reclaimed land and the houses to the lord of the 
 soil. True, if the injured man could derive comfort 
 from the thought that others had fared as ill as he, 
 he might enjoy that comfort, for a neighbouring 
 crofter, who had reclaimed from the bog and 
 heather eight acres of land, and who had built 
 houses thereon, was also evicted. These samples,
 
 170 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 taken from a limited area, need no ample comment. 
 Legal though they were, they were akin to the 
 principles of Macheath. Eich and respected some 
 of these landlords are ; but ' the spoil of the poor 
 is in your houses,' notwithstanding. 
 
 Though agricultural rent is less of the character 
 of economical rent than the ground rent in cities, it 
 is partially the price of inherent qualities ; and of 
 it also we may ask, Are we to suffer it to be mono- 
 polised by private persons ? Now, we have already 
 stated some reasons why the purchase of the entire 
 soil would be inexpedient. There are, however, 
 some modes of partially acquiring the right to 
 ' economical rent,' and among them is the proposal 
 of Mr. Mill, that the State should appropriate, 
 either wholly or partially, the future spontaneous 
 increases of rent. * From the present date,' he 
 says, ' or at any subsequent time at which the 
 Legislature may think fit to assert the principle, I 
 see no objection to declaring that the future incre- 
 ment of rent should be liable to special taxation, in 
 doing which all injustice to the landowners would 
 be obviated, if the present market value of the
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 171 
 
 land were secured to them ; since that includes the 
 present value of all future expectations.' To the 
 direction of this suggestion there seems no valid 
 objection, if the above exposition of principles be 
 true. But it may be said, on the one hand, that 
 the proposal falls short of the premises ; they war- 
 rant the complete absorption of economical rent ; 
 Mr. Mill would appropriate only a part. Further, 
 the suggestion would be more valuable were it ac- 
 companied by directions as to how ' increase of rent 
 from natural causes ' can be discriminated from the 
 rises ascribable to a landowner like the Marquis of 
 Tweeddale, or a skilful industrious tenant, and how 
 such special taxation could be made compatible 
 with the existence of due encouragement to im- 
 prove. Excellent in some respects, commendable 
 in particular by reason of its simplicity, it seems to 
 err in at once taking too much and too little too 
 little because it leaves uncorrected what is now 
 wrong, too much because it would sometimes ab- 
 sorb the interest of capital, and would discourage 
 new investments in the improvement of land. 
 
 The objections which have already been taken
 
 172 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 to the complete purchase of land by the State are 
 applicable to the case of agricultural land. Its 
 value twenty or thirty years hence is so uncertain 
 that the amount of compensation now awarded, were 
 the fee simple or reversion bought, might for ever 
 make the bargain unremunerative. But, of course, 
 if there were reasonable prospects of a rapid in- 
 crease of value, it might be advantageous to resort 
 to the purchase of remote reversionary interests. 
 At the same time, there is small probability of such 
 an idea being ever carried into effect ; and in these 
 circumstances, I revert to another of the expedients 
 mentioned in the second chapter to impose a slight 
 addition to the present land tax, or allow no tax 
 or rate on real property of ancient date to be re- 
 moved. Perhaps these expedients, and especially 
 the latter, in the event of the expenditure of the 
 State diminishing, would prove efficacious. 
 
 I sum up : The tenant to be permitted to add 
 whatever value to the land he pleases, and a sub- 
 tenant to be permitted to do the same ; the differ- 
 ence in value to go to the outgoing tenant, and to 
 be paid by the incoming tenant or landlord, in a
 
 AGRICULTURAL LAND 173 
 
 lump sum or by instalments, * payment prompt,' or 
 payment deferred. So far the tenant, thus enabled 
 to work himself into a proprietorial position. On 
 the other hand, the State at long intervals to add 
 slightly to the land tax, to retain whatever imposts 
 on realty are of old date, and to purchase present or 
 reversionary interests wherever or whenever such 
 a course is deemed expedient.
 
 174. THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PROPERTY IN MINES. 
 
 ANOMALOUS as is our land tenure, both in cities 
 and in the country, vast and indefensible as are the 
 privileges of the lord of the soil, these anomalies 
 and these privileges do not surpass, and perhaps do 
 not equal, those which exist with respect to mines. 
 Here we stand alone. We govern mines as no 
 other nation does. We lavish on the owner of 
 the fee simple rights such as his social equivalent 
 nowhere else enjoys over the minerals that lie be- 
 low his estate. Ab ccelo usque ad centrum terrce 
 all, with a paltry exception, is his. The earth is 
 the landlord's and the fulness thereof; the luck 
 of the discoverer is his too ; the progress of mine- 
 ralogical science enriches him; and the labour of 
 geologists and the results of government surveys, 
 and local skill with regard to the run of ' lodes ' and
 
 PROPERTY IN MINES 175 
 
 faults, go to swell the rental of the landlord. 
 Yet how few of those who treat of the land ques- 
 tion and blame our system of land tenure, bestow 
 more than a passing word on this, its weakest, and 
 certainly its most singular, part. While there ap- 
 pear books, articles, pamphlets and addresses by 
 the score, denouncing our land laws, so far as they 
 relate to farming, I can scarcely recall one writer 
 who has taken the trouble to show that there is 
 anything very wrong in our mining laws. And yet 
 not only is there very much to be amended not 
 only is ' economical rent ' absorbed by private pro- 
 prietors but it is possible to put mining property 
 on a sound basis without trampling on numerous 
 private interests and without its being necessary to 
 compensate at every step in the path of reform. 
 Here, and here alone, our hands are free to do 
 that which reflection counsels. Here there is wealth 
 which no man has yet appropriated. That state of 
 nature, of which Eousseau tells us when the earth 
 was common and unappropriated, is no dream ; it 
 exists it lies beneath our feet. But each day 
 a new appropriation is made ; that species ot
 
 176 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 territorial conquest or occupation which we are wont 
 to associate only with rude or primitive times, is 
 repeated to-day in England. We have curtailed 
 the squatter's liberty in Australia, in New Zealand, 
 and indeed, in all our colonies. But the squatter's 
 right over domains which are worth perhaps as 
 much as the fee simple of our Colonial Empire, is 
 still part and parcel of the law of England, which 
 each day tolerates not merely the continuance of 
 the outcome of a vicious system but also sanctions 
 new applications of it. 
 
 According to the English law, all minerals and 
 quarries, with the exception of gold and silver, 
 belong to the owner of the fee simple. The State 
 has no right to them. The discoverer has none. 
 The owner of the fee simple carries away every- 
 thing. He may work the minerals on his estate 
 as he pleases. He may waste them, he may forbid 
 others working them. There is no royalty or special 
 tax to be paid by him. The few exceptions to all 
 this liberty are not of much consequence ; but I may 
 recite them. Though the Crown claims all gold 
 and silver mines, wherever discovered, this Com-
 
 PROPERTY IN MINES 177 
 
 mon Law privilege has been made almost worthless 
 by an enactment the 5 William and Mary, c. 6 
 which declared that no copper, tin, iron, or lead 
 mines should be regarded as royal mines, even 
 though gold or silver was found therein, but which 
 added that the Crown would have the right of pre- 
 emption of the ore when on bank, at certain prices 
 IQL a ton for copper, tin 405., iron 40s., and 
 lead 9/. I recite these figures because they illus- 
 trate the neglect of the revenues of the Crown. 
 Had its original powers at Common Law been 
 retained, the State would now be drawing a hand- 
 some revenue from the lead mines, especially those 
 of Cumberland and Devonshire, which in 1870 
 yielded silver of the value of 19 6,14 0. 91. a ton 
 for lead ore would have left a handsome margin. 
 Unfortunately, in the reign of " George III., the 
 owners, taking alarm at the high prices paid for 
 lead during the French war, induced Parliament to 
 alter the scale to 25/., and destroy the rights of the 
 Crown. 1 The Crown is also the owner of minerals 
 
 1 Mr. Bainbridge, in his treatise on ' The Law of Mines and 
 Minerals,' points out that it is quite possible for the prices of 
 
 N
 
 178 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 found below the sea and up to high-water mark. 
 But this privilege has not yet been found to be 
 of much worth. So far the rights of the Crown, 
 which somewhat curtail the doctrine of the Com- 
 mon Law. I ought to mention as another excep- 
 tion the special legislation which governs the mines 
 of the Dean Forest, as well as those of Cornwall 
 and Devonshire. In these cases there is recognition 
 of the discoverer's right. In the Dean Forest, part 
 of the Crown demesnes, there have grown up various 
 customs with respect to the ownership of the mine- 
 rals. Some of the inhabitants of the Forest and 
 of the Hundred of St. Briavels, calling themselves 
 4 free miners,' claimed of old the right to search 
 for and work minerals within those domains. An 
 Act of Parliament, passed in the beginning of the 
 present reign, recognised that right, and laid down 
 
 rich and peculiar iron ores like red haematite to rise above 
 the sum fixed for pre-emption, that the value of some copper 
 ores is now much above the sum fixed by 5 Will. & Mary, c. 6, 
 and that, ' in general, the sum fixed for tin ore would be 
 greatly inadequate.' 'It follows, therefore, that if it could 
 be proved that any of the ores just mentioned contained any 
 portion of gold or silver, the Crown would have the right of 
 pre-emption at a price which might still seriously affect the 
 interests of the producer.' Bainbridge, 3rd edit. p. 62.
 
 PROPERTY IN MINES 179 
 
 rules conceived in the spirit of the local customs. 1 
 All persons who had laboured a year and a day in 
 a coal or iron mine in the Hundred were held to be 
 entitled to the privileges of ' free miners.' As such 
 they were empowered to receive leases from the 
 Crown Commissioners. They acquired an interest 
 of ' the nature of real estate,' conditional on their 
 faithfully paying certain rents or royalties to the 
 Crown. As to the Cornwall tin mines, it was for- 
 merly essential that ah 1 tin extracted therefrom should 
 be coined into blocks of 320 Ibs. each, and that a 
 certain royalty thereon should be paid to the Prince 
 of Wales of the day. This obligation was abolished 
 by the 1 and 2 Vic. c. 120 ; and such portions of 
 the Prince of Wales' revenue as were formerly de- 
 rivable from that source were made a charge on 
 the Consolidated Fund. At the same time, also, 
 the Customs duty on tin and tin ore was reduced. 
 Next session of Parliament, however, there was 
 passed an Act, calling attention to the privileges 
 granted by this legislation to the tinners of Cornwall, 
 who were exempted from dues paid by the copper 
 
 1 1 & 2 Vic. c. 43, amended by 24 & 25 Vic. c. 40. 
 
 is 2
 
 180 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 miners, and imposing a duty of one farthing a ton 
 on tin and tin ore. No account of the mining law 
 in force in Cornwall could omit reference to the 
 custom of ' bounding.' It is in curious variance 
 with English ideas respecting the sacredness of pro- 
 perty. It is still the case that anyone may go on 
 waste land, or land once waste and subject to the 
 custom, mark off a certain area, appropriate it, 
 unless the bounder's right is challenged by some 
 prior occupier, and work it on condition that there 
 is paid a ' toll tin,' varying from one-tenth to one- 
 fifteenth of the produce. In the mining customs in 
 force in Derbyshire, there is also recognition of the 
 right of the discoverer. By the local customs, now 
 confirmed and defined by Acts of Parliament, the 
 ' free miner ' who discovers a vein of lead is en- 
 titled to two ' meers ; ' a ' meer ' being a space of 
 twenty-seven to thirty-two yards in length in a 
 ' rake ' vein, and of fourteen square yards in flat 
 or pipe mining. The lord of the soil is a secondary 
 person; he receives only one 'meer' for the whole 
 vein. 
 
 Thus there exist in the oldest mining districts
 
 PROPERTY IN MINES 181 
 
 for such are Cornwall and the Dean Forest local 
 laws which recognise at once the claims of the State 
 and the discoverer. But the Common Law, which 
 governs the bulk of mining property, heeds neither. 
 To the owner of the fee simple it gives everything. 
 This doctrine was carried with the rest of our laws 
 to the United States ; but it has been deemed 
 proper to alter it by statute in some of the States in 
 that of New York, for instance, 1 In truth, when 
 the Englishman goes abroad to colonise, he does not 
 carry with him his superstitious feeling of respect 
 for the landowner. He subjects it to critical 
 examination. He owns that the State and the 
 discoverer have their due claims over minerals. In 
 Australia it has been customary to introduce into 
 deeds of grant of land from the Crown clauses 
 reserving the minerals. There, miners have ridden 
 rough-shod over the so-called rights of property, 
 and when the proprietors themselves are not 
 engaged in working some vein, their neighbours have 
 sometimes followed up then: pursuit of gold or silver, 
 careless whither they went, and even continued the 
 1 Kent, vol. iii. p. 483.
 
 182 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 search below streets, churches, and cemeteries. In 
 Victoria the Government have lately introduced a 
 bill which seems to give ample encouragement to 
 the miner. The proprietor of the surface is pro- 
 mised the right of pre-emption of a mining lease ; 
 but if he declines to accept, the right will fall to 
 persons ready to mine and willing to give securities 
 for damages that may happen to be done to build- 
 ings ' or the surface. 1 Only in England, or rather in 
 certain parts of it, do we see the State and the dis- 
 coverer pushed aside and ignored. 
 
 Certainly on the Continent all is different ; and 
 those who contrast our land tenure with that of 
 France and Germany, for example, do not point the 
 sharp contrast as clearly as they might if they 
 forget to mention the antagonism of our laws 
 governing mines to those which are in force abroad. 
 There the State occupies the lucrative place which 
 we assign to the freeholders. More or less also the 
 discoverer's claim to consideration is, as a rule, 
 recognised abroad. The Civil Law has had much 
 to do with the notions of mining property which 
 1 Times, October 1, 1872.
 
 PROPERTY IN MINES 183 
 
 have become supreme on the Continent. On this 
 subject the Eoman Law spoke variously and uncer- 
 tainly. At some times the Emperors put forth 
 pretensions to all minerals. At other times their 
 demands fell far short of this. I borrow from Mr. 
 Eogers' work on Mines the following account of 
 the mining law in force at Eome : ' Under the Civil 
 Law, in its purest times, gold, silver, and other pre- 
 cious metals usually belonged to the State, whilst 
 all other minerals, mines, and quarries belonged 
 to the owner of the soil, subject in some cases to a 
 partial, and in others to a more general, control of 
 the fiscus.' Towards the end of feudal times, in 
 both France and Germany, the right of the sove- 
 reign to all minerals was asserted. Sully believed 
 the mines of France to be the estate of his royal 
 master. It was not until the approach of the 
 Eevolution that other ideas began to be mooted. 
 Turgot brought his supreme sagacity to bear on 
 the question of the true nature of mining property, 
 which was becoming a problem of interest in his 
 days ; and his tract or memoir, ' Des Mines et des 
 Carrieresj 1 disfigured though it is by several fallacies,
 
 184 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 is admirably concise, luminous, and acute. In the 
 capacity of Intendant of Limoges, he wrote, on the 
 occasion of the application of certain companies to 
 be allowed to work the lead mines of Glanges, 
 Haute Vienne, this memoir, which is not only a 
 criticism of the law then in operation, the droit 
 regalien, but which is also by anticipation an assault 
 on the mining code which was subsequently enacted 
 in France. He starts from the principle that the 
 man who owns the surface owns what is below, 
 minerals and all, and proceeds to argue thus : ' The 
 whole of the surface is his property, there is no 
 denying ; therefore, no one can without his consent 
 break ground thereon.' Yet Turgot, apparently so 
 far a friend of a mining law in principle like ours, 
 goes on to maintain that the proprietor of the sur- 
 face ought not to be empowered to hinder one who 
 has sunk a shaft or pit in another man's land from 
 driving a gallery below his estate in pursuit of a 
 seam or vein. His reasons, which will be familiar to 
 colonists who never heard Turgot's name, but which 
 will jar with English notions respecting real property, 
 we quote ; and they are these : ' First, because occu-
 
 PROPERTY IN MINES 185 
 
 pation has not descended so deep ; second, because 
 the considerations of equity and common interest, 
 which have made society guarantee to the first culti- 
 vators the fruit of their labours, have no application 
 to what is underground, which is neither an object 
 of cultivation nor the produce of labour ; third, be- 
 cause the proprietor suffers no harm or annoyance 
 when openings are not made in his estate ; fourth, 
 because a little after property in land was esta- 
 blished society itself had not the means of enforcing 
 this legal guarantee of the possession of minerals.' 
 It will be at once said that these reasons, if good for 
 anything, are fatal to the pretensions of the pro- 
 prietor of the soil to property in the unextracted 
 ore ; and in truth Turgot admits as much. He 
 distinctly affirms that until minerals are extracted or 
 appropriated, they are nobody's, and that they 
 belong to the proprietor of the surface only if he 
 has spent labour or its worth upon them. Not all 
 mineral wealth, but merely the right of saying who 
 shall break ground, is, in Turgot's opinion, the 
 accessory of the fee simple. This memoir was not 
 fired off in the air. In 1791 the question came
 
 186 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 for decision before the National Assembly; and 
 Turgot's arguments were discussed with heat, and 
 challenged by Mirabeau among others. In his 
 fierce, contemptuous way, he dismissed Turgot's 
 proposal for free mining with the remark that ' it 
 would make our mines an inextricable labyrinth, 
 and that this sort of conquest going on in the 
 middle of society, would leave mines to the rule of 
 chance.' Mirabeau declared that they should be at 
 ' the disposal of the nation ; ' meaning thereby that 
 the State should see that they were worked, and 
 that wisely and well. And Mirabeau carried the 
 day ; for such was the substance of the law passed 
 in July 1791. Then came a change. The prin- 
 ciple advocated by Mirabeau seemed to be effaced 
 by the Civil Code, one of the articles of which 
 laid it down that 'the property of the surface 
 carries with it property in all below.' Again, in 
 1810, the much-vexed question came up, and, in 
 spite of Napoleon's fondness for a law somewhat 
 similar to that of England, there was passed an 
 enactment, still in force, putting the State in its old 
 place, and restoring the droit regalien. Of the
 
 PROPERTY IN MINES 187 
 
 three categories, mines, minieres, and carrieres, it 
 was declared that the first could be worked only on 
 a concession or lease from the State being granted. 
 The concessionnaire or lessee must pay a fixed rent 
 of 10 francs the square kilometre, and also a 
 percentage on the * output.' Minieres, the term used 
 to describe alluvial deposits of metal, such as the 
 peroxide of iron one gets in the tin washings of 
 Cornwall, belong to the proprietor of the soil ; but 
 they cannot be worked without the permission of 
 the Government. Only quarries may be worked 
 freely by the owner of the soil. I may add that he 
 has no preferential claim to the concession of a 
 mine situated on his own estate. I have spoken 
 rather fully of the law of France because its leading 
 principles have been adopted elsewhere. It is in 
 force in Belgium, except in the provinces of Hai- 
 nault, Liege, and Limbourg. In Germany there is 
 ample recognition of the right of the State. In 
 Prussia the mines are the property of the nation, 
 and they can be worked only on a concession being 
 granted, and subject to the surveillance of the State. 1 
 
 1 See the weak side of the Prussian mining system, pointed
 
 188 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 There is some consideration shown in Germany to 
 the claims of the discoverer or adventurer. The local 
 adages Es hatjederman einfreyes Schurfen and Der 
 erste Finder ist der erste Muther bear witness to this 
 fact. In Austria, Italy, and Spain, the mines belong 
 to the State, and are let on leases. Only in Eussia 
 do we meet with a law which seems at first blush to 
 invest the landowner with ample powers, equal to 
 those with which the English freeholder is gifted. 
 But on closer inspection we find that it is not so, 
 and that the Eussian noble does not stand in the 
 enviable position of the English proprietor of an 
 estate on the coal measures or above the iron- 
 stone of South Staffordshire. Most of the Eussian 
 mines, such as those in the Ural Mountains, are 
 situated in the vast Crown domains ; and, moreover, 
 the State not only claims the right to sell the pro- 
 duce of mines, Crown or private, but it also imposes 
 a heavy tax on all ore. Certainly, then, not in Eussia 
 
 out in Banfield's Manufactures of the Rhine, p. 55. None of 
 them are necessarily connected with the proposals here advo- 
 cated. If royalties are charges varying according to the 
 gross amount of ore produced, of course, mines badly situated 
 or naturally unproductive must be unfairly taxed.
 
 PROPERTY IN MINES 180 
 
 can we procure a precedent for our manner of deal- 
 ing with mineral property. 
 
 To the mere circumstance that we are almost 
 solitary, and that our law is nearly unique, one cannot 
 attach much consequence; and, armed with sufficient 
 reasons in the background, one need not rest one's 
 case on the basis of authority, even though that 
 authority be the conspiring testimony of almost all 
 nations and ages. Justifications of the rights of pro- 
 perty, in land or movables, may be reduced to three. 
 I have taken the trouble to look into various writers 
 on the subject, such as Locke, and, in later times, 
 Troplong, Thiers, and Faucher. Some of those 
 apologists of property cited only two justifications, 
 but none cited more than three the justice or ex- 
 pediency of giving to a man absolute control over 
 that on which he has expended toil, thought, or 
 capital ; the right which is acquired by first occu- 
 pancy ; and that which is created by prescription or 
 undisturbed possession for a long period. I accept 
 these criteria of what ought to be a man's property ; 
 I apply them to the privileges showered on the 
 English landowner ; and I venture to submit that
 
 190 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 these justifications do not cover the ample extent 
 of his prerogatives, appropriating as he does that on 
 which no man has expended a fraction of labour or 
 wealth, which he has never seen, far less occupied, 
 and about which no right of prescription could 
 have grown up. Of course, it is questionable how 
 far prior occupation, one of the so-called natural 
 modes of acquisition, deserves to create a title in a 
 civilised state of society. It may suit barbarous and 
 sparsely-peopled countries ; but it seems being guided 
 by names and not reasons to apply in a populous 
 society the doctrines of the Civilians with respect 
 to occupation to waste land of vast extent or mine- 
 ral property of great value. When a person claims, 
 in virtue of first occupation, some rich vein of metal, 
 irresistibly we think of Adrian IV. granting, as 
 4 king of all islands,' the lordship of Ireland, or some 
 monarch claiming as his own half a continent be- 
 cause his flag had first waved there. 
 
 But, accepting all these three modes of acquisi- 
 tion as valid in equity, we may point out and it 
 is almost needless to prove that none of them 
 warrant the appropriation of mineral deposits which
 
 PROPERTY IN MINES 191 
 
 are unexpectedly discovered. Let us see whether 
 this is so, and whether it is fraught with conse- 
 quences of moment. Mr. Godwin Austen and Mr. 
 Prestwich assure us that they are confident that coal 
 can be got at workable depths in the valley of the 
 Thames. There is a coal-trough running from Bel- 
 gium across the sea, along the Thames, by Bristol, 
 and extending into Ireland ; and shafts some hun- 
 dreds of feet deep would probably, according to 
 the latter geologist, bring us to the coal measures. 
 The opinion was controverted by Sir Eoderick Mur- 
 chison; but Mr. Prestwich has collected no small 
 amount of proofs, both from geological and pake- 
 ontological considerations, that a huge coal basin is 
 continued below the Thames. There is a possibility 
 that experimental borings may substantiate his sur- 
 mises ; and if they prove true, the discovered coal 
 will at once accrue to the landowners beneath whose 
 estates it happens to lie. Now, could one say that 
 they had expended labour or capital on coal, the 
 very existence of which was unknown and even un- 
 suspected until Mr. Godwin Austen and Mr. Prest- 
 wich threw out the idea ? If such coal exist, it did
 
 192 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 not form an element in determining the purchase 
 money of the overlying soil, if it ever was pur- 
 chased. Prior occupation is out of the question, 
 for no man could occupy that which no man had 
 dreamt of. There could not be the affectus occu- 
 pandi with respect to what the mind could not 
 fasten upon. And as for the right of prescription, 
 its basis is the fact that it is wrong to allow a man 
 to act as owner for the space of twenty or forty 
 years and then to eject him. But what expec- 
 tations could be defeated when none could be 
 formed, and how could prescription be ripening 
 when possession did not exist? As Napoleon ob- 
 served, with his wonted trenchant sagacity, ' The 
 discovery of a mine creates a new property ; an act 
 of the sovereign becomes necessary.' In the pre- 
 sence of such a discovery, the community is free 
 to act as seems good to it ; no vested rights, sacred 
 in the eye of morality, stay its hands ; and if Par- 
 liament were to pass a law to the effect that all new 
 deposits, veins, and seams of minerals discovered in 
 the United Kingdom after 1873 should belong to 
 the State, there would be no injustice to complain
 
 PROPERTY IN MINES 193 
 
 of, and no good reason in the world for demanding 
 compensation. Certainly no jurist could find fault 
 with such a measure were twenty years of grace 
 allowed. 
 
 I next apply the touchstone of the three custo- 
 mary justifications of the rights of property to 
 minerals the position of which is known, but which 
 are not worked owing to their depth or the inade- 
 quate price of ore ; and it seems to me that none of 
 them is broad enough to cover the English land- 
 owner's ample privileges. The Koyal Commission 
 which reported in 1871 on the subject of our coal 
 supply assume that shafts may one day be profit- 
 ably carried down four thousand feet, a depth at 
 which it is now impossible to work, owing to the 
 increase of temperature as one descends into the 
 bowels of the earth. At present, minerals lying 
 more than three thousand feet below the surface 
 are practically unworkable. They will sell for 
 nothing; they will be worth nothing for many a. 
 day, until the art of mining is much improved or 
 prices rise much above their present position ; and 
 if the State appropriated the unworked, and for the 
 
 o
 
 194 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 time unworkable, deposits, in view of the possibility 
 or probability of their being ultimately in request, 
 it would not be bound in equity to compensate 
 the owners. Unbought and untouched by capital 
 or labour, they are still no man's property. Appro- 
 priated or occupied they cannot be said to be : 
 as well might one say that one had occupied the 
 moon by often thinking about it or looking at it, as 
 assert that one had occupied the coal that lies six 
 hundred fathoms down, below the tertiary rocks. 
 And as for the rights which prescription, use, and 
 habit create, they do not seem to apply reasonably 
 to the case before us. One can understand prescrip- 
 tion when it means that a man should be allowed 
 to continue to use that which he habitually has 
 used ; but it sounds nonsensical to speak of a pre- 
 scriptive right to what one never saw, never used, 
 and perhaps never dreamt of using. If, therefore, 
 the State were to declare public property the 56,273 
 millions of tons of coal which, we are told, lie 
 under rocks newer than the coal measures, and such 
 portions of the coal measures as have not yet been 
 worked, or if it were to say that the ironstones
 
 PROPEETY IN MINES 195 
 
 which may be hereafter found in formations similar 
 to the Cleveland Hill seams should belong to the 
 State, there would be no good grounds for listening 
 to demands for compensation. At all events, it 
 would be possible to guard against all inconvenience 
 and hardship by allowing the landowner to work 
 as much and as freely as he liked during the next 
 twenty years. 
 
 We pass now to those mines which are already 
 in operation. In these, with their shafts, and 
 galleries, and buttresses, and engines, millions of 
 capital have been sunk. There true rights of pro- 
 perty exist. Only let us, while conceding this, not 
 admit too much. Of course, as a rule, the person 
 who has put himself to all the outlay is one who 
 is content with a lease for a term of years ; but 
 making the most favourable assumption for the land- 
 owner, that he works as well as owns a mine, has he 
 acquired a right to go on working some particular 
 strata indefinitely? No, seems the right answer. 
 He has a title, good in point of equity, to get a 
 fair return on his capital and labour ; and if Parlia- 
 ment interposes before he has done so, and intercepts 
 
 o2
 
 196 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 his probable profits, Parliament ought to make good 
 his unexpected losses. But the right of prior occu- 
 pation and prescription surely do not go further. 
 It is one thing for a man to claim a spot of land 
 for himself and his successors for all time, and quite 
 another to claim for all time the liberty to make 
 a fresh appropriation every day. It is the latter 
 claim a prescriptive right to add to his estate 
 which the owner of the minerals puts forward, and 
 he cannot fence it round with reasons which com- 
 pass only the former. The latter claim corresponds 
 not to the comparatively modest pretensions of the 
 landowner in a civilised community, satisfied with 
 remaining where he is, but rather to those of the 
 squatter, who will to-day be here, and to-morrow 
 will drive his flocks onwards ; and if we have cur- 
 tailed his license to roam on, appropriating in his 
 march all that is unoccupied, there is surely much 
 to be said in favour of no longer declaring that 
 that is sound policy and justice if done perpen- 
 dicularly, which is waste and usurpation when done 
 laterally. I find that Turgot anticipates and con- 
 firms much of what I deferentially urge : ' Celui
 
 PROPERTY IN MINES 197 
 
 qiii a pris la matierc sur dix toises de longueur 
 n'a pas plus de droit stir la suite de ce filon jusqu'a 
 cent et jusqu'a mille toises plus loin, que le pro- 
 prietaire de la surface n'en avait sur la totaliteY 
 It is a mere fallacy to contend that one has ac- 
 quired a right to the end of a seam because one has 
 appropriated the beginning. He who challenges 
 the justice of the landowner's claim to be permitted 
 to go on working indefinitely any mine or to be 
 compensated if he is stopped at any stage, finds fault 
 with the new applications of an old system : the 
 former would not, of necessity, take away what is 
 already appropriated. 
 
 Some may think that the discoverer of mines is 
 more worthy of reward than either the landowner 
 or the community ; and such as are of that mind 
 must be shocked by our Common Law, which 
 ignores altogether the discoverer. The ' old men,' 
 the cunning miners skilled in ' shedding,' the village 
 geologist who identifies some stratum with that 
 in a neighbouring field, and so leads to the finding 
 of a valuable deposit, receive nothing. How vast 
 have been the accessions to rent rolls from sudden
 
 198 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 discoveries of minerals, for which proprietors can 
 claim no credit ! Let me quote what Mr. Mushet, 
 the first to recognise the worth of the ' black band ' 
 or carbonaceous ironstone which goes in Lanark- 
 shire by his name, says of the results which took 
 place after 1801 : * The estate of Airdrie now 
 returns to the proprietor, for royalty on black 
 band discovered by me in 1801, 12,000/. a year; 
 whereas formerly not one shilling of mineral rent 
 was obtained.' What estimate is too large of the 
 accession to the rentals of the landowners of South 
 Staffordshire after Mr. Thorneycroft of Wolver- 
 hampton proved the value of the ironstone of the 
 district ! Not twenty years ago the demands on 
 the South Staffordshire iron beds led to the open- 
 ing up of the Cleveland Hills, the enormous wealth 
 of which had been before ignored. 
 
 I would add that it is not merely casual services 
 of which the landowners have reaped the benefit. 
 The State has assisted them directly. For many 
 years there has been going on a geological survey 
 carried out at the public cost. Skilled men of 
 science have been employed. Each year a report on
 
 PROPERTY IN MINES 199 
 
 one or more counties, drawn up by Mr. Juke, Mr. 
 Egerton, Mr. Hull, and their coadjutors, has been 
 published. Geological maps, giving proprietors use- 
 ful information with respect to the minerals likely 
 to be found on their domains, have been printed 
 and sold. For some twenty years the nation has 
 employed a highly paid band of geologists in dis- 
 covering the mineral wealth of the kingdom, and 
 in the results of their labours the State has not 
 directly participated. The owner of the fee-simple 
 has taken everything. Translated into the language 
 which we have employed in the previous chapters, 
 the substance of all that has been said with refer- 
 ence to mines is, that landowners draw purely 
 ' economical rent,' and they draw it from natural 
 agencies of which they are making daily new ap- 
 propriations. The condition of affairs with respect 
 to the sites of cities has the excuse of being of 
 old standing ; that excuse is absent in the case of 
 mines; it is a wrong system daily receiving fresh 
 applications. 
 
 To complete the story, let me add that most 
 mines have been the subject of a remarkable and
 
 200 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 little-noted exemption with respect to rating an 
 exemption worth to their proprietors hundreds of 
 thousands. The Act of Elizabeth, which is the 
 basis of our rating system, mentions among the 
 rateable species of property coal mines and none 
 else. So, on the principle expressio unius exclusio 
 alterius^ it was held that iron and other mines 
 were exempted. What was the reason of this 
 apparently unaccountable difference in treatment 
 is not known ; but it may be, as Baron Martin 
 
 suggested, that the framers of the Act deemed mines 
 
 
 
 other than coal were of the nature of manufactories 
 carried on by means of ore. 1 At any rate, the 
 House of Lords felt itself compelled to declare that 
 all mines save coal mines are exempted from rating 
 for the relief of the poor. Indeed, an attempt was 
 lately made, though unsuccessfully, to claim exemp- 
 tion for the buildings, workshops, and machinery 
 attached to ironworks, as being the accessories of 
 unrateable property. 2 
 
 It may be interesting to enquire what would be 
 
 1 Morgan v. CrasJiaw, V. L. R. A. C. 304. 
 
 2 Guest v. Dean, VII. L. B. Q.B. 33].
 
 PROPERTY IN MINES 201 
 
 the gain, supposing that the State acquired 'the 
 economical rent of mines.' It is a problem fraught 
 with difficulties, owing to ignorance of the future 
 rate of development of the coal and iron industries of 
 this and other countries. The Northern Alleghany 
 coalfields alone, and the iron deposits of North 
 America, chiefly confined to Pennsylvania, are capable 
 of yielding limitless stores, and we do not know 
 when they may be extensively worked. But, if no 
 important industrial change take place, and if Eng- 
 land still continue to supply the world with metals, 
 there cannot fail to come a time when the as- 
 sumption by the State of the right to the minerals, 
 subject to existing interests, would prove a step of 
 great profit. In the first place, there is reason 
 to believe that no little gain would be acquired at 
 once and without any grant of compensation. To 
 geologists and miners, it is a familiar fact that 
 the old ideas touching the common situation of 
 minerals are changing rapidly. Often they are 
 found where our ancestors held that they could 
 not exist. The history of Cornish mining abundantly 
 illustrates this truth ; and I shall mention one in-
 
 202 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 stance. It was an old adage that ' tin never made 
 in depth.' It was to be got, according to the miner, 
 in the junction of the granite and ' killas,' near the 
 surface. Watt, Trevethick, and the use of gun- 
 powder changed the miner's ideas on this point ; 
 and, with improved modes of working, this notion 
 is now exploded. 1 Look next at the subversion of 
 the customary ideas with respect to the site of coal. 
 They, too, are being shaken by a thousand investi- 
 gators. I have mentioned the novel contention for 
 which Mr. Prestwich elaborately argues in an ap- 
 pendix to the report of the Coal Commission ; and 
 there have of late been borings which reveal the 
 existence of coal in the South of England to an 
 extent never before dreamt of. Under Dorsetshire 
 there seems to lie workable coal. Excavations at 
 Sandwell Park, near Birmingham, seem to indicate 
 the unity of the South Staffordshire, Warwickshire, 
 and Shropshire fields ; and shafts sunk on the Duke 
 of Newcastle's estate at the Shire Oaks in Notting- 
 hamshire, and on the Earl of Granville's estate afc 
 
 1 ' It is observed that tin rarely continues worth working be- 
 yond fifty fathoms deep.' Polwhele's Cormvall, vol. iv. p. 133.
 
 PROPERTY IN MINES 203 
 
 Lilleshall in Shropshire, seem to show that imme- 
 diately under the Permian formation may be got 
 coals at the present remunerative depth. Even the 
 axiom that coal and lignite worth using are confined 
 to the newer Paleozoic period may yet be shaken. 1 
 
 So far the yet undiscovered minerals or bona 
 vacantia, and the probability that they would prove 
 valuable to the State. In the case of deposits ac- 
 tually worked there seems, in view of the recent 
 increase in the prices of coal and iron, to be pre- 
 eminent justification for the application f Mr. Mill's 
 proposal for the absorption of ' the unearned increase.' 
 If it were said that all future rises in the rent of 
 mines should become the property of the community, 
 the injustice which would be done is not very appa- 
 rent; if the change were fixed to take place ten 
 or twenty years hence, it would be non-existent. 
 
 Few would deny that any immunities with re- 
 spect to rating ought to be removed ; and it may be 
 submitted that more might be done. Though it is 
 impossible to determine what should be the limit of 
 the time necessary for the owners of mines to 
 1 Ansted's Geology, vol. ii. p. 328.
 
 204 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 recoup themselves, we may be sure that thirty or 
 forty years would be sufficient ; 'assuredly, if they 
 were permitted to extract, by means of royalties 
 and other emoluments, all which they could obtain 
 during that period, their just cause of complaint 
 would be small were Parliament to appropriate the 
 reversion. Yet, rather than do aught that savoured 
 of injustice, it might be expedient to pay now the 
 reversionary value, and allow all life interests to 
 run out. Such a step might prove safe and just to 
 both vendor and purchaser. 
 
 Eapid as has been the advance in the value of 
 agricultural and urban land, still more surprising 
 has been the increase in the value of mineral 
 property. While the rateable value of mines 
 (exclusive of ironworks, quarries, and salt and 
 alum works) increased 25 per cent, between 1862 
 and 1 870, the rateable value of land increased only 
 6 per cent. Of ironworks the annual value has 
 increased still more rapidly; in 1862, the annual 
 produce was 1,079,589/., and in 1870 it was 
 2,018,564. In other words, there was an advance of 
 50 per cent. In the raising of coals there is a like
 
 PROPERTY IN MINES 205 
 
 advance ; the value of the coals raised in 1857 
 amounted to 16, 348,6 76/. ; and in 1870 it had 
 swollen to 27, 607, 798 . It may, therefore, be with 
 confidence predicted that no small amount of revenue 
 could be derived from this source.
 
 206 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 COMMONS AND WASTE LANDS. 
 
 THERE is a rich leaven of antiquity in all that per- 
 tains to the common lands of England ; and he who 
 would understand their present position must know 
 their past. Acquaintance with history is highly 
 useful for the comprehension of any portion of our 
 land tenure, for we dwell in a building constructed 
 by many hands one on which we may trace the 
 marks of the tools of Celt and Saxon and Norman, 
 primitive communism and feudalism ; and there is a 
 certain mystery of antiquity about our customary 
 holdings. Such knowledge is absolutely essential 
 to one who would know how the law relating to 
 commons came to be what it is. 
 
 The text books do not always give their true 
 history, and the phraseology of English law is apt to 
 conceal it. Under the misleading name of ' custom '
 
 COMMONS AND WASTE LANDS 207 
 
 the remains of ancient law are buried ; by the 
 copious supposition of fictitious deeds of grants, 
 the preserved fragments of earlier systems are ex- 
 plained away ; and in the Common Law of Eng- 
 land relative to this subject are huddled together 
 ideas of property discordant and of different origin. 
 It is only of late that our judges begin to cast 
 doubts on the customary professional explanations 
 of such peculiarities of English law as copyholds 
 and rights of common appendant and appurtenant. 1 
 Only gradually is it dawning upon legal writers and 
 practitioners how feudalism failed to submerge 
 earlier forms of property, and how lusty shoots of 
 institutions older than the Conquest have survived 
 and flourished in England. Truth on such points is 
 not of purely antiquarian interest. From this brief 
 and imperfect sketch of the inclosure or ' approve- 
 ment ' of commons, it will appear what substantial 
 wrong has been done in obedience to false history and 
 black-letter fictions. The English landowner coveted 
 the wastes attached to his manor. The story of his 
 
 1 Sec Lord Hatherley's judgment in WarricJc v. Queen's 
 College, VI. L.B. C.A. 71G.
 
 208 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 grasping efforts to acquire them forms the burden 
 of this chapter. But it was necessary or expedient 
 to drape spoliation in the robes of legality ; and this 
 service to covetousness, perhaps natural, the English 
 lawyers rendered, telling the lord of the manor that 
 he did but resume his own, speaking to him of grants 
 which were never made, and affirming that the free- 
 hold of the coveted waste was originally in him. Had 
 the true history of English commons been known, 
 they would have been divided very differently. 
 
 What were the oldest forms of property in 
 Britain there is little evidence. Caesar says that the 
 majority of those who lived in the interior did not 
 sow corn. Probably the land, so far as it was 
 cultivated at all, was parcelled out in much the 
 same way in which we find it among various 
 Celtic tribes. We therefore turn to them. In Ire- 
 land and the Highlands of Scotland there existed, 
 even in historical times, a form of communism. 
 The Highland clan or sept owned the strath or glen 
 wherein it dwelt. No man held his land in per- 
 petuity, to be disposed of as he might dictate. 
 When a clansman died, his allotment might be
 
 COMMONS AND WASTE LANDS 209 
 
 divided. The chief was only the officer of the clan ; 
 his post was not necessarily hereditary; and it is 
 matter of history that one sept, the Macdonalds of 
 Clanranald, actually exiled their chieftain and slew 
 him in battle. The Highlander could not be taught 
 the justice of the feudal idea of property, which 
 connected every acre with some lord. It long 
 remained to the Celt ' hateful and scarcely compre- 
 hensible.' Not regarding the ownership of their 
 native glen as lodged in the chief alone, the clans- 
 men could not be persuaded that his treason justly 
 involved the forfeiture of land which was theirs as 
 much as his. So when the Government seized the 
 estates of the chiefs who had taken an active part in 
 the rebellion of 1745, the clansmen looked upon the 
 newcomers as intruders, and we know that purchasers 
 of the confiscated estates were with difficulty found. 1 
 A dweller in Lochaber is rudely evicted from his 
 dwelling by a Government agent ; by-and-by, while 
 the instrument of the law, a Captain Munro of Cul- 
 cairn, rides through the glen at the head of an armed 
 
 1 See Notes to Waverley. 
 P
 
 210 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 party, he is shot by some vindicator of tenant right. 1 
 Another agent of the Government, Campbell of 
 Glenure, gives mortal offence by turning out certain 
 old tenants, and he is forthwith shot also. Though 
 the lands of the rebel chieftains were forfeited, the 
 clansmen, who knew and respected a tenure outside 
 the law, gave them unforced allegiance ; and Lochiel 
 and Ardsheal, living in banishment in France, for 
 years received their rents from retainers who like- 
 wise paid the same dues to the Crown. 
 
 There was, indeed, a tradition preserved by 
 Lord Kames that Malcolm Canmore had introduced 
 feudalism into Scotland, and had given in feudal 
 grants the whole soil, with the exception of the 
 Mutehill of Scoon. But what matter to the clansman 
 that then or in the times of David L, to whom more 
 credible history pointed as the true author of Scotch 
 feudalism, there had been imported the alien feudal 
 system, with all its apparatus and jargon of a me 
 and de me? 2 What mattered a charter issued by 
 
 1 Stewart's Highlands, vol. i. appendix iv. 
 
 2 ' The very oldest writ in the shape of a charter connected 
 with Scotland is that of Duncan, the son of Malcolm Canmore,
 
 COMMONS AND WASTE LANDS 211 
 
 the Rex Scottorum ? The clansman was no con- 
 senting party, and he could not be reconciled to 
 changes which made him a mere tenant at will. 
 The circumstance that a notary public had tra- 
 velled from Edinburgh to a remote glen, and there, 
 perhaps in the middle of a moor, with the aid 
 of two clerks and the postboy, had given ' infeft- 
 ment ' of the surrounding country, did not satisfy 
 the Highlander that his rights were extinguished. 1 
 For centuries he persisted in preferring the sept 
 chiefs to those whom feudalism had given him. 
 The Duke of Gordon, nominally lord of a large 
 tract of country, could not bring into the field so 
 many swords as his feudatory, Macdonald of Clan- 
 ranald, who, though described in the account of the 
 clans compiled by order of President Forbes as 
 a mere ' tacksman,' commanded a following of 200 
 men-at-arms. In the rebellion of 1745, nothing is 
 more surprising than the large number of men 
 whom petty landowners or mere subvassals could 
 
 the date of which is about 1094. With David I, really begins 
 our body of Scotch charters.' Innes's Lectures on Scotch 
 Legal Antiquities, p. 29. 
 
 1 More's Lectures on the Laiv of Scotland, vol. i. p. 480. 
 
 p 2
 
 212 TEE LAND QUESTION 
 
 equip. And when it ceased to be the interest of 
 the Highland chiefs to maintain a large body of re- 
 tainers, and when they began to imitate the ruthless 
 evictions which had been employed in England in the 
 reigns of Henry VII., Henry VIII., and Edward VI., 
 the clansmen again resented, as cruel quibbles, the 
 legal machinery which Bailie Macwheebles brought 
 out in order to strip them of their customary rights. 
 The evictions of Sutherlandshire, and the rise in 
 rents which took place all over the Highlands after 
 the general introduction of sheep farming, were 
 regarded as usurpations. 
 
 In Orkney and Shetland we meet with the udal 
 tenure, which arose when these islands were subject 
 to the Crown of Denmark. Lands originally paid, 
 it is said, a tax or tribute called skat ; and, as they 
 were cultivated and enclosed, they were released 
 from this tribute and became udal or allodial, that 
 is, held of no superior, and in virtue of no charter 
 from the Crown or anyone claiming under it. 1 
 
 Such were the early systems of land tenure 
 scattered over Scotland systems accompanied, 
 
 1 More's Lectures, vol. i. p. 466. Bell's Commentaries.
 
 COMMONS AND WASTE LANDS 213 
 
 perhaps necessarily, by rude husbandry. There 
 was no rotation of crops ; the turf peeled off some 
 neighbouring land, and placed on what the clansman 
 wished to improve, formed what was, not inappro- 
 priately, termed ' a lazybed ; ' and he tilled his 
 little farm, if he tilled it at all, on the ' infield ' and 
 * outfield ' system, that is, he cultivated the land 
 nearest his hut badly, and the portion more remote 
 a little worse. 
 
 For centuries after the nominal conquest of Ire- 
 land, the English Common Law did not travel beyond 
 the Pale, which comprehended six conquered coun- 
 ties. Until the reign of James I., the Brehon Law 
 ruled the greater part of that country. The Statute 
 of Kilkenny had indeed declared the Brehon Law to 
 be a ' lewd custom ; ' but only in the reign of 
 James I. was it conclusively decided that the very 
 prevalent custom of tanistry was illegal. 1 In the 
 words of Sir John Davies, it was held to be unreason- 
 able, and therefore illegal, because a commonwealth 
 cannot exist without a certain ownership of land 
 
 1 The case of taniBtry. Murragh Mac Bryan v. Cahir 
 O'Callaghan. Davies' Reports in the King's Bench, Ireland, 
 p. 78.
 
 214 TEE LAND QUESTION 
 
 t and because, if men know not certainly for what 
 person they travail and defraud their souls of plea- 
 sure, as Solomon saith, they will never improve their 
 land to the best use, nor build houses of any value, 
 nor give civil education to their children ; but, having 
 respect to their present time only, they will be utterly 
 careless of posterity.' 
 
 Perhaps the clearest exposition of the ancient 
 Irish land system is to be found in the resolutions of 
 the judges touching ' the Irish custom of gavelkind.' 
 All possessions before the introduction of the 
 Common Law of England, they say, ' ran always 
 either in course of tanistry or in course of gavel- 
 kind.' Every seignory or chiefry, with the land 
 which passed with it, went without partition to the 
 tanist or heir apparent, who came in by election or 
 the strong hand, and not by descent. At the death 
 of a clansman, the whole of the estates of the sept 
 might be thrown into hotch-potch, and a new partition 
 was made by the chief; ' in which partition he did not 
 assign to the son of him who died the portion which 
 his father had, but he allotted to each of the sept, 
 according to his seniority, the better or greater
 
 COMMONS AND WASTE LANDS 215 
 
 portion.' 1 In other words, succession was deter- 
 mined by the custom of tanistry the land passed to 
 the oldest and worthiest of the family, seniori et 
 dignissimo viro ejusdem sanguinis et cognominis. 
 The Brehon Laws reveal many phases of early Irish 
 land tenure. In the ' saer ' stock and * daer ' stock 
 tenures, we find the equivalents of the metayer 
 tenure in common use abroad, and of the steel- 
 bow tenancy to be met with in Scotland, that is, a 
 tenure according to which the chief furnishes his 
 vassal with cattle. ' What are the returns of each 
 ' sed,' or due amount of stock supplies from great to 
 small, in ' saer ' stock tenure ? ' The answer of the 
 4 Senchus Mor ' is : 'In three years the chief is en- 
 titled to a " sed " in addition to that already given.' 2 
 In ' daer ' stock tenancy, which was optional, the 
 tenant paid so much as ' honour price ' to the chief, 
 and so much in proportion to the stock supplied. 
 4 The chief's claim for rent was contingent on his 
 supplying stock to the occupiers of his land.' 3 
 
 1 Resolution of the judges touching the Irish custom of 
 Gavelkind. Davies' Report, p. 134. 
 
 2 Ancient Laws of Ireland, vol. ii. 
 
 3 Ibid. p. xlviii.
 
 216 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 Accustomed to regard the land as more or less 
 the property of the sept, the Irish septman, like his 
 brother Celt in Scotland, did not relish the English 
 ideas which made him a mere tenant of a superior 
 lord. His chiefs crimes he could not regard as 
 annulling his claims ; arid the O'Mores and the 
 O'Connors took up arms against those who would 
 deprive them of their lands on account of the politi- 
 cal offences of their chieftains. Though much was 
 done to efface this feeling though in his time Lord 
 Clare could say with truth to the Irish landowners, 
 ' Confiscation is your common title ' though we are 
 told that 11,697,629 acres were confiscated between 
 the reign of James I. and the revolution of 1688 
 the feeling still lingers. Centuries of English rule 
 have not obliterated it. The offshoots of ' the lewd 
 customs ' may survive the system that came to de- 
 stroy them. 
 
 I ought here to mention a peculiar form of 
 tenure runrig or rundale to be found alike in 
 England, Scotland, and Ireland. Sometimes the 
 land was split up into thin compartments or strips,
 
 COMMONS AND WASTE LANDS 217 
 
 each of which belonged to a different owner. 
 Even so late as the end of last century the land- 
 owners of Donegal were busy uprooting a system 
 manifestly incompatible with good husbandry. One 
 witness before the Devon Commission, Lord George 
 Hill, stated that he knew a person who held his land in 
 forty-two different patches, and who ' at last gave it 
 up in despair of finding it.' The system existed all 
 over Scotland ; and as it split the land into strips too 
 narrow for ploughing, and was generally contrary 
 to good husbandry, in 1695 the Scotch Parliament 
 passed an Act for the division in severalty of land 
 held in runrig. 1 The reports of decisions in the Court 
 of Session during the last century and the beginning 
 of the present century are full of actions for the 
 division of land lying in runrig or runridge. 2 The 
 same custom we meet with in England, the soil of 
 which was frequently divided into minute panes or 
 compartments. The parish of Chinnor in Oxford, 
 for example, was split up into some two thousand 
 
 1 Erskine, book iii. tit. iii. p. 59. 
 
 2 Douglas v. Forrest, January 21, 1777.
 
 218 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 patches, each of the average size of three roods, 
 twenty- three perches. 1 
 
 In the fifth and subsequent centuries there came 
 to England Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, bringing with 
 them their institutions and customs. 2 Describing 
 the Germans of his time, Csesar distinctly states that 
 they did not know fixed property in land : each 
 year there was a redistribution of it among the sept. 
 In his Germania, Tacitus, describing the same people 
 two centuries later, mentions that the soil was at 
 intervals perhaps no longer annually divided, a 
 device probably employed to assure equality of value 
 in portions. To England, then, came those Jutes, 
 Saxons, and Angles, and settling there, they formed, 
 we are told, the pagus or mark. Among the chief 
 and his followers, or comrades, were parcelled out 
 portions of the soil, to be held in absolute ownership, 
 and known as the edel or allodial land. On the out- 
 
 1 Mr. Blamire's evidence before the Committee on Com- 
 mons' Inclosure. 
 
 2 Proofs of the unity of those early forms of property and 
 laws are accumulating. For example, it is clear that the cus- 
 tom of fosterage, a singular form of adoption, once supposed 
 to be peculiar to Ireland^ existed in England and Wales. 
 See Ancient Laws of Ireland, vol. ii. No. xlvi.
 
 COMMONS AND WASTE LANDS 219 
 
 skirts of the mark lay the waste, belonging to the 
 community and undivided. This, it is surmised, 
 was the origin of the ' folcland ' or ager publicus. 
 According to Kemble, it was the result of the union 
 of two or more wastes or marclands. Over this 
 folcland, or people's land, no man had more than 
 possessory rights. He could not freely devise his 
 interest. It did not descend to his heirs. It was 
 subject to the burthen of the trinoda necessitous, 
 from which, indeed, no land was free, that is to say, 
 the landowner must be ready to do military service, 
 and to repair the king's highways and his castles. We 
 are told that there went on a process which steadily 
 reduced the size of the folcland. With the consent 
 of the Witan or popular Assembly, the king could 
 make grants out of the common domain ; and these 
 grants, being booked or publicly entered, became 
 known as bocland, and were placed in the same 
 position as edel or allodial land. Such land bore the 
 burthen of the trinoda necessitous, but it was subject 
 to no other dues. Then came a change, the steps 
 of which are obscure. The king's power increases ; 
 the Witan loses its influence ; the king's comitatus
 
 220 TEE LAND QUESTION 
 
 or personal following, grows in importance ; the 
 ceorl's lot deteriorates ; and the magnitude of the 
 Comitatus almost places the king in the position of a 
 monarch of feudal times. By-and-by each man is 
 bound to attach himself to some lord ; and long 
 before feudalism exists by name, and before the 
 Consuetudines Feudorum are written, we witness 
 feudalism full blown, if its essence be, as Wright, for 
 example, alleges, the rendering of fealty. Economical 
 and political movements are wont to travel in parallel 
 lines, and the same causes which were destroying 
 the old democratic forms of Government were ef- 
 facing the democratic character of property. The 
 antiquated notion, set forth by Madox and Eeeve for 
 example, that William, by a single statuimus created 
 feudalism, seems unfounded ; and though it may 
 not be quite true, as Sir Francis Palgrave roundly 
 affirms, that ' there is the strongest evidence ' that 
 the Conquest did not make any difference in the 
 tenure of land, it seems certain that the common 
 theory with respect to two features in particular, 
 copyholds and commons, is erroneous. 
 
 If history speaks of revolutions and cataclysms
 
 COMMONS AND WASTE LANDS 221 
 
 rather than of growth, it is because history is imper- 
 fect. Fuller knowledge reveals intermediate steps ; 
 and the more one knows of the Conquest the more 
 one is assured that old English institutions survived 
 and triumphed over the conquerors. Such seems 
 the truth with respect to the commons of England. 
 
 If we try to picture from the accounts of lawyers 
 the state of England after the Conquest, we shall 
 conceive England parcelled into manors, over each of 
 which presides some lord. From the king flowed 
 all rights of property ; to him the lords owed 
 allegiance and service. To inferior tenants they 
 make grants or subfeus, on condition of receiving 
 certain dues. Perhaps the vassal was bound to 
 serve his lord in war. If the tenure was of a base 
 kind, he might be bound to labour so many days in 
 his lord's fields. The Pusey estates were held on 
 condition that the owner should always keep a 
 certain horn. Some towns possessed of land were 
 required to furnish one day's entertainment for the 
 king. Domesday Book enables one to eke out the 
 picture. We read of the tenant in capite, or great 
 lords who held of the king ; the thanes or vava-
 
 222 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 sours, nobles whose exact status is uncertain ; aloarii, 
 whose lands were allodial and subject only to a land 
 tax ; liberi homines, or freemen of all conditions, 
 some of them hangers on of a great lord, others 
 subject to none but the king ; sochemanni, who held 
 their land in soc or franchise of some lord ; and a 
 great mass of serfs and slaves. 
 
 There is much evidence that there was not a 
 complete dislocation of society. The country still 
 lived very much its old life, under new masters. 
 The bulk of the people still belonged to agricultural 
 communities, more or less perfect. Many, perhaps 
 most, of the Saxon proprietors retained their lands, 
 and on the same terms as those to which they were 
 subject under the Confessor. The manors may have 
 been but the continuation of the old marks, which 
 had ceased to be democratic. There were still the 
 old local courts, somewhat changed indeed, but 
 substantially the same as those of ante-Norman 
 times. There was the Court Baron, to which came 
 the lord of the manor and the freemen. There was 
 also the Court Customary, to which the copyholders 
 repaired with their peculiar grievances. In these
 
 223 
 
 Courts were determined all matters concerning the 
 land of the manor. In these and other institutions 
 traces or fragments of the old village community 
 still existed ; and ' Domesday Book ' abounds with 
 proofs that the ' vill ' or township had its rights as 
 well as the landlord. There is mention of common 
 belonging ' to all men,' and ' pasture for the cattle 
 of the village ' is a frequent entry. 1 
 
 Over England are still scattered remains of the 
 old regime, which the Conquest modified but did 
 not destroy remains of a time when, to quote 
 Marshall, ' each parish or township was considered 
 one common farm, though the tenantry were 
 numerous.' In his work on the agriculture of 
 Yorkshire, he describes the old system as existing 
 almost perfect in the vale of Pickering. Eound the 
 village lay the common farmstead or homestead ; 
 next were the arable fields allotted to winter and 
 summer crops and fallow ; then came the meadow 
 grounds, or ' ings ; ' and beyond lay the commonable 
 lands and commons, which were sometimes locally 
 spoken of as ' the known lands ' and ' half-year 
 
 1 Sir Henry Ellis' Introduction to Domesday, vol. i. 
 pp. 103, 171.
 
 224 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 lands,' that is, tracts open at all seasons, or after 
 Lammas. In certain districts there were practices 
 similar to randale or runrig. What Tacitus wrote 
 of their fathers arva per annos mutant was true of 
 many Englishmen of recent times ; and the land so 
 apportioned was known as ' dale ' or * lot meadow.' 
 Sometimes the best lot fell to the most successful 
 wrestler. In ' the sheep heaves ' of the North of 
 England, and the ' cattle gates,' familiar to every 
 Yorkshireman, and not unknown to lawyers as the 
 subject of no small litigation, there are the remains 
 of the same regime. 
 
 In Domesday Book there are many allusions to 
 waste lands. At the date of its compilation the 
 country was sparsely peopled ; and in every manor 
 there must have been much of the soil unculti- 
 vated and open. The commons may have been 
 part of the unabsorbed folcland or the ' mearc- 
 land,' or waste around the old mark. 1 It is pro- 
 bable that as the power of the king rose, and 
 that of the Witan waned, most of the folcland 
 was swallowed up by the former, and became known 
 
 1 Allen On the Royal Prerogative, p. 152.
 
 COMMONS AND WASTE LANDS 225 
 
 as Crown land. 1 Some portions not so dealt with, 
 as being too poor, may have been the origin of com- 
 mons. They may, indeed, have been included in 
 the grants made to the lords by kings ; but the 
 rights of common existed before the lord existed. 
 Certainly there is no proof that what is now common 
 was ever allodial or bocland, or that rights of com- 
 mon were ever, as a matter of fact, granted by the 
 lord. The truth seems to be that the lord of the 
 manor's right was more of an usurpation than the 
 so-called customs in favour of his tenant. No 
 doubt, the lord was more released from the control 
 of the community than was the ealdorman. But 
 there were laws binding on the former also. It 
 does not appear, the dictum of Lord Coke notwith- 
 
 1 The origin of the commons in Scotland is usually alleged 
 to be much the same as in England. ' Commonty,' says Pro- 
 fessor Bell, ' arose at first from grants made by feudal lords 
 and proprietors to their feuors and tenants of rights to pasture 
 their cattle on the grazing ground or waste of the barony. 
 Sometimes, also, cottages were suffered, by vicinage and 
 custom, to establish a right of common over those and waste 
 pasture lands. Neighbouring towns, too, permitted reciprocal 
 encroachments on their pasture ground, and so established 
 commonty of pasture by mutual agreement or forbearance.' 
 Bell's Commentaries, vol. ii. p. 800. 
 
 Q
 
 226 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 standing, that the lord of the manor could ' ap- 
 prove ' or enclose without the consent of his tenants 
 before the Statute of Merton. The operative words 
 of that statute, and those of its supplement the 
 Statute of Westminster, 1 are inconsistent with the 
 contrary notion, though sanctioned by such high 
 authority as Coke and Justice Buller. 
 
 There is proof in the earliest law books and 
 statutes of the importance of commons and waste 
 lands. In Glanville, one of the earliest writers on 
 English law, we find specimens of writs to the 
 sheriffs to provide for cases of usurpation. 2 Brae- 
 ton, who wrote on the customs and laws of England 
 in the reign of Henry III., discusses the subject of 
 commons at much length. He states that rights of 
 commons were acquired by grant, sale, long use, ex 
 scientia, negligentia^ et patientia dominorum, and that 
 they might be so lost. He speaks of the remedies 
 open to one who was deprived of such rights. The 
 sufferer was to go to the person who looks after 
 such rights to obtain assize or a writ of enquiry, for 
 the purpose of recovery. It was the duty of the 
 
 ' 20 Henry III. c. 4, and 13 Edward I. c. 46. 
 2 Glanville, p. 275. Beanie's translation.
 
 227 
 
 viceeomes, or sheriff, to examine such complaints 
 without delay. A jury was to be empanelled, and, 
 in the presence of the parties, it was bound to in- 
 quire into the alleged grievances, and to certify to 
 the justices the results of the examination. Bracton 
 did little more than apply to commons the doctrines 
 of the Roman law relative to servitudes. 1 It was 
 left to other lawyers to draw the distinction between 
 easements and profits a prendre, or mere rights over 
 the soil and profits therefrom, which Bracton had 
 lumped together. By-and-by there was also elabo- 
 rated the distinction between common appendant and 
 common appurtenant, or rights of common possessed 
 by the tenant of a manor as an incident to his land 
 and rights conferred by special grant. 2 A long series 
 of cases, from Gatewards case to our own time, 
 has built up the present complicated law of common 
 rights. 
 
 1 Dunraven v. Llewelyn, 15 Q.B. 791. 
 
 1 Giiterbock, who has inquired into the relations of Bractou's 
 work to the Civil Law, observes that its influence on his teaching 
 is not very perceptible with respect to commons. Two maxims, 
 however, Bracton plainly owes to the civil law first, that the 
 rights of common could exist only in connection with land, and 
 that they must exist over another man's land. 
 
 Q ^
 
 228 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 Even in Bracton's time the work of enclosing 
 had begun ; and he speaks of many lords not being 
 able to make good use of their manors by reason of 
 the claims of commoners. So it was provided that 
 were it shown that the tenants had been left suffi- 
 cient pasture, with free egress and ingress, then ' let 
 them be content therewith,' and let their lords be 
 free to enjoy the improvements which they have 
 effected in their lands, wastes, and pastures. It was 
 the Statute of Merton which gave, or, as some say, 
 confirmed this power. 1 In the Year Books we find 
 many instances of attempts to 'approve; ' for example, 
 in one of the Year Books of Edward I. there is 
 chronicled an attempt to enclose, under the Statute 
 of Merton, contrary to the terms of a reservation of 
 common of pasture in a feoffment. 2 In the same 
 Year Book we note another attempt again made 
 under the Statute of Merton to approve contrary to 
 the terms of a grant. 8 In the Year Book for 1304, 
 there is mention of a writ of admeasurement against 
 
 1 20 Henry III. c. 4., supplemented by the Statute of West- 
 minster, 13 Edward I. c. 46. 
 
 2 Year Books of Edward I., for years 30-31 (Harwood's 
 edition), p. 353. 8 Ibid. p. 328.
 
 229 
 
 certain lords of the ' vill ' of C., for surcharging the 
 common pasture with more beasts than they were 
 entitled to in proportion to their freeholds ; and 
 Bereford, J., lays it down that if the lord ' surcharge 
 so that the tenant cannot have a sufficient pasture, I 
 say he is a disseisor.' 
 
 The Extenta Manerii, a statute said to have 
 been passed in the fourth year of the reign of 
 Edward I., directs inquiries to be made as to the 
 extent of the lord's right of pasture outside his manor 
 and of the amount of land which he was at liberty 
 to improve. For many years the statute book re- 
 ceived few new enactments on the subject. Yet, 
 in the reign of Edward IV., the lord of the manor 
 obtained one clear victory. It was decided that 
 the inhabitants of a town, a fluctuating uncertain 
 number, could not have common of pasture. 1 For 
 a time, labour rather than land was in demand ; 
 and there were passed many laws, such as the 
 Statute of Labourers, which complain of the exces- 
 sive wages of husbandry and of the efforts of the 
 bondmen to break away from their yoke. 2 In the 
 1 6 Rep. 59. 2 See Eden's State of Poor, vol. i. p. 36.
 
 230 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 reign of Edward VI., Parliament solemnly resanc- 
 tioned the Statute of Merton. Certainly, the work 
 of enclosure did not stand still. John Eous, who 
 writes in the end of the fifteenth century, is fierce 
 in his denunciations of the enclosers of his time, 
 declaring that they insulted God and man by ' their 
 preference of irrational beasts to rational men.' 1 
 Thomas More, writing later, speaks of the sheep 
 as becoming so voracious that ' they devour men, 
 fields, and houses, and desolate and depopulate 
 towns.' Bernard Gilpin treats as worse than Ahab 
 those who pluck away the pastures of the com- 
 monalty and ' who sell the poor for a . pair of 
 shoes.' True, the statutes of Henry III. and 
 Edward I., under which enclosures took place, 
 declared that the tenants were to be left sufficient 
 pasture. But, as Latimer pointedly asked, ' Who 
 should be the judge to limit what was sufficient for 
 them ? ' If the statutes of Henry III. and Edward I., 
 argued Latimer, allowed the landlords to take 
 away so much pasture from the tenants, the lords 
 would be sure to leave no more than was barely 
 
 1 Cited in Brodie's Constitutional History.
 
 231 
 
 sufficient ; ' and if the tenants had any more taken 
 from them since that time, then they had not now 
 sufficient.' x 
 
 In the reigns of Henry VII. and Henry VIII. 
 were passed numerous laws, the object of which was 
 to prevent land being turned into pasturage. In the 
 time of the latter alone were passed no fewer than 
 four Acts, levelled against ' pulling doune and de- 
 struction of tounes wythin thys realme and laying to 
 pasture laudes which customably have been manured 
 and occupied wyth tyllage and husbandry. 5 Still the 
 work of enclosure went on. These Acts of Parlia- 
 ment and the denunciation of Latimer could not 
 prevent the spoliation of the poor. In 1548 Corn- 
 wall was in a state of revolt, chiefly by reason of 
 this cause of vexation. So the Lord Protector 
 issued a proclamation against the enclosing of arable 
 lands and turning them into pasture, a policy which, 
 he said, had brought the land to ' a marvellous 
 desolation.' He also appointed a royal commission 
 of inquiry. As was pointed out by John Hales, one 
 of the Commissioners, in his charge, the inquiry 
 1 Jjast sermon preached before King Edward VI,
 
 232 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 was designed to lead to the enforcement of the 
 Acts passed in the preceding reigns. It did not 
 bear much fruit. The Chronicles of Strype for the 
 next year are fall of the records of fresh riots. 
 Of course, the enclosures complained of did not 
 as a rule relate to commons. But they frequently 
 related to Lammas lands subject to rights of common. 
 We need not follow minutely the later history 
 of the enclosures of commons. It is enough to say 
 that in every county history will be read the records 
 of the strife. Each village green has created 
 Hampdens, who withstood the little tyrants or Ahabs 
 of the fields. One could name commons which 
 have been saved to the poor by bravery and adroit- 
 ness which, on a larger platform, would have been 
 memorable in history. Let us narrate only one 
 instance ; but let us think of it as typical of many. 
 Berkhampstead Common or Frith was part of the 
 honour of Berkhampstead, which was granted to 
 the Prince of Wales in the reign of Edward III. It 
 at one time included 1,270 acres. In 1618 the 
 Prince of Wales of that time appropriated 300 
 acres, and added them to his park. This step was
 
 COMMONS AND WASTE LANDS 233 
 
 taken with the consent of the tenants; and in 1639 
 400 more acres were enclosed and leased. But this 
 new encroachment the people would not brook, and 
 one William Edlyn, of North Church, figures dimly 
 in law reports as a sort of stalwart Hampden of his 
 time. He threw down the new fences. The Com- 
 missioners of the Revenues of the Prince of Wales 
 petitioned Parliament, and complained of the rude- 
 ness of Edlyn. The House of Lords ordered Edlyn 
 not to repeat the offence, and said that the Prince 
 should enjoy the enclosed lands during that Parlia- 
 ment. In 1651 the honour and manor were sold 
 to Godfrey Ellis and Griffbntius Philips ; and Ellis 
 offered 400 acres for sale. The indefatigable Edlyn 
 in 1653 presented a petition to certain Commis- 
 sioners ' for the removing of obstructions in the sale 
 of the honours of the late King and Queen and 
 Prince,' and prayed that Ellis should be compelled 
 to make out the State's title. Ellis failed to give 
 security for costs of inquiry, and the result was that 
 all fresh enclosures were stopped. And so John 
 Edlyn passes out of sight. But we owe him much. 
 He kept the common intact until 1866, when Earl
 
 234 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 Brownlow again attempted to enclose it, and was 
 foiled by Mr. Augustus Smith. 1 
 
 The machinery of the Acts of Merton and West- 
 minster moved too slowly for the landowners, and 
 particularly because ,it did not enable them to 
 enclose against the wishes of copyholders. It was, 
 therefore, customary to resort to private Acts of 
 Parliament. In the reigns of the Georges the work 
 of enclosure was carried on with zeal and even fury. 
 Lovers of rural beauty, and pitiful souls such as 
 Goldsmith, deplored the ravages made in the name 
 of agriculture and improvement. 
 
 Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide, 
 And even the bareworn common is denied. 
 
 On the other hand, men who looked to material 
 results, asked why they should send 7,000,000/. 
 abroad in three years in order to purchase corn, 
 while so much of the soil of England was wasted or 
 misapplied. What excuse, it was asked, could be 
 given for the maintenance of commonable lands ? 
 And how could winter wheat be sown if there was a 
 
 1 9 L.B. Equity 241.
 
 COMMONS AND WASTE LANDS '235 
 
 flockmaster who at a certain season was entitled to 
 depasture his sheep over a whole parish? One 
 writer declared that the value of the whole produce 
 of common laud did not amount to more than four 
 shillings an acre. 1 Perhaps to Arthur Young more 
 than any other is due this rage for enclosing. In 
 and out of season he preached it. ' The greatest 
 disgrace to a kingdom so truly flourishing is the 
 existence of so much waste land ; ' and he pledged 
 himself to pay off the National Debt in a few years 
 by running the plough through the idle acres of 
 the North of England. He groaned in spirit over 
 the moorland farms of Northumberland, yielding a 
 slovenly crop for a year or two, and then suffered 
 to fall into grass. ' What a noble source of riches 
 and population ! ' 2 he exclaims, as he looks at the 
 broad moors stretching between Alnwick and Koth- 
 bury. 'At a slight expense every acre might be 
 made worth 8s. to 10s.' Marshall, an agricultural 
 writer of the end of last century and the beginning 
 
 1 Middleton's Survey of Middlesex. Quoted in Southey's 
 Doctor, vol. i. p. 197. 
 
 2 Six Months 9 Tour through the North of Evfjland, vol iii. 
 p. 86.
 
 236 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 of this, dwelt much on the pernicious effect of 
 commons and commonable lands ; Lammas land 
 he computes to be worth only one half of similar 
 land when enclosed. 
 
 The portion of the poor was all the while being 
 silently absorbed. There were few to befriend him 
 in the jostle of landowners and an unreformed 
 Parliament : and oftentimes the cotter had only a 
 confused idea that something was going on in that 
 remote and inconceivable centre of things, London, 
 before he learned that he might no more drive 
 afield his geese and cows. These things were done . 
 in corners ; they did not come before the eye of the 
 world ; and in the private Acts passed before 1800, 
 there was small attention paid to the wants of the 
 poor. Unrepresented and undefended, their rights 
 were swept away. The work of destruction was 
 facilitated not a little by the general Act passed 
 at the instance of Sir George Sinclair, which con- 
 solidated certain provisions usually inserted in all 
 enclosure Acts ; and, by its aid, in the space of 
 forty-five years there were passed 2,000 private 
 enclosure bills. Yet the work did not go on fast
 
 COMMONS AND WASTE LANDS 287 
 
 enough to satisfy landowners. The expense of pro- 
 curing a private bill was very large, and it might 
 amount to a thousand pounds. In fairness let us 
 add that scandalous instances of waste were to 
 be met with in the more thickly peopled counties ; 
 in Lancashire alone there were 200,000 acres of un- 
 cultivated land. Commonable land still abounded. 
 Accordingly there was passed the 6 and 7 Will. IV. c. 
 115, facilitating enclosures ; and in 1845 there was 
 enacted the General Enclosure Act, which is the 
 chief instrument of recent enclosures. 1 It did not 
 become law without opposition. Men so dissimilar 
 as Mr. Joseph Hume and Colonel Sibthorp agreed in 
 denouncing it as a landlord's bill. Yet it triumphed 
 over them. It became law in a form which Par- 
 liament has since repented of. Commissioners were 
 to be appointed to carry out the Act. They were 
 empowered to see to the enclosure of commons, 
 and ' gates and stinted pasture ; ' but ' no waste land 
 of any manor on which the tenants of such manor 
 have rights of common, nor any land whatsoever 
 subject to rights of common which may be exercised 
 8 & 9 Vic. c. 118.
 
 236 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 at all times of every year, for cattle levant or couchant 
 upon other land, or to any rights of common which 
 may be exercised at all times of every year, and 
 which shall not be limited by number of stints, 
 shall be enclosed under this Act, without the pre- 
 vious authority of Parliament in each particular 
 case.' A similar limitation was imposed upon en- 
 closures within fifteen miles of London, and within 
 smaller distances from other large cities. The 
 interests of commoners, if claimed in respect of land, 
 were to be valued according to its rateable value ; if 
 in respect of rights of common in gross rated to the 
 relief of the poor, and not ' defined by numbers and 
 stint,' the interests were to be valued as the Commis- 
 sioners might determine. This Act was the turning 
 point in legislation. Since the passing of it Parlia- 
 ment has set its face in the opposite direction. 
 
 I come now to nearly the last of the enactments 
 on the subject, and of the few it will be unnecessary 
 to mention all. In 1866 there was passed an enact- 
 ment which made it permissible to enclose certain 
 portions of the Forest of Dean, which the General 
 Enclosure Act of 1845 had specially exempted.
 
 COMMONS AND WASTE LANDS 239 
 
 Subsequently there was passed the Metropolitan 
 Commons Act, 1 which declared that ' after the 
 passing of this Act the Commissioners shall not 
 entertain an application for the enclosure of a 
 Metropolitan Common, or any part thereof,' and 
 which provided schemes ' for the establishment of 
 local management.' This Act allowed the Metro- 
 politan Board of Works to compensate those 
 who were damaged or destroyed by any such 
 scheme ; and under the powers of this Act it has 
 purchased Hampstead Heath. Subsequently, in 
 18G9, the Act was extended to all land subject to the 
 General Enclosure Act of 1845. 
 
 Let us now glance at the mode in which the 
 commons or commonties of Scotland have been 
 enclosed or divided for nearly two centuries. In 
 that country there has been since 1695 ample 
 machinery for their enclosure. An Act of that year, 
 singularly influential in its effect on Scotch agri- 
 culture and life, declares that * all commonties, ex- 
 cept the commonties belonging to the king and 
 royal boroughs in burgage, may be divided at the 
 
 1 29 & 30 Vic. c. 122, amended by 32 & 33 Vic. c. 107.
 
 
 240 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 instance of any having interest, by summons raised 
 against all persons concerned before the Lords of 
 Session.' It was wisely provided in this Act that it 
 should not affect the commonties belonging to royal 
 boroughs. But this precaution was made somewhat 
 worthless by two decisions of the Court of Session, 
 which declared that when the commonty had not 
 been conveyed to a corporation on behalf of the in- 
 habitants, but merely to the burgesses, a division 
 might take place. 1 On the whole, the results of the 
 Act have been by no means entirely satisfactory. 
 There is every reason to believe that the poor have 
 frequently been greatly despoiled by _the Act of 
 1695. Lawyers used the doctrines of feudalism to 
 the detriment of commoners. ' They pointed,' says 
 Professor Innes, ' to his (the baron's) charter, with 
 its clause of parts and pertinents, with its general 
 clause of mosses and moors clauses taken from the 
 style book, not with any reference to the territory 
 conveyed in that charter ; and, although the charter 
 was hundreds of years old, and the lord had never 
 
 1 White v. Calder, February 13, 1812, and Henderson v. 
 Malcolm, June 29, 1815.
 
 
 COMMONS AND WASTE LANDS 241 
 
 possessed any of the common, when it came to be 
 divided, the lord got the whole that was allocated to 
 his estate, and the poor cotter none.' l No allot- 
 ment is made on behalf of those who are not pro- 
 prietors, or who do not possess the right to cut turf 
 or other servitudes over the commonty ; and for a 
 time it was customary for the proprietor of the 
 solum to receive a prcedpuum or bonus slice over 
 and above the shares allotted to those whose rights 
 were mere servitudes or easements. ' The present 
 writer recollects listening to a Scotch farmer pouring 
 forth his treasured wrath at the spoliation of 
 what he held to be his birthright. Bleak was the 
 hill to which he pointed with indignation, and little 
 to be prized, thought the on-looker, were the saffron- 
 coloured swamps which hung on the hill flanks, 
 or the thin, rugged, seamy soil through which the 
 rocks protruded. But his father's cattle had fed 
 there, and he perhaps had cut turf in the few 
 green dells, and it had in the past been " our 
 hill," and it was a loss to him not measured by 
 guineas to be obliged to look over a wire fence or 
 1 Innes' Scotch Lego2 Antiquities, p. 155. 
 R
 
 242 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 a whinstone dyke at what had once been virtually 
 his/ 1 
 
 The process of division is strictly litigious. The 
 person who desires a division proceeds to make 
 the parties interested defendants to a friendly suit. 
 In the ' condescendence ' which accompanies the 
 summons, he sets out his grounds for believing 
 that the common in question is a fit subject for 
 division. The other parties then lodge statements 
 of the nature and extent of their claims and their 
 pleas in law. The record having been closed, and 
 the applicant's or pursuer's title having been sus- 
 tained, the Lord Ordinary will direct a surveyor to 
 ' visit and perambulate ' the commonty ; and if the 
 surveyor's report be not objected to, there will be 
 a decree carrying it into effect. 
 
 It is the monotony and the sad sameness of the 
 lot of the poor, as much as their physical wants or 
 painful toiling, that are their curse. They bend their 
 patient necks to the yoke of the severest labour, and 
 in time they take to the roughest fare, and it is their 
 
 1 The above quotation is from an article contributed by me 
 to the Spectator of December 23, 1871.
 
 COMMONS AND WASTE LANDS 243 
 
 safety and comfort that they do so. They bear also 
 the dull monotony of their daily toil without com- 
 plaining ; but ofttimes this is their ruin, for patience 
 is here surrender, and often this insidious submissive- 
 ness, this absence of human unrest, unmans them, 
 and they come to know no wants only because they 
 lose all capacity for varied enjoyment. Now, none 
 'that would wish to chequer and humanize the 
 lot of the poor would lightly take from them the 
 commons, which have been their parks, and which 
 have been the cisterns and sources to them of many 
 simple and abiding joys. I see a village much like 
 its fellows in every English county : at the doors of 
 its modest cottages spreads out a common, bright in 
 summer with gorse and heath and tremulous blue 
 bells?; a breezy plain fit for all manly sports ; the 
 one place where the widow may graze her cow ; the 
 one spot where the poor may glean at all seasons ; 
 and among the few portions of his country where a 
 landless Englishman need not feel a trespasser. The 
 common is doomed. It is broken up and fenced 
 about. It is trenched and tilled with care. Ten 
 years hence it is bright with corn, and smiles with 
 
 R 2
 
 244 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 looks of plenty, and those who knew it as an open, 
 barren plain perhaps say, Behold the mighty gain ! 
 No gipsies' encampments beside the village ; more 
 produce ; larger farms ; the country more thickly 
 peopled ; the poetry and the beauty that dwell in 
 waving corn and scented hayfields such, it may be 
 said, are the solid fruits of the policy of enclosing. 
 But when all these are counted up, there remains 
 the fact that the village has become a more cheer- 
 less home for the labourer, from many pleasures 
 quite cut off; that his lot is more monotonous and 
 machine-like ; and that, denied free access to the 
 open air and room for manly games, he becomes 
 less human, if more civilised less happy, if more 
 patient than his father. The new order may be 
 a higher civilisation. But, if so, civilisation has 
 its victims, and perpetrates cruelties of its own ; 
 it mutilates and maims, if it does not burn ; it en- 
 feebles a community if it destroys no individual ; 
 and the dwellers in this village are among the 
 sufferers. A few parks for the people are but an 
 inadequate recompense for such losses. Many com- 
 mons have been turned into parks, and many private
 
 COMMONS AND WASTE LANDS 245 
 
 parks may be made common before the balance be 
 restored. 
 
 There were, moreover, other benefits of a more 
 palpable character, which have been lost. * Before 
 the commons were parcelled out, there existed 
 potent and well-understood checks on the over- 
 growth of population. Most of the rural poor 
 were then proprietors, not, indeed, of the directum 
 do minium, but of a substantial usus. This truth 
 is too often forgotten. How rarely is it recollected 
 that it is only in very modern times that England 
 came to be peopled by persons totally devoid of 
 proprietorial rights ! Our present condition is 
 chiefly the work of the eighteenth and nineteenth 
 centuries. Our present artificial state artificial, 
 whether Lord Derby or Mr. Bright is right as 
 to the number of landowners is most modern. 
 Long after the destruction of the bulk of our yeo- 
 men, and the diminution of small holdings during 
 the French wars, the mass of the people were to 
 all intents and purposes proprietors. If they did 
 not own the entire dominium, neither did the lord 
 of the manor. If they were not the owners of the
 
 246 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 fee-simple, still they were possessed of some claims 
 over the land. The pertinent circumstance is, that 
 far into the eighteenth century and into this 
 century England was inhabited by persons who, 
 whether freeholders, or copyholders, or cotters, or 
 residents hi towns possessing rights of common, 
 owned proprietorial rights over the soil, and that 
 the present homeless character of the bulk of the 
 people came to pass within living memory. Even 
 if the labourers were not really occupiers of the 
 soil with fixity of tenure, estover, turbary, pasturage, 
 rights of common appurtenant, appendant, or in 
 gross, were valuable and substantial qualities, and 
 the ownership of some or any of them severed the 
 hind of those days as much from the hind of our day 
 as he is severed from a tiller of the Pays du Waes. 
 In the light of a sound polity, this partnership was 
 often a salutary circumstance. All the partners had 
 a plain intelligible standard whereby to regulate 
 their lives. Families must be shaped to fit the land 
 or usus at their disposal. Too many for the land, 
 too many to live. No part in the agricultural 
 communities, no part in life. The sequence was
 
 COMMONS AND WASTE LANDS 247 
 
 direct and most clear. All could understand that 
 pitiless logic. Now, it is a matter of history that 
 countries the population of which has been greatly 
 dependent for sustenance on the soil have been 
 rarely troubled with pauperism, and a fortiori, 
 this would hold good of smaller communities 
 the precise means of which were still more visible. 
 But all cannot understand the dependence of wages 
 on capital, an abstraction about the extent and 
 nature of which even experts, not to say the un- 
 initiated, are interminably disputing. Then, too, 
 prudence in such a situation told most speedily 
 and visibly to one's individual benefit. Now, a 
 man's individual hand is palsied by the thought 
 that, labour as he may, the imprudence of others 
 may efface all traces of his forethought. Telling a 
 labourer to contract the size of his family is telling 
 him to swim hard in order that another man, not 
 necessarily he, may reach the shore. If there were 
 then no historical evidence, we should unhesitatingly 
 conclude that a system which indicated in figures 
 the exact number of vacancies or berths could not 
 but be a salutary check on population. Indeed,
 
 248 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 Tusser, in his rhymed arguments for enclosures, 
 expressly states that a leading recommendation of 
 enclosures was their tendency to augment popu- 
 lation.' 1 
 
 From the preceding sketch, it will be apparent 
 that the manner in which the commons have 
 been divided has been by no means in unison with 
 justice to all concerned or in accordance with their 
 origin. Once, almost every dweller in a manor, 
 unless, indeed, such as were not freemen, had a share 
 in the produce of the common. Perhaps the lord's 
 right always was, until the day of division, of a 
 purely honorary character. Perhaps his legal estate 
 may have been as empty and valueless as the legal 
 estate of a trustee. If he ventured to put up a wall 
 or fence to hinder the commoners' cattle from 
 grazing, it would be cast down. To all intents 
 and purposes, the commoners and not he owned the 
 common. But when a division takes place, those 
 whose rights over the common are of a substantial 
 character may get almost nothing, while those whose 
 
 1 The above quotation is from an article contributed by me 
 to the Spectator of Dec. 23, 1871.
 
 COMMONS AND WASTE LANDS 249 
 
 rights are a figment of law may get almost every- 
 thing. The former are stripped of immemorial en- 
 joyments, and the latter are gifted with powers 
 which were never theirs before ; and the lord's right 
 at Common Law to the shell is converted into a right 
 to the oyster itself. 
 
 To what has been done, we must resign our- 
 selves, for ancient wrongs make modern rights. But 
 there are still many commons fit for enclosure and 
 not a little waste land which may one day be culti- 
 vated. 1 The traveller who passes through Matter- 
 dale Common, for instance, beholds a splendid tract 
 of some thousand acres fit for the plough yet lying 
 almost useless. For the enclosure of these com- 
 mons, and such as these, the Statute of Merton, 
 the 6 and 7 Will. iv. c. 115, and the General 
 Enclosure Act, do not afford due facilities. More 
 are required. But let us adopt new principles in 
 regard to enclosures. No man has a vested claim 
 to obtain an Act of Parliament, and without it 
 
 1 It has been computed by Captain Maxse that of the waste 
 lands of the United Kingdom, amounting to 27,287,919 acres, 
 11,000,000 are cultivable. Fortnightly Review, August 1870.
 
 250 THE LAND QUESTION 
 
 the lord's right may be zero. If, when an 
 enclosure takes place, he receives an allotment pro- 
 portioned, not, as now, to the rental or rateable value 
 of his land, but to the actual value of his previous 
 rights over the common, he would be compensated. 
 Such a principle would revolutionise schemes of 
 enclosure, and the lion's share would go to the 
 parish or local community, and not, as now, to the 
 lord. 
 
 

 
 APPENDIX A 
 
 IT may be expedient to point out the main characteristics 
 of the system of registration devised by Sir Kobert Torrens. 
 His is a system of registration of title as opposed to a 
 registration of assurances. One of the great features of 
 his system is, that he proposes to put on the register all 
 legal interests, such as mortgages, leases, life tenancies, 
 excluding only equitable interests, such as trusts. The 
 other is, that no property will be conveyed by mere execu- 
 tion of a deed or instrument, that instruments will serve 
 only as authorities to make entries, and that conveyance 
 will be accomplished by registration. The former is a 
 point of detail to be tested by experience ; the latter is a 
 vital point. I may here mention as proof of the unsatis- 
 factory character of the working of Lord Westbury's Act, 
 that it has been computed that 760 years would, at the 
 present rate, be required in order to put the whole soil of 
 England on the register. See Mr. Arthur Arnold's 
 article on 'Land Transfer' in Fraser'a Magazine for 
 March 1873. 
 
 I.ON'DOX : nn.NTF.D DY 
 
 SI'OTTISWOODK AMI CO. XKW-STHEKT SQCAKH 
 A>"I) PAUMAMKXT STUEET
 
 BEDFORD STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON, 
 1872. 
 
 MACMILLAA. & Co:s CATALOGUE of Works 
 in the Departments of History, Biography, 
 and Travels ; Politics, Political and Social 
 Economy, Law, etc.; and Works connected 
 with Language. With some short Account 
 or Critical Notice concerning each Book. 
 
 HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, arxd TRAVELS. 
 
 Baker (Sir Samuel W.) Works by Sir SAMUEL BAKER 
 M.A., F.R.G.S.: 
 
 THE ALBERT N'YANZA Great Basin ol the Nile, and Explora- 
 tion of the Nile Sources. New and Cheaper Edition. Maps and 
 Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 "Bruce -won the source of the Blue Nile ; Sfeke and Grant -won the 
 Victoria source of the great White Nile ; and I have been permitted to 
 succeed in completing the Nile Sources by the discovery of the great 
 reservoir of the equatorial waters, the Albert N^yanza, froftf. -which the 
 river issues as the entire White Nile.' 1 ' 1 PREFACE. "As a Macaulay 
 arose among the historians" says the READER, "so a Baker has arisen 
 among the explorers." " Charmingly ivritten;" says the SPECTATOR, 
 "full, as might be expected, of incident, and free from that -wearisome 
 reiteration of useless facts which is the drawback to almost all books of 
 African travel." 
 
 THE NILE TRIBUTARIES OF ABYSSINIA, and the Sword 
 Hunters of the Hamran Arabs. With Maps and Illustrations. 
 Fourth and Cheaper Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.
 
 2 MACMILLAN'S CATALOGUE OF WORKS IN 
 
 Sir Samuel Baker here describes twelve months' exploration, diiring 
 which he examined the rivers that are tributary to the Nile from Abyssinia, 
 including the Albara, Stttite, Royan, Salaam, Angrab, Kahad, Dinder, 
 and t/ie Blue Nile. The interest attached to these portions of Africa, differs 
 entirely from that of the White Nile regions, as the whole of Upper Egypt 
 and Abyssinia is capable of development, and is inhabited by races having 
 some degree of civilization; -while Central Africa is peopled by a race of 
 savages, whose future is more problematical. The TIMES says : " It solves 
 finally a geographical riddle which hitherto had been extremely perplexing, 
 and it adds much to our information respecting Egyptian Abyssinia and 
 the different races that spread over it. It contains, moreover, some notable 
 instances of English daring and enterprising skill ; it abounds in ani- 
 mated tales of exploits dear to the heart of the British sportsman; and it 
 will attract even the least studious reader, as the author tells a story well, 
 and can describe nature with uncommon power." 
 
 Barante (M. De). ^GUIZOT. 
 
 Baring-Gould (Rev. S., M.A.) LEGENDS OF OLD 
 
 TESTAMENT CHARACTERS, from the Talmud and other 
 sources. By the Rev. S. BARING-GOULD, M.A. Author of 
 " Curious Myths of the Middle Ages," " The Origin and Develop- 
 ment of Religious Belief," " In Exitu Israel," &c. In Two Vols. 
 Crown 8vo. i6s. Vol. I. Adam to Abraham. Vol. II. Mel- 
 chizedek to Zechariah. 
 
 Mr. Baring- Gould's previous contributions to the History of Mythology 
 and the formation of a science of comparative religion are admitted to be 
 of high importance; the present work, it is believed, will be found to 
 be of equal value. He has collected from the Talmud and other sources, 
 Jewish and Mohammedan, a large number of curious and interesting 
 legends concerning the principal characters of tJie Old Testament, com- 
 paring these frequently with similar legends current among many of the 
 Peoples, savage and civilized, all over the world. ' ' These volumes contain 
 much that is very strange, and, to the ordinary English reader, very 
 novel." DAILY NEWS. 
 
 Barker (Lady). See also BELLES LETTRES CATALOGUE. 
 
 STATION LIFE IN NEW ZEALAND. By LADY BARKER. 
 Second and Cheaper Edition. Globe Svo. 3.5-. 6d.
 
 HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, fr TRAVELS. 3 
 
 These letters are the exact account of a lady's experience of the brighter 
 and less practical side of colonization. They record the expeditions, ad- 
 ventures, and emergencies diversifying the daily Kfe of the -wife of a New 
 Zealand sheep-farmer ; and, as each was written while the novelty and 
 excitement of the scenes it describes were fresh upon her, they may succeed 
 in giving here in England an adequate impression of the delight and free- 
 dom of an existence so far removed from our own highly -wrought civiliza- 
 tion. ' ' We have never read a more truthful or a pkasanter little book. " 
 ATHENAEUM. 
 
 Bernard, St. see MORISOM. 
 
 Blanford (W. T.) GEOLOGY AND ZOOLOGV OF 
 ABYSSINIA. By W. T. BLANFORD. 8vo. zis. 
 
 This work contains an account of the Geological and Zoological 
 Observations made by the author in Abyssinia, when accompanying the 
 British Army on its march to Magdala and back in 1868, and during a 
 short journey in Northern Abyssinia, after the departure of the troops. 
 Parti. Personal Narrative; Part II. Geology; Part III. Zoolo^>. 
 With Coloured Illustrations and Geological Map. " 77ie result of his 
 labours," the ACADEMY says, "is an important contribution to the 
 natural history of the country." 
 
 Bryce. THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. By JAMES BRYCE, 
 D.C.L., Regius Professor of Civil Law, Oxford. New and Re- 
 vised Edition. Crown 8vo. 7-f. 6</. 
 
 The object of this treatise is not so much to give a narrative history of 
 the countries included in the Romano- Germanic Empire Italy during the 
 Middle Ages, Germany from the ninth century to thenineteenth as to describe 
 the Holy Empire itself as an institution or system, the wonderful offspring 
 of a body of beliefs and traditions which have almost wholly passed away 
 from the world. To make such a description intelligible it has appeared 
 best to give the book the form rather of a narrative than of a dissertation ; 
 and to combine with an exposition of what may be called the theory of the 
 Empire an outline of the political history of Germany, as well as some 
 no f ice of the affairs of medieval Italy. Nothing else so directly linked the 
 old world to the new as the Roman Empire, which exercised over the minds of 
 men. an influence such as its material strength could never have commanded. 
 It is of this influence, and the causes that gave it pcnver, that the present 
 work is designed to treat. "It exactly sit.pplies a want ; it- affords a key 
 
 A 2
 
 4 MACMILLAN'S CATALOGUE OF WORK'S IN 
 
 t& much which men read of in their books as isolated facts, but of which they 
 have hitherto had no connected exposition set before them. We know of no 
 wi itzr who has so thoroughly grasped the real nature of the meditzval 
 Empire, and its relations alike to earlier and to later times. " SATURDAY 
 REVIEW. 
 
 Burke (Edmund). .SV^MORLEY (JOHN). 
 
 Cameos frqm English History See YONGE (Miss). 
 
 Chattgrtqn. See WILS.O.N (DANIEL). 
 
 Cooper. -ATHENE CANTABRIGIENSES. By CHARLES 
 HENRY CO.OPER, F,$.A., arid THOMPSON COOPER, F.S.A. 
 Vol. I. 8yo., 150085, jSjr. ; Vol. II., 15861609, i8.r. 
 
 This elaborate -work, which is dedicated by permission to Lord Macaulay, 
 contains lives of the eminent men sent forth by Cambridge, after the 
 fashion of Anthony <i Wood, in his famous " A thence Oxonienses." 
 
 Cox (G. V., M.A.) RECOLLECTIONS OF OXFORD. 
 By G. V. Cox, M.A., New College, late Esquire Bedel and 
 Coroner in the \Jniversity of Oxford. Cheaper Edition. Crown 8vo. 
 6s. 
 
 "An amusing farrago of anecdote, and will pleasantly recall in many 
 a country parsonage the memory of youthful days." -TiMES. " Those 
 who wish to make acquaintance with the Oxford of their grandfathers, 
 and to keep up the intercourse with Alma Mater during their father 's time, 
 tven to the latest, novelties in fashion or learning of the present day, will do 
 well to procure this pleasant, unpretending little volume." ATLAS. 
 
 " Daily News." THE DAILY NEWS CORRESPOND- 
 
 ENCE of the War between Germany and France, 1870 i. Edited 
 with Notes and Comments. New Edition. Complete in One 
 Volume. With Maps and Plans. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 This Correspondence has been translated into German. In a Prelace 
 the Editor says: 
 
 " Among the various pictures, recitals, and descriptions which have 
 appeared, both of our gloriously ended national war as a whole, and of its 
 several episodes, we think that i)i laying before the German ptiblic, through
 
 HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, &- TRAVELS. 5 
 
 a translation, the following War Letters which appeared first in the DAILY 
 NEWS, and were afterwards published collectively, we are offering them a 
 picture of the events of the war of a quite peculiar character. Thtir com- 
 munications have the advantage of being at once entertaining and instruc- 
 tive, free from every romantic embellishment, and nevertheless written 
 in a vein intelligible and not fatiguing to the general reader. The writers 
 linger over events, and do not disdain to surround the great and heroic 
 war-pictures with arabesques, gay and grave, taken from camp-life and 
 the life of the inhabitancs of the occupied territory. A feature which 
 distinguishes these Letters from all other delineations of the war is that they 
 do not proceed from a single pen, but were written jro)n the camps of both 
 belligerents." " These notes and comments" according to the SATURDAY 
 REVIEW, " are in reality a very well executed and continuous history." 
 
 Dilke. GREATER BRITAIN. A Record of Travel in English- 
 speaking Countries during 1866-7. (America, Australia, India. ) 
 By Sir CHARLES WENT WORTH DILKE, M.P. Fifth Edition. 
 Crown 8vo. 6*. _!__ 
 
 " Mr. Dilke" says the SATURDAY REVIEW, "has written a book which 
 is probably as well worth redding iii any book of the same aims and 
 character that ever was written. Its merits are that it is written in a 
 lively and agreeable style, that it implies a great deal oj physical pluck, 
 that no page of it fails to show an acute and highly intelligent observer, 
 that it stimulates the imagination as well as the judgment of the reader, 
 and that it is on perhaps the most interesting subject that can attract an 
 Englishman who cares about his country" " Many of the subjects dis- 
 cussed in these pages" says the DAILY NEWS, "are of the widest interest, 
 and such as no man who cares for the future of his race and of the worla 
 can afford to treat with indifference. " 
 
 Diiref (Albrecht). s* HEATON (MRS. C.) 
 
 European History, Narrated in a Series of Historica 
 Selections from the best Authorities'. Edited and arranged by 
 E. M. SEWELL and C. M. YONGE. First Series, crown 8vo. 6s. ; 
 Second Series, 1688- 1228, crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 When young children have acquired the outlines of history from abmtg- 
 ments and catechisms, and it becomes desirable to give a more enlarged 
 view of the subject; in order to render it really useful and interesting, a
 
 6 MACMILLAN'S CATALOGUE OF WORKS IN 
 
 difficulty often arises as to the choice of books. Two courses are open, either 
 io take a general and consequently dry history of facts , such as Russell 's 
 Modern Europe, or to choose some work treating of a particular period or 
 subject, such as the works of Macaulay and Froude. The former course 
 usually renders history uninteresting ; the latter is unsatisfactory, because 
 it is not sufficiently comprehensive. To remedy this difficulty, selections, 
 continuous and chronological, have in the present volume been taken from 
 the larger works oj Freeman, Milman, Palgrave, Lingard, Hume, and 
 others, which may serve as distinct landmarks of historical reading. 
 " We know of scarcely anything," says the GUARDIAN, of this volume, 
 "which is so likely to raise to a higher level the average standard of English 
 education." 
 
 Fairfax (Lord). A LIFE OF THE GREAT LORD FAIR- 
 FAX, Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Parliament of 
 England. By CLEMENTS R. MARKHAM, F.S.A. With Portraits, 
 Maps, Plans, and Illustrations. Demy 8vo. i6s. 
 No full Life of the great Parliamentary Commander has appeared ; 
 and it is here sought to produce one based upon careful research in con- 
 temporary records and upon family and other documents. " Highly 
 useful to the careful student of the History of the Civil War. . . . Pro- 
 bably as a military chronicle Mr. Markham's book is one of the most full 
 and accurate that we possess about the Civil War." FORTNIGHTLY 
 REVIEW. 
 
 Field (E. W.) See SADLER. 
 
 Freeman. Works by EDWARD A. FREEMAN, M.A., D.C.L. 
 
 ' ' That special power over a subject which conscientious and patient 
 research can only achieve, a strong grasp of facts, a true mastery over 
 detail, with a clear and manly style all these qualities join to make 
 the Historian j>f the Conquest conspicuous in the intellectual arena." 
 ACADEMY. 
 
 HISTORY OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, from the Foun- 
 dation of the Achaian League to the Disruption of the United 
 States. Vol. I. General Introduction, History of the Greek 
 Federations. 8vo. 2is. 
 
 Mr. Freeman's aim, in this elaborate and valuable work, is not so 
 much to discuss the abstract nattire of Federal Goz'n-nment, as to exhibit 
 its actual working in ages and countries widely removed from one another. 
 Four Federal Commonwealths stand out, in four different ages of the world, 
 as commanding above all others the attention of students of political history,
 
 HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, &- TRAVELS. 7 
 
 Freeman (E. A..) continued. 
 
 viz. the Achaian League, the Swiss Cantons, the United Provinces, the 
 United States. The first volume, besides containing a General Introduc- 
 tion, treats of the first of these. In writing this volume the author has 
 endeavoured to combine a text which may be instructive and interesting to 
 any thoughtful reader, whether specially learned or not, -with notes which 
 may satisfy the requirements of the most exacting scholar. " The task 
 Mr. Freeman has undertaken" the SATURDAY RKVIEW says, "is one 
 of great magnitude and importance. Il is also a task of an almost 
 entirely novel character. No other work professing to give the history of 
 a political principle occurs to us, except the slight contributions to the 
 history of representative government that is contained in a course of 
 M. Guizot' 1 s lectures .... The historv of the development of a principle 
 is at least as important as the history of a dynasty, or of a race. ' 
 
 OLD ENGLISH HISTORY. With Five Coloured Maps. Second 
 Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo., half- bound. 6s. 
 
 "Its object" the Preface says, "is to show that clear, accurate, and 
 scientific vieivs of history, or indeed of any subject, may be easily given to 
 children from the very first. . . . I have throughout striven to connect the 
 history of England with the general history of civilized Europe, and I have 
 especially tried to make the book serve as an incentive to a more accurate 
 study of historic geography." The rapid sale of the first edition and the 
 universal approval with which the work has been received prove the correct- 
 ness of the author's notions, and show that for such a book there was ample 
 room. The work is suited not only for children, but will serve as an ex- 
 cellent text-book for older students, a clear and faithful summary of the 
 history of the period for those who wish to revive their historical know- 
 ledge, and a book full of charms for the general reader. The work is 
 preceded by a complete chronological Table, and appended is an exhaustive 
 and useful Index. In the present edition the whole has been carefully revised, 
 and such improvements as suggested themselves have been introduced. 
 " The book indeed is full of instruction and interest to students of all 
 ages, and he must be a well-informed man indeed who will not rise from 
 its perusal with clearer and more accurate ideas of a too much neglectea 
 portion of English history." SPECTATOR. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF WELLS, 
 as illustrating the History of the Cathedral Churches of the Old 
 Foundation. Crown 8vo. 3^. 6d.
 
 8 MACMILLAWS CATALOGUE OF WORKS /A 
 
 Freeman (E. A.) continued. 
 
 ' I have here" the author says, " tried to treat the history of the 
 Church of Wells as a contribution to the general history of the Church 
 and Kingdom of England, and specially to the history of Cathedral 
 Churches of the Old Foundation. . . . I wish to point out the general 
 principles of the original founders as the model to which the Old Foun- 
 dations should be brought back, and the New Foundations reformed after 
 their pattern." " The history assumes in Mr. Freeman's hands a signi- 
 ficance, and, -we may add, a practical value as suggestive of what a cathe- 
 dral ought to be, which make it well worthy of mention." SPECTATOR. 
 
 HISTORICAL ESSAYS. Second Edition. 8vo. IDJ. 6J. 
 
 The principle on which these Essays have been chosen is that 
 of selecting papers -which refer to comparatively modern times, or, at 
 least, to the existing states and nations of Europe. By a sort of accident 
 a number of the pieces chosen have thrown themselves into something like 
 a continuous series bearing on the historical causes of the great events of 
 1870 71. Notes have been added whenever they seemed to be called f or ; 
 and whenever he could gain in accuracy of statement or in force or clear- 
 ness of expression, the author has freely changed, added to, or left out, 
 what he originally wrote. To many of the Essays has been added a short 
 note oftlie circumstances tinder which they were written. It is needless to 
 say that any product of Mr. Frseman's pen is worthy of attentive perusal ; 
 and it is believed that the contents of this volume will throw light on 
 several subjects of great historical importance and the widest interest. 
 The following is a list of the subjects: I. The Mythical and Romantic 
 Elements in Early English History ; 2. The Continuity of English 
 History ; 3. The Relations between the Crowns of England and Scotland ; 
 4. Saint Thomas of Canterbury and his Biographers ; 5- The Reign of 
 Edward the Third ; 6. The Holy Roman Empire ; 7. The Franks and 
 the Gauls ; 8. The Early Sieges of Paris ; 9. Frederick the First, Kin* 
 of Ilaly ; 10, The Emperor Frederick the Second; II. Charles the Bold ; 
 1 2. Presidential Government. ' ' He never touches a question without 
 adding to our comprehension of it, without leaving the impression of an 
 ample knowledge, a righteous purpose, a clear and pffiverful under- 
 standing." SATURDAY REVIEW. 
 
 THE GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION FROM 
 THE EARLIEST TIMES. In the press.
 
 HISTORY, &JOG&APHY, & TRAVELS. 9 
 
 Galileo. THE PRIVATE LIFE OF GALILEO. Compiled 
 
 principally from his Correspondence and that of his eldest 
 daughter, Sister Maria Celeste, Nun in the Franciscan Convent of 
 S. Matthew in Arcetri. With Portrait. Crown 8vo. "js. bd. 
 
 It has been the endeavour of (he compiler to place before the reader a 
 plain, ungarbled statement of facts ; and, as a means to this end, to allow 
 Galileo, his friends, and his judges to speak for themselves as far as possible. 
 All the best authorities have been made use of, and all the materials which 
 exist for a biography have been in this volume put into a symmetrical form. 
 The result is a most touching picture skilfully arranged of the great heroic 
 man of science and his devoted daughter, whose letters are full of the deepest 
 reverential love and trust, amply repaid by the noble soul. 77ie SATUR- 
 DAY REVIEW says of the book, " It is not so much the philosopher as the 
 man who is seen in this simple and life-like sketch, and the hand whivh 
 portrays the features and actions is mainly that of one who had studied the 
 subject the closest and the most intimately. This little volume has done 
 much within its slender compass to prove the depth and tenderness of 
 Galileo's heart." 
 
 Gladstone (Right Hon. W. E., M.P.) JUVENTUS 
 
 MUNDI. The Gods and Men of the Heroic Age. Crown 8vo. 
 cloth. With Map. ior. 6d. Second Edition. 
 
 This -work of Mr. Gladstone deals especially with the historic element 
 in Homer, expounding that element and furnishing by its aid a full 
 account of the Homeric men and the Homeric religion. It starts, after 
 the introductory chapter, with a discussion of the several races then existing 
 in Hellas, including the influence of the Phoenicians and Egyptians. It 
 contains chapters on the Olympian system, with its several deities ; on the 
 Ethics and the Polity of the Heroic age ; on the Geography of Homer ; on 
 the characters of the Poems ; presenting, in fine, a view of primitive life 
 and primitive society as found in the poems oj Homer. To this New 
 Edition -various additions have been made. "Seldom," says the ATHE- 
 NAEUM, "out of the great poems themselves, have these Divinities looked 
 sff majestic and respectable. To read these brilliant details is like standing 
 on the Olympian threshold and gazing at the ineffable brightness within. " 
 " There is," according to //^WESTMINSTER REVIEW, "probably no other 
 ivriter now living who could have done the work of this book. . . It would 
 e difficult to point out a book that contains so much fulness of kno-ivledge 
 long with so much freshness of perception and clearness of presentation"
 
 io MACMILLAWS CATALOGUE OF WORKS IN 
 
 Guizot. M. DE BARANTE, a Memoir, Biographical and Auto- 
 biographical. By M. GuiZOT. Translated by the Author of 
 "JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN." Crown Svo. 6s. 6d. 
 
 " It is scarcely necessary to -write a preface to this book. Its lifelike, 
 portrait of a true and great man, painted unconsciously by himself in his 
 letters and autobiography, and retouched and completed by the tender hand 
 of his surviving friend the friend of a lifetime is sure, I think, to be 
 appreciated in England as it was in France, where it appeared in the 
 Revue de Deux Mondes. Also, I believe every thoughtful mind will 
 enjoy its clear reflections of French and European politics and history for 
 the last seventy years, and the curious light thus thrcnun upon many present 
 events and combinations of circumstances." PREFACE. " The highest 
 purposes of both history and biography are answered by a memoir so life- 
 like, so faithful, and so philosophical." BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW. 
 " This eloquent memoir, which for tenderness, gracefulness, and vigour, 
 might be placed on the same shelf with Tacitus' Life of Agricola. . . . Mrs. 
 Craik has rendered the language of Guizot in her own sweet translucent 
 English." DAILY NEWS. 
 
 Heaton (Mrs. C.) HISTORY OF THE LIFE OF AL- 
 BRECHT DURER, of Niirnberg. With a Translation of his 
 Letters and Journal, and some account of his Works. By Mrs. 
 CHARLES HEATON. Royal Svo. bevelled boards, extra gilt. 3U. 6d. 
 
 This work contains about Thirty Illustrations, ten of which art produc- 
 tions by the Autotype (carbon) process, and are printed in permanent tints 
 by Messrs. Cundall and Fleming, under licence from the Autotype Com- 
 pany, Limited ; the rest are Photographs and Woodcuts. 
 
 Hole. A GENEALOGICAL STEMMA OF THE KINGS 
 OF ENGLAND AND FRANCE. By the Rev. C. HOLE, 
 M.A., Trinity College, Cambridge. On Sheet, is. 
 The different families are printed in distinguishing colours, thus facili- 
 tating reference. 
 
 Hozier (H. M.) Works by CAPTAIN HENRY M. HOZIER, 
 late Assistant Military Secretary to Lord Napier of Magdala, 
 
 THE SEVEN WEEKS' WAR; Its Antecedents and Incidents. 
 New and Cheaper Edition. With New Preface, Maps, and Plans. 
 Crown Svo. 6s.
 
 HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, &* TRAVELS. \\ 
 
 Hosier (H. Hi.) continued. 
 
 This account of the brief but momentous Austro- Prussian War of 1866 
 claims consideration as being the product of an eye-witness of some of its 
 most interesting incidents. The author has attempted to ascertain and 
 to advance facts. Two maps are given, one illustrating the opera- 
 tions of the Army of the Maine, and the other the operations from 
 Koniggratx. In the Prejatory Chapter to this edition, evans resulting 
 from the war of 1866 are set forth, and the current of European histary 
 traced down to the recent Franco- Prussian war, a natural consequence 
 of the war whose history is narrated in this volume. "Mr. Hazier 
 added to the knowledge of military operations and of languages, which 
 he had proved himself to possess, a ready and skilful pen, and ex- 
 cellent faculties of observation and description. . . . All that Mr. 
 Hazier saw of the great events of the war and Jie saw a large share 
 ~ of them he describes in clear and vivid language." SATURDAY 
 REVIEW. "Mr. Hozier's volumes deserve to -take a permanent place 
 in the literature of the Seven Weeks' War. " PALL MALL GAZETTE. 
 
 THE BRITISH EXPEDITION TO ABYSSINIA. Compiled from 
 Authentic Documents. 8vo. 9-r. 
 
 Several accounts of the British Expedition have been published. 
 They have, hmvever, been written by those who have not had access to those 
 authentic documents, which cannot be collected directly after the termination 
 of a campaign. The endeavour of the author of this sketch has been to 
 present to readers a succinct and impartial account of an enterprise which 
 has rarelv been equalled in the annals of war. " This" says the 
 SPECTATOR, " will be the account of the Abyssinian Expedition for 
 professional reference, if not for professional reading. Its literary 
 merits are really very great." 
 
 THE INVASIONS OF ENGLAND. A History of the Past, with 
 Lessons for the Future. In the press. 
 
 Huyshe (Captain G. L.) THE RED RIVER EXPE- 
 DITION. By Captain G. L. HUYSHE, Rifle Brigade, late on 
 the Staff of Colonel Sir GARNET WOLSELEY. With Maps. 8vo. 
 lev. (>d. 
 
 This account has been written in the hope of directing attention 
 to the successful accomplishment of an expedition which was attended with 
 more than ordinary difficulties. The author has had access to the official
 
 12 MACMILLAN'S CATALOGUE OF W'ORkS IN 
 
 documents of the Expedition, and has also availed himself of the reports on 
 the line of route published by Mr. Dawson, C.E., and by the Typogra- 
 phical Department of the War Office. The statements made may therefore 
 be relied on as accurate and impartial. The endeavour has been made to 
 avoid tiring the general reader with dry details of military movements, and 
 yet not to sacrifice the character of the work as an account of a military 
 expedition. The volume contains a portrait of President Louis Riel, and 
 Maps of the route. The ATHEN^UM calls it " an enduring authentic 
 record of one df the most creditable achievements ever accomplished by the 
 British Army" 
 
 Irving. THE ANNALS OF OUR TIME. A Diurnal of Events, 
 Social and Political, Home and Foreign, from the Accession of 
 Queen Victoria to the Peace of Versailles. By JOSEPH IRVING. 
 Second Edition. 8vo. half-bound. l6s. 
 
 Every occurrence, metropolitan or provincial, home or foreign, which 
 gave rise to public excitement or discussion, or became the starting point for 
 new trains of thought affecting our social life, has been judged proper matter 
 for this volume. In the proceedings of Parliament, an endeavour has 
 been made to notice all those Debates which were either remarkable as 
 affecting the fate of parties, or led to important changes in our relations 
 ittith Foreign Powers. Brief notices have been given of the death of all 
 noteworthy persons. Though the events are set down day by day in their 
 order of occurrence, the book is, in its way, the history of an important 
 and ^vell-deflned historic cycle. In these ''Annals,' 1 the ordinary reader 
 may make himself acquainted with the history of his own time in a way 
 that has at least the merit of simplicity and readiness ; the more cultivated 
 student will doubtless be thankful for the opportunity given him of passing 
 down the historic stream undisturbed by any other theoretical or party 
 feeling than what he himself has at hand to explain the philosophy of our 
 national story. A complete and usefttl Index is appended. The Table 
 Of Administrations is designed to assist the reader in following the various 
 political changes noticed in their chronological order in the ' Annals.'' 
 In the new edition all errors and omiisions have been rectified, 300 pages 
 been added, and as many as 46 occupied by an impartial exhibition of the 
 wonderful series of events marking the latter half of 1870. if We 
 have before us a trusty and ready guide to the events of the past thirty 
 years, aTailable equally for the statesman, the politician, the public 
 writer^ and the general reader. If Mr. Irving 's object has been to bring 
 before the reader all the most noteworthy occurrences which have happened
 
 HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, &* TRAVELS. 13 
 
 since the beginning of her Majesty's reign, he may justly claim the credit 
 ef having done so most briefly, succinctly, and simply, and in such a 
 manner, too, as to furnish him with the details necessary in each case to 
 comprehend the event of which he is in search in an intelligent manner." 
 TIMES. 
 
 Kingsley (Canon). Works by the Rev. CHARLES KINGSLEY, 
 M.A., Rector of Eversley and Canon of Chester. (For other 
 Works by the same Author, see. THEOLOGICAL and BELLES 
 LETTRES Catalogues. ) 
 
 ON THE ANCIEN REGIME as it existed on the Continent before 
 the FRENCH REVOLUTION. Three Lectures delivered at the 
 Royai Institution. Crown 8vo. 6.r. 
 
 These three lectures discuss severally (l) Caste, (2) Centralization, (3) 
 The Explosive Forces by which the Revolution was superinduced. The 
 Preface d-eals at some length with certain political questions of the present 
 day. 
 
 AT LAST : A CHRISTMAS in the WEST INDIES. With nearly 
 Fifty Illustrations. New and Cheaper Edition. Crown 8vo. 
 i os. 6d. 
 
 Mr. Kingsley 's dream of forty years was at last fulfilled, when he 
 started on a Christmas expedition to the West Indies, for the purpose of 
 becoming personally acquainted with the scenes which he has so vividly 
 described in " Westward Ho!" These two volumes are the journal of his 
 voyage. Records of natural history, sketches of tropical landscape, chapters 
 on education, views of society, all find their place in a work written, so to 
 say, under the inspiration of Sir Walter Raleigh and the other adventurous 
 men who three hundred years ago disputed against Philip II. the possession 
 ef the Spanish Main. " We can only say that Mr. Kingsley' s account of 
 a ' Christmas in the West Indies ' is in every way worthy to be, classed 
 among his happiest productions." STANDARD. 
 
 THE ROMAN AND THE TEUTON. A Series of Lectures 
 delivered before the University of Cambridge. 8vo. izr. 
 
 CONTENTS : Inaugural Lecture ; The Forest Children ; The Dying 
 Empire; The Human Deluge ; The Gothic Civilizer; Dietriches End; The 
 Nemesis of the Goths ; Paulus Diaconus ; The Clergy and the Heathen 
 The Mpnka Civilize* ; The Lombard Laws ; The Popes and the Lombard; ;
 
 14 MACMILLAN'S CATALOGUE OF WORKS IN 
 
 The Strategy of Providence. "He has rendered" says the NONCON- 
 FORMIST, " good service and shed a new lustre on the chair of Modern 
 History at Cambridge .... He has thrown a charm around the work 
 by the marvellous fascinations of his own genius, brought out in strong 
 relief those great principles of which all history is a revelation, lighted 
 up many dark and almost unknown spots, and stimulated the desire to 
 understand more thoroughly one of the greatest movements in the story of 
 humanity." 
 
 Kingsley (Henry, F.R.G.S.) For other Works by same 
 Author, see BELLES LETTRES CATALOGUE. 
 
 TALES OF OLD TRAVEL. Re-narrated by HENRY KINGSLEY, 
 F.R.G.S. With Eight Illustrations by HUARD. Third Edition. 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 In this volume Mr. Henry Kingsley re-narrates, at the same time 
 preserving much of the quaintness of the original, some of the most fasci- 
 nating tales of travel contained in the collections of Hakluyt and others. The 
 CONTENTS are Marco Polo; The Shipwreck of Pelsart; The Wonderful 
 Adventures of Andrew Battel; The Wanderings of a Capuchin; Peter 
 Carder; The Preservation of the " Terra Nova ;" Spitsbergen; D^Erme- 
 nonviltt s Acclimatization Adventure ; The Old Slave Trade ; Miles Philips ; 
 The Sufferings of Robert Everard ; John Fox ; Alvaro Nunez; The Foun- 
 dation of an Empire. " We know no better book for those who want 
 knowledge or seek to refresh it. As for the ' sensational J most novels are 
 tame compared with these narratives" ATHENAEUM. "Exactly the 
 book to interest and to do good to intelligent and high-spirited boys" 
 LITERARY CHURCHMAN. 
 
 Macmillan (Rev. Hugh). Forother Works by same Author, 
 see THEOLOGICAL and SCIENTIFIC CATALOGUES. 
 
 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS ; or, Rambles and Incidents in 
 search of Alpine Plants. Crown 8vo. cloth. 6s. 
 
 The aim of this book is to impart a general idea of the origin, character, 
 and distribution of those rare and beautiful Alpine plants which occur on 
 the British hills, and which are found almost everywhere on the lofty 
 mountain chains of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. The informa- 
 tion the author has to give is conveyed in untcchnical language, in a 
 setting of personal adventure, and associated with descriptions of the
 
 HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, & TRAVELS. 15 
 
 natural scenery and the peculiarities of the human lifeinthe midst of which 
 the plants were found. By this method the subject is made interesting to 
 a very large class of readers. ' ' Botanical knowledge is blended -with a 
 love of nature, a pious enthusiasm, and a rich felicity of diction not to be 
 met with in any works of kindred character, if we except those of Hiigh 
 Miller." TELEGRAPH. "Mr. M.'s glowing pictures oj Scandinavian 
 scenery." SATURDAY REVIEW. 
 
 Martin (Frederick) THE STATESMAN'S YEAR-BOOK : 
 See p. 36 of this Catalogue. 
 
 Martineau. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES, 18521868. 
 By HARRIET MARTINEAU. Third and Cheaper Edition, with 
 New Preface. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 A Collection of Memoirs under these several sections: (i) Royal, (2) 
 Politicians, (3) Professional, (4) Scientific, (5) Social, (6) Literary. These 
 Memoirs appeared originally in the columns of the DAILY NEWS. " Miss 
 Martineau 's large literary powers and her fine intellectual training make 
 these little sketches more instructive, and constitute them more genuinely 
 works of art, than many more ambitious and diffuse biographies." 
 FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW. " Each memoir is a complete digest of a 
 celebrated life, illuminated by the flood of searching light which streams 
 from the gaze oj an acute but liberal mind." MORNING STAR. 
 
 MaSSOn (David). For other Works by same Author, see PHILO- 
 SOPHICAL and BELLES LETTRES CATALOGUES. 
 
 LIFE OF JOHN MILTON. Narrated in connection with the 
 Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of his Time. By 
 DAVID MASSON, M.A., LL.D., Professor of Rhetoric and English 
 Literature in the University of Edinburgh. Vol. I. with Portraits. 
 8vo. iSs. Vol. II., 16381643. 8vo. i6s. Vol. III. in the 
 press. 
 
 This work is not only a Bi&graphy, but also a continuous Political, 
 Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of England through Milton's whole 
 time. In order to understand Milton, his position, his motives, his 
 thoughts by himself, his public words to his countrymen, and the probable 
 effect of those words, it was necessary to refer largely to the History of his 
 Time, not only as it is presented in well-known books, but as it had to be 
 rediscovered by express and laborious investigation in original and forgotten
 
 1 6 MAGELLAN'S CATALOGUE OF WORKS IN 
 
 records : thus of the Biography, a History grew : not a mere popular 
 compilation, but a -work of independent search and method from first to 
 last, which has cost more labour by far than the Biography. TTie second 
 volume is so arranged that the reader may select or omit either the History 
 <M- Biography. The NORTH BRITISH REVIEW, speaking of the first 
 volume of this -work said, ' ' The Life of Milton is here written once for 
 all." The NONCONFORMIST, in noticing the second volume, says, " Its 
 literary excellence entitles it to take its place in the first ranks of our 
 literature, "while the -whole style of its execution marks it as the only book 
 that has done anything like adequate justice to one of the great masters of our 
 language, and one of our truest patriots, as well as our greatest epic poet.'" 
 
 Mayor (J. E. B.) WORKS Edited By JOHN E. B. MAYOR, 
 M.A., Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Part II. 
 Autobiography of Matthew Robinson. Fcap. 8vo. 5-r. 6d. 
 
 This is the second of the Memoirs illustrative of ' ' Cambridge in the 
 Seventeenth Century, ' ' that of Nicholas Farrar having preceded it. It gives 
 a lively picture of England during the Civil Wars, the most important 
 crisis of our national life; it supplies materials for the history of the 
 University and our Endowed Schools, and gives us a view of country 
 clergy at a time when they are supposed to have been, with scarce an ex- 
 ception, scurrilous sots. Mr. Mayor has added a collection of extracts and 
 documents relating to the history of several othei- Cambridge men of note 
 belonging to the same period^ all, like Robinson, of Nonconformist leanings. 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP BEDELL. By his SON. Fcap. Svo. 3^. 6d. 
 
 This is the third of the Memoirs illustrative of" Cambridge in the I "Jth 
 Century." The life of the Bishop of Kilmore here printed for the first time 
 is preserved in the Tanner MSS., and is preliminary to a larger one to be 
 issued shortly. 
 
 Mitford (A. B.) TALES OF OLD JAPAN. By A. B. 
 MlTFORD, Second Secretary to the British Legation in Japan. 
 With upwards of 30 Illustrations, drawn and cut on Wood by 
 Japanese Artists. Two Vols. crown Svo. zis. 
 
 Under the influence of more enlightened ideas and of a liberal system of 
 policy, the old Japanese civilization is fast disappearing, and will, in q
 
 HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, &* TRAVELS. 17 
 
 few years, be completely extinct. It was important, therefore, to preserve 
 as far as possible trustivorthy records of a state of society which, although 
 venerable from its antiquity, has for Europeans the dawn of novelty ; 
 hence the series oj narratives and legends translated by Mr. Mitford, 
 and in which the Japanese are very judiciously left to tell their own tale. 
 The two volumes comprise not only stories and episodes illustrative of 
 Asiatic superstitions, but also three sermons. The preface, appendices, 
 and notes explain a number of local peculiarities ; the thirty-one woodcuts 
 are the genuine work of a native artist, who, unconsciously of course, has 
 adopted the process first introduced by the early German masters. " These 
 very original volumes will always be interesting as memorials of a most 
 exceptional society, while regarded simply as tales, they are sparkling, sensa- 
 tional, and dramatic, and the originality of their ideas and the quaintness 
 of their language give them a most captivating piquancy. The illustra- 
 tions are extremely interesting, and J or the curious in such mailers have 
 a special and particular value." PALL MALL GAZETTE. 
 
 Morley (John). EDMUND BURKE, a Historical Study. By 
 JOHN MORLEY, B.A. Oxon. Crown Svo. 7^. 60". 
 
 " The style is terse and incisive, and brilliant with epigram and point. 
 It contains pithy aphoristic sentences which Burke himself would not have 
 disowned. Its sustained pmver of reasoning, its wide sweep of observation 
 and reflection, its elevated ethical and social tone, stamp it as a work of 
 high excellence." SATURDAY REVIEW. "A model of compact conden- 
 sation. We have seldom met with a book in which so much matter was 
 compressed into so limited a space." PALL MALL GAZETTE. "An essay 
 of unusual effort." WESTMINSTER REVIEW. 
 
 Morison. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAINT BERNARD, 
 
 Abbot of Clairvaux. By JAMES COTTER MORISON, M.A. Cheaper 
 Edition. Crown Svo. 4^. 6d. 
 
 The PALL MALL GAZETTE calls this " one of the best contributions in 
 our literature towards a vivid, intelligent, and worthy knowledge of 
 European interests and thoughts and feelings during the twelfth century. 
 A delightful and instructive volume, and one of the best products of the 
 modern historic spirit." "A work," says the NONCONFORMIST, "of 
 great merit and value, dealing most thoroughly with one oj the most in- 
 teresting characters, and one of the most interesting periods, in the Church 
 history of the Middle Ages. Mr. Morison is thoroughly master of his subject,
 
 18 MACMILLAWS CATALOGUE OF WORKS IN 
 
 and writes with great discrimination and fairness, and in a chaste and 
 elegant style." The SPECTATOR says it is "not only distinguished by 
 research and candour, it has also the great merit of never being dull." 
 
 Palgrave (Sir F.) HISTORY OF NORMANDY AND 
 OF ENGLAND. By Sir FRANCIS PALGRAVE, Deputy Keeper 
 of Her Majesty's Public Records. Completing the History to the 
 Death of William Rufus. Four Vols. 8vo. 
 
 Volume I. General Relations of Mediteval Europe The Carlovingian 
 Empire The Danish Expeditions in the Gauls And the Establishment 
 of Rollo. Volume II. Tlie Three First Dukes oj Normandy ; Rollo, 
 Guillaume Longue-Epee, and Richard Sans-Peur The Carlovingian 
 line supplanted by the Capets. Volume III. Richard Sans-Peur 
 Richard Le-Bon Richard III. Robert Le Diablc William the Con- 
 queror. Volume IV. William Rufus Accession of Henry Beauclerc. 
 It is needless to say anything to recommend this -work of a lifetime to all 
 students of history ; it is, as the SPECTATOR says, " perhaps the greatest 
 single contribution yet made to the authentic annals of this country" and 
 " must" says the NONCONFORMIST, "always rank among our standard 
 authorities. " 
 
 Palgrave (W. G.) A NARRATIVE OF A YEAR'S 
 
 JOURNEY THROUGH CENTRAL AND EASTERN 
 ARABIA, 1862-3. By LIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE, late of 
 the Eighth Regiment Bombay N. I. Sixth Edition. With Maps, 
 Plans, and Portrait of Author, engraved on steel by Jeens. Crown 
 8vo. 6s. 
 
 " The work is a model of what its class should be ; the style restrained, 
 the narrative clear, telling us all we wish to know of the country and 
 people visited, and enough of the author and his feelings to enable us to 
 trust ourselves to his guidance in a tract hitherto untrodden, and dangerous 
 in more senses than one. . . He has not only written one of the best books 
 on the Arabs and one of the best books on Arabia, but he has done so in a 
 manner that must command the respect no less than the admiration of his 
 fellow-countrymen.'''' FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW. " Considering the extent 
 of our previous ignorance, the amount of his achievements, and the im- 
 portance of his contributions to our knowledge, we cannot say less of him 
 than was once said of a far greater discoverer Mr. Palgrave has indeed 
 ^iven a new world to Europe." PALL MALL GAZETTE.
 
 HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, fr TRAVELS. 19 
 
 Paris. INSIDE PARIS DURING THE SIEGE. By an 
 OXFORD GRADUATE. Crown 8vo. "js. 6d. 
 
 This -volume consists of the diary kept by a gentleman who lived in Paris 
 during the whole of its siege by the Prussians. He had many facilities for 
 coming in contact with men of all parties and of all classes, and ascertain- 
 ing the actual motives which animated them, and their real ultimate aims. 
 These facilities he took advantage of, and in his diary, day by day, care- 
 fully recorded the results of his observations, as well as faithfully but 
 graphically photographed the -various incidents of the siege which came 
 under his own notice, the actual condition of the besieged, the sayings and 
 doings, the hopes and fears of the people among whom he freely moved. 
 In the Appendix is an exhaustive and elaborate account of the Organization 
 of the Republican party, sent to the author by M. Jules Andrieu ; and a 
 translation of the Manifesto of the Commune to the People of England, 
 dated April 19, 1871. " The author tells his sto"y admirably. The 
 Oxford Graduate seems to have gone everywhere, heard what everyone had 
 to say, and so been able to give us photographs of Paris life during the 
 siege which we have not had from any other source." SPECTATOR. 
 "He has written brightly, lightly, and pleasantly, yet in perfect good 
 taste." SATURDAY REVIEW. 
 
 Prichard. THE ADMINISTRATION OF INDIA. From 
 1859 to 1868. The First Ten Years of Administration under the 
 Crown. By ILTUDUS THOMAS PRICHARD, Barrister-at-Law. 
 Two Vols. Demy 8vo. With Map. 2U. 
 
 In these volumes the author has aimed to supply a full, impartial, and 
 independent account of British India between 1859 and 1868 which is 
 in many respects the most important epoch in the history of that country 
 that the present century has seen. " It has the great merit that it is not 
 exclusively devoted, as are too many histories, to military and political 
 details, but enters thoroughly into the more important questions of social 
 history. We find in these volumes a well-arranged and compendious 
 reference to almost all that has been done in India during the last ten 
 years ; and the most important official documents and historical pieces are 
 well selected and duly set forth." SCOTSMAN. "It is a work which 
 every Englishman in India ought to add to his library." STAR OF 
 INDIA.
 
 Robinson (H. Crabb) THE DIARY, REMINISCENCES, 
 AND CORRESPONDENCE, OF HENRY CRABB ROBIN- 
 SON, Barrister-at-Law. Selected and Edited by THOMAS 
 SADLER, Ph.D. With Portrait. Third and Cheaper Edition. 
 Two Vols. Crown 8vo. i6j. 
 
 The DAILY NEWS says : " The two books which are most likely t 
 survive change of literary taste, and to charm while instructing generation 
 after generation, are the ' Diary ' of Pepys and Boswell's ' Life of 
 jfohnson.' The day will come when to these many will add the ' Diary of 
 Henry Crabb Robinson. ' Excellences like those which render the personal 
 revelations of Pepys and the observations of Boswell such pleasant reading 
 abound in this work . ... In it is to be found something to suit every taste 
 and in form ei>ery mind. For the general reader it contains much light and 
 amusing matter. To the lover of literature it conveys information which 
 he will prize highly on account of its accuracy and rarity. The stttdent of 
 social life will gather from it many valuable hints whereon to base 
 theories as to the effects on English society of the progress of civilization. 
 For these and other reasons this ' Diary ' is a work to which a hearty 
 welcome should be accorded. " 
 
 Rogers (James E. Thorold). HISTORICAL GLEAN- 
 
 INGS : A Series of Sketches. Montague, Walpole, Adam Smith, 
 Cobbett. By Prof. ROGERS. Crown 8vo. 4^. 6d. Second Series. 
 Wiklif, Laud, Wilkes, and Home Tooke. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 Professor Rogerfs object in these sketches, which are in the form of 
 Lectures, is to present a set of historical facts, grouped round a principal 
 figure. The author has aimed to state the social facts of the time in 
 which the individual whose history is handled took part in public business. 
 It is from sketches like these of the great men who took a prominent 
 and influential part in the affairs of their time that a clear conception of 
 the social and economical condition of our ancestors can be obtained. 
 History learned in this way is both instructive and agreeable. " His Essays, " 
 the PALL MALL GAZETTE says, " are full of interest, pregnant, thoughtful, 
 and readable." " They rank far above the average of similar perfor- 
 mances," says the WESTMINSTER REVIEW. 
 
 Raphael. RAPHAEL OF URBINO AND HIS FATHER 
 
 GIOVANNI SANTI. By J. D. PASSAVANT, formerly Director 
 of the Museum at Frankfort. With Twenty Permanent Photo- 
 graphs. Royal 8vo. Handsomely bound. 3U. 6d.
 
 HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, 6- TRAVELS. 21 
 
 To the enlarged French edition of Passavanfs. Life of Raphael, that 
 painter's admirers have turned "whenever they have sought information, 
 and it -will doubtless remain for many years the best book of reference on 
 all questions pertaining to the great painter. The present -work consists 
 of a translation of those parts of Passavanfs volttmes which are most 
 likely to interest the general readtr. Besides a complete life of Raphael, it 
 contains the vakiable descriptions of all his known paintings, and the 
 Chronological Index, which is of so muck service to amateurs ivho -wish to 
 study the progressive character of his works. The Ilhistrations by 
 IVoodbury's new permanent process of photography, are taken from the 
 fittest engravings that could be procured, and have been chosen with the 
 intention of giving examples of Raphael's various styles of painting. The 
 SATURDAY REVIEW says of them, " We have seen not a few elegant 
 specimens of Mr. Woodbury's new process, but we have seen none that 
 equal these." 
 
 Sadler. EDWIN WILKINS FIELD. A Memorial Sketch- 
 By THOMAS SADLER, Ph. D. With a Portrait. Crown Svo. 4^. 6d. 
 
 Air. Field was well known during his life-time not only as an eminent 
 lawyer and a strenuous and successful advocate of law reform, but, both 
 in England and America, as a man of wide and thorough culture, varied 
 tastes, large-heartedness, and lofty aims. His sudden death was looked 
 upon as a public loss, and it is expected that this brief Memoir will be 
 acceptable to a large number outside of the many friends at whose request 
 it has been written. 
 
 Somers (Robert), THE SOUTHERN STATES SINCE 
 THE WAR. By ROBERT SOMERS. With Map. Svo. qs. 
 
 This work is the result of inquiries made by the author ofallatilhoritiei 
 competent to afford him information, and of his cnvn observation during a 
 lengthened sojourn in the Southern States, to which writers on America so 
 seldom direct their steps. The author's object is to give some account of the 
 condition of the Southern States under the new social and political system 
 introduced by the civil war. He has here collected such notes of the progress 
 of their cotton plantations, of the state of their labouring population and of 
 their industrial enterprises, as may help the reader to a safe opinion of 
 their means and prospects of development. He also gives such information 
 of their natural resources, railways, and other public works, as may 
 tend to show to what extent they are fitted to become a profitable field of
 
 22 MACMILLAWS CATALOGUE OF WORKS IN 
 
 enlarged immigration, settlement, and foreign trade. The volume contains 
 many valuable and reliable details as to the condition of the Negro popula- 
 tion, the state of Education and Religion, of Cotton, Sugar, and Tobacco 
 Cultivation, of Agriculture generally, of Coal and Iron Mining, Manu- 
 factures, Trade, Means of Locomotion, and the condition of Towns and of 
 Society. A large map of the Southern States by Messrs. W. and A. K. 
 Johnston is appended, which shows with great clearness the Cotton, Coal, 
 and Iron districts, the railways completed and projected, the State boundaries, 
 and other important details. "Full of interesting and valuable informa- 
 tion.'" SATURDAY REVIEW. 
 
 Smith (Professor Goldwin). THREE ENGLISH 
 
 STATESMEN. See p. 37 of this Catalogue. 
 
 Streets and Lanes of a City. See BUTTON (AMY) p. 31 
 of this Catalogue. 
 
 TacitUS. THE HISTORY OF TACITUS, translated into 
 English. By A. J. CHURCH, M.A. and W. J. BRODRIBB, M.A. 
 With a Map and Notes. 8vo. IQJ. 6d. 
 
 The translators have endeavoured to adhere as closely to the original as 
 was thought consistent with a proper observance of English idiom. At 
 the same time it has been their aim to reproduce the precise expressions- of 
 the author. This work is characterised by the SPECTATOR as " a scholarly 
 and faithful translation. " 
 
 THE AGRICOLA AND GERMANIA. Translated into English by 
 A. J. CHURCH, M.A. and W. J. BROURIBB, M.A. With Maps 
 and Notes. Extra fcap. Svo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 7*he translators have sought to produce such a version as may satisfy 
 scholars who demand a faithful rendering of the original, and English 
 readers who are offended by the baldness a-nd frigidity which commonly 
 disfigure translations. The treatises are accompanied by Introductions, 
 Notes, Maps, and a chronological Summary. The ATHEN/EUM says of 
 this work that it is " a version at once readable and exact, which may be 
 perused with pleasure by all, and consulted with advantage by the classical 
 student;" and the PALL MALL GAZETTE says, " What the editors have 
 attempted to do, it is not, we think probable that any living scholars could 
 have done bettei'."
 
 HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, & TRAVELS. 23 
 
 Taylor (Rev. Isaac). WORDS AND PLACES. See 
 
 p. 44 of this Catalogue. 
 
 Trench (Archbishop). For other Works by the same Author, 
 see THEOLOGICAL and BELLES LETTRES CATALOGUES, and p. 45 
 of this Catalogue. 
 
 GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS : Social Aspects of the Thirty Years' 
 War. By R. CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D., Archbishop of Dublin. 
 Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 " Clear and lucid in style, these lectures will be a treasure to many to 
 whom the subject is unfamiliar." DUBLIN EVENING MAIL. " These 
 Lectures are vivid and graphic sketches: the first treats of the great 
 King of Sweden, and of his character rather than of his actions ; the 
 second describes the condition of Germany in that dreadful time when 
 famine, battles, and pestilence, though they exterminated three-fourths of the 
 population, -were less terrible than the fiend-like cruelty, the utter lawless- 
 ness and depravity, bred of long anarchy and suffering. The substance of 
 the lectures is drawn from contemporary accounts, which give to them 
 especial freshness and life" LITERARY CHURCHMAN. 
 
 Trench (Mrs. R.) Remains of the late MRS. RICHARD 
 TRENCH. Being Selections from her Journals, Letters, and 
 other Papers. Edited by ARCHBISHOP TRENCH. New and 
 Cheaper Issue, with Portrait. 8vo. 6s. 
 
 Contains Notices and Anecdotes illustrating the social life of the period 
 extending over a quarter of a century (1799 1827). // includes also 
 Poems and other miscellaneous pieces by Mrs. TrencJi. 
 
 \Vallace. Works by ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE. For other 
 Works by same Author, see SCIENTIFIC CATALOGUE. 
 
 Dr. Hooker, in his address to the British Association, spoke thus of the 
 atithor : " Of Mr. Wallace and his many contributions to philosophical 
 b ; ology it is nol easy to speak without enthusiasm ; for, putting aside thcii 
 great merits, he, throughout his writings, with a modesty as rare as 1 
 believe it te be unconscious, forgets his awn unquestioned claim to the honour 
 of having originated, independently of M>'. f)arwin the, theories icliiih 
 he so ably defends."
 
 24 MACMILLAN'S CATALOGUE OF WORKS IN 
 
 Wallace (A. ^continued. 
 
 A NARRATIVE OF TRAVELS ON THE AMAZON AND 
 RIO NEGRO, with an Account of the Native Tribes, and Obser- 
 vations on the Climate, Geology, and Natural History of the 
 Amazon Valley. With a Map and Illustrations. 8vo. 12s. 
 Mr. Wallace is acknowledged as one of the first of modern travellers 
 
 and naturalists. This, his earliest work, will be found to possess many 
 
 charms for the general reader, and to be full of interest to the student of 
 
 natural history. 
 
 THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO : the Land of the Orang Utan 
 and the Bird of Paradise. A Narrative of Travel with Studies 
 of Man, and Nature. With Maps and Illustrations. Third and 
 Cheaper Edition. Crown 8vo. "js. 6d. 
 
 ' ' The result is a vivid picture of tropical life, -which may be read with 
 unflagging interest, and a sufficient account of his scientific conclusions to 
 stimulate our appetite without wearying us by detail. In short, we may 
 safely say that we have never read a more agreeable book of its kind." 
 SATURDAY REVIEW. "His descriptions of scenery, of the people and 
 their manners and customs, enlivened by occasional amusing anecdotes, 
 constitute the most interesting reading we have taken up for some time." 
 STANDARD. 
 
 Ward (Professor). THE HOUSE OF AUSTRIA IN THE 
 
 THIRTY YEARS' WAR. Two Lectures, with Notes and Illus- 
 trations. By ADOLPHUS W. WARD, M.A., Professor of History 
 in Owens College, Manchester. Extra fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d. 
 Tliesetwo Lectures were delivered in February, 1869, at the Philosophical 
 Institution, Edinburgh, and arenow published with Notes and Illustrations, 
 bear more thoroughly the impress of one who has a true and vigorous grasp 
 " We have never read," says the SATURDAY REVIEW, " any lectures which 
 of the subject in hand." " They are" the SCOTSMAN says, " the fruit of 
 much labour and learning, and it would be difficult to compress into a 
 hundred pages more information" 
 
 Warren. AN ESSAY ON GREEK FEDERAL COINAGE. 
 By the Hon. J. LEICESTER WARREN, M.A. 8vo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 The present essay is an attempt to illustrate Air. freeman's federal 
 Government by evidence deduced from the coinage of the times and countries 
 therein treated of.
 
 HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, &* TRAVELS. 2$ 
 
 Wedgwood. JOHN WESLEY AND THE EVANGELICAL 
 
 REACTION of the Eighteenth Century. By JULIA WEDGWOOD. 
 Crown 8vo. 8s. (>d. 
 
 This book is an attempt to delineate the influence of a particular man 
 upon his age. The background to the central figure is treated with 
 considerable minuteness, the object of representation being' not the vicissitude 
 of a particular life, but that element in the life -which impressed itself on 
 the life of a nation, an element which cannot be understood -without a 
 study of aspects of national thought which on a superficial view might 
 appear wholly unconnected with it. " In style and intellectual pcnver, in 
 breadth of vino and clearness of insight, Miss Wedgwood's book far 
 surpasses all rivals" ATHEN^UM. "As a short account of the most 
 remarkable movement in the eighteenth century, it must fairly be described 
 as excellent." PALL MALL GAZETTE. 
 
 Wilson. A MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON, M. D., 
 F. R. S.E., Regius Professor of Technology in the University of 
 Edinburgh. By his SISTER. New Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 " An exquisite and touching portrait of a rare and beautiful spirit." 
 GUARDIAN, "f/e more than most men of whom we have lately read 
 deserz'ed a minute and careful biography, and by such alone could he be 
 understood, and become loveable and influential to his fellow-men. Such 
 a biography his sister has written, in which letters reach almost to the 
 extent of a complete autobiography, with all the additional charm of being 
 unconsciously such. We revere and admire the heart, and earnestly praise 
 the patient tender hand, by -which such a worthy record of the earth-story 
 of one of God's true angel-men has been constructed for our delight and 
 profit.'" NONCONFORMIST. 
 
 Wilson (Daniel, LL.D.) Works by DANIEL WILSON, 
 LL.D., Professor of History and English Literature in University 
 College, Toronto : 
 
 PREHISTORIC ANNALS OF SCOTLAND. New Edition, 
 with numerous Illustrations. Two Vols. demy 8vo. 36^. 
 
 One object aimed at when the book first appeared was to rescue archaological 
 research from that limited range to which a too exclusive devotion to classical 
 studies had given rise, and, especially in relation to Scotland, to prove how 
 greatly more comprehensive and important are its native antiquities than all
 
 26 MACMILLAN S CATALOGUE OF WORKS IN 
 Wilson (Daniel, LL.D.) continued. 
 
 the traces of intruded art. The aim has been to a large extent effectually 
 accomplished, and such an impulse given to archaeological research, that in 
 this new edition the "whole of the work has had to be remodelled. Fully a 
 third of it has been entirely re-written ; and the remaining portions have 
 undergone so minute a revision as to render it in many respects a new 
 work. The number of pictorial illustrations has been greatly increased, 
 and several of the former plates and woodcuts have been re-engraved 
 
 from new drawings. This is divided into four Parts. Part I. deals 
 with The Primeval or Stone Period : Aboriginal Traces, Sepulchral 
 Memorials, Dwellings, and Catacombs, Temples, Weapons, etc. etc. ; 
 Part II. The Bronze Period : The Metallurgic Transition, Primitive 
 Bronze, Personal Ornaments, Religion, Arts, and Domestic Habits, with 
 other topics ; Part III. The Iron Period : The Introduction of Iron, The 
 Roman Invasion, Strongholds, etc. etc.; Part IV. The Christian Period : 
 Historical Data, the Norrifs Law Relics, Primitive and Medieval 
 Ecclesiology, Ecclesiastical and Miscellaneous Antiquities. The work is 
 
 furnished with an elaborate Index. " One of the most interesting, learned, 
 and elegant works we have seen for a long time." WESTMINSTER 
 REVIEW. " The interest connected with this beautiful volume is not 
 limited to that part of the kingdom to which it is chiefly devoted ; it will be 
 consulted with advantage and gratification by all who have a regard for 
 National Antiquities and for the advancement of scientific Archczology." 
 ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL. 
 
 PREHISTORIC MAN. New Edition, revised and partly re- written, 
 with numerous Illustrations. One vol. 8vo. 2U. 
 
 This work, which carries out the principle of the preceding one, but with 
 a wider scope, aims to " view Man, as far as possible, unaffected by those 
 modifying influences which accompany the development of nations and the 
 maturity of a true historic period, in order thereby to ascertain the sources 
 from whence such development and maturity proceed. These researches 
 into the origin of civilisation have accordingly been pursued under the belief 
 which influenced the author in previous inquiries that the investigations 
 of the archceologist, when carried on in an enlightened spirit, are replete 
 with interest in relation to some of the most important problems of modern 
 science. To reject the aid of archeology in the progress of science, and 
 especially of ethnological science, is to extinguish the lamp of the student 
 when most dependent on its borroivcd rays. " A prolonged residence on 
 some of the neioest sites of the Nav World has afforded the author many
 
 HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, & TRAVELS. 27 
 
 Wilson (Daniel, LL.D.) continued. 
 
 opportunities of investigating the antiquities of the American Aborigines, 
 and of bringing to light many facts of high importance in reference to 
 primez>al man. The changes in the new edition, necessitated by the great 
 advance in Archeology since the first, include btth reconstruction and 
 condensation, along -with considerable additions alike in illustration and 
 in argument. " We find," says the ATHEN^UM, "the main idea of his 
 treatise to be a pre-eminently scientific one, namely, by archa;ological 
 records to obtain a definite conception of the origin and nature of man's 
 earliest efforts at civilization in the New World, and to endeavour to dis- 
 cover, as if by analogy, the necessary conditions, phases, and epochs through 
 which man in the prehistoric stage in the Old World also must necessarily 
 have passed." The NORTH BRITISH REVIEW calls it "a mature and 
 mellow work of an able man ; free alike from crotchets and from dog- 
 matism, and exhibiting on every page the caution and moderation of a 
 well-balanced judgment. " 
 
 CHATTERTON : A Biographical Study. By DANIEL WILSON, 
 LL.D., Professor of History and English Literature in University 
 College, Toronto. Crown 8vo. 6s. 6d. 
 
 The author here regards Chatter ton- as a poet, not as a ''mere resetter 
 and defacer of stolen literary treasures. " Reviewed in this light, he has 
 found much in the old materials capable of being turned to new account : 
 and to these materials research in various directions- has enabled him to 
 make some additions. He believes that the boy-poet has been misjudged, and 
 that the biographies hitherto written of him are not only imperfect but 
 untrue. While dealing tenderly, the author has sought to deal truthfully 
 with the failings as well as the virtues of the boy: bearing always in 
 remembrance, what has been too frequently lost sight of, thai he was but a 
 boy ; a boy, and yet a poet of rare power. The EXAMINER thinks this 
 "the most complete and the purest biography of the poet which has yet 
 appeared." The LITERARY CHURCHMAN calls it " a most charming 
 literary biography." 
 
 Yonge (Charlotte M.) Works by CHARLOTTE M. YONGE, 
 Author of "The Heir of Redclyffe," &c. &c. : 
 
 A PARALLEL HISTORY OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND: 
 
 consisting of Outlines and Dates. Oblong 4to. 3*. 6d. 
 This tabular history has been drawn up to supply a want felt by many 
 teachers of some means of making their pupils realize what events tn the
 
 -28 MACMILLAN'S CATALOGUE. 
 
 Yonge (Charlotte M.)_ continued. 
 
 two countries were contemporary. A skeleton narrative has hem constructed 
 of the chief transactions in either country, placing a column bttiveen for 
 what affected both alike, by "which means it is hoped that young people may 
 be assisted in grasping the mutual relation of events. 
 
 CAMEOS FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. From Rollo to Edward 
 II. Extra fcap. 8vo. Second Edition, enlarged. 5j. 
 A SECOND SERIES, THE WARS IN FRANCE. Extra fcap. 
 8vo. 5^. 
 
 The endeavour has not been to chronicle facts , but to put together a series 
 of pictures of persons and events, so as to arrest the attention, and give 
 some individuality and distinctness to the recollection, by gathering together 
 details of the most memorabl' moments. The ' ' Cameos " are intended as 
 a book for young people just be^'ond the elementary histories of England, 
 and able to enter in some degree into the real spirit of events, and to be 
 struck with characters and scenes presented in some relief. " Instead of 
 dry details" says the NONCONFORMIST, " we have living pictures, faithful, 
 vivid, and striking." 
 
 Young (Julian Charles, M.A.) A MEMOIR OF 
 
 CHARLES MAYNE YOUNG, Tragedian, with Extracts 
 from his Son's Journal. By JULIAN CHARLES YOUNG, M.A. 
 Rector of Ilmington. With Portraits and Sketches. New and 
 Cheaper Edition. Crown 8vo. "js. 6d. 
 
 Hound this memoir of one who held no mean place in public estimation 
 as a tragedian, and who, as a man, by the tinobtrusive simplicity and 
 moral purity of his private life, won golden opinions from all sorts of men, 
 are clustered extracts from the author's Journals, containing many 
 curious and interesting reminiscences of his father's and his own eminent 
 and famous contemporaries and acquaintances, somewhat after the manner 
 of H. Cr abb Robinson's Diary. Every page will be found full both of 
 entertainment and instruction. It contains four portraits of the tragedian, 
 and a few other curious sketches. " In this budget of anecdotes, fables, and 
 gossip, old and neiv, relative to Scott, Moore, Chalmers, Coleridge, Words- 
 worth, Croker, Mathews, the third and fourth Georges, Bowles, Beckford, 
 Lockhart, Wellington, Peel, Louis Napoleon, DOrsay, Dickens, 
 Thackeray, Louis Blanc, Gibson, Constable, and Stanfield, etc. etc. the 
 reader must be hard indeed to please who cannot find entertainment. " 
 PALL MALL GAZETTE.
 
 POLITICS, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL 
 ECONOMY, LAW, AND KINDRED 
 SUBJECTS. 
 
 Baxter. NATIONAL INCOME : The United Kingdom. By 
 R. DUDLEY BAXTER, M.A. Svo. 3-r. 6d. 
 
 The present work endeavours to answer systematically tuch questions 
 as the following: What are the means and aggregate wages of our 
 labouring population ; what are the numbers and aggregate profits 
 of the middle classes ; what the revenues of our great proprietors 
 and capitalists ; and what the pecuniary strength of the nation to 
 bear the burdens annually falling upon us ? What capital in 
 land and goods and money is stored up for our subsistence, and for 
 carrying out our enterprises ? The author has collected his facts 
 from every quarter and tested them in various ways, in order to 
 make his statements and deductions valuable and trustworthy. 
 Part' I. of the work deals with the Classification of the Population 
 into Chap. I. The Income Classes ; Chap. II. The Upper and 
 Middle and Manual Labour Classes. Part II. treats of the In- 
 come of the United Kingdom, divided into Chap. III. Upper 
 and Middle Incomes ; Chap. IV. Wages of the Manual Labour 
 Classes England and Wales ; Chap. V. Income of Scotland ; 
 Chap. VI. Income of Ireland ; Chap. VII. Income of the 
 United Kingdom. In the Appendix will be found many valuable 
 and carefully compiled tables, illustrating in detail the subjects 
 discussed in the text. 
 
 Bernard. FOUR LECTURES ON SUBJECTS CONNECTED 
 WITH DIPLOMACY. By MOUNTAGUE BERNARD, M.A., 
 Chichele Professor of International Law and Diplomacy, Oxford. 
 STO. s.
 
 30 MACMILLAWS CATALOGUE OF 
 
 These four Lectures deal with /. " The Congress of Westphalia ; " 
 //. " Systems of Policy ; " ///. "Diplomacy, Past and Present;" 
 IV. " The Obligations of Treaties." "Singularly interesting 
 lectures, so able, clear, and attractive." SPECTATOR. "The 
 author of these lectures is full of the knowledge "which belongs to 
 his subject, and has that power of clear and vigorous expression 
 which results from clear and vigorous thought." SCOTSMAN. 
 
 Bright (John, M. P.) SPEECHES ON QUESTIONS OF 
 PUBLIC POLICY. By the Right Hon. JOHN BRIGHT, M.P. 
 Edited by Professor THOROLD ROGERS. Author's Popular Edition. 
 Globe 8vo. 3.?. 6d. 
 
 The speeches which have been selected for publication in these volumes 
 possess a value, as examples of the art of public speaking, which no 
 person will be likely to underrate. The speeches have been selected 
 with a view of supplying the public with the evidence on which Mr. 
 Brighf s friends assert his right to a place in the front rank of 
 English statesmen. They are divided into groups, according 
 to their subjects. The editor has naturally given prominence to 
 those subjects with which Mr. Bright has been specially identified, 
 as, for example, India, America, Ireland, and Parliamentary 
 Reform. But nearly every topic of great public interest on which 
 Mr. Bright has spoken is represented in these volumes. "Mr. 
 Brighf s speeches will always deserve to be studied, as an apprentice- 
 ship to popular and parliamentary oratory ; they will form 
 materials for the history of our time, and many brilliant passages, 
 perhaps some entire speeches, will really become a part of the living 
 literature of England." DAILY NEWS. 
 
 LIBRARY EDITION. Two Vols. 8vo. With Portrait. 25*. 
 
 Christie. THE BALLOT AND CORRUPTION AND 
 EXPENDITURE AT ELECTIONS, a Collection of Essays and 
 Addresses of different dates. By W. D. CHRISTIE, C. B., formerly 
 Her Majesty's Minister to the Argentine Confederation and to 
 Brazil ; Author of " Life of the First Earl of Shaftesbury. " Crown 
 8vo. 4J. 6d. 
 
 Mr. Christie has been well known for upwards of thirty years as a 
 strenuous and able advocate for the Ballot, both in his place in 
 Parliament and elsewhere. The papers and speeches here collected
 
 WORKS IN POLITICS, ETC. 3 r 
 
 are six in number, exclusive of the Preface and Dedication to Pro- 
 fessor Maurice, which contains many interesting historical details 
 concerning the Ballot. ' ' You have thought to greater purpose on 
 the means of preventing electoral corruption, and are likely to be of 
 more service in passing measures for that highly important end, 
 than any other person that I could name." J. S. Mill, in a 
 published letter to the Author, May 1868. 
 
 Corfield (Professor W. H.) A DIGEST OF FACTS 
 RELATING TO THE TREATMENT AND UTILIZATION 
 OF SEWAGE. By W. H. CORFIELD, M.A., B.A., Professor of 
 Hygiene and Public Health at University College, London. 8vo. 
 lew. 6d. Second Edition, corrected and enlarged. 
 
 In this edition the author has revised and corrected the entire work, 
 and made many important additions. The headings of the eleven 
 chapters are as follow: /. "Early Systems: Midden- Heaps and 
 Cesspools." I I. "Filth and Disease Cause and Effect." III. "Im- 
 proved Midden-Pits and Cesspools; Midden- Closets, Pail- Closets,, 
 etc." IV. " The Dry- Closet Systems." V. " Water- Closets." VI. 
 " Setverage." VII. "Sanitary Aspects of the Watei'- Carrying 
 System." VIII. "Value of Sewage; Injury to Rivers." IX, 
 Town Sewage; Attempts at Utilization." X. "Filtration and 
 Irrigation." XI. "Influence of Sewage Farming on the Public 
 Health." An abridged account of the more recently published 
 researches on the subject will be found in the Appendices, while the 
 Summary contains a concise statement of the views which the author 
 himself has been led to adopt; references have been inserted through- 
 out to show from what sources the numerous quotations have bee 
 derived, and an Index has been added. "Mr. Corfield 's work is 
 entitled to rank as a standard authority, no less than a convenient 
 handbook, in all matters relating to sewage." ATHENAEUM. 
 
 Button (Amy). STREETS AND LANES OF A CITY? 
 being the Reminiscences of AMY DUTTON. With a Preface by 
 the BISHOP OF SALISBURY. Pp. viii. 159. Globe 8vo. 3-r. 6d. 
 
 This little volume records "a portion of the experience, selected out of 
 overflowing materials, of two ladies, during several years of devoted 
 work as district parochial visitors in a large population in the 
 North of England." The "Reminiscences of Amy Dutton" serve
 
 32' MACMILLAN'S CATALOGUE OF 
 
 to illustrate the line of argument adopted by Miss Stephen in her 
 work on the "Service of the Poor," because they show that as in one 
 aspect the lady visitor may be said to be a link between rich and 
 poor, in another she helps to blend the "religious" life with the 
 " secular," and in both does service of extreme value to the Church 
 and Nation. "A record only too brief of some of the real por- 
 traits of humanity, painted by a pencil, tender indeed and sympa- 
 thetic, but with too clear a sight, too ready a sense of humour, and 
 too conscientious a spirit ever to exaggerate, extenuate, or aught set 
 down in malice." GUARDIAN. 
 
 Fawcett. Works by HENRY FAWCETT, M.A., M.P., Fellow of 
 Trinity Hall, and Professor of Political Economy in the University 
 of Cambridge : 
 
 THE ECONOMIC POSITION OF THE BRITISH 
 LABOURER. Extra fcap. 8vo. $s. 
 
 This work formed a portion of a course of Lectures delivered by the 
 author in the University of Cambridge, and he has deemed it 
 advisable to retain many of the expositions of the elementary prin- 
 ciples of Economic Science. In the Introductory Chapter the 
 author points out the scope of the work and shows the vast import- 
 ance of the subject in relation to the commercial prosperity and even 
 the national existence of Britain. Then follow five chapters on 
 " The Land Tenure of England," "Co-operation," "The Causes 
 which regulate Wages," "Trade Unions and Strikes," and 
 "Emigration." The EXAMINER calls the work "a very scholarly 
 exposition on some of t/ie most essential questions of Political 
 Economy;" and the NONCONFORMIST says "it is written with 
 charming freshness, ease, and lucidity." 
 
 MANUAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. Third and Cheaper 
 Edition, with Two New Chapters. Crown 8vo. ior. 6d. 
 
 In this treatise no important branch of the subject has been omitted, 
 and the author believes that the principles which are therein ex- 
 plained will enable the reader to obtain a tolerably complete view of 
 the whole science. Mr. Fawcett has endeavoured to show A<no 
 intimately Political Economy is connected with the practical ques- 
 tions of life. For the convenience of the ordinary reader, and 
 especially for those who may use the book to prepare themselves for
 
 WORKS IN POLITICS, ETC. 33 
 
 FaWCCtt (H..} continued. 
 
 examinations, he has prefixed a very detailed summary of Contents, 
 which may be regarded as an analysis of the work. The new 
 edition has been so carefully revised that there is scarcely a 
 page in which some improvement has not been introduced. The 
 DAILY NEWS says : " It forms one of the best introductions to the 
 principles of the science, and to its practical applications in the 
 problems of modern, and especially of English, government and 
 society." " The book is written throughout," says the EXAMINER, 
 "with admirable force, clearness, and brevity, every important 
 part of the subject being duly considered." 
 
 PAUPERISM : ITS CAUSES AND REMEDIES. Crown 8vo. 
 5-r. 6d. 
 
 In its number for March I ith, 1871, //fo SPECTATOR said: " We wish 
 Professor Fawcett would devote a little more of his time and energy 
 to the practical consideration of that monster problem of Pauperism, 
 for the treatment of which his economic knowledge and popular 
 sympathies so eminently fit him." The volume now published may- 
 be regarded as an answer to the above challenge. The seven 
 chapters it comprises discuss the following subjects : /. "Pauperism 
 and the old Poor Law." II. " The present Poor Law System." 
 III. " The Increase of Population." IV. " National Education ; 
 its Economic and Social Effects." V. "Co-partnership and Co 
 operation." VI. " The English System of Land Tenure." VII. 
 " The Inclosure of Commons." The ATHEN^UM calls thework "a 
 repertory of interesting and well-digested information." 
 
 ESSAYS ON POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SUBJECTS. By PRO- 
 FESSOR FAWCETT, M.P., and MILLICENT GARRETT FAWCETT. 
 8vo. i or. 6d. 
 
 This volume contains fourteen papers, some of which have appeared 
 in various journals and periodicals ; others have not before been 
 published. They are all on subjects of great importance and uni- 
 versal interest, and the names of the two authors are a sufficient 
 guarantee that each topic is discussed with full knowledge, great 
 Ability, clearness, and earnestness. The following are some of the 
 titles: " Modern Socialism;" " Free Education in its Economic 
 Aspects ;" "Pauperism, Charity, and the Poor Law ;" "National 
 Debt and National Prosperity ;" " What can bt done for tin 
 C
 
 34 MACMILLAN'S CATALOGUE OF 
 
 Agricultural Labourers y" " The Education of Women ;" " The 
 Electoral Disabilities of Women;" " The House of Lords ." Each 
 article is signed with the initials of its author. 
 
 Fawcett (Mrs.) POLITICAL ECONOMY FOR BEGIN- 
 NERS. WITH QUESTIONS. By MILLICENT GARRETT 
 FAWCETT. i8mo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 In this little -work are explained as briefly as possible the most im- 
 portant principles of Political Economy, in the hope that it will be 
 useful to beginners, and perhaps be an assistance to those who are 
 desirous of introducing the study of Political Economy to schools. 
 In order to adapt the book especially for school use, questions have 
 been added at the end of each chapter. The DAILY NEWS calls, it 
 "clear, compact, and comprehensive;" and the SPECTATOR says, 
 "Mrs. Fawcetfs treatise is perfectly suited to its purpose." 
 
 Freeman (E. A., M.A., D.C.L.) HISTORY OF 
 
 FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. Ste p. 6 of preceding HIS- 
 TORICAL CATALOGUE. 
 
 Godkin (James). THE LAND WAR IN IRELAND. A 
 
 History for the Times. By JAMES GODKIN, Author of "Ireland 
 and her Churches," late Irish Correspondent of the Times. 8vo. 
 
 I2S. 
 
 A History of the Irish Land Question. " There is probably no other 
 account so compendious and so complete. " FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW. 
 
 Guide to the Unprotected, in Every Day Matters Re- 
 lating to Property and Income. By a BANKER'S DAUGHTER. 
 Third Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 3-r. 6d. 
 
 Many widows and single ladies, and all young people, on first 
 possessing money of their own, are in want of advice when they 
 have csmmonplace business matters to transact. The author of 
 this work writes for those who know nothing. Her aim throughout 
 is to avoid all technicalities ; to give plain and practical directions, 
 not only as to what ought to be done, but how to do it. "Many an 
 unprotected females will bless the head which planned and the hand 
 which compiled this admirable little manual. . . . This book ii>as 
 very much wanted, and it could not have been better done." 
 MORNING STAR.
 
 WORKS 7N POLITICS, ETC. 35 
 
 Hill. CHILDREN OF THE STATE. THE TRAINING OF 
 JUVENILE PAUPERS. By FLORENCE HILL. Extra fcap. 
 8vo. cloth. 5-r. 
 
 In this work the author discusses the various systems adopted in this 
 and other countries in the treatment of pauper children. The 
 BIRMINGHAM DAILY GAZETTE calls it "a valuable contribution 
 to the great and important social question which it so ably and 
 thoroughly discusses ; and it must materially aid in producing a 
 wise method of dealing with, the Children of the State " 
 
 Historicus. LETTERS ON SOME QUESTIONS OF 
 INTERNATIONAL LAW. Reprinted from the Times, with 
 considerable Additions. 8vo. 7^. 6d. Also, ADDITIONAL 
 LETTERS. 8vo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 The author's intention in these Letters was to illustrate in a popular 
 form clearly-established principles of law, or to refute, as occasion 
 required, errors which had obtained a mischievous currency. He 
 has endeavoured to establish, by sufficient authority, propositions 
 which have been inconsiderately impugned, and to point out the 
 various methods of reasoning which have led some modern writers 
 to erroneous conclusions. The volume contains: Letters on "Recog- 
 nition;" "On the Perils of Intervention;" "The Rights and 
 Duties of Neutral Nations ;" "On the Law of Blockade;" "On 
 Neutral 7"rade in Contraband of War;" " On Belligerent Viola- 
 tion of Neutral Rights ;" "The Foreign Enlistment Act ;" "The 
 Right of Search;" extracts from letters on the Affair of the 
 Trent; and a paper on the " Territoriality of the Merchant 
 Vessel." "It is seldom that the doctrines of International Law oil 
 debateable points have been stated with more vigour, precision, and 
 certainty." SATURDAY REVIEW. 
 
 Jevons. Works by W. STANLEY JEVONS, M.A., Professor of 
 Logic and Political Economy in Owens College, Manchester. (For 
 other Works by the same Author, see EDUCATIONAL and PHII.O 
 SOPHICAL CATALOGUES.) 
 
 THE COAL QUESTION : An Inquiry Concerning the Progress 
 of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of our Coal Mines. 
 Second Edition, revised. 8vo. los. 6d. 
 c 2
 
 36 MACMILLAN'S CATALOGUE OF 
 
 JCVOns (W.S.) continued. 
 
 "Day by day," the author says, "it becomes more evident that the 
 coal we happily possess in excellent quality and abundance is the 
 mainspring of modern material civilization." Geologists and 
 other competent authorities have of late been hinting that the 
 supply of coal is by no means inexhaustible, and as it is of vast 
 importance to the country and the vuorld generally to know the real 
 state of the case, Professor Jevons in this work has endeavoured to 
 solve the question as far as the data at command admit. He 
 believes that should the consumption multiply for rather more than 
 a century at its present rate, the average depth of our coal mines 
 would be so reduced that we could not long continue our present rate 
 of progress. " We have to make the momentous choice," he beliez'cs, 
 "between brief greatness and long-continued prosperity." "The 
 question of our supply of coal, " says the PALL MALL GAZETTE, ' ' be- 
 comes a question obviously of life or death. . . . The whole case is 
 stated with admirable clearness and cogency. . . . We may regard 
 his statements as unanswered and practically established. " 
 
 THE THEORY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 8vo. 9*. 
 
 In this work Professor Jevons endeavours to construct a theory of 
 Political Economy on a mathematical or quantitative basis, believing 
 that many of the commonly received theories in this science are per- 
 niciously erroneous. The author here attempts to treat Economy 
 as the Calculus of Pleasure and Pain, and has sketched out, almost 
 irrespective of previous opinions, the form which the science, as it 
 seems to him, must ultimately take. The theory consists in apply- 
 ing the differential calculus to the familiar notions of Wealth, 
 ' Utility, Value, Demand, Supply, Capital, Interest, Labour, and 
 all the other notions belonging to the daily operations of industry. 
 As the complete theory of almost every other science involves the use 
 of that calculus, so, the author thinks, we cannot have a true theory 
 of Political Economy withmit its aid. "Professor Jevons has done 
 invaluable service by courageously claiming political economy to be 
 strictlv a branch of Applied Mathematics." WESTMINSTER 
 REVIEW. 
 
 Martin. THE STATESMAN'S YEAR-BOOK: A Statistical 
 and Historical Annual of the States of the Civilized World. 
 Handbook for Politicians and Merchants for the year 1872. By
 
 WORKS IN POLITICS, ETC. 37 
 
 FREDERICK MARTIN. Ninth Annual Publication. Revised after 
 Official Returns. Crown 8vo. los. 6d. 
 
 The Statesman's Year-Book is the only -work in the English language 
 which furnishes a dear and concise account of the actual condition 
 of all the States of Europe, the civilized countries of America, 
 Asia, and Africa, and the British Colonies and Dependencies in 
 all parts of the world. The new issue of the work has been revised 
 and corrected, on the basis of official reports received direct from the 
 heads of the leading Governments of the world, in reply to letters sent 
 to them by the Editor. Through the valuable assistance thus given, 
 it has been possible to collect an amount of information, political, 
 statistical, and commercial, of the latest date, and of unimpeachable 
 trustworthiness, such as no publication of the same kind has ever 
 been able to furnish. The new issue of the Statesman's Year- 
 Book has a Chronological Account of the principal events of the 
 past momentous twelve months. "As indispensable as Bradshaw." 
 TIMES. 
 
 Phillimore. PRIVATE LAW AMONG THE ROMANS, 
 
 from the Pandects. By JOHN GEORGE PHILLIMORE, Q.C. 8vo. 
 i6s. 
 
 The author's belief that some knowledge of the Roman System of 
 Municipal Law will contribute to improve our own, has induced 
 him to prepare the present work. His endeavour has been to select 
 those parts of the Digest which would best show the grand manner 
 in which the Roman jurist dealt with his subject, as well as those 
 which most illustrate the principles by which he was guided in 
 establishing the great lines and propositions of jurisprudence, which 
 every lawyer must have frequent occasion to employ. "Mr. Philli- 
 more has done good service towards the study of jurisprudence in 
 this country by the production of this volume. The work is one 
 which should be in the hands of every student." ATHEN/EUM. 
 
 Smith. Works by Professor GOLDWIN SMITH : 
 
 A LETTER TO A WHIG MEMBER OF THE SOUTHERN 
 INDEPENDENCE ASSOCIATION. Extra fcap. 8vo. 2s. 
 
 This is a Letter, written in 1864, to a member of an Association 
 formed in this country, tht purpose of which was "to laid assistance
 
 Smith (Prof. G .) continued. 
 
 to the Slave-owners of the Southern States in their attempt to effect a 
 disruption of the American Commonwealth, and to establish an 
 independent Power, having, as they declare, Slavery /0r its cornea-- 
 stoned" Mr. Smith endeavours to show tJiat in deing so they 
 would have committed a great folly and a still greater crime. 
 Throughout the Letter many points of general and permanent 
 importance are discussed. 
 
 THREE ENGLISH STATESMEN: PYM, CROMWELL, 
 PITT. A Course of Lectures on the Political History of England. 
 Extra fcap. 8vo. New and Cheaper Edition. $s. 
 
 "A work which, neither historian nor politician can safely afford to 
 neglect." SATURDAY REVIEW." " There are o utlines, clearly and 
 boldly sketched, if mere outlines, of the three Statesmen who give the 
 titles to his lectures^ whichare well deserving of study. " SPECTATOR. 
 
 Social Duties Considered with Reference to the 
 ORGANIZATION OF EFFORT IN WORKS OF BE- 
 NEVOLENCE AND PUBLIC UTILITY. By a MAN OF 
 BUSINESS. (WILLIAM RATHBONE.) Fcap. 8vo. 4J-. 6d. 
 
 The contents of this valuable little book are /. ' ' Social Disintegra- 
 tion" II. '''Our Charities Done and Undone" III. "Organiza- 
 tion and Itidividual Benevolence their Achievements and Short- 
 comings." IV. " Organization and Individualism their Co- 
 operation Indispensable." V. " Instances and Experiments." VI. 
 " The Sphere of Government. " lt Conclusion." The views urged 
 are no sentimental theories, but have grown out of the practical ex- 
 perience acquired in actual work. "Mr. Rathbone's earnest and 
 large-hearted Hi tie book will help to generate both a larger and wiser 
 charity." BRITISH QUARTERLY. 
 
 Stephen (C. E.) THE SERVICE OF THE POOR; 
 Being an Inquiry into the Reasons for and against the Establish- 
 ment of Religious Sisterhoods for Charitable Purposes. By 
 CAROLINE EMILIA STEPHEN. Crown 8vo. 6s. 6d. 
 
 Miss Stephen defines Religious Sisterhoods as "associations, the 
 organization of which is based upon the assumption that works of 
 eharitv are either acts of worship in themselves, or means to an end, 
 thai m:f l-eittg the spiritual welfare of the objects or the peiformers
 
 WORKS IN POLITICS, ETC. 39 
 
 of those works." Arguing from that point of view, she devotes the 
 first part of her volume to a brief history of religious associations, 
 taking as specimens /. The Deaconesses of the Primitive Church. 
 II. TheBeguines. III. The Third Order of S. Francis. IV. The 
 Sisters of Charity of S. Vincent de Paul. V. The Deaconesses of 
 Modern Germany. In the second part, Miss Stephen attempts to 
 show what are the real wants met by Sisterhoods, to what extent the 
 same wants may be effectually met by the organization of corre- 
 sponding institutions on a secular basis, and what are the reasons 
 for endeavouring to do so. " The ablest advocate of a better line of 
 work in this direction than we have ever seen." EXAMINER. 
 
 Stephen (J. F.) A GENERAL VIEW OF THE 
 
 CRIMINAL LAW OF ENGLAND. By JAMES FITZJAMES 
 STEPHEN, M.A., Barrister-at-Law, Member of the Legislative 
 Council of India. 8vo. I&.T. 
 
 The object of this work is to give an account of the general scope, 
 tendency, and design of an important part of our institutions, 
 of which surely none can have a greater moral significance, or be 
 more closely connected with broad principles of morality and 
 politics, than those by which men rightfully, deliberately, and in 
 cold blood, kill, enslave, and otherwise torment their fellers- 
 creatures. The author believes it possible to explain the principles, 
 of such a system in a manner both intelligible and interesting. 
 The Contents are I. "The Province of the Criminal Law." 
 II. " Historical Sketch of English Criminal Law." III. "JXft- 
 nition of Crime in General." IV. " Classification and Definition 
 of Particular Crimes." V. " Criminal Procedure in General:' 1 
 VI. " English Criminal Procedure" VII. " The Principles cj 
 Evidence in Relation to the Criminal Law." VIII. "English 
 Rules of Evidence." IX. "English Criminal Legislation." 1 
 The last \tp pages are occupied with the discussion of a nui ho- 
 of important cases. "Readers fed in his book the confidence which 
 attaches to the writings of a man who has a great practical 
 acquaintance with the matter of which he writes, and lawyers will 
 agree that it fully satisfies the standard of professional accuracy." 
 SATURDAY REVIEW. " His styleis forcible and perspicuous, and 
 singularly free from the unnecessary use of professional lenns.''- 
 SPECTATUR.
 
 40 MACMILLAN'S CATALOGUE. 
 
 Thornton. ON LABOUR : Its Wrongful Claims and Rightful 
 Dues ; Its Actual Present State and Possible Future. By WILLIAM 
 THOMAS THORNTON, Author of" A Plea for Peasant Proprietors," 
 etc. Second Edition, revised. 8vo. I4J. 
 
 The object of this volume is to endeavour to find "a cure for human 
 destitution" the search after which has been the passion and the 
 work of the author's life. The work is divided into four books, 
 and each book into a number of chapters. Book I. "Labour's 
 Causes of Discontent." II. ''''Labour and Capital in Debate." 
 III. ll Labour and Capital in Antagonism." IV. " Labour and 
 Capital in Alliance." All the highly important problems in Social 
 and Political Economy connected with Labour and Capital are 
 here discussed with knowledge, vigour, and originality, and for a 
 noble purpose. The new edition has been thoroughly revised and 
 considerably enlarged. " We cannot fail to recognize in his work 
 the result of independent thought, high moral aim, and generous 
 intrepidity in a noble cause. . . . . A really valuable contribution. 
 Tht number of facts accumulated, both historical and statistical, 
 make an especially valuable portion of the work.'" WESTMINSTER 
 REVIEW.
 
 WORKS CONNECTED WITH THE SCIENCE 
 OR THE HISTORY OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 (for Editions of Greek and Latin Classical Authors, Gram- 
 mars, and other School works, see EDUCATIONAL CATALOGUE.) 
 
 Abbott. A SHAKESPERIAN GRAMMAR : An Attempt to 
 illustrate some of the Differences between Elizabethan and Modern 
 English. By the Rev. E. A. ABBOTT, M.A., Head Master of the 
 City of London School. For the Use of Schools. New and 
 Enlarged Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 6.r. 
 
 The object of this -work is to furnish students of Shakespeare and 
 Bacon -with a short systematic account of some points of difference 
 between Elizabethan Syntax and our own. The demand for a third 
 edition within a year of the publication of the first, has encouraged 
 the author to endeavour to make the work somewhat more useful, 
 and to render it, as far as possible, a complete book of reference for 
 all difficulties of Shakesperian Syntax or Prosody. For this purpose 
 the whole of Shakespeare has been re-read, and an attempt has been 
 made to include within this edition the explanation of every 
 idiomatic difficulty (where the text is not confessedly corrupt) that 
 comes within the province of a grammar as distinct from a glossary. 
 The great object being to make a useful book of reference for students 
 and for classes in schools, several Plays have been indexed so fully, 
 that with the aid of a glossary and historical notes the references 
 will serve for a complete commentary. "A critical inquiry, eon- 
 ducted with great skill and knowledge, and with all the appliances 
 of modern philology.'" PALL MALL GAZETTE. "Valuable not 
 only as an aid to the critical study of Shakespeare, but as tending to 
 familiarize the reader with Elizabethan English in general"- 
 ATHENAEUM.
 
 42 MACMILLAN'S CATALOGUE OF 
 
 Besant. STUDIES IN EARLY FRENCH POETRY. By 
 WALTER BESANT, M.A. Crown Svo. $s. 6^. 
 
 A sort of impression rests on most minds that French litei-ature begins 
 with the "siJcle de Louis Quatorze;" any previous literature being 
 for the most part unknown or ignored. Few know anything of the 
 enormous literary activity that began in the thirteenth century, was 
 carried on by Rulebeuf, Marie de France, Gaston de Foix, Thibault 
 de Champagne, and Lorris ; was fostered by Charles of Orleans, 
 by Margaret of Valois, by Francis the First; that gave a crowd of 
 versifiers to France, enriched, strengthened, developed, and fixed the 
 French language, and prepared the way for Corneille and for 
 Racine. The present work aims to afford information and direction 
 touching these early efforts of France in poetical literature. "In one 
 moderately sized volume he has contrived to introduce us to the very 
 best, if not fo all of the early French poets." ATHEN/EUM. 
 " 'Industry, the insight of a scholar, and a genuine enthusiasm for 
 his subject, combine to make it of very considerable value." 
 SPECTATOR. 
 
 Helfenstein (James). A COMPARATIVE GRAMMAR 
 OF THE TEUTONIC LANGUAGES : Being at the same 
 time a Historical Grammar of the English Language, and com- 
 prising Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, Early English, Modern English, 
 Icelandic (Old Norse), Danish, Swedish, Old High German, 
 Middle High German, Modern German, Old Saxon, Old Frisian, 
 and Dutch. By JAMES HELFENSTEIN, Ph.D. Svo. iSs. 
 
 This work traces the different stages of development through which the 
 various Teutonic languages have pasfed, and the laws which Jiavc 
 regulated their growth. The reader is thus enabled to study the 
 relation which these languages bear to one another, and to the Eng- 
 lish language in particular, to which special attention is devoted 
 throughout. In the chapters on Ancient and Middle Teutonic 
 languages no grammatical form is omitted the knowledge of 'which 
 is required for the, study of anciftti literature, whether Gothic or 
 Anglo-Saxon or Early English. To each chapter is prefixed a 
 sketch slewing the relation of tlie 'J\;itonic tt> the cognate languages, 
 Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit. Those who' have mustered the book 
 will be in a position to proceed with intelligence to the more elaborate 
 works of Grimm, Bopp, Pott, Schlcichcr, and others.
 
 WORKS ON LANGUAGE. 43 
 
 Morris. HISTORICAL OUTLINES OF ENGLISH ACCI- 
 DENCE, comprising Chapters on the History and Development 
 of the Language, and on Word-formation. By the Rev. RICHARD 
 MORRIS, LL.D., Member of the Council of the Philol. Soc., 
 Lecturer on English Language and Literature in King's College 
 School, Editor of "Specimens of Early English," etc., etc. 
 Fcap. 8vo. 6s. 
 
 Dr. Morris has endeavoured to write a work which can be profitably 
 used by students and by the upper forms in our public schools. His 
 almost unequalled knowledge of early English Literature renders 
 him peculiarly qualified to -write a work of this kind ; and English 
 Grammar, he believes, without a reference to 'the older fornls, must 
 appear altogether anomalous, inconsistent, and unintelligible. / 
 the writing of this volume, moreover, he has taken advantage of the 
 researches into our language made by all the most eminent scholars 
 in England, America, and on the Continent. The author shows 
 the place of English among the languages of the world, expounds 
 clearly and with great minuteness " Grimm's Law," gives a brief 
 history of the English language and an account of the various 
 dialects, investigates the history and principles of Phonology, 
 Orthography, Accent, and Etymology, and devotes several chapters 
 to the consideration of the various Parts of Speech, and the final 
 one to Derivation and Word-formation. 
 
 Peile (John. M.A.) AN INTRODUCTION TO GREEK 
 AND LATIN ETYMOLOGY. By JOHN TEILE, M.A., 
 Fellow and Assistant Tutor of Christ's College, Cambridge, 
 formerly Teacher of Sanskrit in the University of Cambridge. 
 New and revised Edition. Crown 8vo. los. 6d. 
 
 These Philological Lectures are the result of Notes made during the 
 author's reading for some years previous to their publication. These 
 Notes were put into the shape of lectures, delivered at Chris? s 
 College, as one set in the "Intercollegiate'" list. They have been 
 priiited with some additions and modifications, but substantially 
 as they were delivered* "The book may be accepted as a very 
 valuable contribution to ///> sciencf of landtag,:"* \TUKDAY 
 REVIEW.
 
 44 MACMILLAN'S CATALOGUE OF 
 
 Philology. THE JOURNAL OF SACRED AND CLAS- 
 SICAL PHILOLOGY. Four Vols. 8vo. i2s. (>d. 
 
 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY. New Series. Edited by W. 
 G. CLARK, M.A., JOHN E. B. MAYOR, M.A., and W. ALDIS 
 WRIGHT, M.A. Nos. I. II., III., and IV. 8vo. 4r. 6d. each. 
 (Half-yearly.) 
 
 Roby (H. J.) A GRAMMAR OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE, 
 FROM PLAUTUS TO SUETONIUS. By HENRY JOHN 
 ROBY, M.A., late Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. 
 Part I. containing : Book I. Sounds. Book II. Inflexions. 
 Book III. Word Formation. Appendices. Crown 8vo. 8.r. 6d. 
 
 This -work is the result of an independent and careful study of the 
 writers of the strictly Classical period, the period embraced between 
 the time of Plautus and that of Suetonius. The author's aim has 
 been to give the facts of the language in as few words as possible. It 
 will be found that the arrangement of the book and the treatment of 
 the various divisions differ in many respects from those of previous 
 grammars. Mr. Roby has given special prominence to the treat- 
 ment of Sounds and Word-formation ; and in the First Book he has 
 done much towards settling a discussion which is at present largely 
 engaging the attention of scholars, viz., the Pronunciation of the 
 Classical languages. In the full Appendices will be found various 
 valuable details still further illustrating the subjects discussed in the 
 text. The author's reputation as a scJiolar and critic is already 
 well known, and the publishers are encouraged to believe that his 
 present work will take its place as perhaps the most original, exhaus- 
 tive, and scientific grammar of the Latin language that has ever 
 issued from the British press. ' ' The book is marked by the clear 
 and practical insight of a master in his art. It is a book which 
 would do honour to any country.' 11 ATHEN/EUM. " Brings before 
 the student in a methodical form the best results of modern philology 
 bearing on the Latin language. " SCOTSMAN. 
 
 Taylor (Rev. Isaac). WORDS AND PLACES ; or, 
 
 Etymological Illustrations of History, Ethnology, and Geography. 
 By the Rev. ISAAC TAYLOR. Second Edition. Crown 8vo.
 
 WORKS ON LANGUAGE. 45 
 
 This work, as the SATURDAY REVIEW acknowledges, "is one -which 
 stands alone in our language. " The subject is one acknowledged to 
 be of the highest importance as a handmaid to History, Ethnology, 
 Geography, and even to Geology ; and Mr. Taylor's work has 
 taken its place as the only English authority of value on the subject. 
 Not only is the work of the highest value to the student, but will be 
 found full of interest to the general reader, affording him wonderful 
 peeps into the past life and wanderings of the restless race to which 
 he belongs. Every assistance is given in the way of specially pre- 
 pared Maps, Indexes, and Appendices ; and to anyone who wishes 
 to pursue the study of the subject further, the Bibliographical List of 
 Books will be found invaluable. The NONCONFORMIST says, "The 
 historical importance of the subject can scarcely be exaggerated." 
 "His book," the READER says, "will be invahiable to the student of 
 English history.'" "As all cultivated minds fed curiosity about 
 local names, it may be expected that this will become a household 
 book," says the GUARDIAN. 
 
 Trench. Works by R. CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D., Archbishop of 
 Dublin. (For other Works by the same Author, see THEOLOGICAL 
 CATALOGUE.) 
 
 Archbishop Trench has done much to spread an interest in the history 
 of our English tongue. He is acknowledged to possess an un- 
 common power of presenting, in a clear, instructive, and interesting 
 manner, the fruit of his own extensive research, as well as the 
 results of the labours of other scientific and historical students 
 of language ; while, as ttieATHENJEVM says, " his sober judgment 
 and sound sense are barriers against the misleading influence of 
 arbitrary hypotheses." 
 
 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. New Edition, 
 enlarged. 8vo. cloth. \zs, 
 
 The study of synonyms in any language is valuable as a discipline for 
 training the mind to close and accurate habits of thought; more 
 especially is this the case in Greek "a language spoken by a people of 
 the finest and subtlest intellect; who saw distinctions where others saw 
 none; who divided out to different words what others' often were 
 content to huddle confusedly under a common term.' 1 '' This work is 
 recognized as a valuable companion to every student of the New 
 Testament in the original. This, the Seventh Edition, has been
 
 46 MACMILLAWS CATALOGUE OF 
 
 Trench (R. C.} continued. 
 
 carefully revised, and a considerable number of new synonyms added. 
 Appended is an Index to the synonyms, and an Index to many of her 
 words alluded to or explained throughout the work. "lie is," the 
 AxHENyEUM says, "a guide in this department of knowledge to 
 whom his readers may entrust themselves with confidence. " 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF WORDS Lectures Addressed (originally) 
 to the Pupils at the Diocesan Training School, Winchester. 
 Fourteenth Edition, revised and enlarged. Fcap. 8vo. 4?. 6d. 
 
 This, it is believed, was probably the first work which drew general 
 attention in this country to the importance and interest of the 
 critical and historical study of English. It still retains its place as 
 one of the most successful if not the only exponent of those aspects 
 of Words of which it treats. The subjects of the several Lectures 
 are I. "Introductory." II. "On the Poetry of Words." III. 
 " On the Morality of Words." IV. "On the History of Words." 
 V. "On the Rise of New Words." VI. "On the Distinction of 
 Words." VII. "Tht Schoolmaster's Use of Words." 
 
 ENGLISH PAST AND PRESENT. Seventh Edition, revised 
 and improved. Fcap. 8vo. 4?. 6d. 
 
 This is a series of eight Lectures, in the first of which Archbishop 
 Trench considers the English language as it now is, decomposes some 
 specimens of it, and thus discovers of what elements it is compact. In 
 the second Lecture he considers what the language might have been 
 if the Norman Conquest had never taken place. In the following 
 six Lectures he institutes from various points of view a comparison 
 between the present language and the past, points out gains which it 
 has made, losses which it has endured, and generally calls attention 
 to some of the more important changes through which it has passed, 
 or is at present passing. 
 
 A SELECT GLOSSARY OF ENGLISH WORDS USED 
 
 FORMERLY IN SENSES DIFFERENT FROM THEIR 
 
 PRESENT. Third Edition. Fcap. Svo. 4^. 
 
 This alphabetically arranged Glossary contains many of the most 
 
 important of t/iose English words which in the course of time have 
 
 gradually changed their meanings. The author's object is to point 
 
 out some of these changes, to suggest how many more there may be,
 
 WORKS ON LANGUAGE. 47 
 
 Trench (R. C.) continued. 
 
 to show how slight and subtle, -while yet most real, these changes 
 have often been, to trace here and there the progressive steps by 
 which the old meaning ha-s been put off and the new put on the 
 exact road which a word has travelled. The author thus hopes to 
 render some assistance to those -who regard this as a serviceable dis- 
 cipline in the training of their own minds or the minds of others. 
 Although the book is in the form of a Glossary, it -will be found as 
 interesting as a series of brief well-told biographies. 
 
 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN OUR ENGLISH DICTION- 
 ARIES : Being the substance of Two Papers read before the 
 Philological Society. Second Edition, revised and enlarged. 
 8vo. 3-r. 
 
 The following are the main deficiencies in English dictionaries pointed 
 out in these Papers, and illustrated by an interesting accumulation of 
 particulars : /. ' ' Obsolete words are incompletely reg istered. ' ' If. 
 "Families or groups of words are often imperfect." III. "Much 
 earlier examples of the employment of words oftentimes exist than 
 any which are cited, and much later examples of words ncnv 
 obsolete." IV. "Important meanings and uses of words are passed 
 over." V. "Comparatively little attention is paid to the distinguish- 
 ing of synonymous words." VI. "Many passages in our literature 
 are passed by, which might be carefully adduced in illustration of 
 the first introduction, etymology, and meaning of words." VJI. 
 " Our dictionaries err in redundancy as well as defect." 
 
 Wood. Works by H. T. W. WOOD, B.A., Clare College, 
 
 Cambridge : 
 THE RECIPROCAL INFLUENCE OF ENGLISH AND 
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE IN THE EIGHTEENTH 
 
 CENTURY. Crown Svo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 This Essay gained the Le Bas Prize for the year 1869. Besides a, 
 general Introductory Section, it contains other three Sections on 
 " The Influence of Boileau and his School ; " " The Influence of 
 English Philosophy in France;" "Secondary Influences the 
 Drama, Fiction," etc. Appended is a Synchronological Table of 
 Events connected with English and French Literature, A.D. 1700 
 A.D. 1800.
 
 48 MACMILLAWS CATALOGUE. 
 
 Wood (H. T. W ' .^-continued. 
 
 CHANGES IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE BETWEEN 
 THE PUBLICATION OF WICLIF'S BIBLE AND THAT 
 OF THE AUTHORIZED VERSION ; A.D. 1400 to A.D. 1600. 
 Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 This Essay gained the Le Bas Prize for the year 1870. Besides the 
 Introductory Section explaining the aim and scope of the Essay, 
 there are other three Sections and three Appendices. Section II. 
 treats of "English before Chaucer." III. " Chaucer to Caxton." 
 IV. "From Caxton to the Authorized Version." Appendix: I. 
 "Table of English Literature" A.D. 1300 A.D. 1611. //. 
 "Early English Bible." III. "Inflectional Changes in the Verb." 
 This will be found a most valuable help in the study of our language 
 during the period embraced in the Essay. "As we go with him" 
 the ATHEN^UM says, "we learn something new at every step." 
 
 Yonge. HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN NAMES. By CHAR- 
 LOTTE M. YONGE, Author of " The Heir of Redclyffe." Two 
 Vols. Crown 8vo. i/. is. 
 
 Miss Yongis work is acknowledged to be the authority on the interest- 
 ing subject of which it treats. Until she wrote on the subject, the 
 history of names especially Christian Names as distinguished from 
 Surnames had been but little examined ; nor why one should be 
 
 popular and another forgotten why one should flourish through- 
 out Europe, another in one country alone, another around some 
 
 petty district. In each case she has tried to find out whence the 
 name came, whether it had a patron, and whether the patron took 
 it from the myths or heroes of his own country, or from the mean- 
 ing of the words. She has then tried to classify the names, as to 
 treat them merely alphabetically would destroy all their interest and 
 connection. They are classified first by language, beginning with 
 Hebrew and coming down through Greek and Latin to Celtic, 
 Teutonic, Slavonic, and other sources, ancient and modern ; then 
 by meaning or spirit. "An almost exhaustive treatment of the 
 subject . . . The painstaking toil of a thoughtful and cultured mind 
 on a most interesting theme." LONDON QUARTERLY. 
 
 R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS, LONDON.
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
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