CHAPTER XVII

OTHER SCHEMES OF LAND REFORM

THERE are several schemes advocated by land reformers to remedy the evils of the present system. The most practical among them, and the one receiving most support among ardent land reformers, is that known as "Free Trade in Land." Shortly stated, the object of this reform is to make the sale and transfer of land as easy and inexpensive as that of any other property; to abolish the laws and customs which invite, encourage, and perpetuate the accumulation of land in a few hands; to destroy the power of the "dead hand"; to control the disposal of estates; to alter the law which allows a man to tie up land during his lifetime, and for many years after his death; to abolish the law (primogeniture) which, if the landowner does not avail himself of his power to make a deed or will, gives all his land, in one undivided estate, to his heir; in short, as described by a wellknown writer, to abolish the "old feudal system of primogeniture, entails, long settlements, and intricate devises of land, invented in order to keep great estates together, and to preserve the great power of the feudal aristocracy.

Now, whatever may be the merits of these reforms, it is difficult to see how they would facilitate the creation of yeoman holdings or of a peasant proprietary. At the best the process would be tedious

1 "Free Trade in Land,” by Joseph Kay, Q.C.

and slow. No doubt "Free Trade in Land" would result, eventually, in putting a large number of estates on the market, but the cultivators would certainly be in no better position than now, and probably in a far worse position.1

Seeing that tenant farmers, as a rule, have no spare money to buy, and the peasants certainly have none, the buyers would be of two classes: the first class would consist of small capitalists, who would buy land as an investment and let it at the highest rent they could get. This would be a disadvantage, as small owners-either from necessity or from the commercial spirit-are generally the hardest of landlords. The second class of buyers would be wealthy men desirous of becoming "county" people, who would buy up any estates offered, as indeed to a considerable extent they are now doing.

There would be no gain in this; for of the two, a landed aristocracy is, as far as the tenants are concerned, perhaps preferable to a landed plutocracy. So that "free trade" in land, if realized to-morrow, unless accompanied by a Land Purchase Bill, would simply have the effect of locking up land in the hands of a new set of owners. It would retard, rather than advance, the one object in view, which is to get the soil

1 The Irish "Encumbered Estates Act" of 1849 no doubt enabled land of the value of many millions sterling to be sold, but the tenants were not the purchasers. On the contrary, the land thus set "free" was too frequently bought by capitalists who dealt in a commercial manner with the property they had acquired. Many of them raised rents regardless of the tenants' position and rights, and the Irish farmers often found themselves worse off than they were under the old squireens. The present writer remembers the advertisements for the sale of these lands and seeing frequently at the bottom of them, "These rentals are capable of great improvement,” etc.

of the country as far as possible permanently into the hands of occupying owners.

There is no doubt that in England in past times large numbers of peasants' and yeomen's holdings have been bought and consolidated into large estates by wealthy men, who have offered such prices for the holdings as the owners felt bound to accept. To this cause mainly is due the disappearance, to such a large extent, of that fine class of freeholders called "statesmen," for the loss of whom, from a national point of view, no money can compensate. The following is an extract from a very interesting account of these hardy husbandmen and of their exit from the soil :—

"These independent farmers, with their well-marked qualities of persistence, industry, and suspicion, due to their retired position, are worth careful study. We are told that at the beginning of last century there were about seven thousand statesmen in Cumberland.

The lads and damsels saw no disgrace or degradation in farmwork, and followed it with a due sense of the social unity involved in it and with the native pride of an independent community. For the farm was a common duty and a common pleasure also.'

"

The writer goes on to describe the falling prices of produce and the heavier charges on the land which caused these honest statesmen to drift slowly into difficulties, and adds:

"While there was less and less hope of making a comfortable livelihood out of the land and the farmer's heart failed him, the value of his freehold still tended to rise, not to fall, as it should have done. So that as the difficulties of living increased, the temptation to throw the whole thing up and try some other way of living increased also. There were rich people, iron

men and others, who wished to create an estate and were glad to tempt the poor farmer, often encumbered with debts and mortgages incurred in the bringing up of his family, to relieve himself of all present anxiety by selling his land for a good round sum of ready money.'

The writer laments the disappearance of these men, "driven out by the baleful power of wealth," but adds that in the remaining statesmen much of the old quality remains. "The old stuff survives, and one wishes that this conservative element of our race might return to the land," etc.1

The provisions of the Land Purchase Bill would prevent untoward transactions of this kind. The object of the Bill is not only to get the soil of the country as far as possible into the hands of occupying owners, large and small, but to make these ownerships permanent, and as they increase in number to become an important, and ultimately the most important, factor in our rural life.2

On this point-Free Trade in Land-it is impossible to admire too much the foresight and patriotism

1 "The Statesmen of West Cumberland" (G. W. Kitchin, the present Dean of Durham), "Northern Counties Magazine," Vol. II, 1901.

The following extract from a letter received by the present writer some years ago from a firm of surveyors in Westmoreland, bears on this point: "Economic law has swept away the aboriginal 'statesmen,' whose acres have been absorbed by the wealthy. One Estate of £15,000 a year has been so aggregated by such purchases entirely within my own memory in the last fifty years; in many cases forty years' purchase, in some fifty, having been paid. In fact, land got to be a luxury which only the wealthy could afford to buy."

On the Continent many legal and other means exist for benefiting occupying owners which would not apply to tenants. Land banks are established which offer protection to the proprietors from professional money-lenders. Country bankers help these men, whom they know, in ways that they would not think of doing with yearly tenants who may be here to-day and gone to-morrow.

of the Prussian statesmen at the beginning of last century.

Perhaps the best accounts in English of the land legislation begun by Stein and Hardenberg are to be found in the numerous parliamentary reports on land tenure in other countries.1

The description of this German land legislation is a complete model of the manner in which the land question of England-of the same kind, but far less complicated than it was in Germany-might have been dealt with if there had been statesmen in this country of the same fibre and foresight as those in Germany. As soon as Stein took office he issued the celebrated Edict of 1807, which was the basis of all subsequent reforms. The edicts and laws which followed, extending over a period of fifty years, contained corrections and improvements of that Edict, and provided machinery for carrying it out.

The avowed objects of the legislation initiated in 1807 were-to free the peasantry from their servile tenure and to fix them on the soil, in order to invigorate the State"; to provide a national agriculture; to abolish the powers of lords of the manor, giving them fair compensation, and thus to convert peasant lands into independent ownerships; to commute the real charges resting upon private rights which were attached to various kinds of landed property; to commute rights of common and inclosed common lands,

1 "Reports respecting Land Tenure," C. 426, 1871; C. 271, 1870; C. 66, 1869; C. 572, 1872; C. 75, 1869-70. See also "Land System of France," T. E. Cliffe Leslie; "Agrarian Legislation of Prussia," Sir Robert Morier; "English Land System," C. Wren Hoskins; "Land System of Belgium and Holland," M. Emile de Laveleye.