THE ABUSES OF A LANDED GENTRY.

I AM only in part responsible for the title of this paper. There was a discourse delivered in Edinburgh during the autumn which had the same title with the exception of a single syllable. Mr. Froude held forth On the Uses of a Landed Gentry,' and called upon all men to accept and admire the laws and customs which have led to the present distribution of the British soil. It seems to me that the most mistaken and unpatriotic attitude which a public man can assume with reference to our land-system is one of easy contentment. I do not for a moment allege against Mr. Froude the conscious betrayal of the interests of his countrymen. Diligent in research, picturesque and powerful in literary display, he is probably shortsighted in the region of practice. He is profoundly distrustful of all popular movements. He is an apostle of the gospel of force. Mr. Froude has no confidence in the policy of extending the ownership of land, perhaps because of his declared conviction that the philosophy of progress is false in its principles.

I am constrained to suppose that Mr. Froude believes the actual distribution and apportionment of the soil of this country have the approval of Divine Power. In the fact that 23 noblemen hold in disability for they are only life-tenants-one-fifth of the United Kingdom, I think he recognises high purposes of the Creator. I am sure I should respect Mr. Froude's creed if I comprehended it, but for my own part I have never been able to fathom that which appears to me the presumption of men who profess to discern the decrees of an Almighty God. I would as soon seek the aid of juggling spiritualists in regard to the politics of the dead as the counsel of such men for the direction of the living. Mr. Froude has told us that the conditions under which human society will cohere harmoniously are inherent in the nature of things; and human laws are wise or unwise, just or unjust, so far as they are formed on accurate discernment of the purposes of the Maker of the world.'' He does not tell us who are the high-priests of these oracles. We are only warned that this power of accurate discernment is not in the people. He looks upon

English in Ireland, vol. iii. p. 1.

the development of representative government as the growth of an idol of spurious freedom.' 2 He believes in heaven-born men who scorn the vor populi. As for the multitude, who are slaves to their own ignorance, they will choose those to represent them who Matter their vanity and pander to their interest.' But, I should like to ask, was it not the heaven-born' men-men of that past which Mr. Froude loves so well-who held the multitude in slavery to their own ignorance; and is the provision of universal education -which is always a first demand of the multitude, and is nowhere established until the multitude have been enfranchised-is universal education an improper pandering to their interest?

I wish some better man had stepped forward to rebuke this audacious philosophy, which proclaims in the face of history, glaring all the while with contradiction, that when the possession of power is the property of few, they will be less eager in the pursuit of selfinterest than the many-which, in violation of the precepts of every writer on Political Economy, from Adam Smith to Mill and Cairnes, ventures to assert that the distribution of land in this country is the result of economic laws as absolute as the law of gravity.'4

We will pass now to consider what is the actual distribution of land in Great Britain, and in this matter we shall derive no small assistance from the returns recently made public in Blue Books which are commonly known as the 'New Domesday Books.' Pre-eminently these returns establish the fact that the soil of Great Britain is held by the landed gentry. The island is virtually in possession--I do not say of country gentlemen, because, through no fault of their own, they are not owners-in possession of the families which they represent. This cannot be regarded as an exaggerated statement of the facts when it is observed that 12,791 persons are returned as owners of four-fifths of the soil of this island, their aggregate property, exclusive of that within the metropolitan boundaries, being 40,180,775 acres. This, I say, is the return; but, in fact, the number of owners upon that immense area is much less than 12,000, and if we could get at the truth it would not surprise me to learn that the number of socalled owners of four-fifths of the soil of Great Britain is nearer 5,000 than 10,000.

To begin with the nobles, of whom there are about 500. Onethe Duke of Buccleuch-is counted as 14 landowners in this total, his grace having estates in no fewer than 14 counties in this island. There are four peers who are returned as 44 landowners, because these noblemen-the Dukes of Devonshire and Cleveland, the Earl Howe, and Lord Overstone-each appear on the roll of 11 counties. Thus we have five persons returned in these New Domesday Books as 58 landowners; and if we include the Duke of Bedford, who has land in

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Mr. Froude On the Uses of a Landed Gentry.'

3 P. 4.

10 counties, we may say six peers returned as 68 landowners. Let us see how any of them-say the Duke of Bedford-stands in the return. There can be nothing invidious in selecting one of the best landlords in the United Kingdom. In the lists for the counties of Bedford, Cambridge, and Devon, the Duke of Bedford appears as a great landowner. He is returned in each as the owner of more than 10,000 acres. In the counties of York, Buckingham, Cornwall, Dorset, Huntingdon, and Northampton, he is returned as the possessor of more than 1,000 and less than 5,000 acres, while in the counties of Hertford and Lincoln he is returned as the owner of more than 1 acre and less than 100 acres. The effect of this is to make the superficial result of the New Domesday Books very misleading. Not only is the Duke of Buccleuch returned as 14 landowners and the Duke of Bedford as 10 landowners, but there is consequent error in any estimate of the various classes of landowners. In the category of great landowners the Duke of Bedford makes a threefold appearance; then in the category which many assume is composed of squires, his grace makes a sixfold entry; and last and lowest of all, he is placed in the ranks of the small owners, who some would have us believe are peasant-proprietors or yeomen, and there he stands as two landowners. This is only an example, and undeniably a fair one, of the fallacious character of these returns.

It

But we should be on comparatively safe ground if we could assume that the Blue Books need investigation only in regard to the 12,791 persons who are returned as owners of four-fifths of Great Britain. is published for our acceptance and belief that in this island there are not fewer than 269,299 persons among whom is distributed the ownership of 11,597,514 acres of land in parcels varying in size from 1 to 500 acres. I wish that these figures, which appear in the New Domesday Books, were true, or anything like true. I know they were compiled with care and assiduity under the supervision of an eminent public servant. But I fancy that if these books had been issued under Liberal instead of Conservative auspices, the grand totals would not have been promulgated without a large allowance for necessary deductions, to which I am about to refer. We who, from motives of national policy, desire to see a much wider diffusion of property in land, do not complain that in this category we have no indication of the number of persons contained in it who derive their subsistence from the cultivation of their own land. It is, we know, in great part made up with gentlemen-owners of two or three acres of lawn and shrubbery; with tradesmen-owners of what is known as accommodation land in the neighbourhood of towns in which their commercial or other business is carried on. This confusion of classes was inevitable. No one who has any positive acquaintance with the facts would suppose that of the 130,000 persons returned as possessing more than 1 acre and less than 10 acres there is beyond a mere handful of what may be called peasant-proprietors.

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All this, however, applies to the figures when we have reduced them to the actual number of persons owning land varying in extent from 1 to 500 acres. But how is this to be accomplished? Officials sitting down to compile a New Domesday Book, with unlimited power of obtaining correct returns, would not think of including the separate properties of corporations, in some cases giving the name of the corporation, many times repeated, and in others the name of the occupier or incumbent, as that of the landowner. Yet this is what has happened throughout these returns. The North-Western Railway Company is counted as 28 landowners. Trustees of Poor' stand as 40 landowners in the single county of Bucks. The compilers have made an attempt to distinguish the lands of corporations by italics, but in this respect there has been a notable failure. I have selected for careful examination the returns relating to three counties-Bucks, Hertford, and Lancaster. The choice was made for no other reason than because the three principal members of the Government reside in those shires. In the county of Bucks I find that the only Church lands represented by italics are those of 1 perpetual curate, 1 rector, and 3 vicars; in Hertford, there are only 2 rectors and 1 vicar; and in the county of Lancaster only 2 rectors and 5 vicars. But in the first county there are no fewer than 235 landowners with the title of 'Reverend ;' in the second there are 159; and in the third there are 286 Reverend' landowners. Of course, with very few exceptions, these clerical landowners are in possession of glebe lands, and their names ought therefore to have been placed in italics. In the county of Bucks there are 273 'owners' or corporations in italics, and if we add that number to the total of the clerical owners' of glebe lands, we have a deduction of 508, or about one-sixth, to make from the 3,288 reputed owners of more than 1 acre in that county. The areas of these public lands are generally small; all, it may be said, are included in the category we are at present examining-that of the reputed owners of more than 1 acre and less than 500, who are returned as numbering 269,299 in Great Britain.

We have learned from the case of the Duke of Bedford and others that a large reduction must be made in this category for the peers, baronets, and other great gentry who are also returned in the former division containing all owners of above 500 acres, and the allowance for these great gentry has to be added to the holders of public lands who are not rightly returned as landowners. There are other errors ; sometimes the name of a landowner is repeated in respect of separate properties in the same county. But to reduce this category to its proper dimensions would produce no very interesting result. Take the actual number of owners in this category at about 150,000; that total would include a very large majority who are not agricultural landowners. They are, for the most part, residential suburban proprietors.

It is not unlikely that the true number of agricultural landlords

does not exceed the famous estimate of 30,000. The New Domesday Books were to establish the absurdity of that estimate. In this they are unsuccessful. But we are not on the whole dissatisfied with these ponderous volumes. They exhibit the one great characteristic fact of the English land-system; that the ownership of four-fifths of the soil, if properly recorded, would be inscribed above the names of a number of persons between 5,000 and 10,000.

It would be just as reasonable to say that the overflow of the Thames was caused by the policy of the Government upon the Eastern Question, as to assert that this possession of four-fifths of the soil by a body of persons who could be put into Exeter Hall is the result of economic laws. It is the consequence of the feudal customs of this country, established, confirmed, and encouraged by the force and operation of law. We know how it is done. The law declares in every county, except I believe one, in this island, that if a landowner dies intestate the eldest son shall inherit the whole property, and that his brothers and sisters shall be dependent upon his bounty. In Kent a peculiar rule prevails, which is unnatural only as regards the daughters of the intestate landowner-the property being divided in gavelkind among the sons, and the girls left destitute. The abolition of this law of primogeniture is sought because it produces injustice, especially in the class of small landowners; primarily it is demanded because the English people will not consent to retain upon their statute-book a law which is offensive to natural ideas of morality and justice. But this narrowed ownership is especially due to the custom of entail and strict settlement which has been allowed to fasten so banefully upon the soil of our country. This cannot be a free country while the freehold is reserved to an unborn generation. Of these 40,000,000 acres in Great Britain (I do not speak of Ireland) to which I have referred, it may be said that they are in bondage. By legal devices, which are not advantageous to the personal interests of the nominal proprietors, nor to those of the people at large, these lands are, with insignificant exceptions, placed under permanent disabilities; they are the preserves of entail, fenced with strict settlement; they belong to no man, and to a certain extent they are doomed to infertility, because they are ever in waiting for the unborn hand of the next generation. We all know that this is opposed to the interests of the country; we none of us doubt that it would be for the advantage of the landlords that the fullest energies of proprietorship should be brought to bear through each generation upon agriculture. The material interests of the country demand from us an effort to free the soil, and in this our labour will be sweetened by the knowledge that while we shall be conferring a pecuniary advantage upon those who are at present the nominal owners of this vast and valuable area, we may fairly claim a part of that increase of value for the revenue of the State. This law of pri