2. That the clauses of "The Land Clauses Consolidation Act 1845," "with respect to the purchase of lands by agreement," and "with respect to the purchase and taking of lands otherwise than by agreement," and "with respect to the purchase money or compensation coming to parties having limited interests, or prevented from treating or not making title," shall be, and they are hereby incorporated with this act.

3. That every tenant or occupier who has for the past five years been in possession of any land, tenements, or hereditaments, shall be considered "a promoter of the undertaking within the meaning of the said recited act, and shall be entitled to purchase the lands which he has so occupied, 'either by agreement' 'or otherwise than by agreement,' as provided in the said recited act."

Then follow some details which it is unnecessary to recite here.]

The 55th William I. secured to freemen the inheritance of their lands, and they were not able to sell them until the act QUIA EMPTORES of Edward I. was passed. The tendency of persons to spend the representative value of their lands and sell them was checked by the Mosaic law, which did not allow any man to despoil his children of their inheritance. The possessor could only mortgage them until the year of jubilee—the fiftieth year. In Switzerland and Belgium, where the nobles did not entirely get rid of the FREEMEN, the lands continued to be held in small estates. In Switzerland there are seventy-four proprietors for every hundred families, and in Belgium the average size of the estate is three and a half hectares—about eight acres. These small ownerships are not detrimental to the state. On the contrary, they tend to its security and well-being. I have treated on this subject in my work, "The Food Supplies of Western Europe." These small estates existed in England at the Norman Conquest, and their perpetual continuance was the object of the law of William I., to which I have referred. Their disappearance was due to the greed of the nobles during the reign of the Plantagenets, and they were not replaced by the Tudors, who neglected to restore the men-at-arms to the position they occupied under the laws of Edward the Confessor and William I.

The establishment of two estates in land; one the ownership, the other the use, may be traced to the payment of rent, to the Roman commonwealth, for the AGER PUBLICUS. Under the feudal system the rent was of two classes—personal service or money; the latter was considered base tenure. The legislation of the Tudors abolished the payment of rent by personal service, and made all rent payable in money or in kind. The land had been burdened with the sole support of the army. It was then freed from this charge, and a tax was levied upon the community. Some writers have sought to define RENT as the difference between fertile lands and those that are so unproductive as barely to pay the cost of tillage. This far-fetched idea is contradicted by the circumstance that for centuries rent was paid by labor—the personal service of the vassal—and it is now part of the annual produce of the soil inasmuch as land will be unproductive without seed and labor, or being pastured by tame animals, the representative of labor in taming and tending them. Rent is usually the labor or the fruits of the labor of the occupant. In some cases it is income derived from the labors of others. A broad distinction exists between the rent of land, which is a portion of the fruits or its equivalent in money, and that of improvements and houses, which is an exchange of the labor of the occupant given as payment for that employed in effecting improvements or erecting houses. The latter described as messuages were valued in 1794 at SIX MILLIONS per annum; in 1814 they were nearly FIFETEEN MILLIONS; now they are valued at EIGHTY MILLIONS.

[Footnote—A Parliamentary return gives the following information as to the value of lands and messuages in 1814 and 1874:

1814-15. 1873-74. Lands, L34,330,463 L49,906,866 Messuages, 14,895,130 80,726,502

The increase in the value of land is hardly equal to the reduction in the value of gold, while the increase in messuages shows the enormous expenditure of labor.]

The increase represents a sum considerably more than double the national debt of Great Britain, and under the system of leases the improvements will pass from the industrial to the landlord class.

It seems to me to be a mistake in legislation to encourage a system by which these two funds merge into one, and that hands the income arising from the expenditure of the working classes over to the tenants-in-fee without an equivalent. This proceeds from a straining of the maxim that "what is attached to the freehold belongs to the freehold," and was made law when both Houses of Parliament were essentially landlord. That maxim is only partially true: corn is as much attached to the freehold as a tree; yet one is cut without hindrance and the other is prevented. Potatoes, turnips, and such tubers, are only obtained by disturbing the freehold. This maxim was at one time so strained that it applied to fixtures, but recent legislation and modern discussions have limited the rights of the landlord class and been favorable to the occupier, and I look forward to such alterations in our laws as will secure to the man who expends his labor or earnings in improvements, an estate IN PERPETUO therein, as I think no length of user of that which is a man's own—his labor or earnings—should hand over his representative improvements to any other person. I agree with those writers who maintain that it is prejudicial to the state that the rent fund should be enjoyed by a comparatively small number of persons, and think it would be advantageous to distribute it, by increasing the number of tenants-in-fee. Natural laws forbid middlemen, who do nothing to make the land productive, and yet subsist upon the labor of the farmer, and receive as rent part of the produce of his toil. The land belongs to the state, and should only be subject to taxes, either by personal service, such as serving in the militia or yeomanry, or by money payments to the state.

Land does not represent CAPITAL, but the improvements upon it do. A man does not purchase land. He buys the right of possession. In any transfer of land there is no locking up of capital, because one man receives exactly the amount the other expends. The individual may lock up his funds, but the nation does not. Capital is not money. I quote a definition from a previous work of mine, "The Case of Ireland," p. 176:

"Capital stock properly signifies the means of subsistence for man, and for the animals subservient to his use while engaged in the process of production. The jurisconsults of former times expressed the idea by the words RES FUNGIBILES, by which they meant consumable commodities, or those things which are consumed in their use for the supply of man's animal wants, as contradistinguished from unconsumable commodities, which latter writers, by an extension of the term, in a figurative sense, have called FIXED capital."

All the money in the Bank of England will not make a single four-pound loaf. Capital, as represented by consumable commodities, is the product of labor applied to land, or the natural fruits of the land itself. The land does not become either more or less productive by reason of the transfer from one person to another; it is the withdrawal of labor that affects its productiveness.

WAGES are a portion of the value of the products of a joint combination of employer and employed. The former advances from time to time as wages to the latter, the estimated portion of the increase arising from their combined operations to which he may be entitled. This may be either in food or in money. The food of the world for one year is the yield at harvest; it is the CAPITAL STOCK upon which mankind exist while engaged in the operations for producing food, clothing, and other requisites for the use of mankind, until nature again replenishes this store. Money cannot produce food; it is useful in measuring the distribution of that which already exists.

The grants of the Crown were a fee or reward for service rendered; the donee became tenant-in-fee; being a reward, it was restricted to a man and his heirs-male or his heirs-general; in default of heirs-male or heirs-general, the land reverted to the Crown, which was the donor. A sale to third parties does not affect this phase of the question, inasmuch as it is a principle of British law that no man can convey to another a greater estate in land than that which he possesses himself; and if the seller only held the land as tenant-in-fee for HIS OWN LIFE and that of HIS heirs, he could not give a purchaser that which belonged to the Crown, the REVERSION on default of heirs (see Statute DE DONIS, 13 Edward I., ANTE, p. 21). This right of the sovereign, or rather of the people, has not been asserted to the full extent. Many noble families have become extinct, yet the lands have not been claimed, as they should have been, for the nation.

I should not complete my review of the subject without referring to what are called the LAWS OF PRIMOGENITURE. I fail to discover any such law. On the contrary, I find that the descent of most of the land of England is under the law of contract—by deed or bequest—and that it is only in case of intestacy that the courts intervene to give it to the next heir. This arises more from the construction the judges put upon the wishes of the deceased, than upon positive enactment. When a man who has the right of bequeathing his estate among his descendants does not exercise that power, it is considered that he wishes the estate to go undivided to the next heir. In America the converse takes place: a man can leave all his land to one; and, if he fails to do so, it is divided. The laws relating to contracts or settlements allow land to be settled by deed upon the children of a living person, but it is more frequently upon the grandchildren. They acquire the power of sale, which is by the contract denied to their parents. A man gives to his grandchild that which he denies to his son. This cumbrous process works disadvantageously, and it might very properly be altered by restricting the power of settlement or bequest to living persons, and not allowing it to extend to those who are unborn.

It is not a little curious to note how the ideas of mankind, after having been diverted for centuries, return to their original channels. The system of landholding in the most ancient races was COMMUNAL. That word, and its derivative, COMMUNISM, has latterly had a bad odor. Yet all the most important public works are communal. All joint-stock companies, whether for banking, trading, or extensive works, are communes. They hold property in common, and merge individual in general rights. The possession of land by communes or companies is gradually extending, and it is by no means improbable that the ideas which governed very remote times may, like the communal joint-stock system, be applied more extensively to landholding.

It may not be unwise to review the grounds that we have been going over, and to glance at the salient points. The ABORIGINAL inhabitants of this island enjoyed the same rights as those in other countries, of possessing themselves of land unowned and unoccupied. The ROMANS conquered, and claimed all the rights the natives possessed, and levied a tribute for the use of the lands. Upon the retirement of the Romans, after an occupancy of about six hundred years, the lands reverted to the aborigines, but they, being unable to defend themselves, invited the SAXONS, the JUTES, and the ANGLES, who reduced them to serfdom, and seized upon the land; they acted as if it belonged to the body of the conquerors, it was allotted to individuals by the FOLC-GEMOT or assembly of the people, and a race of LIBERI HOMINES or FREEMEN arose, who paid no rent, but performed service to the state; during their sway of about six hundred years the institutions changed, and the monarch, as representing the people, claimed the right of granting the possession of land seized for treason by BOC or charter. The NORMAN invasion found a large body of the Saxon landholders in armed opposition to William, and when they were defeated, he seized upon their land and gave it to his followers, and then arose the term TERRA REGIS, "the land of the king," instead of the term FOLC-LAND, "the land of the people;" but a large portion of the realm remained in the hands of the LIBERI HOMINES or FREEMEN. The Norman barons gave possession of part of their lands to their followers, hence arose the vassals who paid rent to their lord by personal service, while the FREEMEN held by service to the Crown. In the wars of the PLANTAGENETS the FREEMEN seem to have disappeared, and vassalage was substituted, the principal vassals being freeholders. The descendants of the aborigines regained their freedom. The possession of land was only given for life, and it was preceded by homage to the Crown, or fealty to the lord, investiture following the ceremony. The TUDOR sovereigns abolished livery and retainers, but did not secure the rights of the men-at-arms or replace them in their position of FREEMEN. The chief lords converted the payment of rent by service into payment in money; this led to wholesale evictions, and necessitated the establishment of the Poor Laws, The STUARTS surrendered the remaining charges upon land: but on the death of one sovereign, and the expulsion of another, the validity of patents from the Crown became doubtful. The PRESENT system of landholding is the outcome of the Tudor ideas. But the Crown has never abandoned the claim asserted in the statute of Edward I., that all land belongs to the sovereign as representing the people, and that individuals HOLD but do not OWN it; and upon this sound and legal principle the state takes land from one and gives it to another, compensating for the loss arising from being dispossessed.

I have now concluded my brief sketch of the facts which seemed to me most important in tracing the history of LANDHOLDING IN ENGLAND, and laid before you not only the most vital changes, but also the principles which underlay them; and I shall have failed in conveying the ideas of my own mind if I have not shown you that at least from the Scandinavian or ANGLO-SAXON invasion, the ownership of land rested either in the people, or the Crown as representing the people: that individual proprietorship of land is not only unknown, but repugnant to the principles of the British Constitution; that the largest estate a subject can have is tenancy-in-fee, and that it is a holding and not an owning of the soil; and I cannot conceal from you the conviction which has impressed my mind, after much study and some personal examination of the state of proprietary occupants on the Continent, that the best interests of the nation, both socially, morally, and materially, will be promoted by a very large increase in the number of tenants-in-fee; which can be attained by the extension of principles of legistration now in active operation. All that is necessary is to extend the provisions of the Land Clauses Act, which apply to railways and such objects, to tenants in possession; to make them "promoters" under that act; to treat their outlay for the improvement of the soil and the greater PRODUCTION OF FOOD as a public outlay; and thus to restore to England a class which corresponds with the Peasent Proprietors of the Continent—the FREEMAN or LIBERI HOMINES of ANGLO-SAXON times, whose rights were solemnly guaranteed by the 55th William I., and whose existence would be the glory of the country and the safeguard of its institution.

THE END