The Online Library of Liberty

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• Essays On Economics and Society 1850–1879
• The Savings of the Middle and Working Classes 1850
• The Regulation of the London Water Supply 1851
• Newman’s Political Economy 1851
• The Law of Partnership 1851
• The Income and Property Tax 1852
• The Bank Acts 1857
• The Income and Property Tax 1861
• Currency and Banking 1867
• Endowments 1869
• Thornton On Labour and Its Claims 1869
• Leslie On the Land Question 1870
• Land Tenure Reform 1871
• Property and Taxation 1873
• Chapters On Socialism 1879
• Editor’s Note
• Chapters On Socialism
• Preliminary Notice
• Introductory
• Socialist Objections to the Present Order of Society
• The Socialist Objections to the Present Order of Society Examined
• The Difficulties of Socialism
• The Idea of Private Property Not Fixed But Variable
• Appendices
• Appendix A: Mcculloch’s Discourse On Political Economy (1825)
• Appendix B: Petition On Free Trade (1841)
• Appendix C: Examination Paper In Political Economy Set By Jsm (1872)
• Appendix D: Land Tenure Reform Association: Public Lands and Commons Bill (1872)
• Appendix E: Bibliographic Index of Persons and Works Cited In the Essays, With Variants and Notes

LESLIE ON THE LAND QUESTION

1870

EDITOR’S NOTE

Fortnightly Review, n.s. VII (June, 1870), 641-54. Signed; republished in D&D, IV (1875), 86-110. Original heading: “Professor Leslie on the Land Question,” footnoted: “Land Systems and Industrial Economy of Ireland, England, and Continental Countries. By T. E. Cliffe Leslie, LL.B. of Lincoln’s Inn, Barrister-at-Law, Examiner in Political Economy in the University of London, and Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economy in the Queen’s University in Ireland, and Queen’s College, Belfast. London: [Longmans, Green,] 1870.” Identified in JSM’s bibliography as “A review of Professor Cliffe Leslie’s work on the Land Systems of different countries, in the Fortnightly Review of June 1, 1870” (MacMinn, 99). No copy in Somerville College.

In answer to a letter from Leslie, JSM wrote from Avignon, 8 March, 1870, in part: “I have just seen the advertisement of your book in Longmans’ list. It is not worth while sending any proofs here as we leave for England at the beginning of next week.” (Draft in British Library of Political and Economic Science.)

In the D&D version, many mistakes in the quotations from Leslie are corrected. The corrections in punctuation are accepted silently; the substantive corrections are also accepted, and the readings in the Fortnightly are given as variant notes. In these notes, “70” refers to the version in the Fortnightly; “75” to that in D&D, IV.

Leslie on the Land Question

the founders of Political Economy have left two sorts of disciples: those who have inherited their methods, and those who have stopped short at their phrases; those who have carried on the work of the masters, and those who think that the masters have left them no work to do. The former follow the example of their teachers in endeavouring to discern what principles are applicable to a particular case, by analysing its circumstances; the latter believe themselves to be provided with a set of catch-words, which they mistake for principles—free-trade, freedom of contract, competition, demand and supply, the wages fund, individual interest, desire of wealth, &c.—which supersede analysis, and are applicable to every variety of cases without the trouble of thought. In the language of Mr. Leslie, himself one of the best living writers on applied political economy—

Since the downfall of Protectionism made Political Economy a term of honour, and no longer, with the classes dominant in politics and society, one of opprobrium, this routine school of political economists have mostly had things their own way; the more easily, as they comprise in their ranks some men of more than ordinary talents and acquirements, but who share the common infirmity of liking to get their thinking done once for all, and be saved all further trouble except that of referring to a formula. The ascendancy, however, of this school has always been disputed by those who hold that general maxims should be helps to thought, not substitutes for it. And the progress of events is now thrusting into the front, not merely of theoretical discussion, but of practical statesmanship, problems which definitely separate these two kinds of political economists, and put in evidence the broad distinction between them. Such is, in a peculiar degree, the question of Land Tenure, in Ireland and in England.

The Irish land difficulty having shown, by painful experience, that there is at least one nation closely connected with our own, which cannot and will not bear to have its agricultural economy ruled by the universal maxims which some of our political economists challenge all mankind to disobey at their peril; it has begun to dawn upon an increasing number of understandings, that some of these universal maxims are perhaps not universal at all, but merely English customs; and a few have begun to doubt whether, even as such, they have any claim to the transcendent excellence ascribed to them. The question has been raised whether the administration of the land of a country is a subject to which our current maxims of free trade, free contract, the exclusive power of every one over his own property, and so forth, are really applicable, or applicable without very serious limitations; whether private individuals ought to have the same absolute control, the same jus utendi et abutendi, over landed property, which it is just and expedient that they should be permitted to exercise over movable wealth.

Once fairly raised, this question admits of but one answer. The distinction between the two kinds of property is fundamental.

In the first place, land is a monopoly, not by the act of man, but of nature; it exists in limited quantity, not susceptible of increase. Now it is an acknowledged principle that when the State permits a monopoly, either natural or artificial, to fall into private hands, it retains the right, and cannot divest itself of the duty, to place the exercise of the monopoly under any degree of control which is requisite for the public good.

This control, moreover, is likely to be peculiarly needful, when the State has allowed private persons to appropriate the source from which mankind derive, and must continue to derive, their subsistence. The community has too much at stake in the employment of the land as an instrument for the supply of human wants, to be entitled to recognise any right in individuals to make themselves an impediment to the most beneficial use of it for that end. Wherever might is not accepted as a sufficient basis of right, the justification of private property in land has rested on the theory that most is made of the land for the good of the community by giving that full play to the stimulus of self-interest which is given by private ownership. But this theory, though it has a foundation in truth, is by no means absolutely true; and the limits of its truth ought to be the limits of its practical application. The self-interest of the owners of land, under perfect freedom, coincides with the general interest of the community up to a certain point, but not wholly; there are cases in which it draws in a totally opposite direction. Not even in the point of view of Production is there a complete coincidence between the private interest of landowners and the public interest. In that of Distribution, whether the institution of private property in land should include the concession, to enrich a class, of all that annual increase of wealth which the mere progress of capital and population, in a prosperous community, showers down upon landlords without any exertion or sacrifice of their own, is a question not raised by Mr. Leslie, and which, for the present, we are content to leave undiscussed. But the self-interest of landlords is far from a sufficient security for their turning the land to the best account, even as to its productive powers.

But though the self-interest of landlords frequently operates to frustrate, instead of promoting, the interest which the community has in the most effective use of the productive powers of the soil, there is another party concerned whose self-interest does work in that useful direction; and that is, the actual cultivator of the soil, if he be either a small proprietor, or a tenant on conditions which secure to him the full fruits of his labour and outlay:—

It is a great step in advance, and a signal triumph of political necessity over inveterate prejudice, that Parliament is now passing a bill^[*] which recognises that in Ireland at least, security of tenure is indispensable to enlist the self-interest of the occupier of land on the side of good cultivation, and that this security cannot, in Ireland, be trusted to the operation of contract, but must be provided by law. There is something amusingly naïf in the form in which this interference of legislation represents itself to the minds of many who, with considerable reluctance, find themselves forced to support it. According to them, it is a deeply to be regretted, but unavoidable, setting aside of what they call the principles of political economy, in consequence of insuperable difficulties. May I venture to suggest that there are no such principles of political economy as those which they imagine themselves to be violating? The principles of political economy, as of every other department of knowledge, are a different thing from its practical precepts. The same principles require different precepts, wherever different means are required for the same ends. If the interest of landlords does not afford sufficient security to tenants, it is not contrary, but in the strictest conformity, to the teachings of political economy, to provide other security instead. The absolute power of landlords over the soil is what political economy really condemns; and condemns in England as well as in Ireland, though its economic mischiefs are not, in England, so flagrant and unqualified.

Mr. Leslie’s volume is partly a republication of essays which have appeared during the last three years in periodicals. But they are as fresh, and as germane to the present state of the question, as if they had been written yesterday; and they are supplemented by others which bring up the information and discussion to the latest date. They all relate to some of the aspects of the question of Land Tenure, and may be classed under three heads: the land question as it is in Ireland, the land question as it is in England, and the agricultural economy of those continental countries which the author has had the means of personally observing. We cannot attempt to give an adequate view of the contents of the volume; but in the hope of directing readers to the work itself, we will touch cursorily on a few of the points on which most stress is laid.

The view which Mr. Leslie takes of the condition of Ireland—and Mr. Leslie is an Irishman, of Ulster, who has studied the operation of economic laws in that country at first hand, and on the spot—is at once unfavourable and encouraging. Encouraging as regards the capabilities of the country, agricultural and even manufacturing, and the capacity of the people for thriving under a more tolerable land system; but unfavourable, as he considers much of the improvement alleged to have taken place, and to be still in progress, under the present system, in consequence of the famine and the emigration, to be merely imaginary. He denies the virtue either of emigration, or of the other favourite English prescription—the consolidation of farms—as a cure, or even much of a palliation, for Irish poverty. As a matter of fact, he asserts that the increase of wages which has taken place, considerable as it appears in comparison with the former standard, is not much more than equivalent to the rise in the price of articles of consumption caused by the gold discoveries, and by the railways, which have everywhere so greatly increased the price of agricultural produce in what were once, from the inaccessibility of markets, the cheap regions of the world. As a matter of science, he justly criticises the sweeping generalisation which assumes that whatever reduces the supply of labourers must proportionally raise wages, without regard to the effect which, in certain economic conditions, even a small rise in the price of labour may produce on the demand. On this subject he has shown that there is room and need for a supplementary chapter or section in our treatises on political economy; and it is no blame to him if, in a volume of this character, he rather points out the want than supplies it.^* As far as Ireland is concerned, his opinion is, that the extensive substitution of pasture for tillage which has been taking place during the whole period of the emigration, and has been greatly facilitated by it, has curtailed the demand for labour in a proportion fully equal to the diminution of the supply. And the facts adduced, not only by Mr. Leslie, but by Professor Lyon Playfair, in his essay in Recess Studies, “On the Declining Production of Human Food in Ireland,”^[*] show that this transformation and, in fact, supersession of rural industry, which at first only diminished the produce of tillage, but greatly increased the products of grazing farms, has now for some years decreased even the number of cattle, “through the want of winter keep, and what is worse, through a positive deterioration of the depastured soil,” its fertilizing elements, instead of being restored to it, having been carried out of the country in the bodies of the exported cattle ([Leslie,] p. 65). The single exception to the decline in the number of animals is sheep, the only farm product which increases in a soil abandoned to nature, and which, accordingly, has greatly increased in Ireland. The “decay of husbandmen”^[*] and diminution of the produce of agriculture has had its natural effect in the decay of the country town and the village; and Mr. Leslie draws a sad picture of the desolation of the poverty-stricken country towns, the eastern coast excepted, which has been saved by the trade with England. Even the rise of prices, seemingly so beneficial to the farmer, is, under the wretched land system of Ireland, often the very reverse. “Rising prices, in themselves, and unaccompanied by security, only imperil the position of the tenant farmer, by tempting the proprietor to sudden changes in the terms of the tenure, or in the tenancy itself.” (P. 63.) And tenancy at will is more universally the rule at this moment than it has been for several generations. “The natural consequence has been that system of husbandry which so experienced a judge as Mr. Caird lately described as everywhere meeting his eye, save in Ulster and the eastern seaboard of the country. ‘What the ground will yield from year to year at the least cost of time, labour, and money is taken from it.’ ”^[†]

The consolidation of farms, from which so much was expected, and which so many Englishmen still honestly believe to be the panacea for Irish poverty, perversely resisted by a population which it would essentially benefit, has proved, no less than the emigration, a complete failure as regards the prosperity of the country.

Since the immense produce raised from the barrenest soil in the small farms of Belgium, and the higher rent they actually pay, compared with large farms, have been made generally known in England, attempts have been made by Lord Rosse, Lord Dufferin, and others, to make out that the experience of Flanders, from difference of climate and other causes, is not applicable to Ireland. Mr. Leslie maintains, on the contrary, that the success of the petite culture in Flanders has been attained in spite of great disadvantages, not only of soil but of climate; that the British islands have much greater natural advantages than Flanders, for the success of five-acre farms; that “there is hardly any part of Europe, save England, better fitted for farms of the smallest description than the greater part of Ireland, including its waste lands; and even its waste lands could be made highly productive by Flemish agriculture.” (P. 18.) Nor are the Irish peasantry, under anything like fair play, incapable of the qualities necessary for doing the fullest justice to small holdings.

It is not, therefore, as so often idly pretended, from any original incapacity or inveterate habits in the Irish race, that production and prosperity are declining throughout the whole space contained between “a line from Dublin to the nearest point of Lough Swilly in the north, and another to Bantry Bay in the south” (p. 70), a space including nearly three-fourths of the island. But to say more at present on the Irish part of the land question is inconsistent with our limits.

The land question in England, as Mr. Leslie justly observes, is unlike the land question in Ireland; but the evils of the system are different in kind rather than inferior in degree. The land question in Ireland is a tenant’s question; and what the case principally requires is reform of the conditions of tenure. The land question in England is mainly a labourer’s question, though the tenants also suffer deeply from the same causes which have reduced the labourers to their present state. Mr. Leslie tells once again the sad history of the divorce of the peasantry from the land. In England, unlike many other countries, the descendants of serfs had risen into a yeomanry, regarded by cotemporary chroniclers as the main strength of the country, both in war and in peace. In the last quarter of the seventeenth century the number of these small landed proprietors still “exceeded that of the tenant-farmers, amounting at the most moderate estimate to not less than 160,000 proprietors, who with their families must have made more than a seventh of the whole population.” (P. 164, and the passage of Macaulay therein quoted.^[*] ) But now—

The means by which these lamentable changes have been brought about may be found in Mr. Leslie’s volume, or in Mr. W. T. Thornton’s “Over-population and its Remedy.” They are summed up by Mr. Leslie, so far as relates to the labourers, in the following catalogue (pp. 207-8):—

These various headings are explained and expounded in the pages which follow; and the author concludes—

Thus complete has been the failure of the English agricultural economy, if we look, not to the prosperity of landlords, nor even to the amount of produce raised from the soil, but to the truest test—the condition of the mass of the population. But when we pass, in our author’s pages, from the picture of the evils to the suggestion of remedies, we are struck by a sense of their inadequacy. We imagine Mr. Leslie himself would be the first to admit that he does little more than break ground on the subject.

The causes of evil, in Mr. Leslie’s apprehension, are, that landed property is in too few hands; that the movement even towards large farms has been carried too far; and that tenants have not sufficient security of tenure. Remedial measures, he believes, will be efficacious, just in so far as they tend to increase the number of proprietors of land, and to give to tenants the security of a long lease. To attain the former object—

Mr. Leslie’s proposal is to restore to him these legitimate rights, abolishing all restrictions which deprive the owner of land for the time being of the power of alienation.

In order to judge of these proposals, it is not necessary to have come to a positive conclusion on the rather difficult legislative question, whether and in what cases settlements should be permitted; in other words, whether and to what extent an owner of property should have power to bequeath to one person a life-interest, and to another or others the succession after the death of the first. It is evident that settlement of property may be permitted without permitting settlement of land. It would be sufficient to enact that testamentary dispositions which do not confer unrestricted ownership on the person in whose favour they are made, shall not be valid for the land itself, but only for the proceeds of its sale. There are not the same objections to tying up consols and similar representative wealth from alienation, which there are in the case of the actual sources of production; and if, without forbidding the landowner to regulate, within certain limits, the descent of his pecuniary means beyond his immediate successor, it were put out of his power to detain for this purpose any portion of the land of the country from general circulation, he would be obliged either to bequeath the land in full ownership, implying liberty of sale, or if he thought it indispensable to tie the hands of his successor, the land would be sold by operation of law at his decease, and the restriction would only apply to the proceeds. Mr. Leslie, as we saw, proposes a sale of land at every succession to the extent necessary for clearing the remainder from all existing incumbrances. Without pledging ourselves to this proposal, which requires mature discussion, we may remark that if it were adopted, the proprietor, being no longer able to charge the land beyond his own life with a provision for younger children, must choose between leaving them a portion of the land itself, and selling a portion to raise money for their benefit. These provisions combined would greatly restrict the power of keeping together large masses of land in a particular line of descent; and it might fairly be anticipated that a great increase would take place in the quantity of land which would annually be brought into the market.

But Mr. Leslie, we should think, must be as well aware as anybody, how little this would do towards making any great part of the land of this country the property of the actual cultivators. In France, and other countries of the Continent, the sale of land generally means its purchase by the poor; for the poor give the highest price, the rich being neither numerous, nor, in general, addicted to rural duties or pleasures. But in England the sale of land means generally its sale to the rich. The annual accumulation of fortunes in manufactures and commerce raises up a perpetual succession of rich families, eager to step into the place of landowners who are obliged to sell. Unless changes much more radical than an increase of the facilities of alienation are destined to take place in this country, nearly all the land, however it may change hands, is likely to remain the property of the rich; nor are the new proprietors more likely than the old to lease their lands on terms more encouraging to the industry and enterprise of their tenants. No doubt, the increased quantity of land in the market would cause a cheapening of its price, which would bring it within the reach of a somewhat greater number of purchasers; and it would occasionally fall into the hands of persons intending to cultivate instead of letting it, but seldom of those who cultivate with their own hands. If the greater marketableness of land is to be made a benefit to the labouring class, it must be in another manner entirely; as, for example, by buying from time to time on account of the public, as much of the land that comes into the market as may be sufficient to give a full trial to such modes of leasing it, either to small farmers with due security of tenure, or to co-operative associations of labourers, as without impairing, but probably even increasing, the produce of the soil, would make the direct benefits of its possession descend to those who hold the plough and wield the spade. Mr. Leslie has not included any measure of this sort among his proposals, but it is quite germane to his principles, and necessary, we think, to enable them to produce their best effects.

Meanwhile, the measures which he proposes would render possible a multitude of agricultural and industrial enterprises, beneficial to the national wealth, and giving great employment to labour, which at present the restrictions of family settlements make impracticable. We quote at the foot of the page some striking examples of the obstructive operation of these arrangements.^*

We have not space remaining for an analysis of the third part of Mr. Leslie’s Essays, relating to the land systems and agricultural economy of Continental states. They are, however, a valuable contribution to our knowledge of the subject, relating to regions which the author has himself visited, and has been assisted in his inquiries by high economical and agricultural authorities on the spot: in Westphalia and the Ruhr Basin by several persons; in Central France by the eminent M. Léonce de Lavergne; and in Belgium by M. Emile de Laveleye, whose important paper in the Cobden Club volume^[*] has recently brought home to many English readers the lessons contained in his remarkable works on Belgium, Holland, and Lombardy. The essays on the Ruhr Basin and on La Creuse are most interesting reading, and the facts they contain, when first published by Mr. Leslie, were almost wholly new to English readers. But the most valuable, for the general purposes of the book, are those on Belgium. Mr. Leslie’s paper in the Cobden Club volume^[†] had shown, in opposition to a still strong, though diminishing, prejudice, the great success of peasant properties in France. The paper in the present volume on Belgium renders the same justice to the small farms as well as the small properties of that country. If we compare with the minute and well-considered statements of Mr. Leslie and M. de Laveleye, such as are given on the contrary side even by such an authority as Mr. James Howard, in his “Continental Farms and Peasantry”^[‡] (though Mr. Howard is by no means absolutely hostile to small farms, but expresses a strong sense of the desirableness of a certain admixture of them), we see nothing in the latter which seriously diminishes the consideration due to the former. Everything in Mr. Howard’s remarks which is matter of fact—everything which is the result of actual observation—may be admitted, without affecting the worth of Belgian example as evidence in favour of what the petite culture is capable of. There is not a single drawback pointed out by Mr. Howard, which is inseparable from petite culture; while even in Belgium the drawbacks are shown by Mr. Leslie and M. de Laveleye to be steadily diminishing.

[* ]Mr. Leslie adds: “Political writers and speakers of this school have long enjoyed the double satisfaction of beholding in themselves the masters of a difficult study, and of pleasing the powers that be, by lending the sanction of ‘science’ to all established institutions and customs, unless, indeed, customs of the poor. Instead of a science of wealth, they give us a science for wealth.” [P. 89.]

[a-a]70 one; and

[b-b]70 makes

[c-c]70 deer-parks

[d-d]70 like

[e-e]+75

[[*] ]See 33 & 34 Victoria, c. 46.

[* ]“The bargain of wages is a transaction between the individual employer and his men; what that employer can give depends on his own means forf profits, and not on the sum of the funds in his own and other people’s possession. . . . . The aggregate amount of the funds expendible as wages does not, given the number of labourers, determine the rate of wages at all. . . . . Were only one labourer left in the country, would he earn as much as all the former labourers put together? Clearly not; unless he did as much work, and worked for all employers at once; for how else could the money be forthcoming to pay him? . . . If a single employer, or a few who could combine, had the entire amount, all the labour in the country which could not emigrate might be hired for its bare subsistence, whatever the rate in the power of the employer to give. Again, if the whole amount were, as it really is, very unequally shared among employers, the price of labour might be immeasurably lower than if it were equally shared; just as, at an auction, the prices paid for things will probably be immensely higher if the purchasers have equal means, than if most of the money is in the hands of a few. If two bidders, for example, have each £50, one of them may have to spend his whole fifty to get half what he wants; but if one of them has but £5, and the other has £95, the latter may get all he wants for £5 5s.” (Pp. 41, 87-8.) Hence a very large emigration might take place, and yet the rise of wages be stopped at what the bulk of the employers of labour—in Ireland a very poor class—could afford to pay. “Although emigration may force employers either to pay more for labour or to forego it, it cannot enable them to pay more for it, as higher prices of produce will do; . . . it may, on the contrary, compel or determine them to diminish their outlay upon it, may force or induce them to relinquish enterprises already on foot, to forsake tillage for pasture, to emigrate themselves, and in various other ways to withdraw funds from the labour market. It may actually disable them from paying the same rate of wages as formerly, by withdrawing the strongest and most skilful hands from their employment; and again, in place of being the cause of a rise in the rate of wages, it may be the consequence of a fall.” (P. 97.)

[[*] ]Recess Studies, ed. Alexander Grant. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1870, pp. 241-60.

[[*] ]See Leslie, p. 69.

[[†] ]Leslie, p. 63, quoting Caird, James. The Irish Land Question. London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1869, p. 19.

[[‡] ]Brodrick, George. “The Irish Land Question,” in Recess Studies, ed. Alexander Grant, pp. 1-53.

[g-g]70 [quotation marks omitted]

[[*] ]Macaulay, Thomas Babington, The History of England. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1849, I, pp. 334-5.

[h-h]70 dependence

[i-i]70 essential respects

[j-j]+75

[k-k]70 had

[l-l]70 would

[m]70 the

[* ]“About fifteen years ago (Dr. Hancock relates in his “Treatise on the Impediments to the nProsperityn of Ireland” [London: Simms and McIntyre, 1850, pp. 85-7]) an enterprising capitalist was anxious to build a flax mill in the North of Ireland, as a change had become necessary in the linen trade from hand-spinning to mill-spinning. He selected as the site for his mill a place in a poor but populous district, situated on a navigable river, and in the immediate vicinity of extensive turf bogs. The capitalist applied to the landlord for a lease of fifty acres for a mill site, labourers’ village, and his own residence, and of fifty acres of bog, as it was proposed to use turf as the fuel for the steam-engines of the mill. The landlord was most anxious to encourage an enterprise so well calculated to improve his estate. An agreement was concluded; but when the flax-spinner consulted his legal adviser, he discovered that the law prevented the landlord from carrying out the very liberal terms he had agreed to. He was bound by settlement to let at the best rent only; the longest lease he could grant was for three lives, or thirty-one years. Such a lease, however, at the full rent of the land, was quite too short a term to secure the flax-spinner in laying out his capital in building; the statute enabling tenants to lease for mill sites only allowing leases of three acres. The mill was not built, and mark the consequence. Some twenty miles from the spot alluded to, the flax-spinner found land in which he could get a perpetual interest; there he laid out his thousands; there he has for the last fifteen years given employment to hundreds of labourers, and has earned money. The poor but populous district continues as populous, but, if anything, poorer than it was. During the past season of distress, the people of that district suffered much from want of employment, and the landlord’s rents were worse paid out of it than from any other part of his estate.” (Pp. 52-3.)

“Belfast, the only great manufacturing city in Ireland, owes its greatness to a fortunate accident which converted the ground on which it stands from feudal into commercial territory, by transferring it from a great noble to its own citizens. But the growth of Belfast itself, on one side, has been strictly circumscribed by the rival claims of two noble proprietors, who were in litigation respecting them for more than a generation; and in a step the inhabitant passes from new streets to a filthy and decaying suburb, into which the most enterprising capitalist in the neighbourhood has been prevented from extending his improvements. On the other side of the town is some ground which the capitalist just referred to bought three years ago for the purpose of building; but which remains unbuilt on, in consequence of difficulties in the legal title; although in equity the title is indisputable, and is not disputed. Some years ago the same capitalist contracted for the purchase of another plot of ground in the neighbourhood. It proved, however, that the vendor was precluded by his marriage settlement from completing otheo contract, although it reserved to him the unusual power to grant leases for 999 years. That, however, did not answer the same purpose; in the first place, because (a consequence of the land system, with its distinction between real and personal property), the succession duties are heavier on leasehold than on freehold estates. What is more important, a tenant for years has not the rights of ownership, as was afterwards experienced in the very case before us. The capitalist accepted a lease for 999 years; although diverted from his original design with respect to the ground. In putting it to a different purpose, he proceeded to level an eminence, and to carry away the gravel for use elsewhere. But the Law of Landlord and Tenant says: If a tenant open pits for the purpose of raising stone or waste [?] it will be waste. And this being the law, the landlord actually obtained an injunction to restrain the tenant’s proceedings, and mulcted him in damages. Once more; in another county the very same capitalist opened an iron mine by arrangement with the lord of the soil, and commenced works on an extensive scale. The landlord then demanded terms to which he was not entitled by his contract; but the price of Irish iron has not been high enough of late years to defray the cost of a Chancery suit, in addition to the cost of production; and delay, worry, and anxiety are not inducements to industrial enterprise, so the iron works were suspended. Here are five cases within the author’s knowledge, all happening in recent years, in which a single individual has been arrested in the course of town enterprise and improvement by the state of the law. . . . It is well known that there are no manufacturing establishments on the Companies’ estates, because these London guilds persistently refuse to give perpetuity lease for mill purposes; while on the borders of the county [Londonderry], Cookstown, Ballymena, Ballymoney, and Coleraine, where such leases are granted, manufactures have increased and prospered, and even in the county, where freehold sites can be procured, manufactures have taken root.” [JSM’s square brackets in both cases] (Pp. 76-9.)

[[*] ]“The Land System of Belgium and Holland,” in Systems of Land Tenure in Various Countries. London: Macmillan, 1870, pp. 228-78.

[[†] ]“The Land System of France,” ibid., pp. 328-52.

[[‡] ]Continental Farming and Husbandry. London: Ridgway, 1870.

[* ]“The bargain of wages is a transaction between the individual employer and his men; what that employer can give depends on his own means forf profits, and not on the sum of the funds in his own and other people’s possession. . . . . The aggregate amount of the funds expendible as wages does not, given the number of labourers, determine the rate of wages at all. . . . . Were only one labourer left in the country, would he earn as much as all the former labourers put together? Clearly not; unless he did as much work, and worked for all employers at once; for how else could the money be forthcoming to pay him? . . . If a single employer, or a few who could combine, had the entire amount, all the labour in the country which could not emigrate might be hired for its bare subsistence, whatever the rate in the power of the employer to give. Again, if the whole amount were, as it really is, very unequally shared among employers, the price of labour might be immeasurably lower than if it were equally shared; just as, at an auction, the prices paid for things will probably be immensely higher if the purchasers have equal means, than if most of the money is in the hands of a few. If two bidders, for example, have each £50, one of them may have to spend his whole fifty to get half what he wants; but if one of them has but £5, and the other has £95, the latter may get all he wants for £5 5s.” (Pp. 41, 87-8.) Hence a very large emigration might take place, and yet the rise of wages be stopped at what the bulk of the employers of labour—in Ireland a very poor class—could afford to pay. “Although emigration may force employers either to pay more for labour or to forego it, it cannot enable them to pay more for it, as higher prices of produce will do; . . . it may, on the contrary, compel or determine them to diminish their outlay upon it, may force or induce them to relinquish enterprises already on foot, to forsake tillage for pasture, to emigrate themselves, and in various other ways to withdraw funds from the labour market. It may actually disable them from paying the same rate of wages as formerly, by withdrawing the strongest and most skilful hands from their employment; and again, in place of being the cause of a rise in the rate of wages, it may be the consequence of a fall.” (P. 97.)

[* ]“About fifteen years ago (Dr. Hancock relates in his “Treatise on the Impediments to the nProsperityn of Ireland” [London: Simms and McIntyre, 1850, pp. 85-7]) an enterprising capitalist was anxious to build a flax mill in the North of Ireland, as a change had become necessary in the linen trade from hand-spinning to mill-spinning. He selected as the site for his mill a place in a poor but populous district, situated on a navigable river, and in the immediate vicinity of extensive turf bogs. The capitalist applied to the landlord for a lease of fifty acres for a mill site, labourers’ village, and his own residence, and of fifty acres of bog, as it was proposed to use turf as the fuel for the steam-engines of the mill. The landlord was most anxious to encourage an enterprise so well calculated to improve his estate. An agreement was concluded; but when the flax-spinner consulted his legal adviser, he discovered that the law prevented the landlord from carrying out the very liberal terms he had agreed to. He was bound by settlement to let at the best rent only; the longest lease he could grant was for three lives, or thirty-one years. Such a lease, however, at the full rent of the land, was quite too short a term to secure the flax-spinner in laying out his capital in building; the statute enabling tenants to lease for mill sites only allowing leases of three acres. The mill was not built, and mark the consequence. Some twenty miles from the spot alluded to, the flax-spinner found land in which he could get a perpetual interest; there he laid out his thousands; there he has for the last fifteen years given employment to hundreds of labourers, and has earned money. The poor but populous district continues as populous, but, if anything, poorer than it was. During the past season of distress, the people of that district suffered much from want of employment, and the landlord’s rents were worse paid out of it than from any other part of his estate.” (Pp. 52-3.)

“Belfast, the only great manufacturing city in Ireland, owes its greatness to a fortunate accident which converted the ground on which it stands from feudal into commercial territory, by transferring it from a great noble to its own citizens. But the growth of Belfast itself, on one side, has been strictly circumscribed by the rival claims of two noble proprietors, who were in litigation respecting them for more than a generation; and in a step the inhabitant passes from new streets to a filthy and decaying suburb, into which the most enterprising capitalist in the neighbourhood has been prevented from extending his improvements. On the other side of the town is some ground which the capitalist just referred to bought three years ago for the purpose of building; but which remains unbuilt on, in consequence of difficulties in the legal title; although in equity the title is indisputable, and is not disputed. Some years ago the same capitalist contracted for the purchase of another plot of ground in the neighbourhood. It proved, however, that the vendor was precluded by his marriage settlement from completing otheo contract, although it reserved to him the unusual power to grant leases for 999 years. That, however, did not answer the same purpose; in the first place, because (a consequence of the land system, with its distinction between real and personal property), the succession duties are heavier on leasehold than on freehold estates. What is more important, a tenant for years has not the rights of ownership, as was afterwards experienced in the very case before us. The capitalist accepted a lease for 999 years; although diverted from his original design with respect to the ground. In putting it to a different purpose, he proceeded to level an eminence, and to carry away the gravel for use elsewhere. But the Law of Landlord and Tenant says: If a tenant open pits for the purpose of raising stone or waste [?] it will be waste. And this being the law, the landlord actually obtained an injunction to restrain the tenant’s proceedings, and mulcted him in damages. Once more; in another county the very same capitalist opened an iron mine by arrangement with the lord of the soil, and commenced works on an extensive scale. The landlord then demanded terms to which he was not entitled by his contract; but the price of Irish iron has not been high enough of late years to defray the cost of a Chancery suit, in addition to the cost of production; and delay, worry, and anxiety are not inducements to industrial enterprise, so the iron works were suspended. Here are five cases within the author’s knowledge, all happening in recent years, in which a single individual has been arrested in the course of town enterprise and improvement by the state of the law. . . . It is well known that there are no manufacturing establishments on the Companies’ estates, because these London guilds persistently refuse to give perpetuity lease for mill purposes; while on the borders of the county [Londonderry], Cookstown, Ballymena, Ballymoney, and Coleraine, where such leases are granted, manufactures have increased and prospered, and even in the county, where freehold sites can be procured, manufactures have taken root.” [JSM’s square brackets in both cases] (Pp. 76-9.)

[forf]70 and [printer’s error?]

[nProsperityn]70 Property

[otheo]70 his