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TJic Cannery Gentleman'' s Magazine 



LORD NAPIER ON THE LAND LA WS. 



THE annual meeting of the Social 

 Science Association was inaugurated at 

 Plymouth on Wednesday, when Lord Napier 

 and Ettrick, president, delivered a long ad- 

 dress on some of the most important ques- 

 tions of the day. Alluding to land tenure, he 

 remarked : — 



The distribution of property is the feature 

 in our laws and customs which presents the 

 greatest apparent hardship, which arouses 

 the keenest sense of injustice, which affords 

 the readiest materials for misrepresentation, 

 and which discovers the most dangerous in- 

 consistency between our political institutions 

 and our social condition. With reference to 

 real property, let it, then, never be forgotten 

 for one moment that Great Britain stands 

 apart and alone in the civihzed world. In 

 other respects our institutions, compared 

 with those of foreign countries, exhibit that 

 sort of divergence which may be likened to 

 the various elements of colour in a diversified 

 but not inharmonious pattern. In regard to 

 property, there is a contrast which arrests 

 and offends the eye. Permit me to present 

 once more, in a few rapid strokes, the familiar 

 features of the case. In Great Britain real 

 property is transferred and transmitted under 

 laws, customs, and influences which all com- 

 bine with irresistible increasing power to pro- 

 duce consolidation. Primogeniture, entail, 

 traditional predilections, the exigences of 

 fashion and recreation, the accumulation of 

 capital are working incessantly together to 

 promote great aggregations of land in the 

 hands of a few. 



IMPEDIMENTS TO IMPROVED LAND LAWS. 



The statistics df landed property have not 

 yet been verified with any accuracy, but it 

 would be hazardous to estimate the number 

 of estates above the dimensions of a garden 

 or a paddock at more than 100,000 in a 

 country which numbers more than 26,000,000 

 inhabitants, and there are but few counter 



acting agencies at work to mitigate the 

 perilous progression towards monopoly. It 

 may be broadly asserted that in no country 

 does so large a proportion of the population 

 live in lodgings as in Great Britain, or in 

 separate habitations as tenants at will ; in no 

 country do so many live on the land of 

 others without a lease or with a terminable 

 tenure ; in no country are the prerogatives 

 of property vested in such restricted number. 

 The attitude of the English Government in 

 matters of land tenure and land revenue has 

 been influenced at different times by the 

 political sentiment and economical theories 

 preponderant at home. Our policy has 

 now taken a permanent root, I hope. It is 

 one marked equally by justice, prudence, 

 and benevolence. The Government respects 

 the guaranteed rights of the landlord, or 

 zemindar, however inconvenient they may 

 be in regard to the fiscal interests of the 

 State ; they decline, in reference to the 

 occupiers under other tenures, to allow an 

 irrevocable alienation of the undisputed 

 right of the State to share in the increased 

 value of the produce of the soil, not created 

 by a capital of labour of the cultivator, but 

 there is an unquestionable inclination to re- 

 cognize and confirm a popular tenure in the 

 land. It would be easy, but it would be 

 idle, to multiply examples from the legisla- 

 tion or the usage of foreign or dependent 

 nations to prove with what strength and 

 unanimity the disposition runs to impart the 

 benefits of real property to the greatest 

 number. Unhappily, in searching for the 

 means of action, it becomes at once apparent 

 that there are many difficulties in the way 

 which have not operated with the same 

 force in other countries, in which the question 

 has been already solved, or which are alto- 

 gether peculiar to our condition. Among 

 these impediments the following may be 

 noted as the most conspicuous : — The 

 extinction of all positive or traditional 



