EXPERIMENTAL LEGISLATION. 769 



Although the liquor-traffic presents the widest and most important 

 sphere for social experiment, there are many other matters to which it 

 must be applied. Consideration in detail must show whether, in each 

 case, the tentative method is or is not the proper method. But it is 

 easy to name several other reforms which ought, in all probability, to 

 be approached in the experimental manner. Thus, peasant proprietor- 

 ship ought certainly to be tried in Ireland, as it was intended to be 

 tried under the Bright clauses of the Irish Land Act. I am familiar 

 with most of the economic objections to peasant proprietorship in this 

 kingdom, and I have read sufficient of the large literature of the sub- 

 ject to know that evidence in favor of and against such a tenure of 

 land is exceedingly divergent and perplexing. The proper resource, 

 then, is to try the thing, not by some vast revolution in the land-own- 

 ing of Ireland, as proposed by the late Mr. Mill— a measure which, in 

 the first place, would never pass Parliament, and, if it did, would cost 

 an enormous sum of money, and probably result in failure — but by a 

 small and progressive exjDeriment. " Earth-hunger " is a very potent 

 passion, and I believe it is that from which the Irish people are really 

 suffering. Bread and bacon are not the only good things an Irish 

 peasant might aspire to; a place to call his own, a share of the air and 

 sunlight of his native isle, and a land-bank in which to save up the 

 strokes of his pick and spade, might work moral wonders. It is not 

 safe to predict the action of human motive ; but, at any rate, try it, 

 although the trial cost as much as one or two first-rate ironclads, or 

 a new triumph over a negro monarch. Surely the state of our Irish 

 Poland is the worst possible injury to our " prestige." 



Much doubt exists, again, as to whether imprisonment is necessary 

 to enforce the payment of small debts. If needless, it is certainly 

 oppressive. But if the abolition of the power of imprisonment, on the 

 part of County Court judges, would really destroy the credit of the 

 poorer classes with their tradesmen, a general measure to that effect 

 would be dangerous and difficult to retract. I do not see how the 

 question can be decided, except by trying the effect in a certain num- 

 ber of County Court districts, and watching the results. 



It would be well worth the trouble to try the effect upon a certain 

 body of inhabitants of the most perfect sanitary regulation, somewhat 

 in the manner foreshadowed by Dr. B. W. Richardson in his " City of 

 Hygeia." This I should like to see tried, as regards the middle classes, 

 in some newly built watering-place, with full and special powers of 

 sanitary regulation to be granted to it by Parliament, avowedly as an 

 experiment. At the same time, a few large blocks of workmen's 

 dwellings ought to be built and placed under experimental sanitary 

 laws. I am convinced that legislation must by degrees be carried much 

 further in this direction than is at present the case, but it ought to pro- 

 ceed tentatively. 



One of the difficult questions of the present day is. How can Lon- 

 voL. XVI. — 49 



