1881.] on the Land Systems of Emjland and of Ireland. 565 



bidders in the land-market. Wc must, therefore, look beyond tlio 

 fancy price of land for the explanation of the fact tliat in England 

 the body of landowners is getting; smaller and smaller. The ex- 

 planation is not far to seek. The vast preponderance of great 

 landowners has left the yeoman class no place in county government 

 or county society. As one yeoman vanishes after another, those wlio 

 survive, feeling themselves more and more isolated, and missing the 

 neighbourly fellowship of past generations, are drawn insensibly into 

 country towns, until at last the rural population of English counties 

 may be said to consist of three elements, and three only, landlords, 

 tenant-farmers, and labourers. 



4. This leads us to consider the fourth distinctive feature of the 

 English land system — the direction of cultivation by a class of tenant- 

 farmers usually holding from year to year, without the security of a 

 lease. For the great bulk of the land in these islands, as is well 

 known, is cultivated, not by the owners, but by this intermediate class, 

 numbering between 500,000 and 600,000 farmers in Great Britain, 

 who hold on the average 56 acres each. It is not thus in other coun- 

 tries, especially in the most civilised. There, on the contrary, the 

 great bulk of the laud is cultivated by the owners themselves, most of 

 whom may be classed with our agricultural labourers rather than with 

 our tenant-farmers, but form a real peasantry of a class well nigh 

 extinct in England. For it was not always thus in England itself. 

 Lord Macaulay believes the small freeholders, whom he estimates at 

 160,000, to have greatly outnumbered the tenant-farmers in the reign 

 of Charles II., and there is good reason to believe that English farms 

 were commonly held under lease until the period of the French w^ar 

 at the end of the last century. The history of yearly tenancy is 

 difficult to trace, but it is certain that it was very much encouraged 

 by the long continuance of " war prices " which made landlords very 

 unwilling to part with the immediate control of their properties, and 

 by their desire to maintain political influence over their tenants. The 

 late agricultural depression has operated in the same direction, inclin- 

 ing landlords to keep farms at their disposal until rents improve, and 

 inclining tenants to rely on the forbearance of landlords under 

 yearly tenancy, rather than " hang a lease round their necks," as they 

 say. On the other hand, the want of security incident to a mere 

 yearly tenancy, and especially the want of security for a farmer's 

 improvements, have been very much felt and discussed of late. Un- 

 ha2)pily, it has not led to a revival of leases, but to attempts to bolster 

 up the unstable system of yearly tenancy. One of these attempts was 

 embodied in the Agricultural Holdings Act of 1875, to extend which 

 is the object of two Bills introduced this year. Such measures may be 

 described as tending to establish a national system of tenant-right, 

 and this w'ould certainly be a great advance on mere yearly tenancy, 

 but it w'ould be a very poor substitute for leases, and no substitute at 

 all for ownership. 



5. We now come to the fifth distinctive feature of the English land 



