GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. (TiiE LAND QUESTION.) 



457 



because of its unpopularity with the democ- 

 racy, re-enforced by the new electorate. The 

 benefit would, moreover, fail to redeem from 

 their financial entanglements the large mass of 

 entailed and settled estates that were unable to 

 meet their current charges. The agitation for 

 the restoration of the corn laws, whether coup- 

 led with the protection of British manufactures, 

 or yoked with a patriotic imperialistic scheme 

 for a customs union with the colonies, had failed 

 to obtain sufficient popular support to be in- 

 scribed on the Tory banners. The Conserva- 

 tives were at the end of their projects for the 

 direct benefit of the landlord class, and hence 

 looked to their opponents for proposals for the 

 extraction of crippled land-owners from per- 

 plexities that reacted on the general welfare. 

 With regard to the Radical demand for " free 

 land," American competition has wrought a 

 remarkable change in the noli me tangere atti- 

 tude taken by the aristocracy in Stuart Mill's 

 times. The land-owners as a class are now 

 desirous of complete freedom of sale. The 

 great Conservative lawyer, Lord Cairns, in the 

 Settled Estates Act of 1882 quietly revolution- 

 ized the principle of entail. Under the old law 

 entailed property could not be alienated by a 

 present owner without the consent of all the 

 parties in remainder, that is, usually, his heir and 

 the next in descent after the immediate heir. 

 The tenant for life would thus have to wait 

 for his grandson, not yet born at the time of 

 the settlement, to arrive at full age, and then 

 obtain the consent of both son and grandson 

 before selling any portion of the hereditary 

 estate. Whether land was settled at the com- 

 ing of age or the marriage of the heir, or devised 

 by will, nothing short of an act of Parliament 

 could permit a deviation from the exact terms 

 of the trust, though the interests of all par- 

 ties suffered. Lord Cairns's act enables a ten- 

 ant for life to sell any part or the whole of an 

 estate, with the exception of the mansion and 

 demesne, provided the proceeds of the sale are 

 applied, not for his own use, but in paying off 

 mortgages, improving lands, or otherwise for 

 the benefit of the remainder-man according to 

 the trust deed. The house and park may also 

 be sold, with the approval of the court. The 

 Radical opponents of the custom of entail 

 would go further, and forbid the practice of 

 binding up land for three lives, and dissolve 

 existing trusts of estates in remainder. The 

 Settled Estates Act had very little effect, partly 

 because the limited owners of estates had no 

 interest to sell except the unselfish one of 

 benefiting the family estate when the rental 

 was impaired by disposing of a part, partly 

 because there was no market for large estates, 

 and partly because of the delays and expenses 

 attending the sale and transfer of real estate. 

 The latter difficulty most affects small proper- 

 ties, of which there are a vast number, run 

 down and neglected, waiting for purchasers. 

 In the times of their prosperity, land-own- 

 ers bought up 40s. freeholds, for the sake 



of controlling parliamentary elections. The 

 change in the electoral laws has deprived these 

 properties of their principal value. These cot- 

 tage properties no rich man now cares to hold, 

 while no poor man can pay the heavy charges 

 for conveyancing in addition to the price of the 

 land. There are many small farms in the vicin- 

 ity of towns which the tenants would purchase 

 if they could be easily transferred from one 

 owner to another; but these petty farmers 

 have a dread of parchment deeds which cost 

 them much trouble and expense, and will en- 

 tail additional trouble and expense upon their 

 family after their death. The larger farmers 

 have little motive to become proprietors at 

 present, as much of the corn-land is rented for 

 1 an acre, which is only 5 per cent, on the 

 estimated average value of the improvements. 

 The simplification of land-transfers by doing 

 away with settlements and entails, and by the 

 substitution of a simple registration of title for 

 the intricate formalities designed by lawyers to 

 prevent instead of to facilitate the transfer of 

 land, are the means by which many expect with 

 Mr. Goschen that land will become as salable 

 as consols, so that " the living hand " shall 

 u grasp the living soil." The process of draft- 

 ing deeds is now a work of months, and the 

 cost to each party to a sale is equal to 5 per 

 cent, of the purchase-money. The fees of the 

 land-brokers with their charges for plans, ad- 

 vertisements, etc., amount to 5 per cent. Thus 

 15 per cent, of the capital value of the proper- 

 ty must be paid to the intermediaries of a sale. 

 A record of deeds, such, as is customary in 

 America, is kept in the counties of York and 

 Middlesex, under acts of Parliament of the 

 reign of Anne. The advocates of reform pre- 

 fer the Australian system, in which a registra- 

 tion of "title, with a description of the parcel 

 conveyed, takes the place of deeds and all other 

 formalities, an opportunity being first given by 

 advertisement for contesting a disputed title. 

 Leases, mortgages, and incumbrances would 

 be registered in like manner, and descriptions 

 would follow the ordnance-survey map, not 

 yet completed for the whole of England. 



Facility of transfer is not, under the present 

 conditions of agriculture, expected to create 

 the peasant proprietary which was the ideal of 

 former assailants of feudal customs. The Radi- 

 cals are not satisfied with a reform that will 

 merely transfer the soil from the hands of one 

 class of rich men into those of the more opu- 

 lent newly rich. Henry George's idea of the 

 confiscation of rent is the property of theo- 

 rists; yet his doctrine has made an impression 

 on politics, as evinced by the demand that new 

 burdens should be imposed on land-owners, 

 notwithstanding their losses and perplexities. 

 All Radical land theories now have a socialistic 

 tendency. The farming class, impoverished by 

 bad seasons, cattle-diseases, low prices, and 

 high rents, as the actual workers of the soil, 

 are deemed a class better worth preserving 

 than the landlords. A large section of the 



